It is fun to be inspired by other artists. This is inspired by the music and message of 30 Seconds to Mars. I have never done a collage so focused on one color before, and you can see how challenged I was by the straight lines! Red is also a very all or nothing color - there's no half way, not really shades. I used a lot more art pieces, and had to seek different images because this had to have specific meaning, pertaining to the band. Everything has meaning and significance in some way. Some of the things I would mention, is that the very tip shows the light of a star being born and the wonderful Janus-headed stand-in for Mithra (the phoenix) comes from an old vodka ad. The bowl represents abundance, and is also the circle about which Black Elk says: "Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round." The red coral in the bowl evokes energy and passion. Uniting the arrow with the circle in this piece is meant to represent the coming together of the divine masculine and the divine feminine.
30STM is a band with rich symbolic lore, it is what really drew me in, and one of the things that they (strangely) share with the Grateful Dead. But with the Dead, it was drugs, divine intervention, and groupthink of a large group of creative tripping people. 30STM was started by two brothers from Louisiana, they are a little younger than I am, grew up poor and without their dad, like so many of us - point is: I can relate to them as peers. They have worked really hard to get where they are, and they express a genuine sense of gratitude that I like and respect. And they put all this thought into how to get their fans reading and exploring big ideas.
