One step at a time. Gwenn Seemel paints portraits.

Twenty slices of the American dream

For over two years now, my studio has been overrun with twenty immigrants and their children.  This August, they’ll finally move to the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center to be set on public display in my upcoming show, Apple Pie. 

As the daughter of a French immigrant, I spent a good deal of my childhood in a small village in France.  Now, at twenty-seven, I’m living the American dream.  I make my living as an artist, have a waiting list for commission work, and have painted everyone from mechanics to movie stars.  Feeling lucky to be on American soil, I set out to connect with other multi-ethnic Americans to see if their experiences were anything like mine.
For Apple Pie, I’ve gathered subjects that don’t always come to mind when one thinks of a US citizen, first and second generation Americans.  And, instead of simply painting the participants as they are, I’ve blended their likenesses with American icons.  These combinations are a kind of allegorical portraiture cum political cartoon that leave those leaning both left and right questioning their understanding of the US. 
Some of the more uniquely American paintings in the show include a Zimbabwean-American woman who wears white bunny-face to fit into her adopted country’s decidedly compartmentalized concept of her ethnicity and an Iranian-German-American version of Rosie the Riveter. In this refiguring of the United States, Superman reveals his Mexican heritage and a Native American George Washington finally earns the title First American.

The Portland showing of Apple Pie runs 28 August through 20 September at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, and, in May and June 2009, the series will travel to Eugene for a stint with the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts. 

I have just two paintings left to complete for Apple Pie, and this is one of them.  Once these two portraits are done, I need to document the series and lay out the catalogue for the show.  I’m excited to be publishing these images along with statements by each of the subjects about what they think it means to be American.  And, to round out this composite definition of the United States, the Oregonian journalist Inara Verzemnieks has also contributed an essay about her take on the American dream.

The catalogue and the show are funded in part by a project grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.  They are some of my favorite people!

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