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"Kaw Liga" Lithograph on BFK, 22x30, 2020

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A love story - Two cut out advertisements, a cowboy and a bar patron reminiscent of a Tolouse Lautrec figure, are propped up inside a  rural Illinois gas station. One advertises Hamms beer, the other a small dive bar called Marie’s Old Towne Tavern. They’re in love but because they’re placed on opposite ends of the gas station, separated by aisles of beef jerky, various grades of motor oil and candy, they can never interact. One day, a tornado plows through the gas station and lifts the two cutouts in the air and drops them in a corn field where they can finally be together. 

An object history of western art lays around them, starting with the Venus of Willendorf and ending with Mondrian’s “Composition in Red and Yellow”, as if the same tornado also hit a museum gift shop. Two of the art history objects are the Venus de Milo and the Hellenistic sculpture, The Boxer. They sit next to each other, mirroring the relationship between the two advertisement cut outs. Gasoline, Lithotine, and Vegetable Oil stand together as well, a more subtle object history of solvents used in printmaking. A barbed wire fence runs through the center of the composition, referencing a time line. 

The title is a reference to the Hank Williams song, “Kaw Liga. The lyrics are about two dime store statues that fall in love until one of them is sold, leaving the other to rot alone.