Golden Child (The Onesiestm Project): a Commentary on Social Reaction to Gay Adoption
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University of Massachusetts Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts GOLDEN CHILD (THE ONESIESTM PROJECT): A COMMENTARY ON SOCIAL REACTION TO GAY ADOPTION A Thesis in Visual Design by Alain D. Blunt Copyright 2014 by Alain D. Blunt Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts May 2014 Copyright 2014 by Alain D. Blunt. All rights reserved. This material may not be duplicated by any means without the express written permission of the author. I grant the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth the non-exclusive right of making a single copy on a not-for-profit basis to replace the University’s circulating copy if it is lost or destroyed. Alain D. Blunt Date We approve the thesis of Alain D. Blunt Date of Signature Yoon Soo Lee Professor of Design Thesis Advisor Thomas Spencer Ladd Associate Professor of Design Thesis Committee Janet Fairbairn Full Time Lecturer of Design Thesis Committee Mark Millstein Graduate Program Director, Department of Design Adrian Tio Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts Tesfay Meressi Associate Provost for Graduate Studies Abstract Golden Child (The OnesiesTM Project): A Commentary on Social Reaction to Gay Adoption by Alain D. Blunt My graduate studies and the birth of my son have transformed me. I’ve evolved from a “silent partner” in corporate design — a professional adhering to strict client-driven standards — into an expressive artist who has something personal to say about the world. Flowing out of my identity as a gay, married, and adoptive parent, and my status as a biracial, adopted immigrant, my current work is a critique of society’s lack of social tact and lingering prejudice surrounding adoption, particularly gay adoption. Working within conventions of parody, I use standard design tools and methodology to construct combinations of text and image that communicate subversive messages to make the implicit explicit. I study and borrow from formats in the baby product industry, such as “Onesies”™, and from traditional print media. My primary objective is storytelling; an additional goal is to raise social awareness. iii SECTION 1 Introduction Ultimately, my work is a parodistic critique of society’s general ignorance of and biases on adoption, particularly gay adoption. My OnesiesTM Project represents a change in direction for me because it blurs the lines between personal narrative and political commentary. I am using the iconic format of the infant bodysuit (and exploring other forms associated with the baby product industry) to display language and image that seek to provoke a response from the viewer. These personal statements are somewhat subversive in nature because they are veiled in parody, irony, and satire. I want the content to challenge expectations and elicit conversation. This is the work that I connect with most as a designer, as a parent, and as someone who has something to say about the life-changing events of the last three years. This conceptual point of departure in my work successfully wraps up all the themes that I’ve been talking about since the start of my three-year course of study: identity (husband, father, gay man, victim of prejudice), race, alienation, and emotional labor (managing others’ perceptions of us through emotion management), and even design and branding. I should have known I would end up having a career in the visual arts. From an early age, I was fascinated with the act of making images, whatever the medium. I was commonly known as “the resident artist” in school. For me, art was revelatory, transformative, magical, and above all, one of my few outlets for expression. Growing up in a strict Vietnamese household, I was brought up to speak when spoken to, stay quiet while others talk, and “tone it down.” In my artistic life, I attempt to hush these old voices for a new voice of my own, one that I can use to express myself openly, and one that seeks to expose topics that can seem uncomfortable to some. 1 Never one to rock the boat as a child, I had always done what was expected of me. As a result, my desire to study graphic design at the University of Maryland was met with both awe and resistance from my parents, especially my mother. She wanted her son to have a “respectable” profession; I simply wanted to study a subject that I loved. After a lengthy impassioned argument, they both surprisingly gave in. As their support for my artistic endeavors increased throughout my undergraduate experience, so did my confidence. I wanted so much to prove my mother wrong so I forged ahead excitedly in all of my classes, graduating on time and with high marks. Over the years, I have built a nice career for myself, slowly but surely. Design was my calling; it was the glue that connected all the different aspects of my life seamlessly. Over my eighteen- year career, I gained corporate, freelance and agency experience in designing, art directing and producing award-winning work for a variety of projects and clients. I am proud of my work and remain passionate about my discipline. Most of my design work so far has been client-centric; its primary goal is to communicate a clear message on the client’s behalf. This kind of work is focused on both perceived and financial success; thus it’s not about the designer’s motivation or intention behind the work. Even though my clients’ success trickles down to me, internally I’ve always felt a little like the “silent partner” in the designer-client scenario. Until coming back to school to pursue advanced studies in design, little of my work had been made just for me or just for my benefit. With its unexpected twists and turns, life has a way of keeping us engaged. One such surprise came in the form of a call one day from the chair of Design at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. It was an offer to teach a class and I was not sure what to do. I had never taught before and did not understand explicitly what was involved. After interviewing for the opportunity, the school asked me to join their small but trusted circle of adjuncts. This turned out to be one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made, and it changed my life profoundly. The joy of teaching led me to the decision to obtain an advanced degree in my field, after which I can pursue my long-term plans of teaching full-time in higher education. However, my MFA 2 experience has proven to be much more than a means to an end. It has provided a supportive environment for professional growth, self-discovery, and the quest for my true voice. Last year, my husband and I went through a life-changing event: we adopted a baby boy. The journey to fatherhood was eye-opening for me, and I learned a lot about myself along the way. The birth of our son has to be the most thrilling and all-consuming experience of my life. How could I not talk about it? Suddenly this “silent partner” was overcome with emotion and had so much to say. I’ve enjoyed writing about, talking about, and making work that is about my recent experiences with adoption, my son Max, and fatherhood. Apart from a few glimpses of happiness or excitement, the majority of the pre-adoption process was scary, anxiety-provoking, and even occasionally ugly. My first instinct was to channel everything that was going on into making art. I had a genuine desire to help other pre-adoptive parents; this resulted in the design and development of an Adoption Profile Guide. The guide’s intent is to help waiting parents through the process of creating their adoption profile, the single most important document for waiting parents to connect with expectant parents in domestic adoption. I believe that the guide needed to be made, but although our story was represented in it I felt that its focus was still on “the other” and not on me/us. I was holding back; I had more to say. It came in the form of a revelation, something that I had been processing for a while but couldn’t verbalize until then. Adopting a child as a gay married couple was challenging enough to manage; however, it was the reaction of outsiders that surprised us most. Some reactions were to be expected — some sad, some shocking. I realized how emotional this all made me, how it brought up deep-rooted issues of self-identity, race, and family for me. Since I am exploring the complexity of identity, I look for references of people who focus on this theme in art making. My own identity (I am gay, biracial, multilingual, adopted and an immigrant) reveals itself in different aspects and at various points in my current pieces. I am looking at artists and designers who use storytelling in their work. I am particularly interested in those artists who do this in the form of parody. 3 SECTION 2 Sources 2.1 Childhood In grade school we were asked to transcribe poems and stories we had read in class onto blank ruled notebooks, but I always went above and beyond. I spent hours filling up pages with colorful illustrations of scenes from Aesop’s Fables and nursery rhymes. In fact, at the age of eight, my teachers began to collect and keep my notebooks at the end of each semester. My love of art, and later design, stayed with me throughout my undergraduate education, which exposed me to a range of classes that served to deepen my interest in the subject and broaden my creative horizons.