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Artists Sculptors Guild
 
Philip Simmons
email:  simmonsphilip@gmail.com
website: www.philipsimmons.net
I make sculpture that comments on current American culture and politics, by creating sign-like sculpture, and more recently, cast-resin objects, and sculptural installation. By combining disparate symbols, icons and objects into a piece, I attempt to capture the complexity of political and cultural debate. Politicians, the media and other cultural actors rely on iconic images and symbols to capture immediate attention, and to appeal to a particular segment of the public. These complex, coded messages are often intentionally ambiguous, and are meant to appeal to as wide a group of people as possible. I take these symbols and recombine them in ways that raise questions about, and directly comment on, contemporary American culture. The work explores the seams and fissures of the cultural landscape, often with a sense of humor. One recurrent theme is The West, and in particular The Cowboy, as mythologized in movies and the media. This amazingly powerful symbol encapsulates many positive and negative attributes of "Americanness". In my latest body of work titled "Crash", the Iraq war was a dominant theme. 
 
Empire
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Angry Cock
 
Black Water
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