Thank God, I'm Home - Gallery Essay

T-Bone Phone - Julie Green

Whopper, Fries and Then - Julie Green

     

               Our class got to visit the Thank God, I’m Home: First Meal exhibition at NJCU. The artist behind this exhibition, Julie Green, had asked wrongfully convicted people about the first meals they had when they were released from prison. After hearing their responses, she painted their answers and put up her work in this exhibition. When walking through this exhibition and seeing all the works of art that she created and reading the stories of all the people who have been wrongfully convicted was very powerful to see. There were two pieces that stuck out to me the most. One of them was titled T-Bone Phone and the other was called Whopper, Fries and Then.

               The first piece I’m going to talk about is T-Bone Phone. What I really loved about this piece is the boldness of the colors that Julie Green used. Compared to the other works in the exhibition this one had much darker colors. Something that’s apparent in this piece is that the steak is within an iPhone with photos of Charlie Brown along the sides of the painting. When reading about what this piece is about, it was sort of hard to imagine what the exoneree had to go through when released from prison. The exoneree had been in prison for 27 years and when he got out of prison, he was exposed to a whole new world than when he went in. Hearing this was hard for me to imagine, maybe because I was born into a world of when technology was growing and slowly grew along with it. It must have been very complicated for the exoneree to get a grasp on this new society that moved on without them. I think the Charlie Brown border on the side is meant to symbolize the society that he grew up in. And the iPhone in the center of the painting is meant to obviously show the new society that he has to get used to. I think it’s a really cool painting that does a great job showing how this person felt while getting his first meal from a whole new world to them.

               The second piece Whopper, Fries and Then had this sort of cruel irony to it which is small reason as to why I like the painting so much. What first caught my eye about the painting is the colors that were used. It has a bit of gold incorporated to the painting that really caught my eye. When this exoneree got out of prison, he wanted his first meal to be a whopper from Burger King. On the painting it says that the exoneree, Juan, had been in prison for 17 years while on death row. On the bottom of the plate, it mentions that after eating his first meal outside of prison he ended up throwing up. So this person had been waiting all this time to have a good meal once finally being able to leave prison, and once this moment has finally arrived for him, he ended up throwing up the food he had eaten. It’s a very cruel irony that Juan had experienced. I’m unsure as to whether or not this painting could have been commenting on fast food restaurants and the processed foods that are used that people eat regularly without a second thought.

               Julie Green had another exhibition that used plates to show the final meals of those who were executed while in prison. She painted food on porcelain plates to represent the convicts final meals. A quote from an article about this project of hers, “She began painting these meals on secondhand porcelain dinner plates, up to 50 a year. She’s since created 600 of these plates, sometimes making one each day.” This quote shows her dedication toward this cause that she’s very passionate about. She cares so much about those in prison and has a great empathy for them that not many people do. Even with the Thank God, I’m Home: First Meal exhibition she shows how much she cares about those she interviewed by how detailed she made her paintings. She wanted to convey their stories accurately as well as show the importance of meals for both of her projects. Another quote from this reading is “Individually, the plates are deeply personal.” This is another aspect of Green’s work that she expressed in this exhibition. Though some of the exoneree’s chose not to give too much information about their stories or even their names,  she’s still telling their stories and keeping the artworks dedicated to them as personal as possible. A final quote from this same article states, “One convict’s story forces us to think, seeing 600 such stories gathered in one place creates a roar that is impossible to shut out.” I feel like this quote does a great job capturing the overall work that Julie Green has done for these convicts and exoneree’s. She made sure to make their stories known even if many people may not have heard of their stories while in prison. This is truly a beautiful exhibition that I really enjoyed seeing. It made me appreciate meals in general and how lucky we all are to be able to eat every day with or without people around us. We have food at our disposal and not many people have the same privilege as we do.