Steve Davis, Visual Artist

Monuments is a recent body of work that is concerned with the notion of American Exceptionalism.   With this work, I hope to raise questions of what is the American Dream, and to whom is it applicable? How many of the notions of what makes America great are derived from exclusion of historical events that would say otherwise? What is patriotism and why do some say to question one’s government and history is to dishonor it as well as those who have fought and died for it?  Why do we look at the past as our paradigm of greatness, and not at the progress we have made since then? How do we as a nation start to recognize and reconcile the mistakes of the past as well as praise the successes of the present? How do we own our checkered history?