The tragic reality of America's children today is they grow up with routine shooter drills as the norm in classrooms. This editorial portrait expresses the tension of a real-life active shooter scenario where the training of the drills is falling apart. The teacher and kids chaotically throw desks and chairs in front of the door. The kids are running to hide with their teacher against the wall. The shooter stands ominously outside the door, a shadowy threat directly in line with one of the kids looking out the door window. The teacher begs for the kids to be quiet, as her pointer finger reminds the viewer to VOTE for common sense gun laws. The poster of the bloody map of the United States was crafted using the data points from The Department of Homeland Security's shooting incident data from June 1970-2022 (viewed on Sept 4th, 2024:https://www.chds.us/sssc/data-map/). I created this map originally for the album cover for my brother in law's song "Lockdown" on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/track/4moUVigCa9KZJcI4XH5y9X?si=55L2-MNQTAi6pyM6CwbMLw&nd=1&dlsi=8699d96c84da4185).
While I was working on this painting, the Apalachee High School shooting occurred in Georgia. Please vote.