Modern Atlanta catalog is damn sexy, and baskets are useful.

Also: I have a spread in it. Dashboard Co-op asked several artists to create images for the interior of the publication, the only stipulation was that it had to be a duotone of orange and blue PMS colors. I’ve been working for a while now on a body of work based on guillotines, so that’s what inspired this work as well. I was thinking about the baskets that collect the chopped-off heads (see the picture below), and the nursery rhyme A-Tisket A-Tasket popped into my not-chopped-off head.

My spread, A Tisket A Tasket

Detail

The PMS color changed after I submitted, so this blue is a little different from the actual print.

Modern Atlanta cover

Baskets are useful.

The image is overlapping text gradients with rectangular recessions in visual space. For me, they evoke body-support objects and/or containers: boxes, chairs, benches or coffins. Things we use to support or contain a body. The foreground also makes a letter “H.” You can decide for yourself what that might stand for.

There are several lyrical variations to the rhyme, the words that make up the halftones are:

A-tisket a-tasket, A green and yellow basket, I wrote a letter to my mommy, And on the way I dropped it, I dropped it.
I dropped it, And on the way I dropped it. A little girly picked it up and put it in her pocket.
It started to take on a more sinister meaning when the function of many pre-Disneyfied children’s rhymes and stories is considered in context with the guillotine’s. Each could be seen as a form of alleviating social deviancy: rhymes and fairy tales to occupy the imagination or warn children of the harsh realities of the world so they grow up “right,” guillotines to enforce social healing by eliminating undesirables from society. One makes a person and helps form their social identity, the other unmakes them and removes it.