Thoughts on the creative process and inspiration from creators Philip Sanders and Kassandra La Giusa-Riedeman.

We can remember, the day after the election, the sense of insecurity felt across the nation. Unsure of people that would soon be in power and they would live up to the position they were obtaining or what it meant for people that opposed the new administrative propositions. Communication broke down. People aligned with their own parties. If your views weren’t the same as your friends, they might block you on social media.

In several classes a professor would address the election to the class and then ask the students what they needed in that moment? Music seemed to be the answer for many people.  It was a way to escape from reality and at the same time express how you were feeling at the moment.

When Kasandra and I discussed AUTS topics, we noticed  that people who were our friends and family had stopped talking to each other because of party affiliation. We wanted to find a way to bring people together again. We felt that we needed to focus on what can bring us together and what is breaking us apart.

We both hope this piece symbolizes our feelings and is a step in the right direction of opening up the channels of communication. For our piece we are symbolizing the colors of red and blue people who have differences and using purple as the spirit that wants to bring the country back together. We feel the color purple is the perfect symbol of unity because red and blue together creates this color.

Symbolic Explanation

• Red symbolizes one polarized group of people.
• Blue symbolizes another group of people.
• Purple symbolizes our commonalities, that inside we are all human and have a right to our own opinions. 
• Each brick is symbolized by what each party fears about the other.

Collaboration and Understanding

Through the collaborative process, our group stumbled upon a series called The Messy Truth with Van Jones. Jones a democrat went to visit a family that was primarily republican. While they all had differences and arguments too they all believed that we had to not let each other be dived by our opinions. One thing that struck us while watching the interview is that by breaking down communications we are starting a war. Van Jones went on to say that Republicans are concerned with liberties, having individual rights. Democrats are concerned with justice and making sure everyone was fair equal and protected by the government. He then said they both need each other. Liberty without justice is totalitarianism, and justice without liberty is corporatism. They are both bad and need each other. The best way to start is having respect for each other and accepting and trying to understand why someone is affiliated with their party and understanding that it’s ok and shouldn’t hate each other for it.

-Philip Sanders, Student

Liberty, Justice, and Respect.

Posted by Team Van | 11tvp November 06, 2016. Van Jones. N.p., 4th Nov. 2016. Web. 24 Apr.

2017.