Guilty
By Tia Blassingame
Claremont, California: Primrose Press, 2017. Edition of 8 variants.

7" x 10.25" single sheet. Letterpress. Pressure printing. Backed with kozo paper. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Tia Blassingame: "These are concept prints for a new artist's book that I am working on [I AM]. They stand alone, but like everything I do they helped to move the book idea forward."

Tia Blassingame, Entropy Interview December 18, 2017, in answer to the question "Where are you focusing your next experience?": "I’m very interested in the relationship between black and white in terms of who is considered innocent, criminal. As a nation, we continue this long history of re-victimization of black victims and their loved ones, and of a justice system that does not provide justice if the crime is committed by a white American against a black American. Even in our popular culture we joke about this. We accept this as tragic, but almost inevitable. Though both are constructs, blackness does not exist without whiteness. Whiteness cannot exist without blackness. It’s fascinating how that relationship plays out like the biggest threat to white supremacy is just being, existing in this skin."

Tia Blassingame, next project I AM: "I AM is one book or two depending upon how you view their relationship. Using old family photographs and portraits, my image at various ages represents various recent victims of police brutality. The idea of a duality me, you. Victim, perpetrator was added after it was revealed that a juror in the Terence Crutcher case had voted not guilty because he was tired and hungry, and just wanted deliberations to be over so he could eat.

"(On September 16, 2016, Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old black man, was fatally shot by white police officer Betty Shelby in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was unarmed during the encounter, in which he was standing near his vehicle in the middle of a street.)"
(SOLD/Out of print)