So a few years ago, or maybe more than a few...time tends to just all run together as you get older...Lucasfilm sent out a hundred (or so) replica Darth Vader helmets to underground artists with the request that they treat the helmet as their blank canvas and go crazy. The helmets were then put on display at a Star Wars Celebration convention in California, and I think since then has made the rounds to other notable locales around the world. This is just one such example.
Over the years I've collected images of the Vader helmets, simply because I love the idea of taking an iconic image from pop culture and transforming that into a visual artwork. The idea that an artist can take something so iconic and distort it to the point that it evokes new meaning is very interesting to me as an artist, and as an art teacher. Many times over the past few years I've asked kids to look at the Vader helmets and we talk about the ramifications of the work. Is it art? How is it art, if the artist did not create the Vader image? What new meaning is expressed in the new visual representation, so on and so on. And now...I'm just done talking about it. I want to do it!
So...let it be known that this year, I am writing a request to Skywalker Ranch in hopes that I will be given a hundred or so of the Vader replica helmets to that I can turn this into an art project with my sixth graders. How amazing would it be to have 100 kids working on the manipulation of this well known screen villain? Words can't express how giddy I am at the possiblity. However...despite being an optimist, I am a realist, and I understand that this may never come to be. But one can dream...
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