Elliott Earls

Liberty Weeps was inspired by Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People." In this piece, Liberty is embodied in the innocence of a crying child. Is Liberty crying for the victims of September 11th? Is Liberty crying over the loss of civil liberties in the War on Terror? Is Liberty crying for our fallen soldiers in Iraq or for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? The open nature of the language in this poster, contrasted with the specificity of the image, is meant to provoke discussion.

Elliott Earls is a performance artist, musician, and designer, and is designer in residence and head of the Graduate Graphic Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. His experimentation with nonlinear digital video, spoken word poetry, music composition, and design has been seen in venues as diverse as...The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the “Exit” Theater Festival at Maison des Arts de Créteil in France. As a performance artist, Earls was awarded an emerging artist grant by Manhattan’s Wooster Group. In 1999 he was a featured performer at the Wooster Group's Performing Garage. Earls spent September 2000-May 2001 as an artist in residence at Fabrica, Benetton's research center in Treviso, Italy. As a typographer, his original type design is distributed worldwide by Emigre Inc. Some of Earls's poster designs are part of the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution and he has bronze busts in the Wasserman Collection. Earls's multi-media piece entitled “Eye Sling Shot Lions” is part of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum's research file. In 2001, Earls was a finalist for the Chrysler National Design Award in New Media. In January 2006, Earls performed his latest performance piece “Bull and Wounded Horse” at Music Hall Detroit with his band The Venomous Sons of Jonah. Earls has lectured extensively at American universities, and has given workshops on design, culture, and new media in Europe and America.