heroes. with mayo on the side.

Concept: Heroes or false heroes or false idols, etc

Background: in doing research on Thomas Edison, I discovered that there is a lot about Thomas Edison that you don’t learn in school. (1) He did not invent the light bulb- the idea of the light bulb had been tried out for almost 80 years before Edison came along. He is only known for having used a certain type of light bulb- which he didn’t even invent- he stole the idea from Joseph Swan, who then sued Edison for patent infringement. Edison lost and was forced to bring Swan into his business as a 50% partner. Edison then bought out Swan and continued working.

Why is this important: I want to used this as one of several pieces in a series on heroes- it struck me how much we are lied to as children about so much- people talk about unlearning what we were taught- and it makes me think- no one there is so much depression and lying and cheating- we are brought up with heroes based on lies. Etc.

Idea: have a series of art pieces that reflect this theme
Topics/Heroes: (each with blurb explaining truth about hero)
1. Edison- a sculpture of a wire that spells out the word deceit in script- leading to the “i” which is a light bulb, and then the other wire finishing the word. Maybe the whole piece mounted on unfinished wood. Or maybe finished wood?
2. Founding fathers, writing about men created equal, and bills of rights, owned slaves
3. Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegimate child with a slave
4. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and set the precedent of suspending rights of people during war times
5. Police- taught to trust people in school (possible to get kids book about cops) and replace one page with newspaper article on brutality- Rodney king or child shot for having toy gun).
6. brothers grim
7. ghandi beat his wife
Other idea: bad people who did things that lead to good things in history:
8. LBJ/JFK- if JFK hadn’t been killed, LBJ would not have been able to do a lot of good things.