Edel Rodriguez
The War on Terror
The killing of Osama bin Laden has revived the old debate about whether or not torture works. The painting above is for a recent article in The Washington Post titled "Torture-lite:It's wrong, and it might work", which goes into detail about the thinking that went into implementing these techniques soon after 9/11.
With a decade of wars and the killing of Bin Laden, I thought I'd take this moment to look back and show some of the work I've done over these years. I visit schools often but don't see much politically oriented work being created by the students. I'm sometimes asked by students how my work developed, or how I got into doing this kind of work. I’ve met a couple of foreign students who have told me that their interest in politics or displays of their ethnicity is discouraged, that they are often encouraged to pursue a more commercial or decorative direction in their work. I found this to be odd advice so I thought some of this might help others that may be trying to find a direction.
My interest in politics started early. I was always interested in following current events and was into subjects like European history in high school. Since my family was affected by dictatorship, Communism, etc., I think I was trying to make sense of all of that at an early age. While in high school, I was looking for college scholarships and found one sponsored by TIME magazine. I applied, which basically consisted of illustrating a hypothetical TIME cover, and won the competition, which gave me some money for college. Along with the scholarship, I got a free subscription to TIME and started getting the magazine every week. My parents didn't subscribe to any news or English language magazines at our house so this was a big deal for me. I just started reading more and more about current events and became very interested in the artwork that showed up in the magazine.
At my college library, I came across another magazine called The Progressive, which was art directed by Patrick J.B. Flynn. All of the work in The Progressive was very inspiring. I ended up sending copies of my drawings to Patrick and he gave me one of my first assignments while I was still in college. I studied abroad for a summer and traveled around Europe for the first time. My interest in history, politics, and current events continued. I kept sketchbooks on my travels and some of those drawings became part of my portfolio. When I was looking for a design job, I ended up getting in touch with Steve Conley, an art director at TIME magazine. I showed him my drawings and design work, and began working there as a designer. Over the years, some of the art directors on the TIME staff began giving me illustration assignments and this kind of work developed further.
An unexpected result of all of this was that I began to get book cover and film poster assignments for stories that dealt with the intersection of religion, war, immigration and other cultural issues.