GODBLESS
from New Morality
12" x 28"
acrylic  on mounted denim
2019
Private Collection, Houston, Texas
Exhibitions
Houston, Texas, New Morality, September 21-22, 2019
 
GODBLESS unfolds as a triptych of moral construction—sanctification, desperation, and spectatorship—stitched into denim and rendered in cultural code. On the left, a stylized red Santa Claus holds a pipe, evoking vintage charm and pop-art irony. Beneath the surface lies a deeper lineage: Saint Nicholas, canonized to broaden the Church’s appeal, gradually secularized into Santa Claus—a hybrid myth shaped by folklore and stylized by Coca-Cola. A saint transformed into a seasonal mascot: generous, jolly, and commercially optimized.


The center panel interrupts with a handwritten cardboard plea:
HOPELESS
Even +++ Pennies Will Help
GODBLESS
It’s raw, clipped, and emotionally exposed. The cardboard sign is a ritual of desperation—public, vulnerable, and often ignored. It echoes the ethos of charity found in all religious movements, yet it lacks the comfort of institutional mediation. We give offerings in churches, temples, and mosques—spaces that frame charity as virtue. But on the street, faced with a living need, we look away. The cardboard sign becomes a moral test: not of belief, but of response.


On the right, a green-tinted audience in 3D glasses stares forward, synchronized and passive. They are watching something—perhaps a spectacle, perhaps nothing. Their gaze becomes a symbol of moral spectatorship: present, but disengaged. In the context of New Morality, they represent the audience to suffering, the consumers of myth, the witnesses who do not act.

Mounted on denim, the work resists sanctity. The frayed edges and hanging threads suggest wear, labor, and cultural residue. Denim becomes a secular canvas for sacred tension. GODBLESS becomes a triptych of safe morality—where religion offers the comfort of ritual without the discomfort of direct confrontation. The saint is stylized, the plea is ritualized, and the audience is buffered. Charity becomes conceptual, not personal. The suffering is visible, but distant. The morality is present, but protected.