Dr T.J. Eckleburg

I created this piece for my birthday. It was the big 30. The theme of the party was the end of the “Roaring Twenties” with a huge Great Gatsby influence. There was a cocktail menu inspired by the cocktails of the 1920’s such as the Bee’s Knees, Gin Rickey, Mary Pickford and the Southside. Dress code was the roaring twenties and there was a photo booth with props for the occasion. This party was hosted in my garden and I even managed to create my own outside drapes to cover the garden. The only problem was that there was only so much space available, I had nowhere to hide the garden junk so I created the Dr TJ Eckleburg painting.

In the Great Gatsby, there is a billboard in the middle of Queens. The billboard is an ad for an optometrist. The billboard depicts a pair of giant disembodied blue eyes, which are covered by yellow spectacles. The rest of the face isn’t pictured, and the billboard is dirty with paint that has faded from being exposed to the elements. The character narrating describes Queens as a depressing, crumbling “valley of ashes” that is “grotesque” and “desolate”. I felt that this was a great way to ‘hide’ the garden mess and imply that the garden junk was the Queens as described in the Great Gatsby. That is why I used the billboard as described and also why the painting is not mounted, it was tied on by gold ribbon (a tiny piece remains and can be seen blowing into the left of the painting) above the mess and it danced in the wind during the party. The painting remains unmounted and is currently clipped on to bamboo with bull clips. The medium is acrylic on canvas.