mixed media, collage

“I was inspired by the SOS Art Retrospective artworks because they are all unique and are about topic close to the artist. It inspired me to pick a topic that I have experienced, along with many other people. My piece is about peer pressure; this happens all around the world and I have experienced it myself first hand. The pressure to fit in drives people to do things they would never do alone. It is so easy to have the need to “fit in” but this urge can lead to some scary things.
While I was researching this topic I learned about how peer pressure has only gotten worse. We are in an age of technology at our fingertips. Access to phones and social media make it easy for people to pressure others into doing things. You can even do this anonymously; it is easy to click a couple of buttons and completely change someone’s life.
I wanted to show the dangers of peer pressure in my art work, so I put a kid on the side of a cliff with water below being told to jump. This is an extreme example of peer pressure but it helps get my point across that peer pressure is wrong and can be dangerous. I came up with this imagery by thinking about the saying “If everyone else jumped off a bridge would you?” I think this is an interesting saying because I think people would go as far as jumping off dangerous heights to fit in or look cool. Peer pressure can drive people into doing crazy things.
In my piece I used newspaper clippings to create the water and magazine clippings to make the people in the back pressuring the kid on the cliff to jump. The people are created with words to show what they are saying but also to show people are full of hurtful words.
The message I am trying to communicate is that peer pressure is an issue that needs to be stopped. It can be dangerous and lead to bad situations. I hope that my piece sheds some light on this issue.”