First you notice the objectified “attractive female sleeping” character – flat, like out of a comic book. Then you read the captions: The hardest part / Is waking up alone. And the first thing you think of is the stereotypical, cinematic loneliness of a woman waking up alone. The sun, like a halo, behind her is already up. But is she awake and just keeping her eyes shut – or is she only about to wake up? Not unlike the Mona Lisa who only just begins to smile, this character is in between, in a half dream, which we are beginning to inhabit.
 
We know what loneliness is like. Loneliness is built into our commodified, mass-marketed bodies. The female character recurs in this artist’s work. Like an Andy Warhol Madonna. It could be someone’s avatar on social media. It could be any one of us. If there was a QR code to scan here, we would be raising our phones prayerfully to inhabit this icon’s digital dimension.
 
In the exquisite lettering around her – EXQS – we discern the hint of a hammer and sickle in the Q. The five-corner stars we noticed before now begin to acquire meaning. The circled anarchist A in one corner is balanced by the heart in the opposite. Arrows suggest movement – the movement of the mind, language, towards alternatives. If we can find a way not to be alone together, perhaps our social system would be different.
 
Waking up to a system of exploitation can be lonely business. To be alone is also a prerequisite for awareness, knowledge. To be aware and alone yet not lonely – perhaps that is the hardest of all. And here in this Lake Country skate park, several artists have come together for the first time to create something new out of highly individualized styles. In a dialogue of style and meaning new possibilities emerge.