The American Dream

With the November election looming heavily, I began to think about things like patriotism, voting rights, women's rights, immigration, etc.  This led me to reflect on how my parents came to this country as immigrants over 60 years ago.  As I thought about the cards I would create this month, I wanted to pay homage to the countless number of individuals who decided to leave their native country in pursuit of the American Dream.  I often marvel at the courage my parents had, in their early twenties, just after completing school, to pick up and move halfway around the world to start a new life for themselves.  America was a place they had never even visited before, with a wildly different culture.  This was a truly a foreign experience for them.  They had one-way tickets to the promised land and there was never a thought of going back.  Neither of my parents came from great wealth, so not succeeding at this new life was not an option for either of them.  It was in Baltimore, Maryland that they started their life as a young, married couple.  That was where my brother and I were born.  After spending 9 years in the East Coast, however, my parents "returned" to Hawaii to settle and raise their family--a place they had seen only once before on a brief layover on their way from the Philippines to the East Coast 9 years earlier, a place that felt like their native home, but was still in America.

To start my cards, I used a selection of Tim Holtz washi tapes to create a striped background.  I had a pack of Tim Holtz Paper Dolls and chose the figures that represented different kinds of people who emigrated to America.  I adhered them with foam squares for a 3-D effect.  I used a simple black strip of cardstock to "anchor" the figures, otherwise they would look like they were just floating on the page.  In each of their faces, I see the promise of a bright future, prosperity, and the hope that in America, all of their dreams can come true.