Getting towards the end of the series I've been working on over the last year. Hoping that they'll all be on display here by September or October so people can see it all in order. This piece came about after I spent some time up in my hometown last summer when I was getting a mental break from the city. Not to get too depressing but driving and biking around made me realize how much the look and feel of some areas have changed almost to the point of being unrecognizable from my childhood. From boarded up windows, vacant store fronts and empty lots that used to be the site of a busy restaurant, it all kind of hit me for the first time.
The Sunset Inn was an Italian American restaurant that we frequented when I was younger but as the strip malls and chain restaurants creep their way through the rural towns of America and small business owners want to retire to spend time with their families after grinding for decades on 60-70+ hour work weeks, these type of places are becoming a rare sight in small towns.
One of the other casualties of modern convenience was the downtown movie rental store Home Video. It was the place where I first was introduced to the cinematic masterpiece, Bambi Meets Godzilla. Bet Netflix doesn't have this one. But you can watch it on Youtube if you're really curious as to how this plays out. I decided to put these 2 childhood memories together and keep Godzilla as this destroyer of something that doesn't stand a chance against him. Kind of as a symbol of a force like big business in small town economies or just the passing of time.
I was playing around with the idea of illustrating this like a used placemat at a restaurant but felt like it was too many ideas trying to say the same thing. But I would like to revisit this concept for something else down the line.
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