In the Coliseum

Art Hazelwood

Art Hazelwood visually comments on the circus-like atmospheres of contemporary sporting events, this composition depicting a football game, most probably the Super Bowl and its frenetic emphasis on the commercial, usually completely overwhelming the game itself. Cheerleaders on pedestals urging their team's fans to get louder; fans consuming drinks and, beyond the action, thousands of fans stacked high into the sky, in which planes are towing banners urging people to "Buy". And they do.

The first Super Bowl was played between Green Bay, Wisconsin's Packers (for which I have the Wisconsin Packer gene) and the Kansas City Chiefs in Los Angeles. The half-time show featured the Grambling and University of Arizona marching bands. Wow, how sexy is that!?

Art Hazelwood continues a long tradition with his printmaking - commenting on current events using a visual language. Honoré Daumier, Thomas Rowlandson, and Francisco Goya are just a few of the printmakers that had a major influence on the public of the time, sometimes masking the content with the images to avoid official wrath, sometimes holding nothing back, parodying and satirizing the culture, subcultures and individuals of the day.

Art Hazelwood, printmaker, painter, muralist, impresario, educator, independent curator, and political satirist and activist, was born in Concord, Massachusetts on May 22, 1961. He studied at the University of California at Santa Cruz and received his B.A. degree in Fine Arts in 1983. After graduation, Hazelwood travelled extensively in Asia, and lived in Vienna and then the American Southwest before settling in San Francisco, California in 1993 where he continues to teach printmaking and work for social justice.