"GOD BLESS AMERICA" Sculpture

 This huge sculpture will be hovering over me this weekend while I pedal my ware in downtown Mesa.  I'm excited!!!

Excitement in downtown Mesa with this 25 foot "God Bless America" sculpture at the South East corner of Macdonald and Main Street. The God Bless America sculpture is a take off of the "American Gothic" painting by Grant Wood.  American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Its inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside a woman whose identity remains ambiguous; she may either be his spinster daughter, as explained by the artist's sister, or the farmer's wife. The figures were modeled by the artist's dentist and sister. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man's pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman's right shoulder suggesting domesticity.

It is one of the most familiar images in 20th century American art and one of the most parodied artworks within American popular culture.