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About Sakkal, Artist
Applying symbolism to the art of collage, George Sakkal creates, in this presentation, fifteen images, not of war itself but rather a plethora of visual portraits and hundreds (maybe even thousands) of vignettes that interpret, analyze and evaluate the policy decisions of the Bush-Cheney Administration that resulted in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. These policy decisions cover a time-frame spanning several months in 2002 before the invasion up to several months in 2003 following the occupation of Baghdad.

Sakkal, who created his first collage in 1962 while a student of architecture at Texas A&M University, couples the experience of years spent living in the Middle East, a background in policy science and decades of collage experimentation to create the intricately designed, spectacularly colorful, unusual and meaningfully avant-garde paper collages presented here.

Sakkal served as a Peace Corps Volunteer architect from 1966 to 1968 and was Associate Peace Corps Director in Iran from 1968 to 1971. During the five years that Sakkal lived in Iran he came to understand Islamic culture and discovered the seriously wide schism that exists in the Islamic religion between its Sunni and Shiite sects. In 1973 he earned a master’s in city planning from Harvard University where his thesis concerned the Shah of Iran’s social and economic policies affecting the growth and development of the capital of Tehran...a master plan whose little-known political implications seriously contributed to the Iranian revolution. From 1976 to 1979 he was involved in an evening Ph.D. program of study in policy science at the University of Maryland. Sakkal is a member of two faculties in the Columbia/Ellicott City, Maryland area where he maintains a studio and teaches his art and methodology.

Over the years Sakkal closely followed and studied events that led Iraq and Iran to border hostilities and war against each other –– a war in which biological weapons were used. Drawing upon intimate empirical and academic experience of this area of the world and combining it with the knowledge of events that have come to shape it, Sakkal is able to skillfully create “thought panoramas” that requires more than an ordinary collagist might bring to the art. Forgive me for creating a title, but one might consider Sakkal a dynamic pundit-collagist, since his images and biting words virtually explode on the page, imposing unforgettably vivid and indelible impressions on the viewer as well as the reader.

No matter what title you might select for Sakkal, The Art of War: Iraq - Decisions from the First Year will enthrall and challenge you. It will make you think. It might even make you tremble.
 

Resources and Reviews

Link Comments
City Paper
Article about George Sakkal's methods
Yahoo Press Release about upcoming exhibit
Socializer Events calendar
Lightstreet Gallery / Exhibit
National Review Events
Cumberland Valley Artists Sakkal awarded "Best in Show"
Capital Gazette Award of Excellence at RAL exhibit

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