Red, White, Black and Blue: The Revenge of Billy Jack

• Photographer
  Kerry Skarbakka, United States

Visual artist, Kerry Skarbakka’s practice lies at the intersection of
performance art and staged photography. Over the past thirteen
years, he has used his body as a physical metaphor, a figurative
representation of the fragilities and the environmental pitfalls of
the human condition. In a new body of work, "Red, White, Black
and Blue: The Revenge of Billy Jack", Skarbakka draws from his
experience of living in the Southwest United States, while serving
as Faculty at Prescott College in Northern Arizona from 2011-
2014. In this new series, Skarbakka taps directly into the cinematic
nature of his artwork. Inspired by the action film Billy Jack,
originally filmed at the Court House Square in Historic Downtown
Prescott in the early 1970’s, Skarbakka provides an experimental
narrative on the famous fight scene, where Billy Jack defends the
students of the Freedom School from the local conservative. In a
world that appears increasingly drawn on ideological extremes,
where there is only right or wrong, black or white, Skarbakka’s
hyperbolic re-creation of Billy Jack’s return, alludes to our inherent
combative nature the divisiveness of our current state.

Kerry Skarbakka is an artist and educator working in photography and video. He received his B.A. in Studio Art (sculpture) in 1994 from the University of Washington, and completed his MFA in Photography from Columbia College in Chicago in 2003. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, Fifty-One Fine Art Photography-Antwerp, Belgium, Irvine Contemporary-Washington DC, and Lawrimore Project-Seattle. Group shows include the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Taubman Museum of Art, Virginia, Ahlen Art Museum, Germany and the Warhol Museum. His work has been featured in such notable publications as Aperture, Afterimage, Art and America, and ArtReview International. Skarbakka has received funding and support from the Creative Capital Foundation, the 1% for the Arts (City of Seattle) and the Illinois Arts Council. Additionally, he has appeared on live interviews on FOX, WGN and NBC’s Today Show. Skarbakka is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Oregon State University.