Many things go into constructing the perfect Real World house. The producers spend many hours searching for the perfect city, the perfect location and of course the perfect roommates. This season they found the perfect artist and she is from our own backyard.
MTV producers approached Sara Bacon about featuring her art work on The Real World: Philadelphia. Bacon, a recent graduate of Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, is an artist whose photographs were recently featured on the latest season of TV’s oldest reality show.
Bacon was reluctant to sell her artwork at first, but she had a change of mind.
“I saw it as a way to insert the political into a media that reaches the masses,” she said.
This great opportunity came at the opening of Bacon’s thesis show. The producers approached her and asked her if she would want to have her work on set. After a couple meetings, they selected four pieces. Bacon decided to sell three of them.
“Boy Toys,” a piece that is featured in the house, focuses on toys that kids are told are only appropriate for boys to play with: guns, army men, etc. “Excessive” focuses on an obsession with material things through a picture of row after row of shoes.
When she isn’t having her work featured on MTV, Bacon teaches Photoshop and digital photography in Brooklyn and does other freelance work.
“My primary passions are the ideas that I work with and illuminate throughout my work” Bacon said. “I usually try to focus mainly on relationships and my photographs are a medium through which my passion can be expressed. I use the idea of social concern and responsibility as a way to deal with highly political issues in a more human way.”
An artist since birth and a passionate photographer since high school, Bacon creates pieces that send a definite message. Gender, religion, class and consumerism are themes that run throughout her images.
Bacon recently had a showing at the David Allen Art and Design Gallery in Brooklyn, New York and in The Art Gotham Gallery in Chelsea. One of her pieces is also being featured on the front and back covers of the winter issue of the NYU literary journal. For more information on Sara Bacon’s work, visit www.saraheartbacon.com.
Christine Olley can be reached at molley@temple.edu.
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