COLLECTION:
In this artwork, we see a young white girl wearing a blue short sleeve dress with her hair half-up half-down, blowing a daffodil potentially wishing for a better life. The girl is made out of round beads of darker blues, tans, browns, and whites. The background, in various colors of blue, is painted in squares representing the sky and the green squares representing the grass.
In three paint colors (red, blue, and white), Weitzel creates an American flag using various kinds of lines. The flag symbolizes a land of freedom and a country where you can make yourself become whoever you want to be.
In the middle of a tan and green background, we see a blue/gray screw with the words ASL written in green on top of a white surface attached to the screw. This can symbolize two separate things. It can symbolize a deaf individual building themselves up to be a person they want to be, or it can also show Wentzel’s nightmare of children and deaf people are being viewed as something that needs to be fixed.
In a dreary black and white pencil drawing, we see a line of deaf individuals with their hands cut off, hearing aids or cochlea’s in their ears. This symbolizes a rise in autism, wanting to eradicate American Sign Language and force assimilate deaf individuals using oralism and implanting them with cochlear implants or hearing aids and cutting off their hands.