The pure products of America
go crazy – William Carlos Williams
The original Bible Belt, 1992, ed. 45
With a country like ours, words like that seem almost prophetic. The first lines of poet William Carlos Williams’ “To Elsie” are the essence of what we try to get at with pure products.
Williams also said, “No ideas but in things” and that’s what our goal has been – that each of these artworks possess a tiny kernel of truth as brilliantly succinct as that line from Williams’ poem.
Contract of America underwear hit that nail on the head. A simple undergarment became an insightful metaphor for how vacuous and market driven politics had become by the mid-nineties.
Contract with America underwear, 1995 1st ed. 125, 2nd ed. 300
It really showed what the emperor’s new clothes were made of.
Pure products didn’t stop there. We introduced the John Ashcroft snow globe, part of the W Collection (2001), on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision making George W. Bush president.
Governor Chris Christie, then a federal prosecutor in New Jersey, gave one to Ashcroft as a gift. And he liked it so much, he bought one for himself.
The John Ashcroft Snow Globe (2001), ed. 125
Soon after, we launched the pureproductsusa website, designed by Diane Bertolo.
Pure Products USA website
Click image to see what Pure Products USA used to look like…
And followed that with the Homeland Security Nutrition Kit, using the whimsical, color scheme of terrorists’ threat levels for a new kind of happy meal.
Homeland Secutiry Nutrition Kit
It packed all the nutrition you’d need with Democracy Enriched H2O, Rumsfeld’s Liberty Spread Peanut Butter, and a Bible Bar Energy Snack in a state of the art, styrofoam clamshell case.
Bible Bar Energy Snack - a great readymade
The rest… is history…