In Southern Louisiana many young people sign up for military service at age 18, as it is either that or the oil fields as the only opportunities for most.
These people are then melted into a singular entity: soldiers, which are viewed as a commodity. This commodity experiences accepted losses to acquire greater return – human lives in exchange for resource access – largely in the form of petroleum reserves.
These soldiers are made to serve as a vessel (thus the bowl form) to acquire the petroleum necessary to craft a mockery of their own existence (green army men).
Once the commodity has been exhausted, the mentally and physically deformed soldiers are sent back home, unable and unsupported in their ability to actually divorce themselves from the military.
Many of these returning soldiers then go to work in the oil fields they had originally attempted to evade, to again be used as a commodity for petroleum production, completing the repeating cycle of petroleum acquisition and depletion.
Commodity Bowls 001 - 003, 2022, Low Density Polyethylene