By Tyler Starr
Davidson, North Carolina: Wobble Press, 2017.
Edition of 15 + 2 AP, 1 Handling Copy.
12.5” x 23” x 1” closed, 19 panels, extends out to 230”. Accordion book, hard cover with doublures, foil stamped cover. Extends from back pastedown. Pigment print on Canson Edition Rag 310gm. Bound into cloth-covered boards. Laid in clamshell box. Signed and dated by the artist.
Tyler Starr: "This work reconstructs a KKK motorcade that the FBI linked to the murder of the civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo on March 25, 1965. The car that carried Liuzzo’s killers participated in a 93-car motorcade organized by the United Clans of America, Inc. that traveled through Montgomery on March 21 as a counter-demonstration against the Selma March. Auto classifieds were used to find photographs corresponding to each specific description (year, make, model and color) of the KKK affiliated vehicles identified in FBI documents. A panoramic retracing of the parade route was created using Google Map based on the KKK’s parade permit that is also included in the book.
"Another aspect of the case of Viola Liuzzo explored in the piece was the attempted sale of the vehicle that Viola Liuzzo was killed in as a 'Business Opportunity' to draw crowds. Microfiche was used to find the classified advertisement which was collaged into the work.
"This project was completed with support from a Puffin Foundation Grant."
Tom Patterson, Winston-Salem Journal, "Vintage violence": "This long horizontal digital print visually reconstructs a Ku Klux Klan motorcade linked to the murder, four days later, of Viola Liuzzo, a … civil-rights worker while she was inside her 1963 Oldsmobile. The resultant FBI investigation determined that her killer or killers were traveling in a car that had been in the motorcade. …
"The small images of cards – all manufactured between 1948 and 1965 – are set off against a neutral ground in two long rows above an array of buildings Starr … photographed along the parade route through downtown Montgomery.
"Also incorporated into the piece are a couple of collaged texts. One of these is an FBI summary of the investigation into Liuzzo's murder, including the names of all four suspects, none of whom were ever convicted. Even more shocking is the other text, a classified advertisement published in a Montgomery newspaper following the murder and investigation. In the ad, the car in which Liuzzo was murdered is offered for sale with 'bullet holes and everything still intact,' rendering it 'ideal to bring in a crowd.'"