I have a tendency to mask difficult subjects and emotions with humor. This piece, in which I use thousands of small, individually created party hats to compose images of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq on my birthday, is an attempt to approach this subject.

I began making the hats in response to my mom's request that we throw her a party instead of a funeral. I chose to reference the Iraq war because it was a difficult issue about which I received much of my information from comedy driven sources (The Daily Show and The Onion).