In Killeen, Texas, a small town that is home to one of the world’s largest military installations, GI’s find ways to entertain themselves while they serve their country. Pawn shops, car lots, fast food and speed dealers can be seen on many downtown streets. What’s a lonely soldier to do there while they await deployment in a town full of young men ready to fight? Summer nights are perfect for a spin on the Harley. This work is part of a narrative collection exploring the Killeen landscape.
Melanie Martinez is a BFA student at Texas State University in San Marcos but she lives in Austin, and grew up in the Army town of Killeen. Her early life led her through many worlds from journalism to horticulture, then music and historic preservation and now interior design and painting. Combined with an interest in society and American Studies leads her to examine the ways we live in the world today. Her style evokes the attractive illustrative-yet-disturbing style of Rene Magritte but the subject matter places her in the world of contemporary social realist painters.
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