Fear Itself: George Zimmerman Portrait Made With 12,000 Skittles

The Trayvon Martin killing has rocked our world, not only in the United States, but everywhere. Knowing that all it takes to get shot is a pack of Skittles, a hoodie and a certain skin color is enough to run chills through my body. We’ve all been inundated with the details of this horrific situation, and I have a feeling it’s not going to end anytime soon. I’m not going to get into all that today though.

I just wanted to show you something that an incredible artist created to raise awareness to get people talking about what happened and why. It’s controversial since a lot of people don’t think George Zimmerman deserves to be memorialized like this.

I wanted to feature it anyway because this artist definitely deserves to be recognized. This is a portrait of George Zimmerman created entirely out of Skittles. There are around 12,000 Skittles glued to this 36-inch by 48-inch piece of plywood, which were then varnished. I am in complete awe that the artist, Andy Bell, was able to create such an exact replica of George Zimmerman’s mugshot out of these little colored candy balls.

This portrait is currently hanging in the RedLine Art Gallery in Denver. Andy Bell named the portrait Fear Itself and said, “We as a society, though we might be afraid of a lot of things, when it comes down to it, some of those things might be as innocuous as a bag of Skittles.” The director of the art gallery where this portrait hangs said, “I think we’re using levity to sort of invite people to see that we’ve got to change how we see the world.” I guess you’d call this kind of artwork candy pointillism.