"A Searing Indictment of Our Consumer Culture"

Much to my surprise, Emeryville's Bay Street shopping center is not only home to interesting art (or, art of any kind), but is self-aware!  Yes, rather than hanging up a giant Christmas tree like the unfettered capitalist scum of San Francisco's Union Square, Emeryville retail mecca erected a "holiday tree" made of shopping carts and shiny ornamental balls.  As BuboBlog (taker of the above photo) speculates, is this a pointed critique of the Black Friday-ification--the pepper spraying, and killing, of our fellow man over dumb crap we won't use in six months--of what was a winter celebration of family and Black Baby Jesus?

Artist Anthony Schmitt explains:

The shopping cart tree symbolizes both generosity and abundance, as well as acknowledging those less fortunate where their whole world may be housed in a cart. We see shopping carts everyday and take them for granted. Individually the beauty of an everyday object may become invisible, but in quantity you can’t miss it.

Oh.

[BuboBlog]