Just days days after a historic presidential election that reconstructed the way  Americans think about their political landscape, 250 fans of artist Steve Penley jammed linstrum+matre Artworks in the Bennett Street art district in Atlanta to buy his new book, The Reconstruction of America, and view a powerful, timely exhibition of the sketches, drawings and paintings that went in to creating it.

How did exhibition attendees compare Penley’s icons of American history, like Washington, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, with the new iconic figure of Barack Obama? Do they think that in 150 years visitors to an exhibition of images of giants of American history will see the 44th president among them? To find out, click on this image of Steve Penley at work.

Signed copies of The Reconstruction of America, published by Mercer University Press, are available at the gallery.

To see more of Penley’s work and the other artists represented by the gallery, go to the linstrum + martre website.