Collected thoughts

I have two solo shows coming up next summer, and I've slowly been gathering thoughts and trying to make connections between them as to how they will take form in my work. No resolutions yet, but what I'm considering, in no particular order:

1) Last month the school I teach at was on lockdown for almost two hours due to an active shooter threat. We were slowly evacuated room-by-room. As I was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling tiles, the responsibility of keeping 35 lives from getting shot descended on me. Thankfully, no one was hurt, all students remained safe, threat was neutralized. But I can't shake that feeling.

2) Saw Sophie Calle speak last week. Her talk can be summed up in this statement she made towards the end, "Absence is motivation."

3) Refugee crisis in Syria, and how it is creating its own absence. Evidence suggests the crisis is directly related to global warming.

4) Does global warming cause other violence, albeit, possibly, indirectly? Is there a link between school violence and global warming? Perhaps in the form of anxiety and poverty?

5) Viewing art leads to an increase in empathy.

6) Shipwrecks, the economy, global exchange.

7) I think violence in any form indicates a lack of connection, to other people, to a community, to nature, to spirituality.

8) How can an artist create connection, or interconnection, between people?

9) One form of connection is stories, but does that build a deep enough connection? Could some form of social practice interaction build on stories to create connections?

Printmaking for Los Ayotzinapos 43

Back in March, I was invited by Stephanie Martin and Melissa West to participate in a project they were organizing called Printmakers for the Ayotzinapa 43. For this endeavor, they invited printmakers to make a print that commemorated one of the students who was a victim of the Iguala Mass Kidnapping.

Although I intellectually understood the importance of the project, I didn't realize what I had gotten involved in at first. The artists were given a list of names, and I selected Giovanni Galindes Guerrero, for no particular reason. All I knew about him was this short bio, and so, armed with this small amount of information, I began to think about how I could honor him.

My difficulty was that I had more information about how Giovanni died than about his life. I've done portraits before, but usually of people I knew and connected with. But in this case, I knew very little about his personality, his quirks, his individuality. I knew he was studying to be a teacher; I am a teacher. I knew his nickname was El Espáider (the Spider). I knew he was twenty years old at the time of his death. And I knew there had to be so much more that filled his life, that made up his soul.

Somewhere in all these perambulating thoughts, I turned to art history. The prints of Taller Grafica Popular, particularly Leopoldo Mendez, always inspire me, and felt very relevant to my subject matter. This print has always stayed with me, and became my visual guide. The most haunting part of the print is the smoke of the train, evoking the final destination of the Holocaust deportees to the cremation chambers of the concentration camps.

Giovanni's body was also burned after his death. Thinking about that, his nickname, and Leopoldo's print, I started sketching. I decided to include a spiderweb as the first layer as a reference to his nickname (see the print above), but also an allusion to interconnectedness.

The next layer was his portrait, and a layer of smoke.

This was followed by a chain of buses, like the ones the Ayotzinapa 43 were riding when they first clashed with the police.

When I'd been sketching, I'd originally thought this print would be three layers, and that when I reached this point it would be finished. However, once the imagery was printed, it didn't seem complete to me yet. Sometimes a drawing translated into print needs more. I've been a printmaker in some form or another for over fifteen years, and I still learn, again and again, to listen to the process.

So went back to sketching, and asked a few friends for their thoughts. I felt that the smoke in the print made the image unbalanced, so I added another layer.

The bottom still felt empty, it needed just something a little more to send it home. With all that gray, I felt that it needed a moment of color. After some deliberation, I decided to add the number "43" using pochoir. Several of my students this semester have been experimenting with it, so I thought I'd give it a try.

The prints still need to be curated and signed, but I think the image is complete now. I hope it honors the memory of Giovanni Galindes Guerrero well.

It's been a busy spring, with finishing this print, my regular teaching, two residencies, and editioning an artist book. I'm fortunate to be a part of so many things, and trying to remember to pratice self-care during this insanity, rather than putting it off till after. However, moments like these, it's nice to step back and see the work complete.

Opening of Material Print Machine

Back in the rush to finish Future Tense, I did take an evening to pop over to the opening for Material Print Machine, the community run print studio at Omni Commons.

I'm just going to confess that I love print shops,(obviously), but there's something so sincere and powerful about a startup print shop, where the machines are all gathered from older shops and peoples' garages and Craigslist and other random places, and they all have some weird little caveats to make it all work, but dammit they don't let that stop them.

Above is their working 219 proof press, and that evening they were showing people how to run a piece of paper through it. They also had a little tabletop clamshell (pictured below) as well as standing C&P that needs some parts before it can get going - so if any readers can help out, please contact them.

They also had this offset machine that Grendl is helping them get going. Just seeing it made me miss Mandy and wish she could be there.

Here's to Material Print Machine!

Lucy Lippard at Mills

Sorry for such a crappy phone photo, but it was a dark auditorium. In case you didn't get it from the title of this post, I saw Lucy Lippard speak at Mills College last week. She was there to promote her new book, Undermining, and her talk gave a synopsis of the book.

In truth, as much as I admire her, I felt her talk was fairly cursory, and basically covered the same ideas that those such as myself - who fit into center of the Venn diagram of artists, environmental issues, and activists - have debated and explored and focused on for the past ten years. However, I am still thinking about her talk, so I guess it stayed with me.

I took some notes, although she read her talk at a fairly quick pace and I didn't always get everything. Much of what she said that I found interesting was when she quoted someone else, and I didn't always catch who was the source.

What I came away with:

1) Her new book, which she describes as "an extended essay with parallel narratives," focuses on the gravel pit as a metaphor as an antithesis of the city, the lowest level of the landscape, and an example of what humans are doing to the planet.

2) Pueblo Indians farm with gravel mulch to preserve water. (Just thought this fact was cool).

3) On the global margins, emptiness and negative space are more important.

4) "All art is agriculture, not industry" - Carl Andre. Artists like him focused on absence and the dematerialized rather than object.

5) Land Art for Lippard is now, as she stated, "in the rear view mirror." Now she has turned her focus to things like Land Use and Land Appropriation, and the longer she lives in the West, the more she is drawn to the peripherals, the sideshows.

6) Earthworks take their power from distance - from cities, people, and are often instruments for seeing rather than being seen.

7) Remember that places like Trinity and the Nevada Test Sites were the original Ground Zeros.

8) She discussed how photography can be a form of activism by documenting destruction and degradation, and debated when photographers capture images of such, does the beauty they create allow people to look longer at such destruction, or does it hinder the cause by making it beautiful?

9) EcoArt is a response to the destructive tendencies of Land Art, and coincidentally, has more women involved than Land Art did.

10) "It is easier to conceive of the end of the world than the end of capitalism" - didn't get who said this, but it's sooooo true.

11) "Art may not change the world, but it can be a worthy ally to those trying." - Lippard

12) "The Activist is the artist's ashes, artists rise from the ashes of obsolete art."

13) "An artist who is not an activist is a dead artist." - Ai Wei Wei, although Lippard doesn't agree that all artists are activists. Yet she feels that in this global age, everyone needs to be activist of some sort.

14) Lippard has never been to Burning Man, although she's been told that the Rainbow Gatherings are really where it's at. (But hasn't been to one of those either).

15) When asked by a student if this was a call to arms, and if so, what should be done, her response was, "I'm 78 years old. I shouldn't be telling artists what to do. You've got to rise up and do your own."

16) Social ecology and the importance of the local are necessary involvements for artists and activists.

CENSORED Palestinian Children's Art

Understanding

(source)

Printmaking and Street Art As Activist Art Tools

This summer, I proposed and was fortunate to teach a class to a remarkable group of women at the UC Berkeley Art Extension. The students all made some incredible work, and have given me permission to post some of it here.

Going in alphabetical order, the first is Alexandra Corcoran. Alex was working on expressing the lack of jobs and opportunities for college graduates in the current economic situation.

Lina Janusas was interested in expressing the lack of vitality in corporate culture, sort of along the lines of the "Occupy Your Life" movement, with shades of Posada.

Ka Gan Cheung, winner of the fastest printmaker award for the class, was focused on immigrant rights and exploitation.

Priscilla Read wanted to explore her environmental interests, but found that subject too broad. She ended up focusing on the idea of reducing plastic use, which led her from printmaking to printing on bags to provide vehicles for reducing plastic use.

Susan Richardson took on global warming, and integrated the ideas into an already established body of work that incorporated calligraphy, typography, narrative, experimentation, and other various forms of markmaking.

Katrina Zappala was interested in expressing honeybee issues, such as Colony Collapse Disorder.

It was an amazing and energetic class. And it looks like I will be returning next summer to teach it again next summer!

Sneak Peek - Agents of Change, Artists As Activists, installation photos

I feel like this post should begin with the words: It was a dark and stormy night, in a nod to the way Snoopy always began his novels. Thought it's not that stormy, or even dark right now, but I'm proud and humbled to be a part of the upcoming exhibition at the Jean and Charles M. Schultz (yes, that Charles M. Shultz) Memorial Library Gallery! The exhibition, Agents of Change, Artists As Activists, features work by yours truly, as well as the Guerilla Girls, Betty Kano, Art Hazelwood, Occuprint, and a few others.

Here are a few sneak peeks of the installation in progress - my Ghost Trees:

This amazing piece by Betty Kano:

Occuprint posters:

Art Hazelwood representin' Occupy Oakland:

And the Guerilla Girls!

The opening reception will from 3-5 on Thursday, September 13, and will include a voter registration drive. Hope to see some of you there!