This is Why We Do Art

One reason to make art is to respond to the world. Let's face it: the world (at present anyway!) is pretty messed up and very confusing. Making art can certainly be a way to order your thoughts, express concern, channel outrage (or even hope!) and at the very least, vent some pent up steam. Since The Orange Menace ascended to the throne of The Unpresidented, artists and writers and musicians (and yes! comedians!) have been venting and expressing and that's a good thing.
The piece above is a case in point. The phrase "kompromat" is Russian for "Compromising Material": essentially blackmail. I made this piece as a way of commenting on all the information pouring out about the present administrations ties to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. Let's face it- there is plenty of evidence that the election was hacked and influenced with the "help" of foreign agents. And there is that disturbing dossier full of weird allegations about "golden showers" and other compromising materials...
I worked with gold and other sumptuous fabrics as both Putin and The Donald enjoy luxurious shiny things and a life of opulence. And I wanted the piece to reference heraldic banners as the present administration clearly sees itself as an imperial presidency. Let them eat cake, indeed!
I also employed semi-Cyrillic lettering that was still easily readable but looks vaguely foreign. I thank the curator of the show "Mincing Words" with suggesting the word "kompromat"! The perfect word at the right time. (Thank you, Martha Lewis).
It's worth remembering that Russian artists have labored under restrictions and censorship for years. Speaking one's mind during the Soviet Era was seriously dangerous and artists daring to produce music or art or books that were considered decadent or not for the glory of the Russian people or government were banished to Siberia or killed. Things aren't much better recently; think of the Russian rock band Pussy Riot. They were jailed but continue to make art, music and revolution. We consider these events occur in distant countries, under repressive regimes... until it happens here.
I am deeply horrified and troubled by the rise in hate crimes, the repression of a free press, the belief in fake news and the passing of bizarre laws (such as the one in North Dakota that was to allow drivers to run over people if they were in roadways protesting. Yikes!) Our democracy is being sorely tested and our rights are being eroded. (Why is it that the rethuglicans only like to protect SOME rights- like the right to bear arms?) I think- no, I KNOW- it's an especially important time to exercise our freedom of speech.
So... the only response possible is to make art. Viva La Revolution!

My Gift to You: More Free Art Ideas

Latest piece to erupt on that famous studio wall. I guess I'm (not so subtly) addressing the commodification of, well... everything! And certainly art and artists. I generally riffed on the Coca-Cola* style of font with a bit of personal tweaking (gotta make it my own). I especially enjoy playing with typefaces and fonts because my own handwriting is atrocious. (And if you're going to make big long words labor-intensively sewn onto fabric and embellished I think you'd better be able to read what's being written). This piece is about 70 inches long and about 38 inches tall. The edges are decorated with a half a million of those little white plastic tabs that come on the top of milk cartons. (We've been saving them for years so it's nice to finally have a use for them). I don't know if you can see it in a small picture like this, but the background fabric is pictures of International Harvester and John Deere tractors with cozy farmstead buildings and farm urchins thrown in for good measure. Obviously, Big Agra Inc has seen to the commodification of our food industry (thank YOU Monsanto!) and generally in this, the season of Xmas, everything is truly a commodity. Go ahead and commodify me!
And in the midst of all that commodifying, it occurred to me that this is often a great source of inspiration: a single word or phrase that gets caught in my cerebral cortex. I hear a word and maybe hear it again (or sometimes they just spring suddenly onto that TV screen inside my head) and then it sticks and I need to do something with it. The "do something with it"is to make it into an art project and I recommend this to you, if you're in need of prodding or encouragement. Find a word that resonates and illustrate it or illuminate it or just use it as a point of departure. For me, words that catch my fancy are most often political or economic in flavor. I did a whole series of collages that presented Economic Collapse vocabulary: things like Sub-prime Mortgage and Credit Default Swaps. Not only was it a good mental exercise in that I needed to research what the devil these things were but it was a way of making sense out of a pretty depressing scenario. (And then I sold a bunch of them which was good for my personal economy). A large fabric piece from two years back featured the lugubrious "Sequestration". (Anyone remember that?) You can even make a word up, which of course borders on poetry which is (obviously) creative in it's own right.
So for the holidays, contemplate words that reflect the edge of cliff feelings that we're all experiencing right now. "Unpresidented" is a good place to start...

*Probably the single most recognized font in world. I read a really interesting essay on line about how carefully that font was designed. And how it "shouldn't" work, as it has internal inconsistencies and odd spacing etc.