Create+Engage: The Power of Political Art
September Month of Action: visuals and prompts to inspire creativity and community action.
Hello friends,
It’s officially September which means Creative Fuel is back in action and today we’re kicking off our month-long Create+Engage Month of Action!
All this year we have been hosting monthly virtual Create+Engage workshops and community sessions centered around using creativity as a way to stay engaged and connected. This month, we’re doing a weekly series focused on creative action.
Every Tuesday during the month of September, we’re going to bring you a little dose of creative inspiration in the form of a short essay, visuals, and a prompt. We will highlight organizations and artists who keep us inspired, and we will encourage each other to share what we make in the process. Consider it a kind of weekly creative action digest.
This week we’re going to dive into the power of print. We also have a little Q&A with artist Lisa Solomon who heads up Artists Take Action, a very cool initiative where artists donate small pieces of work that are auctioned off in support of causes. The next auction is coming up soon and they are looking for art.
If you want to take part, submit your art by September 9th. I’m hoping that some of the Creative Fuel community takes part.
Enjoy!
-Anna
Artists, agitators, and activists have been turning to the power of print for centuries. In a pre-digital age, printed forms of communication were the only way to distribute ideas on a mass basis. We may have the internet to send our ideas around, but printed materials continue to inform and grow all kinds of movements, from political posters to one-off zines.
Let’s begin with the artistry of words, found in so many protest signs across the decades. Slogans and phrases are turned into calls to action.
Then there are the posters where the visual carries the message, like this poster from the first Earth Day, designed by Yukihisa Isobe.
Essentially as long as we’ve been able to print, we’ve been using printed words and art to challenge the status quo, raise the profile of issues, and get the word out. When we think of political art, we may immediately go to the Vietnam era, which significantly impacted artists of the time. But the history of protest posters dates back to the 16th century and Martin Luther. In the United States, John Quincy Adams is believed to be the first presidential candidate to widely use campaign posters. These days it would be unthinkable to have campaigns without them.
A single graphic or visual can often get right to the heart of the enormity of an issue. A catalyst for empathy, art has an excellent ability to distill an issue down to its core components.
Lorraine Schneider created this poster in 1967 for Another Mother for Peace, a non-profit anti-war organization founded by women who were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Speaking to the United Nations Non-Governmental Disarmament Conference in 1972, she said:
"... it is up to us, the artists, the people who work in media, to prepare the emotional soil for the last step out of the cave. We can create the symbols of the new day and light the world with our hope and the neanderthals that attempt to restrict our freedom of expression, that attempt to frighten us into silence, that give you only four square inches with which to cry out your anger—use it.”
Today there are many organizations and artist collectives harnessing the power of art to inform and inspire movements.
Amplifier makes posters available for free download so you can print them and put them up in your home, place of work, school, and around your community.
Just Seeds is a decentralized network of 41 different artists committed to social, environmental, and political engagement. The collective also offers a variety of graphics for free download.
There is so much powerful printed art out there. If you have a favorite poster or artist we would love to hear about it in the comments.
And with that, on to this week’s prompt.
CREATIVE PROMPT
What is an issue that feels important to you?
What is one symbol or visual that embodies that issue? What is one word or phrase that sticks out to you when you think about this issue?
Pair the visual and words and make some art!
And then the most important part: share your work. Hang it up in your community. Copy it and hand it out to friends.
We also encourage you to share with the Creative Fuel community on the Create+Engage padlet!
MORE INSPIRATION + FREE DOWNLOADS
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics has over 90,000 domestic and international political posters that may inspire your own
Free downloads: Printed Matter Protest PDFs + Art for Democracy
Other inspiration: Black Women of Print, Printmaking as Resistance, Show of Hands Voting Posters, Center for Cultural Power
Artists Take Action: Q&A With Lisa Solomon
Lisa Solomon is an Oakland, California based mixed media artist, author, educator, and occasional curator. She currently has a solo exhibition at the Redwood City Art Kiosk, which is up through October 1st, and another one that opens September 7th at Walter Maciel Gallery. Also be sure to check out her fantastic book A Field Guide to Color.
We caught up with Lisa to learn a little more about Artists Take Action. The next auction launches September 12th and will be focused on voter registration and get out the vote efforts. If you want to donate some art for the cause, you have until September 9th. More info here.
What inspired you to start Artists Take Action?
The second the results from the 2016 election came in I felt a very strong desire to DO SOMETHING. Anything. I’m a quiet activist —which means I generally do not march or post a lot of political content, so I knew that was not going to be my route to resistance. I was wishing that I had millions of dollars to donate to every cause that I knew was going to need more and more funding. I kept thinking ok so I can send $5-10 here and $5-10 there, but that really isn’t going to impact anything. Oh wait. I have a lot of art just sitting around my studio. I bet all my artist friends do as well. What if we all auctioned off our works for good causes?
I reached out to a few friends and they were immediately on board and enthusiastic, so I thought that it might just work. I think our first auction was for the ACLU… Once one happened I thought maybe I could just do this monthly. Just to keep the momentum going and to see what would happen. EIGHT YEARS [!!!!] later there are still so many people and places in need. I’ve shifted the focus so now people mostly get to donate to whatever cause excites them. And during COVID I ran some quick auctions weekly to try and abate the feeling of hopelessness. I have become more open to larger scale one issue auctions as well, and have partnered with other people to keep expanding the reach. I have been so humbled and inspired by the community that has been built. The strangers—and continued support of my own creative community—that come together to bid and donate and try to make the world a little bit more tolerable. I think this is why I’ve kept it going for this long. And I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can.
What does it mean to be creative?
I think being creative is really an act of observation and faith. We look, we seek, we want to learn, we are delighted, we find wonder… and then we find a way to express that to other people.
What does it mean to be an artist?
To me an artist is anyone who is interested in ideas/aesthetics and wants to share those. These can be in small gestures - like wrapping a gift nicely, or large - like a huge room installation that someone experiences.
How do you stay creativity inspired?
I really don’t have any trouble being inspired. It’s almost overwhelming how many things are inspiring. If I look around I’m inspired. But I think making time to look at art, read books, listen to music, eat great food and rest. Rest has become more and more important. Maybe not traditional rest, but time to digest all the input, to figure out what I want to do and say, and how I want to make something.
How does your creative practice keep you engaged in your community, or how does it inspire your civic engagement practice?
Since I’m a professor, I get very involved in my community. Working with college age students keeps me on my toes and forces me to continually re-work and re-look at what is happening in art. I also have an absolutely stellar network of creative, working, thoughtful artists and makers - so finding time to talk to them and engage is also something I try to do regularly. It’s this community that helped to create and supports Artists Take Action which is certainly one of the largest pieces in my civic engagement puzzle.
Submit to Artists Take Action!
Have a piece of art you want to donate to Artists Take Action? The next auction will go live September 12, and you have until September 9th to submit your work.
UPCOMING CREATE+ENGAGE WORKSHOPS
Thursday September 26, 5-6pm PT: Create+Engage Studio Session
This will be a little more casual than our usual Create+Engage workshops, and we’re hoping that it will encourage you to use this time to come and work on some type of creative action. Make and write some postcards, draw some political poster designs, etc. Sign up here.
Wednesday October 16, 5-6:30pm PT: Create+Engage October Session
We’ll be announcing guest artists soon, but I assure you that you’re going to want to attend this one. Sign up here.
Wednesday November 13, 5-6:30pm PT: Create+Engage November Session
Yup, the election will be behind us before we know it. Save the date for now, and more info to come.
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Already feeling inspired! Thank you!
Ooh love this series! My partner taught himself how to silkscreen and is making VOTE shirts by hand in his Oakland studio, the shirts are super soft and 100% of proceeds goes to Swing Left which focuses on supporting Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot! https://lacuna.one/merch