Letter from a former cloth banner-dropper, now converted to the Miracle of Cardboard!
I’m a classically trained artist. Went to art school. Painting, sculpting, printmaking. While in school, the Iraq war (falsely) began. Friends and I went to marches and protests, and my artistic style began to evolve. My painting became inspired by Red Cross, boys scout, airplane safety, and medical manuals. Everyone in the country was being driven into fear by terror threat warnings color coded on the news. Weapons of mass distraction. Nerve gas. With all this manufactured fear, my response was to create art that informed. I used the illustrations from those murals to make paintings that taught people things. While the artwork itself wasn’t “political” it was a tongue in cheek commentary on our fears. I was preparing the viewer for drownings, crashes, head trauma, broken bones, severe bleeding, or their real life danger. You are scared, so I will help you prepare, but in a pleasing way you can hang on your wall.
As time went on, my style and subject matter has evolved. My work now is more a commentary on the consumer culture, it is more visually abstract, yet in a way more relatable, and easily recognizable.
After the election of 2016, I, like most of America was confused, upset, angry, and felt somewhat violated. So, I reacted the best way I know how. By making things. My first piece was just a stencil of trump, with the word resist underneath. I sprayed it on a few pieces of paper, and sitting there looking at these 5 images, I knew I was on to something. I knew I had to share them with as many people as possible, and I knew I had to make more.
Looking at these images, I realized I had just created a sort of analog meme. I was always turned off by (and still am) the idea of just posting memes all the time. You’re taking someone else’s image, with someone else’s words, and trying to pigeon hole it into your personal rhetoric.
So I set off, to create 100 anti trump, analog memes, for each of his first 100 days in office. And I did it determined to post all of them in public. Some were stenciled and spray painted. Some were hand painted on bedsheets, or poster board, some on plywood or 2x8 lumber. The small prints and stencils got stapled to sign posts, light poles. Same with the plywood and pieces on lumber, except those got screwed in to the post. I also would intentionally strip the head of the screw when I put it in, making it harder to remove. (Most of those are still up) and the bed sheets got hung on freeway overpasses, or pedestrian bridges with a terrible system of a hot glue “grommet” in the corners, and wire or zip ties wrapped around the fencing.
Of all the work, the bedsheets were my favorite. The big size insured they could be seen from far away, I could add more detail, and they just looked damn sexy. But they were cumbersome to put up. It would take a gut wrenching 5 minutes of nervously fumbling, cutting my fingers on the wire, looking around for the authorities, or angry white dudes in lifted pickup trucks and red maga hats. Because of the difficult nature, I only made and posted 10 of these beauties, and the other 90 in the series of 100 had to be smaller. It was nice doing the smaller pieces, and even the cloth banners, because I could easily load up the basket on my bike, load the bike in my vehicle, drive to an area (usually I’d pick a conservative town) and post stuff as I rode around on my bike. (5 or 10 at a time)
Once the hundred was complete, I pretty much stopped doing the public, political art. I still made stickers (copied onto regular blank 8x10 sticker/label paper, cut them out, and stick them on drive through menus, stop signs, gas pumps etc) but quit large scale work. I started doing my “real” art again.
Then, one day on twitter, I run into Patrick Randall, the Freewayblogger. I see his body of work and am inspired. After sending him some of the stuff I had done, we start talking back and forth about using cardboard. Patrick loves cardboard. I now love cardboard. He shared some of his previous tweets with me, showing his system of duct tape, and hangers to install your work. It could not be easier. Seriously. The other day I stopped for gas, just off the freeway. I had a sign in my car. 3x8 feet. While the pump was filling my car, I took the sign out of the back, crossed the service drive, hung the sign, crossed back to my car, and the pump was still running. Literally the largest sign I’ve made took less than 4 minutes to hang, including walking time to and from the spot.
Material cost was 0 dollars. I had the tape, used house paint from the pile in the basement, and had the 3 hangers I used for support while putting tape in the corners of the piece. So now I’m back doing public political art. It’s free, because not only is it freeing to make, and I don’t get paid to do it, but it also is freeing my thoughts, words, and images onto tens of thousands of people who drive past or under it each day.
You don’t need to be an artist to do this. And you certainly don’t need to be a criminal. This is not destruction of property. This is not graffiti. This is your thoughts, your first amendment, your statement to your community. You just need to write big, with a brush. It doesn’t have to be pretty, just legible.
There are more of us out there than we know. We see people on blogs, on twitter, or Facebook that feel the way we do. But there is a digital disconnect. It’s isn’t real, it’s pixels on a screen. Even if we agree, who knows if it’s a real person posting it. You guys. Twitter bots don’t make giant cardboard signs, and hang them in public. People do. Right now, as far as we know, there’s only a handful of us doing it. Imagine how much more powerful your snarky post is in 3 foot letters over the interstate. Imagine how real your words become as you paint them, and experience the excitement of sticking them to an overpass, as cars whiz and honk below. Imagine how it feels to have taken your message, and spread it without hiding behind a keyboard. How many more people will be influenced having seen the real thing, a tangible piece of evidence, knowing you spent time making it, and putting effort into making it visible. Even in this digital age, we still have an attachment, an appreciation for things that are made. Your message can be more powerful. Don’t rely on others. We will keep doing it. But we want your voice to be heard too.