Tag Archives: Political Art

Inscriptions, a new series

So new it’s not in the menu yet!

Here is a promising start to a new series: Inscriptions. The public display of words shows us the ideas we think our society is founded on. Inscriptions are all over the place here in DC. There’s no public building or monument without an inscription. Click on the images to see a larger picture. The first image shows the final state of “Inscription I” made from a photo I captured of the Department of Justice building—printed on stretched canvas, with hand embroidery. 20 inches square. (More coming soon.)

The canvas is heavy and to make my stitches I have to punch hard with the needle. The thread makes a kind of moan as I pull it through the coated, heavy, printed fabric. Punch (pierce) moooooan, punch (pierce) moooooan, punch (pierce) moooooan . . .  The second image shows the stitching in progress, from the back. Light shines through the holes. Stitching is a “feminine” art, so this series is part of the #FemalePowerProject

 

PAY ATTENTION honoring Rachel Carson

Revised design, August 2018

Here is a new perSISTERS design in the #FemalePowerProject for Rachel Carson.

First it is important to understand the times in which Rachel Carson’s attention changed the world. Nature was perceived as a threatening realm in opposition to humans, something that we need to control. Humans were making amazing progress in that regard. The late 1950s was a time of unprecedented prosperity that depended on the exploitation of technologies which had flourished because of wartime investment.

The US and its allies had recently vanquished fascism while creating explosions rivaled only by volcanic forces. It seemed like “man” could do anything: conquer disease with antibiotics; stop plaques with pesticides; create amazing yields with synthetic fertilizers; and…kill billions of living things with one explosion. Not just the explosion—it was the rain of nuclear fallout that spread far and wide afterwards that could wipe out whole populations—something that could not be seen or tasted or touched. This eventually created a profound anxiety. The immense power to control nature first created an optimism about human progress. It took a while for people to realize that this control was also a frightening power that was being deployed heedlessly and without forethought. Rachel Carson was responsible for that reorientation.

Carson had described nature (mostly the shore and the sea) with beautiful language that created a feeling for the delicate and amazing web of interconnected lives and processes. This aesthetic dimension was essential to the power of her message. It could motivate people to cherish the living web that held us up. Not just because humans might perish without it, but also because it is worth saving in itself—it has a value outside of human utility. That is stewardship, a value on which the environmental movement would be founded. Carson saw that human arrogance was outrunning wisdom and she sought to put them in balance. This was accomplished by widening our scope of examination in space and in time. The effects of certain agents might not be evident here and now, but in more distant places and times.

Carson also saw that scientific research was affected by the profit motive of corporations and she called for decisions to made based on more impartial science. One of her biographers, Linda Lear, says in The American Experience
“She is calling for the population to understand that money has a great deal to do with what is done in science. We need to ask who speaks and why. What is done in the name of science and why doesn’t the public have a right to know? These are not just scientific questions. These are questions that a social revolutionary asks.”

Rachel Carson’s goal was to shift the paradigm about humans and nature. She accomplished this not as a scientist, but as a master synthesizer of scientific information and a gifted communicator of science. She also fought hard to convince those in power to heed her alarm. This they did. And she accomplished this before she died of breast cancer at 56.

from Wikipedia:
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.

Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Meet Nasty RZY

What is she about to do with that fist?
In which the artist explores the rhetoric of vulgarity within the feminist discourse of anger…

Here is a new body of work in the Female Power Project: Nasty RZY

RZY (“Rosie”) has some things she would like to say and sometimes the most direct language is the most effective. When you’re this angry you are entitled to roll up your sleeves and speak clearly. Is there a decorous and feminine way to express anger? Is it still anger? Can you stomach more anger if it is sweetened and mediated? Does a spoon full of humor help the medicine go down? What if you have to look harder to see the anger—if you have to work to make out the words—what if you can let it sink in slower? Can you digest it then? [What if you make every statement into a question?] Maybe then it can be a seed of power. Maybe then it can communicate. It’s a funny thing to make artwork that I am afraid to speak its name when people come to the studio. Maybe this is work for me, too. That is what RZY SEZ.