No End to the Project

The Election was a disaster. And so was the aftermath. I don't need to write about it. We were all injected with the daily trauma. Weekly displays on SNL weren't funny because they mirrored the reality we were seeing on the news. We laughed because it we've become cynical and macabre. 

A friend and I were zoom-watching the certification of the vote and instead saw in horror as the Capitol was breached by a mob of angry yahoos. True, when I talk like this, I'm seen as a pretentious, elitist liberal, but hey, I didn't beat up a cop with an American flag. 

"We love you, you're very special." Print
available at Diamondxpres.com.

The dress rehearsal for this event was in Lansing a few months before. Frustrated, fully armed white men saw they could get away with yelling in cops' faces at the Michigan capitol building. So, they figured Washington DC would be a piece of cake. 

The Republicans I know were stunned; they backed away as carefully as they could. After speaking with a politically-savvy relative in a far-away land, we both came to the conclusion that this hideous event wasn't going to disappear for a long time. Ten years. Maybe more. 

The second impeachment trial promised to take a week or so. It's almost old hat since we've been through the constant barrage of insane news in the last five years that we're burnt out. Even the senate minority leader is numb. A strategy if I ever saw one.

So now I'm back to work on a list of new ideas, on a list of issues.

COVID hangs over us like the grim reaper on a cold, damp night. The scores of people hanging out without PPE is astounding. You don't see anything like that in NYC. Not only do we have some major mandates, but, like 9/11, we took the hit for the rest of the country. We suffered so horribly in the spring that we're not taking any more chances.

More astounding is the vaccine debacle. We'll never know what happened there. Why didn't we order enough? 350 million people at 2 doses, you'd think those greedy pharma execs would have looked ahead (read: at their wallets) if our health officials were sleeping at the wheel.

And then, there's the distribution, a sssssit show just as rancid as the anti-vaxxers and their hand-written posters trolling those in their cars at vax sites, grasping at their chance to go back to life as it was before. 

Fat Chance. Invest in masks. Everyone's gonna need two to trick the variant(s). Vaccine or not. 

So, here's my latest. A little miniature diptych. Just gotta get the hinges and I'm set. I'll post when it's done.

Stay safe.

Goals Are Relative

Gladly, I made my goal a few days ago.

I bemoan my ignorance of web analytics, search engine optimization, and search engine marketing. I had a full two weeks to go and could have really made a strong promotional push, but I don't know the works. When I ran a campaign five years ago, I had cancelled the first try for Steel Ice & Stone. 

I then pounded social media daily for three months. Daily. Multiple platforms. And, two, sometimes three postings on the blog every week. Users were directed first to the KS then to the website, then back to the KS. I was relentless. However, that goal was much larger, and for a highly experimental piece. 

I underestimated the appeal of a salient issue to sell/promote an idea/project. It's all in the marketing. 

Interestingly, four--count'em--crowd funding marketing services wrote to me offering their services to help me surpass my expectations. One even offered a $50 pledge to my project. I paid them no mind. 

Another thing I have to say, however...I came up with the design and immediately planned and launched the campaign--in a week. It took KS longer to approve the project than it did to prepare the campaign. Maybe that could be the issue. More planning next time.

A little easier this time around....or so I thought...

Today's posting in KS.

As I worked my strategy in the past, I launched a Twitter announcement that day between 11:00 - 1:00. I already posted on FB last night, but at the moment didn't get any hits. I got more attention for posting my new profile photo. Go figure.

In less than 12 hours, my project was almost 50% funded on Kickstarter. While I was requesting a $5.00 pledge for a postcard,a number of people pledged $ 25.00, which is awesome.

The funding came to a abrupt halt a few days later. I mean abrupt. I didn't get a single pledge. For a week. Flipping as usual, I made some changes, and a few more pledges came in.And then, another stop. It's possible that the Robert Indiana similarity isn't resonating. A trusted colleague emailed me to warm that his estate is very strict about the LOVE use; I didn't get back any objections. So, just about 90% funding, I'm calculating my next move. I'm thinking about a voice-over video.

I'm almost there and just might make it. I need a knight in shaping armor. Keeping a positive attitude, the minute I make the funding goal, I'm thinking of printing even if it's in advance of the closing date. 

This is quite unlike the other KS I did a few years back, because the amount requested is so much smaller and the rewards are so much more manageable. But, I'm learning, without the major marketing, it's an uphill battle, doesn't matter how much or how little the goal.

Kickstarter--Yet Again

Without any nail biting and tapping on my experience and that of others, I launched a Kickstarter this evening to fund the printing of the VOTE Postcard I designed. 

I'm printing-on-demand, and my goal is large enough for me to print and mail the first batch and have a little left over to print a 22 x 17-inch letterpress of this image, and small enough to hopefully make goal.  

Allow me to explain: The idea of making a postcard--a mailed item--and using an image inspired by Robert Indiana's piece on a postage stamp--is the concept of the piece. 

I swiped the image to the left from an ETSY vendor who is offering 10 unused stamps for sale on their site. At such close range, it's fun to see the imperfections in the perforated tear; even in its reduced image state, the colors still vibrate after all these years.

Within minutes of launching I had two backers. Very exciting. 

What this has taught me, yet again, is how much text needs to be considered and edited when launching any kind of campaign. 

Parading it by colleagues, there was a bit of confusion about the meaning and purpose of the work;  others were concerned that I was encouraging people to participate in a system that just might lose their vote. I saw it as a way to send out a message relating to voting safely--by mail. 

Hope I make my goal. At $ 5.00--the price of a pledge--at a time, it could be a long road to $ 250.00. Yet another chapter in this journey.

Here's the postcard:

The Vote

No one is happy.

Everyone is on edge. Left and Right.

The vote by mail was an attempt to circumvent the pandemic which is still rampant; more on that later. People are worried that their vote--for or against--won't come or go as planned. Or discounted if not delivered according to a strict protocol. 

Friends have told me that they'll show up in haz-mat suits to vote if they've got any voting insecurity, but that's no one knows how that's going to go, either. 

So many months have gone by, flown like the wind, and we're less than 90 days till the fateful one. Biden is calm and has said that the election results will be determined by January 20th, and that's the day that the US Marshalls will, if necessary, vacate the office. 

Planned as a 2-color letterpress print.

I'm waiting for the reply from Robert Indiana's estate to publish the print, left. It's a play on the stamp made from his artwork from way back. It's very interesting that when he created the work in 1970, it was done as a gentle submission to his religious beliefs. 

A devout Christian Scientist from Indiana (Robert Clark is his real name), he created the artwork not as a nod to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but to the love that his beliefs required to extend to others. A very private man, he was miffed at the fame that the commercialization of his famous, famous art work brought him. Originally, it was a sculpture, and the original is housed in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

The original postage stamp was printed in color: the red letters with blue and green vibrating backgrounds. It has been reinterpreted in many sizes, materials and media over the decades, and my use of it travels on two avenues. The political one, obviously. But I am thrilled that the typeface used in the original sculpture is a form of Clarendon. How wonderful. 

For me, it's critical to keep the interplay on my message: that, in disrupting the mail delivery for the sake of the election, we must expect and demand that our vote be cast and delivered in a timely and decent matter.

However, many millions will be spent against this endeavor and ultimately hurt many millions of people. 

For example: many receive their medications by mail. Can they afford a two-week delay? What about people who send in their rent to their landlords. Will they be evicted if that check isn't delivered on time? 

While the pandemic has demonstrated how dependent we will be on electronic exchanges in the future, it has also shown the debilitating disadvantage of those who either don't have the technology or who depend on physical items to live. It puts in start relief how we've co-opted yet another public service.

Especially now, for corrupt and personal purposes of this president.

God Loves Guns

In an insane upheaval of events, our nation was thrown into a frenzy of disease, death, unemployment and poverty--in a word, horror--in a matter of weeks. Governors and mayors, with very little support from gutted public health departments at every level were left with no other choice than to lock down any and all states' public gathering areas--including most businesses, recreation areas, and all the etceteras.

Planned as a 2-color letterpress print
from polymer plate.

Abruptly, our country was held up to a horrific mirror: our level of disorganization for a crisis. It's painfully obvious we didn't learn much from the AIDS crisis, the 9/11 attacks or the Katrina Hurricane. We've played down the fact that health insurance is a need. Never addressed the inequalities of people of color with regard to health and human services, brushing their needs under the rug as a cultural issue  (as usual) rather than the exclusionary norm that has reached critical mass.

More than ever, we've exposed ourselves as a nation that lives paycheck to paycheck. If we can't sustain ourselves for 60 days without descending to homelessness and destitution, what does being great, becoming great or staying great mean? How absurd is this?

Yesterday, in Lansing Michigan, protesters entered armed with rifles entered the state office building demanding an end to the lockdown imposed by the governor. Egged on by the president to demand liberation, a female democrat was bullied by the president. Yelling angry white men with guns demanded the right to become sick from an illusive virus, about which we know so little and is still evolving.

Do we sustain ourselves in this country by tattoos, haircuts and beers? Apparently so. God and guns will keep us safe.

The Proud and Brave in Chicago

After a deep breath, I sealed the box and sent She Has Neither and 78 for exhibition to Woman Made Gallery for the Suffra-Jetting Exhibition. It opens in two weeks, and I just might jump the plane and go for the opening. I haven't been to Illinois for a while and miss the place. 

However, I'm busy preparing for another exhibition in St Louis the week after, and chugging away at some new pieces. The work for this series is taking off, with no end in sight--either for opportunities or subject matter.

I'm glad a gallery is unabashedly showing She Has Neither. It's a tough piece and while everyone who's seen it is stunned by it, groups whose eyes have fallen on it have collectively gasped. It's sobering subject matter, and it needs to be addressed in unrelenting terms.

The interactive invitation to the exhibition in Chicago.

Argentina, after having a reproductive rights bill narrowly defeated two years ago, stands the possibility of a new bill with a new president in office. However, I find it appalling that the bill stands in balance of other motives.

From the NYT this week: “Considering he [President Alberto Fernández] is trying to take a more orthodox path when it comes to the economy, he is using other issues to calm the demands of his voters,” said Mariel Fornoni, a political analyst. 

So, what is the motivation, helping vulnerable women in a dire, desperate time or keeping his ass in office?