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?

Pink. Just Pink.

As I put together my guerrilla campaign to hit the streets in the coming weeks, I moved to printing You're Next as color laser prints at my local copy shop. True, it's not the luscious 22 x 30" (56 x 76 cm)  from a wide-format ink jet printer, or the imposing 24 x 36 (61 x 91 cm) offset 2-color print, but I just don't have the funds to print any other way right now. It's going up as a tabloid-size.

A printer gave me quote for 500 copies of a 2-color print on a light-weight coated stock at 24 x 36 for $ 900. Not a bad price considering the ink coverage; and at 500 prints, the sheetfed is just making ready. The ppu is pretty good considering; I could run a crowd funder to pay for it, and it would include postage and the mailing tube. Promoting it could make it a hit, or an uphill battle.

I'll talk more about the distribution later, for now, the color.

The red from a laser printer would give me a peach-colored triangle when printed; the yellow comes out strongly in the lower opacity (see the top image). So, decreasing it, the pink will be accurate in the tabloid-size print. If I ever get the offset printed, I'd go with a spot color, and the lowered opacity would produce the pink I want. Just gotta be sure that I choose a cooler red.

For the distribution, I'm thinking I'll start in my little town, putting up some at night and see if I get a reaction. I have to reach out to contacts to find the spots with the traffic that would most respond to the image.

That's one of the most interesting things about this project. The climate in this country has turned so acrid and exclusionary. It has been revealing how people respond to the individual images. Each of the works are met by gasps--but the reaction comes only from a specific group, the one targeted by the piece.

My honest hope is that the message and its design resonate so deeply that we collectively do something about the crisis our nation is in. Never did I think that as a population we were harboring so much fear and hatred toward one another. In these times of accessible communication, couldn't we stop seeing one another as groups of "them" vs. "us"? It took someone with these feral emotions to capitalize on these fears in others; sadly, as a nation we've responded badly in not rejecting the rhetoric and ousting this shell of a human being from our highest office. We most certainly face his re-election if we don't unite and act.

78, the redesign......

Even when inspiration strikes, you sometimes have to take a step back and consider the entire work. With a long standing series such as DSH, there are a number of facets that require consideration before rushing off to print.

DSH has been in the works for over two years, and many various ideas have been developed, some shelved, some still in the incubator. News events dictate a lot of what is being said, however, mulling over the aesthetics is essential to the effectiveness of the final design.

78 Cents On the Dollar was originally a four-color image, set for printing via RISO in Newburgh, NY. There are RISO printing facilities in NYC--notably Blackburn--however, the press in Newburgh can handle the size and type of paper I intend to use.

RISO, as noted before, doesn't work in CMYK. It works on a series of inks more closely modeled on RGB and the results can be unpredictable--both a good and a bad thing.

Bringing the piece to so many colors didn't seem right in the face of the others in this series--and I felt it might look like an eye sore. I also felt that the color, while off-beat, might dilute the message. Since the works are all a little confrontational, I decided to omit all the colors and instead make the work in tints of black and the RISO red.

I spoke with the pressman, and I'll be reporting soon. In the meantime, images are below. In processing the files from Ai to Acrobat, the color shifts. I have to speak with the pressman again to see what the best format is. He said the files would print well as RGB PDFs, so I'll have to see what the best processing channel will be.

The Peripheral Information

Watching the news--actually, at this point avoiding it--has become a project in itself. What is most annoying is the shifting realities; at the onset, the event didn't exist. Then, it never occurred.

With the admission that an event did, in fact occur, and that many, many people were involved in many, many incremental steps, the fact that our country has asked another to lie on international TV is being deemed a not-so-bad thing. An overreaction. Oh brother. I can't take it. Just can't.

This astonishing chain of events is leaving me with considerable unease and hence, the very stuff to concentrate on other things. Angst is a great catalyst for experiment.

I follow the media about the pay gap between men and women, especially in this time of "the lowest unemployment in US history". In 2019, according to

https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap

women's pay has grown, in 2019, a whopping $ .01 to $ .79 on the dollar. So, my piece is obsolete.

[I could change the 78 for 79 without much hassle, but it's printing this week. I'll keep you posted on that.]

What I find far more annoying, but not surprising, is that, in CONTROLLED instances--job title, years of experience, industry and location--women still make less than a man at $ .98 on the dollar. 

You might think that's not too bad, right? What's a lousy 2 cents? Well, that "tiny" gap occurs when a woman actually reaches that salary level. If a woman finally makes it up that hill to reach the same status as a man in the same job, she still makes less than he does. 

The website explores minority women, who make less of all. Check this out: A Black  female executive earns $0.63 for every dollar a White male executive earns. In other words, a Black female executive earns 27 percent less than a White male executive. 

I'll be writing soon on an article I saw in this week's NYT, that relates to ICE, immigrants and the working poor throughout the Deep South. Turns out that poor minority workers are snapping up dangerous jobs in chicken processing plants that were left behind by the deported alien workers. They're happy to get $ 11.00 an hour to gut hens because it beats out the $ 4.50 an hour they get at a Sonic. $ 4.50? Is this for real?

OK, let's talk about prints:

78 Cents, as reported months ago on

https://democracyspokenhere.blogspot.com/2019/05/78-cents.html

has undergone a considerable re-design, for a number of reasons. First of all, I decided the color was ineffective, so I reduced it, and the colors of the upcoming pieces to two: red and black. It just works out better that way. Besides, it was fun to make two colors look like many, playing with the densities. The battered old penny, turning greenish red as its value further dissolves, transformed seamlessly.

RISO colors, the final destination of the file, works with colors that are like CMYK but not. To the left is the scale, taken from Secret Riso Club's website; the paper sample looks wooly, but it remains to be seen how this will print. I have a feeling it could go on for a while.

Here's the latest print iteration:
There's a lot of space around it because I've included the 1" border; and it looks rather dull here in the upload. I'm hoping that it will print as vibrantly as the .pdf or the .AI doc shows.

What's interesting about RISO printing is that the production phase requires the plates be separated, and I'm wondering what the steel graphic will turn into. I'm waiting to hear back from the pressman to see when I could go up there, possibly with a computer to adjust the file. The steel grain might need work, which, at a print shop, I'd like to avoid. Dying to see this.

Happy New Year to all.

Athol, Massachusetts

After a 3.5-hour drive from NYC to the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, I pulled into a small press at the end of the block of a sweet New England mountain town.

Needless to say, except for a stretch on I-91, most of the drive was throughout the backroads of Connecticut and Massachusetts where signs alert you to crossing moose.

Highland Press, recommended by a printing buddy, is one of the last presses willing to take on a small offset job. They has a small 5-color Heidelberg GTO as well as a selection of letterpresses to accomplish jobs for a variety of clients in the area.

There were some little issues during the press run, shown on the video. However, the surprise of the day came just before I was leaving: the owner told me he has a collection of wooden type in the basement of the shop, and, so sublime, the font is Clarendon.

Guess I'll be watching out for moose on the road again in the near future; my drive home was thinking what and how am I going to print with those wooden slugs?

Note, at the end of the vid, the pressman holds a slug. It's actually upside down, since slugs are in reverse.

You're Next, part II

Next chapter: Almost 900,000 Central American residents, refugees living in the US under the Clinton administration since 1999, are going to be deported. These are individuals that have since started families and businesses, and deporting them back to uncertain or dangerous environments could prove catastrophic to a population amounting to a mid-size city.

Some argue that the people here illegally faced their fate when they crossed the border. True. 

However, the 900,000 Central Americans are not here illegally. This administration has effectively shuttered the border for émigrés AND refugees. And, many who face deportation, were part of LEGAL programs that allowed them into the country. Rather than offering them an opportunity at citizenship--or at the very least, permanent residency--in this country, they're being stripped of everything they have. There are instances of parents being deported while their children were in school.

The president has made abundantly clear who he would like to see immigrate here and who he would like to see deported. Deportation is the first step of mass dehumanization.

The first ones rounded up--the immigrants and refugees--are the most vulnerable, those who aren't fluent or fully literate in the American language, or cannot afford an attorney to represent their cause.

Don't make me laugh: the official policy, gently worded can be found here:

https://www.usa.gov/deportation#item-213693

Residents--legal ones--who need medical care or other forms of assistance are also marked for deportation unless they can prove severe hardship. Some might argue this is understandable, however, remember these are residents. They are or have worked in this country and have paid taxes just like American citizens. However, the administration has determined that they too, must go.

You're Next

I'd spent the summer following the case of Constantin Mutu, a 4-month-old Romani child separated by his father at the border. The child was fostered by a family in Michigan, and detained for five months because the US government maintained the infant had to find his own way home.

His mother, father and a sibling had gone to Mexico seeking to cross the US border seeking asylum from outrageous racial persecution of the Romani across Europe. The entire family was separated and afterwards, the father, distraught over his missing son, was reduced to tears and depression. As a result, he was routinely beaten by his cellmates. His anguish continued; he, like his wife and other child were deported to back Romania, leaving Constantin behind.

Eventually the child was reunited with his parents, with many, many readjustment issues looming.

This is one of many tragedies in the long list of deportations this administration has instituted. There are many ways to prevent illegal or process asylum immigration; however separating families has become perfectly acceptable--almost admirable--in this crippled, morally debased administration.

The president has also made clear his position on Muslims, women, differently-abled people, disabled veterans, overweight people, homeless people and others who don't meet his standards--mostly people who aren't white or privileged.

Oh, African-Americans? They won't be deported back to Africa. That would go against our Constitution. The vote will just be suppressed in predominantly AfAm districts or gerrymandered to death, so those voices will never be heard. Exiles in their own land.

What I find fascinating is that his base doesn't see themselves as vulnerable and follow his ideas and ideals blindly.

They don't see that they're part of the snake eating itself. That They're Next.

This piece is planned as a large offset print. I had considered a silk-screen, however, the worlds won't KO properly from the thickness of the ink.