It's Printable!

Anyone...please print this out and post it in your community! The link is under "links" to the right....draw-in flyer.

List #2!

Here's Natasha's list:
--bus or van for every school, or gas money, and a creative person to take kids on field trips, at least once-a-week
--more percent for art opportunities
---ice skates for every kid and a safe place to skate that's kept cleared of snow
--swimming lessons and free camping trips for kids==jobs for artists, money for all NGO's to hire artists, artists for all schools, institutions
--artist-in-residence programs in every school
--universal single-payer healthcare, free health clinics, free dental
--energy retro-fitting for every house
--community gardens for every town with master gardeners helping people set up backyard gardens
--subsidies for the most nutritious foods and distribution of them to low-income people; make good food as accessible as junk food
--public transportation system for everywhere
--bookmobiles, local libraries, access to computers in local libraries, book clubs, reading aloud programs
--prison release programs, counseling, educatgion, mentoring of prisoners
--a total ban on smoking
--more orchards
--more park benches, especially artist-designed ones
--free college tuition
--free cultural events and subsidized tickets for low-income people to attend ones that cost
--fuel efficient cars for everybody
--solar panels for all
--distribution of home-grown food to those who need it
--ice skates, sleds, cross-country skis for every school
--free health care, including acupuncture, homeopathy, massage, and alternative treatments
--grants to subsidize the best newspapers to hire investigative reporters
--high speed internet free for everybody
--fully fund educational mandates
--make schools equal whether in poor or rich communities
--increase teachers' salaries and get the best teachers available
--hire artist to teach non-art subjects using the arts
--teach history in wonderful ways to make it living and relevant, and to highlight how people have struggled for their rights
--fund public television so it will become more educational, relevant, and create a less passive, better-informed public
--state should buy more land for parks and public access, especially along the coast
--clone Bill Moyers
--create a viable third party
--help schools reach all kinds of kids' learning styles
--teach foreign languages from first grade up
--promote cultural exchanges
--teach every kid to play an instrument and make instruments available
--teach local history in inspiring ways, storytelling programs, murals, etc.
--provide free childcare, top-quality, and Head Start programs
--create meaningful job opportunities
--hire home-makers to teach nutritional low-cost cooking to everybody who needs it
--set up apprenticeship programs for trouble teens
--give money for Haitian relief
--free pre-natal care and free abortions
--beautiful affordable housing available to all who need it
--create vegetable gardens and orchards at every school
--funding for diversity training, and civil disobedience training

My List

Natasha asked me to come up with my own personal list of 50 things that I would spend the $2.5 billion of Maine taxpayers’ money that has gone to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars up to now on. Well...here it is:
Retro fit Maine’s landmark architecture to net-zero energy efficiency
Invest in solar hot water systems
More park benches
Healthy food for every Mainer
Farmer’s markets
Art in prisons
More trains
Electric cars
Restore Mill buildings
More lobster
More wild sea life
50% for art in new construction rather than 1%
Paid family days off from work
Mentor programs
Drug awareness
Parades for every town in Maine
Local history museums in every town
Fishing lessons for every child
Free swimming lessons
Annual picnics for every business big and small
Free college education
Portraits of town elders
Pothole brigades
High speed internet to every household
More libraries
More boats
Bike paths
More technical schools
Doctors that make house calls
More farms
Medical universities
Less cigarettes
Less soda consumption
Exercise paths
Indoor activity centers
Swap shops
Building construction debris recycling
Toxic materials recycling
More bio fuel fill-up stations
More music programs in schools
More read aloud programs for children
More boat building programs for troubled youth
More performing troupes
More care for the elderly
More pizza ovens
Year round tourism
Local radio and television access
Cottage industry event centers
Small business convention center
More horses, cows and sheep

Let's Collaborate!

Natasha and I were thinking up a way to make art at the Draw-In at the state capital in Augusta and we came up with the idea of creating drawings during the Draw-A-Thon that would have large blank areas in them, then make photo copies and use the photo copies to draw on during the Draw-In. Here's an example of one I just created early this morning before setting of to work. We thought that it might be fun to draw in this manner and that it would be conducive to creating a greater amount of drawings quickly...and would directly tie in our activities from the Draw-A-Thon. We'd like to be able to create many drawings so that each legislator gets an original work of art, but with 180+ legislators creating all of that work might be physically impossible for the time that we would be there. Maybe we could even create some kind of potato stamps or something to fill in the blank part of the drawings even quicker? I invite anyone out there who is reading this to go ahead, print out this drawing and try adding imagery to it, then scan the completed work and email it to me...I'll post it here. If this sounds like something you'd like to try then go to this link, click on "all sizes", down load the image and print it out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennycole/4292964756/in/photostream/

Here's what it looked like after I added my own additional imagery to it. My process for drawing often involves looking through this old encyclopedia set (1966!) for funny images that I can then develop into a tableaux that comes around in some round about way to reference the theme of how to spend our war dollars. In this drawing I found an image of a town meeting, took away the audience, added some clouds, a heavenly arm with cash, a flag with a pine tree on it and a solar heating device...I'm sure that some one out there could probably do much better than that??!!

Draw-In

Natasha, Lisa of Code Pink and I are planning a draw-in at the State House in Augusta at some point during this 90 Day Campaign to bring our war dollars home. I was involved in a nation-wide draw-in that occurred in the early days of the Iraq war as a protest against the looting of the Iraq National Museum. The way it worked was that on one particular day artists all over the world went into museums that contained artifacts from ancient Iraq, sat down and did drawings of the artifacts. I organized one for the museum at Bowdoin College. It was a great way to get people's attention while being creative and enjoying some time drawing. Apparently there is an ongoing effort to recover stolen items from the museum and you can click on this link to learn more about that:
The Baghdad Museum Project My thought for our anti-war spending draw-in would be to bring only pink pastels, crayons or pencils to show solidarity with Code Pink! If you are interested in being a part of our draw-in let us know, it would really help to know how many of us there will be. Of course when we finalize the details, they will get posted here.

Collins announces committee approval of DOD bill

It feels to me sometimes as though there is no limit to how deeply we are invested in designing, building and becoming economically dependent on the war economy. I've attached a gouache drawing here from a new series that I'm working on that will depict submarines from around the world. Though it was not created specifically for the 90 day campaign here in Maine, I thought that it would work well as it depicts all of those books sprouting circulatory systems...a nice metaphor for health and knowledge as an alternative spending goal? Here's the link to Collins' war spending achievements for Maine...read it and weep: Collins' Report