Come One, Come All!

Well, it's official! We are organizing another Draw-A-Thon...this time around it will be at Harlow Gallery in Hallowell, Maine. Our thematic approach this time around will be to take on the spirit of the OCCUPY! movement. In April the gallery will give us a month long exhibition slot where we will be able to show some of the work created at this Draw-A-Thon. We'll also conduct a Print-A-Thon during the exhibit to show the public how we do things. So what are you waiting for? Drop me or Natasha Mayers a line and let us know if you will be attending! Hope to see you there! Kenny (kenny@kennycole.com) Natasha(mayersnatasha@gmail.com)

Catching up!

Wow...the last post was in July! I'm a very bad post-master...a lot has happened between now and then. For example there was this little thing called the "Occupy" movement that came along at the end of the summer!

Here's Lisa Savage's report on the WERU Grass Roots Conference: The Bring Our War $$ Home 30 day Care-a-Van kicked off a statewide tour with a t-shirt screen printing workshop at WERU Community Radio's Maine Grassroots Media Conference at Unity College on Sep.10, 2011. Images made at Draw-a-thons previously held with the Union of Maine Visual Artists, as well as the Codepink "house" campaign logo, were available for the public to have printed onto a shirt of their choice. Artists and organizer Steve Burke headed up the production of about 50 shirts which will now help carry the BOW$H message out into the world. Panelists Rob Shetterly (Americans Who Tell the Truth), Tamar Etingen (West Athens 4th of July), Lisa Savage (CP Maine Local Coordinator) and Steve displayed and talked about political art and its power to inspire and communicate. Rob's portraits of art activist Natasha Mayers, playwright Eve Ensler, whistleblower Bradley Manning, and other truth tellers on display brought still more voices into the conversation. photos of the event

Portland Paste

There is a new kid in town: Portland Paste. Check them out! Very much in the spirit of what we've been trying to achieve; Political art action at its best!

CMCA Draw-In

Today we conducted a "Draw-In" at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine, during the Steve Mumford lecture. In attendance were myself (Kenny Cole), Julie Rose, Brian Reeves, Mark Roman and Natasha Mayers. Natasha and I began our action by standing outside and handing out Robert Shetterly's statement to anyone willing to read it. It ended up being a sold out event and I personally witnessed several people getting turned away because they had not reserved seating for the talk. We sat quietly and drew for the hour long presentation and were able to ask a few questions afterwards. Our cause was a difficult sell to this "support the troops" crowd, but we did our best. Mumford proved to be a smooth talker who could contradict himself without skipping a beat. His case, from my perspective, was as follows: he is essentially a realist painter who developed an interest in war, went to see it for himself, but only found lots of bored soldiers. When questioned about depicting the horrors/Iraqi victims of war he replied that you can't depict it if you don't see it, that to do so would be dishonest propaganda, just not what realist painters do. His only regret was that he did not see enough action...maybe next time? Let's hope that there are a lot more wars...eventually I'm sure he'll get around to finding those damned evasive horrors!

Image by Julie Rose

We're gettin' out there!

Our silk screens are being purchased by activists and being used in demonstrations...the demonstrations are being covered by the news around the world and our art is getting seen! Well done Print-A-Thoners! The silk screen in this picture was created as a collaboration between our two super stars, Natasha Mayers and Rob Shetterly! Click here to see the news story.

What a Turnout!

This was the day of the double header! Our Draw-In in Augusta, Maine to help visualize how to better spend our war dollars was followed by another rally to return the now famous Maine Labor Mural. We're guessing 300+ in attendance.

More images

Image: Brian Reeves

Letter from Waterfall Arts

The Arts in Maine have been an essential business sector for literally hundreds of years because of what Maine is. The Creative Economy generates a significant amount of business for the state, tens of millions of dollars each year in taxes and visitor spending. Working artists and their art are real business leaders.
The saga of Governor LePage’s supremely wrongheaded removal of the Labor Department mural by Maine artist Judy Taylor just goes on and on. Every day brings a new wrinkle in the mutual outrage.
Mr. LePage and his influential “secret admirer” are outraged at the notion that the history of labor should be seen at the Department of Labor. This camp is also outraged that Department of Labor conference rooms should be named for historical leaders of labor. They want to change all that unpleasant context stuff where one thing fits smoothly with another; to them it seems terribly unfair to businessmen who might walk by, see this and wind up in a little huff.
Protesters, on the other hand, are outraged at the Governor’s high-handed, unilateral, unconstitutional and potentially illegal secret removal of the work to an undisclosed location. As if anonymous secret admirers should run policy in one of the United States.
You can see right away where I am on this. I’m a protester. Funny, how trying to rub out art makes it famous.
Many of the most important points have already been made in this ‘Muralgate‘ incident. The mural was federally funded and installed in 2008 through a public process. That’s standard behavior for a constitutional democracy.
They were secretly removed this past weekend by executive order of our Governor, who would like to replace it with his personal choice of décor: neutral colors, names and images of mountains, moose and ponds. Now, I respect the subject of those traditional Maine images, but they were not chosen by a public process. And I don’t respect the way the mural was removed and the reasons why. That’s standard behavior for a corporate oligarchy, a corporatocracy.
Don’t Maine citizens deserve free pubic debate, whether worker or entrepreneur or established business leader? I believe they do.
Aren’t we all mature enough to do this, respectful of opposing points of view? I believe we are.
Art is powerful, and art’s authenticity and honesty simply can’t be erased. Even thousands of years don’t dim the impact of a work of art, small or large. I suppose that also makes art scary to some who don’t like the light of day or who want it all their way.
Maybe the whole thing is a ham-fisted smoke screen meant to distract people from other affronts, like rolling back child labor laws, just one affront of many.
Unnecessarily denigrating opponents by name-calling, belittling, pushing and dirty tricks is the mark of a playground bully, not a statesman.
Mr. LePage, change your ways, sir. Be an honorable statesman, listen to the people and return the murals to the Department of Labor.
(Signed)
Alan Crichton, Board President
On behalf of the Board of Directors of Waterfall Arts,
Elaine Bielenberg, Brenda Bonneville, Lorna Crichton, Jay Davis, Valery Doody, Erin Herbig, John Jamieson, Jana McQuilkin, Matthew O’Malia, Jessica Porter, Tammy Lacher Scully, Abbie Read, Simon van der Ven, Lisa Whittier

Another Silk Screening Session

We had a great and productive printing day in Southern Maine at Rob Ingwersen and Emily Detterman's home/workshop. Natasha and I had stencils to complete and print and we had a couple of artist friends, Rae Ingwersen and Donise McGinn to assist. It was wonderful. We'll be delivering the posters to Lisa on Monday at the draw-in, over 120 all together.-Nora Tryon

It's On!

For those of you who are wondering: "What's a Draw-In?" I'll tell you...it's fun, easy and will get your artistic and political juices flowing! Basically we park ourselves in the rotunda of the State House (we have permission!) with a table, some signage and plenty of (dry) art materials. We then wait for the public to pass by (usually on their way to speak to legislators) and solicit from them any ideas they might have on how we could better spend the huge sums of money that go into war spending. It's actually a very easy task and you don't have to be proficient at rendering Abrams tanks as, for example if you created a drawing of flowers in a vase, you would be making a perfectly effective political statement about a better way to spend our war dollars. The other great thing about this action, we found from our last Draw-In, was that people are truly dis-armed when it comes to live artists! They get very excited to see their ideas visualized before them and be able to take their drawing away with them. For me as an artist, my favorite part is hanging out with other artists, making art and exchanging thoughts and ideas. It's a win/win in my book! So, will you come join us? I hope so! See you there.
Kenny Cole

Art Dogs

Thanks to Lisa Savage's passion for everything "pink" we got some real groovy results with the pink poster paper that Lisa brought along to last Sunday's "Print-a-Thon" at Art Dogs in Gardiner, Maine. Many thanks to Karen Adrienne for the generous use of her facilities...check them out at:www.theartdogs.com. The image pictured here was originally conceived by Al Crichton, who cut the toxic cloud stencil and was then modified by Kenny Cole and Oran Suta.

Success!

bearded bunny

draw-a-thon video

DIY!!!

Kenny,

There are cheap/easy DIY ways to make silkscreens,too.

Generally, one can stretch sheer curtain fabric/ nylon on an embroidery hoop or other kind of frame.

I have even stretched/ taped it on a crude Matt cut out of cardboard.

Generally, I then draw/trace the image, block around the design by painting mod-podge glue (maybe not a choice for Sat. since glue involves a drying factor), but masking tape, adhesive paper, etc. could be used to mask the screen for a print series .

Rather than squeegee, I press paint through the screen w stencil brushes, but soft squeegees (folded newspaper, cardboard) could be used.
Barbara Loring

Here We Come...!

i cant wait for Saturday.

here is a drawing i did trying to simplify one of my favorites from the ones you selected. i think it would be a good image to stencil.

william

A new look for Code Pink!

Codepink launched a redesign of the national website this week prominently featuring the BOW$H campaign and many photos and actions from Maine CODE PINK

T-Shirts

BOW$H t-shirts are up on the store now
for those of you who wanted to order....

Code Pink Shop