Advocacy-Informed Art
Slice of Access and Dignity (2023, Aug 27)
All.Here.Now…No.Wall.Here (2017, Jan)
Hands-Up…to the Stars (2015, Apr)
Refueling the Collective Will (2011, Sept 18)
COVID-19 Public Health Awareness Art
Masks: A Human Custom (2020), 12”x18”, acrylic and marker on board
Masks are found in every culture. As an art therapist, the use of masks and face coverings to thwart the spread of COVID-19 reminded me of the healing capacities inherent in masks. The images represented (from left to right, starting on the top row) are: Venetian (Italy), Lele (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Japanese, Mexican, Chinese, Kwakwakaʼwakw (Canada, British Columbia), and Celtic. This selection represents various purposes but showcases commonalities in design. The poster reinforces the idea that wearing a hygiene mask protects communities while also situating an individual within a long human tradition.
This piece is dedicated to my friends and colleagues in Hong Kong who have taught me the importance of mask wearing for other’s health - and not just one’s own. A special thank you to Chiu Wong; he has been sending me articles on masks for COVID-19 for several months. Admittedly, it took me awhile to get on board with wearing them but I’ve adapted to the times. I hope others do, too.
Stay socially connected but physically distant until we can all meet up in person once again. And make sure to wear a mask to the supermarket and pharmacy - protect our workers!
Close in Art (2020, April), 12” x 18”, color pencil
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis - Bauhaus artist and art educator - taught art to the children in the Nazi Terezin “model” ghetto and hid more than 5,000 art pieces, many of which would be published in the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Even in these circumstances, she situated empathy as central to her artistic philosophy. She believed that sketching demanded the artist’s sensitive observation and attention, which could foster a sense of closeness and connection with the subject.
Her ideas are central to art therapy. One of her students (pre-internment), Edith Kramer, is considered a founder of art therapy in the U.S. The notion of aesthetic empathy also inspired my focus on arts-based civic dialogues. In our current days of COVID-19 quarantine, Dicker-Brandeis’s techniques have helped me to bridge the gap between physical distance and social connection.
Election to Inauguration (2020, Nov - 2021, Jan), 29.5” x 13.75”, markers, paint markers, quick dry paint sticks)
🇺🇸 Just before the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, I realized that I was going to need a way to give myself some time to shift from a hypervigiliance that consumed me over the past 4 years to a more sustainable activist stance - no matter who won. I decided on a daily project from Election Day to the Inauguration that would give me about 15 minutes or so each night to simply experiment with colors as a meditative activity. In order to forge a connection to the U.S., I chose red, white, and blue (and occasionally black) with art materials that do not naturally blend. I divided a recycled heavyweight paper into a grid of approximately 2”x2” squares and completed each in order from left to right, upper to lower.
🇺🇸 On the back of each square, I counted time in various ways. First, there is a countdown to mark the 78 days from the election to the inauguration. Second, there is the date. Third, I ended up marking smaller periods of time that began with significant events and named them: purgatory (4-6 Nov: election [3 days] - photo 2), liminal (7-22 Nov: projected winner [16 days] - photo 3), transition (23 Nov - Dec 13: GSA ascertainment [21 days] - photo 4), shifting (Dec 14-Jan 6: Electoral College [24 days] - photo 5), transmuting (Jan 7-19: Congressional certification [13 days] - photo 6), and a final image the day the day of the Inauguration (Jan 20 - photo 7). For example, Veteran Day was simultaneously marked November 11, -70, Liminal 5.
🇺🇸 I was able to keep the abstract focus without explicitly reflecting on the day’s events, except for some images: ballots (Nov 4), figure (Nov 25 - Biden’s Thanksgiving address and specifically the line “to love our neighbor as ourselves is a radical act”), Supreme Court (Dec 11 - denial of Texas lawsuit), cassette (Jan 3 - release of Trump and Georgia Secretary of State recording), Capitol (Jan 6 - insurrection), Reflecting Pool (Jan 19 - COVID memorial service).
🇺🇸 In reflection, the project helped give me some mental space and led to some reflections. Despite the ever presence of electoral maps, I quickly lost the association of the colors to specific political parties. I was glad for this as I chose the colors to focus on the U.S., not a particular sub-group. Since I didn’t focus on typical U.S. flag imagery of stars and stripes, I was able to see the series as rooted in the U.S. but not uniquely so as many countries use these colors in their flag. This made me think of the long history and cross-global struggle for democracy. Many days, the art making helped me to clear my mind. Other days, I got caught in rumination on concerns with the sustainability of U.S. democracy (continual lies about fraud despite contrary evidence, enablers and perpetrators for personal and party gain, violent demonstrators).
🇺🇸 Although my movement between hope and despair was distressing, I took comfort in how it mirrored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation that the U.S. embodies oppositional stances. As King wrote in Where do we go from here: Chaos or community? “The racism of today is real, but the democratic spirit that has always faced it is equally real.” Or as Clint Smith more recently put it in his essay “The Whole Story in a Single Photo” in The Atlantic (2021, Jan 8), “the gap between our founding promises and our current reality.” Even with a change in Presidents, the factors and influences that enabled and perpetrated the most hateful aspects of the last administration are not so easily changed. Still, this series helped me stay grounded and focused to play whatever role I can in co-creating the U.S. Constitution’s aspiration “to form a more perfect union.”
artwork in collaboration with the Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival
Shift the Moral Narrative (2018), 9” x 14”, acrylic on cotton (t-shirt scrap)
As art therapists we help people cope with their challenges, but we cannot always tackle the systemic issues that complicate their lives. The current Poor People’s Campaign remedies this as a rededication of Dr. King’s legacy with its focus on calling attention to violence (militarism), racism (discrimination) ecological devastation, and poverty in order to “shift the moral narrative” towards peace, reconciliation, sustainability, and justice. I created this image to represent this idea and intentionally borrowed historical protest art (the racism image is from the March for Racial Justice and the reconciliation one is from the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign). I have been proud to be a part of this fusion coalition - multi-racial, intergenerational, cross-geographic, inter-class - and look forward to the next phases.
Companion art for We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People's Campaign Chapter 53 - We Who Are Becoming (2022, Jan)