Art for Tim Wise’s Essay Blog by Janet Hunter

Prior to putting anything artist on paper, I did research on Tim Wise, including listening to some of his speeches on YouTube. The first things that I did jot down on paper were more like taking classroom notes...collecting ideas. I find racism a difficult subject to come up with good visuals as is apparent when you google for racism images. The selection is poor.
My first drawings were of the border between Mexico and the United States and sort of general ideas like the layering of:

White Elite
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
White poor
- - - - - - - - - -
Black poor

I heard the word brick and that got me thinking of a brick wall in relation to the layering of these groups. I immediately thought of an ornate rod iron fence atop a brick wall. What if i could subtlety impose the words “black poor” and “white poor” on top of a brick wall which supported the graceful, curves of an ornate rod iron fence and could I use an elegant typeface to include White Privilege on the fence? The top part of the poster would be bigger than the bottom half. It would be spacious and yet oblivious to the lower half even though its very existence up there depends on those bricks in the brick wall.
I read tutorials and was fairly proud that I figured out how to impose the words “black poor” and “white poor” onto some bricks. The trouble was I didn’t like it when I got done. I preferred the scrawl of graffiti on the bricks. I am still having trouble with the vectoring of Illustrator, but I did the entire project in Illustrator. I did learn how to warp text into a shape and even though I didn’t use it for type on my bricks, I did use it to alter the word “White Privilege.” Yeah, a new skill!

Stirring the Fire

Let's just start with Tim Wise was amazing. I thought that his speech was very well written and delivered. I think that the way he introduced the topic was very disarming, which is important when you're going to be talking about such an emotionally charged issue that people often don't particularly want to talk about. I also thought that his anecdote about his daughter was brilliant because from my privileged standpoint as a white person, it made the issue and him as a speaker more relatable. Finally, I really appreciated his sort of "disclaimer" at the end about how we will know that we've made progress when a person of color can stand up in front of a group of people and say the same exact thing that he said and be as well received as he was, as a white male. I thought that was a very appropriate observation for him to include, given that one of the criticisms of his work that we'd discussed in class was that in using his voice as a white male he might be preventing people from hearing the voices of people of color who have been saying the same things for many years. I respected him for addressing that and I feel really privileged to have gotten to hear him speak.

Since we were addressing discrimination this week, I thought I'd post about Phil Borges, a social documentarian and photographer. His work is featured in an online exhibit at http://www.stirringthefire.com/. When you first get to the website, you can choose whether you want to view the exhibit or take action. Stirring the Fire is a website devoted to telling the stories of women around the world through art (photograph and film) and then providing ways that people can get involved in the empowerment of women and girls around the world. The photography in the exhibits is made up of beautifully simple and personal portraits of women around the world, and their stories. I have a little bit of a problem with calling it an exhibit, somehow, given that it is the lives of real women that are being presented. But the stories are beautiful and I really appreciate the melding of art and the opportunity for service and involvement. And speaking for myself, before I came to college my knowledge about the oppression of women worldwide was very limited. I had no idea how oppressed women throughout the globe are, and I had no idea how incredibly strong and resilient women throughout the globe are. So I think that art that tells these stories is really important.

On a final note, something that struck me about Carl Wilkens' speech at the Holocaust Conference was his description of how the women he met at Panzi Hospital in the DR Congo, women who had been raped, many of whom multiple times, would sing and dance. Their ability to sing and dance and love and hope is absolutely incredible to me and I think that it should be celebrated just as much as the abuse and oppression of women and girls should be lamented and fought against.

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai is not a graphic designer in really any of the traditional senses of the term. Yet she has dramatically changed the graphics of the landscape of Africa. She, according to nobelprize.org, in cooperation with groups of women across Africa, has planted over 20 million trees. For me this is an incredible form of art for a number of reasons.

First of all, it's a communal project not possible to complete with only the hands of a single artist. In actively involving women other women in the project, Maathai gave those women the tools to empower themselves to literally change the landscape of their communities for the better. Though the project addressed several social issues including women's empowerment and environmental degradation, it didn't attempt to simply tell the stories of people affected by the injustice of these problems, it invited them to participate in physically changing their stories.

Second, the fact that the art is made up of trees is powerful because that means that it will continually grow and evolve and change as the years go by. And those trees will give back to the the communities and the land that they are planted in.

Thirdly, another factor that I think makes this act of art is that it's available to anyone who is in the area. The trees are there and they make a statement that anyone can view and interpret and appreciate.

By Kate Pritchard

Project #2

Through this past project I learned the necessity of giving myself time to "stew". The timeline was shorter for this project and I didn't work in the time needed to fully develop an ideal that fell into that ideal balance between fully formed and still malleable. That stage where you are in love with the idea enough to pursue it as it changes and yet not so committed that you're ready to tie the not right there and then before it's had a chance to fully realize its potential.

Perhaps that also had to do with working with a partner. In the early stages of brainstorming having a partner was brilliant, and all through the working on the computer is was incredible helpful (and I think Becky and I made a pretty cohesive team) but I'm naturally a very accommodating person and it's possible that I didn't pursue any ideas too far for fear of straying from our joint vision.

And I might have been a more effective and helpful partner had I ran after some ideas with a little more gusto and given myself room to explore a little before we started pursuing our common vision.

Still, I'm fairly happy with the final product and I'm going to try my very hardest to take the advice off of our poster and "revel" in all of the uncertainties and discomforts of exploration.

By Kate Pritchard

This week’s post is highlighting the graphic designer Chaz Maviyane-Davies of Zimbabwe. I am featuring his poster called “Globalization.” I love this poster, particularly its simplicity. The concept is just beautiful. To me it speaks to the many effects of globalization. The man’s face disappearing could be representative of how with globalization some native people start to lose their culture, their language, their way of life, their identity. His dark skin is representative of a lot of native people in developing countries while the white paint running down, starting to cover his face is the ways of the white people that dominate much of the developed world. There are benefits to globalization like we can eat foods and enjoy the work of craftsmen from around the globe, but benefits to some might be considered detrimental to others.

For example, in India developed countries brought in their superior technology for water wells and cash crops thinking they were making an improvement. Now that the ground aquifers can’t recharge at the same rate that water is being removed, India has a serious water shortage. To the rescue is developed countries willing to sell them bottled water.

Alright, so this project was... interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Robbie on this project, but I have always been more of an individual when it comes to creating art, especially graphics. I think this was a wonderful learning experience. I had to create a concrete rough draft/sketch of my work, which i've always been really bad at. And I became a greater supporter of the idea that two heads are better than one. I learned a lot about the programs we've been using, things that I probably wouldn't have learned or even encountered had I worked alone.


As for the design of the project itself, I found it to be a lot more difficult than previously anticipaited. I originally wanted to play with the idea of the glass bridge downtown, probably because it is ocasionally a mecca for my friends and I. But in talking with Robbie, we settled on port specific aspects of both Duluth and Tacoma. We then narrowed our options down to bridges and lighthouses. I really dislike the idea of overcrowding designs, even if that means not including enough information.

This is something that I struggled with during this process. I know that posters are about conveying a message, but I liked that our project contained very little text. Perhaps I have seen too many wonderful designs ruined by text crowding or corny phrases. I do agree that a "You are not alone" would've added to the piece, especially in that dark area between the bridges. But I also liked the idea that Duluth's nightsky was reaching into the waterh surrounding the lighthouse.


I also really appreciated the color in our piece. The projector, and almost all projectors for that matter, do a horrendous job of displaying colors. We really limited ourselves to a small color scheme, but I think it worked well and created a powerful sentiment without being overbearing. I'm also happy with our decision to go with a light blue font color rather than red. I feel as though it really emphasized the idea of both water and fluidity between the two cities.


Overall, I am very happy with my partner and the work that we created. I learned some new program skills, better team building skills, and some interesting facts about a city that I had never heard of before. If I had to do this over again, the only thing I would change would be the inclusion of "You are not alone".

Wor-Ship: Project 2

Howdy y'all. This project was a labor of love and frustration. The initial conjure of ideas came quick with agreement between Janet and I. We shared sketches, talked and bragged points beween our own rural upbringings. We agreed upon Port Orchard as the town of choice in which we could cover two monstrous topics: religion and war - now we had to build our own creative ship.

This was the frusting point in "Project 2", a point that left us beautifully mangled in a web of more points of unforgiving vectors. In the beginning we felt trapped underneath the ship in the murky-gray waters of the inviolable illustrator, but with practice, perseverance and Advil we were able to grasp the rusted hull of the battle worn schooner and scamper on board. We started by building the religious image of "the crucifixion of Jesus x Battleship" in photoshop. With the image sliced and pixel-glued to our liking we transfered it to illustrator in which we live-traced it and vectored off the parts we wanted/needed to manipulate further. In an accidental act of the big man on board, the image was moved upward leaving behind the previous "shadow vector" of the boat. This wonderful and purposeful slip resulted in what many have said to be the fitting saving grace of the image; it grounds it, it's a wake, it's a trail of blood, it's a melting nike swoosh - whatever it may be, and it's open to interpretation, it works and brings the work together.

With the image in place - the text is next. "In Port Orchard We Wor-ship" was chosen, choosing to play off the word worship and load the letters by crane into the calloused world of the shipyard. The minute Janet saw the phrase she said, "There needs to be an A here, behind the O in Wor-Ship, War-Ship". This brilliant idea added yet another dimension to the piece and as we would find out later adds a great design element but also anchors the text.

We wanted to bring to awareness that war-ship building is what Port Orchard worships. Their lives are lived by the prayer of the steam whistle, and like that steam, their lives are short and hot before they vanish into Northwest rain. The ships give and the ships destroy; the yard is filled with the moral turbulence of the crusades.

In this project we hope that through social awareness we are able to enact social change in the little Orchard by the sea. And if not, I feel the symbol we created can serve and be used universally. I had a blast working with Janet and am proud of what we created!

Tunnel of Oppression

So for this project, I decided to stay focused on the Tunnel of Oppression. Before participating in the actual tunnel, I had a grand design planned out in my head. I was going to use a thumb print to create the sentiment of a tunnel, and I was going to have it light in the middle and fade into darker colors going outwards. I attempted to create this design probably three or four different times and finally gave up on the idea.

I then decided to go with a very vector based design. I began playing with circles and lines. I originally had about 15 layered circles creating the tunnel. I then attempted to create my own lines which would overlap in front of the "tunnel". I shortly learned that this was not going to work. The design was just too heavy. So i removed a few of the circles and settled on six. I then added the different shades of orange. They were each monochromatic, but I used a blending tool to create a smoother transition between the layers, which I think really emphasized the idea of a tunnel.

I then scrapped the idea of individually creating and placing my own lines and created a circle the same size as the larger one and chose a fill with a line pattern. I played with the thickness of the lines and attempted to change the color from black to something else, but in the end went with black. The amount of black is somewhat stark, but my intention was to grab people's attention, not to make something "pretty".

When deciding where to place the text and how much to use, I chose to place the title, "Tunnel of Oppression" at the top. I wanted to keep the poster pretty bottom heavy, rather than very centered. And I think I did pretty good job of accomplishing that. When giving details about the event, I took a minimalist approach. I find, at least personally, that people are more intrigued by facts and numbers with very little explanation. So I chose to give only the place, date, and time, which where placed in what should be the center of the tunnel. I figure, if people are interested enough in a design, they will probe for more information about whatever it is advertising.

Overall, I am very happy with this design. I wish that I could've executed my original idea, but things change and time is limited and I accomplished what I set out to.

Tunnel of Oppression poster process?

Well, we all made posters for Tunnel of Oppression and they were all pretty great! There were many ways of approaching the project so each of us discussing our process should be interesting to say the least.

The way I approached the creative process in this instance was to search my memory for one of the most powerful paintings I could think of and what I came up with was Goya's Saturn Devorouing His Son and somehow change parts of the meaning of that painting but still use its composition for the basis of my design.

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819-1823

The next step for me was to figure out what Saturn would be replaced by. I spent January in London and saw an exhibit on early Soviet propaganda at the Tate: Modern -- in it there were many caricatures of greedy statesmen and business men looking hungrily at money or land or the starving working classes. This probably subtly inspired me to chose Rich Uncle Pennybags from the board game Monopoly as the villain in the poster.

The final part of the process was to make the corpse of the unnamed Greco-Roman god being eaten by Saturn into a representation of victims of oppression. The thinking behind this segment was the easiest; it pretty made itself clear once I had chosen the Goya painting as my basis, but creating the image was much tougher for me. I have no drawing experience so I knew I couldn't free draw some kind of victim and that if I kept the general shape of the corpse it could serve as a visual anchor to what the design was based on. So I took the easy route out and covered the victim/corpse in "tattoos" of groups of people that are often ignored or even suppressed/oppressed by a hetero-normative Anglo-Saxon America.

The final product looks like this:

Janet's Tunnel of Oppression Poster

Project #1: Since I had never heard of the Tunnel of Oppression before, the first thing I did was some basic research on google to find out about the event. Very cool event. Next, I made a short list of four possible topics for my project: 1) lack of adequate sanitation, 2) lack of clean drinking water, 3) India's garbage problem, or 4) world population issues. From this list I continued with my research, looking for both photos I could use and statistics, something that would grab attention. I chose to work from a photo because I knew my Illustrator skills were not good enough for this project. As it turns out my skills were severely lacking for even a basic typography on a photo type of poster. A huge "thank you" to the young lady in the digital lab for all of her help. I chose for my Tunnel of Oppression poster to make a statement about the lack of adequate sanitation in many parts of the world. I found a couple of photos I liked and the one I ended up using was picked because it was the one I could attain. I have an old Mac at home with Photoshop Elements on it, so after some initial pencil layouts with the typography, I played around on the Mac. I e-mailed the pieces to myself and went to the computer lab on campus. I was able to retrieve the photo but none of the type, but I knew how I wanted it to look. I had the statistic that 43% of the Earth's population is without adequate sanitation, which is a huge percentage, but I felt the more attention getting statistic is that because of that lack of basic sanitation a baby born in sub-Saharan Africa has a 520 times greater chance of dying from diarrhea than a baby born in Europe or the United States. So I took my new statistic and played with the type making key words, like "baby's chance of dying" and "520X", much larger than the rest of the type. After completion, I realized that I needed to have the sanitation statistic on the poster or people wouldn't be able to connect it as the reason for all the deaths, so it is hand written on the bottom. So here's my poster... Sorry, it won't upload, it says the image is corrupt or an unrecognized format, but it is a pdf.

Dehumanization

The message that I was trying to convey with my poster was the idea that in situations in which there is abuse, as well as in greater world conflicts, often both the victim(s) and the perpetrator(s) are dehumanized.

The victim is something to be pitied. If there is sexual violence involved, and especially if the victim is a woman, she is sometimes viewed as irrevocably sullied and thus a source of shame to her family and community. In addition, simply labeling someone a victim carries connotations of helplessness and mental or physical sickness resulting from the trauma experienced. That is not to say that we shouldn't recognize that people experience awful things and are victims of violence and abuse. I just believe that sometimes the term "victim" is used in ways that aren't necessarily empowering.

Similarly, in United States society, once a person has been labeled a perpetrator, they are often socially ostracized and the record of that label can stay with them for the rest of their life, affecting their ability to care for their own basic needs, including getting a job and finding a place to live. Our justice system seems to be set up on the assumption that a perpetrator will be a perpetrator for the rest of their life because there is so much focus on punishment for crimes and so little focus on trying to help people so that they don't commit crimes in the future.

I even considered having the body of the man be made up of the word "monster", because I think that especially perpetrators of sexual crimes are overtly demonized. And while there is never any excuse for abuse or sexual or violent crimes, I think that it is dangerous to dehumanize and demonize any human being because once you can dismiss someone's humanity, it is a lot easier to in turn harm or oppress them. I decided against using the word "monster" because "perpetrator" sounds more like a legal term and as I said earlier, I think that the legal system in the United States shares blame in dehumanizing both victims and perpetrators.

I thought that this is an important issue to address because I don't see how peace and reconciliation and justice and come about if we don't recognize our common humanity.

In terms of my process, I started out by sketching. I drew several sketches before I came up with the idea for what ended up on my poster. I liked the idea of having the words make up their bodies because I thought that would indicate the way the labels of "victim" and "perpetrator" often replace in others' eyes the entire beings/identities of the people being labeled. But I knew I wanted to do more than just point this out, so I added the word human as a question in conjunction with the text at the bottom in order to try to get people to question the morality and implications of the dehumanization of victims of perpetrators.

Once I got to the computer it was just a matter of arranging the words at different angles and in different fonts and sizes to make the shapes of the woman and man. And several hours later, I had me a poster.

By Kate Pritchard