Just Seeds: Blog

New CDC Billboard

2010-09-02T12:34:43Z

I'm a month late in getting this up here, but the billboard lib group California Department of Corrections (CDC) put up a great new billboard:

Here's their press release:

For Immediate Release
San Francisco, California – July 28, 2010
New Billboard Alterations Salute Israel Following Raid on Gaza Flotilla

On July 28, 2010 a total of nine billboards were apprehended, rehabilitated and discharged throughout San Francisco, including the intersection of Guerrero and 18th Street (see attached photo). Additional billboards were discharged into Polk Gulch, the Tenderloin, South of Market, the Mission, the Haight, Potrero Hill and Bay View/Hunters Point. The nine billboards represent the number of civilian fatalities incurred during Israel’s May 31st raid on a flotilla carrying supplies to Gaza.

The CDC released the billboards to highlight the two month anniversary of the raid. The billboards also cap the month of July which saw a White House reception for Israel’s Prime Minister followed by an Israeli military investigation of the May 31 incident. The White House visit reaffirmed America’s unbreakable bond with Israel, and the army investigation exonerated Israeli soldiers of any wrongdoing during the raid. As a compliment to these public relations activities, the CDC has contributed its specialized services to defend Israeli soldiers facing international scrutiny.

]]> The CDC recognizes that our colleagues in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) may require additional support and financing as they expand Israeli jurisdiction into international waters. Annual US aid to Israel will increase to only $3.15 billion by 2013. Although our Israeli allies are thankful for such generosity, the CDC believes that America can do better. In order to encourage additional tax-supported financial donations for Israel, the CDC launched the “Blank Check” billboard campaign.

The corrected billboards read, “THANKS FOR THE BLANK CHECK, AMERICA,” featuring a US Treasury bank note for $7,000,000. The amount is a daily average of America’s $2.70 billion aid package for Israel in fiscal year 2010.

Reflecting Israel’s national colors, the blue and white billboards also include the following caption along with a discreet Israeli flag:

“In May 2010, Israel was attacked by an unarmed flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza. Decisive action by Israeli soldiers stopped this assault. Though only 9 people were killed and hundreds were detained, Israeli prestige came under fire. With your support, Israel can prevent future attacks. Our troops are waiting to execute anyone entering Gaza, but the cost of ammunition will strain daily U.S. aid of $7 million. Your additional tax dollars can overcome this challenge. Please contribute generously and help us bring peace to the Middle East.”

As a private correctional facility, the CDC recognizes the need for control and security in areas under Israeli jurisdiction. Therefore, the department salutes our Israeli colleagues in their efforts to maintain Gaza as the world’s largest open air correctional institution, exposing Palestinians to the safety, efficiency and discipline found in California facilities.

The California Department of Corrections is a private institution dedicated to the alteration, rehabilitation and improvement of California’s most criminal advertising. Initiated in 1994, the department is operated by individuals who feel that California’s correctional facilities have been insufficiently managing the state’s most criminal elements.

For additional information on department programs and policies, contact the CDC Office of Communications at cdc@revolutionist.com.

collage of the week (47)

2010-09-02T12:00:00Z

Some Press...

2010-09-01T13:19:08Z

A couple nice articles have come out recently about my projects:

1) Beth Simpson is working up a new Champaign-Urbana-specific Celebrate People's History poster project. There's a nice write-up in a local blog the217.com HERE.

2) The Spectres of Liberty project I recently did in Syracuse with Dara Greenwald, Olivia Robinson, and Joanna Spitzner is up in a show in Rochester, NY, and got a great write-up in the free weekly, City Newspaper. Check it out HERE.

'A Bundle of Sticks is Strong: Rooting for the Home Team'

2010-08-31T13:00:00Z

Over the course of the summer, I have been crazy busy. I finished a book manuscript, wrote a couple of essays for books, worked on a new series of prints, did the artwork for Michigan Indian Day, and it seems like a dozen other projects as well. Of course, this was all coupled with a two-week residency at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC and lots of trips Up North (as we say in Michigan) with my daughters.

Tomorrow, I will be driving to Cleveland to install a solo exhibition based on eighteen new prints that I created from incised baseball bats. Thinking primarily about immigration and the usage of Native peoples as sporting mascots, the show brings together a team of 'Indians' and 'Immigrants'.

]]> According to the Artist's Statement:
Known as the national pastime or America’s game, baseball occupies a central role in our nation’s collective imagination. Phrases derived from the ballpark pepper our everyday speech: in the big leagues, covering your bases, hitting a home run, out in left field, on deck, rain check, right off the bat, stepping up to the plate, striking out, and swinging for the fences, to name only a few. The game has equally been seen as an emblem of our country abroad and has been enthusiastically accepted by fans worldwide, particularly in Latin America and Japan.

Against this diamond shaped playing field, Dylan Miner proposes that a different game is being played, one that reveals truths of our collective past and points toward potential futures. As an artist and historian, Miner discloses that Native peoples are commonly relegated to either the dustbin of history or to the rural marginality of reservation life. Immigrants, particularly those from the global south, are inversely presented as a threat to the future of America. This exhibition challenges conventional notions of what it means to be a United States citizen at a time when even the most basic Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is being contested.

Bringing together a series of eighteen relief prints created directly from the inventive use of incised Louisville Slugger baseball bats, Miner has composed a full roster of positions that compose two opposing teams: Indians vs. Immigrants. His muscularly rendered compositions of professional baseball players and community leaders unite the contested fields of sports and politics in a singular manner by posing the question of whether you are rooting for the home team. Who is the home team after all?

Scope more at the Cleveland State University Art Gallery

I'll upload photos from the installation later this week!!

Into Iraq by Art Hazelwood

2010-08-31T12:43:03Z

My friend and kick-ass printmaker Art Hazelwood has just released a hand-printed artist book called Into Iraq. Check it out HERE. It;s pretty cool, and here's what he has to say about it:

At the beginning of the Iraq war it seemed like a bad idea. At the end of George W. Bush's final term in office it was a bad idea that had fossilized. This bound set of prints is the bookend to Art Hazelwood's Hubris Corpulentus, a series of engravings done in the first year of the war. Into Iraq consists of small linocut prints each one more full of bile than the previous. The subjects range from the battlefield to the media, to the neocons and the Congressional enablers in Washington. Oil Flag, Patriotic Tune, Sacrifice of Liberty, The President in his Labyrinth are some of the titles.

]]> These linocuts were all created in the last years of the Bush administration. Several were used as the basis for posters. In the last months of the Administration during the 2008 elections the whole series was exhibited in Oakland at the now defunct Front Gallery. It took from that time to the present to print and bind the thirty books. But it is a good time for us to recall George W. Bush. It is a good time to recall the path that led the country on its downward cycle. It is a good time lest we think he or his ilk have disappeared or worse that they have any good ideas at all.

Judging Books by Their Covers: 21

2010-08-30T13:13:15Z

Back at the end of June I was in Toronto, strangely at an academic performance art conference to talk about the Spectres of Liberty project, and their was a table for TDR (The Drama Review), one of the longest running and most political drama/culture journals. They had a pile of old back issues really cheap, with great covers. Plus the contents are great too in the early issues, lots of material on The Living Theatre, Bread & Puppet, Futurism, and guerrilla theatre.

]]> TDR 43, Spring 1969, cover photos by "Rubenstein" (above)

TDR 38, Winter 1968, cover design Fred McDarrah and back cover of 43, advertisement for issue 44, designer unknown:

TDR 44, cover design by Franklin Adams and TDR 56, December 1972, cover design by Brooks McNamara:

TDR 68, December 1975, Leonard Levitsky and TDR 86, June 1980, designer unknown:

RESOURCED Portfolio at the Armory Aug.27-29

2010-08-27T15:21:39Z

Come check out our 2010 portfolio RESOURCED this weekend in NYC!! RESOURCED features 26 artist prints that focus on the issues of resource extraction, climate change, and environmental justice.

@ the Armory in NYC
Aug.27-29 9am-?
68 Lexington Ave & 25th St.

We were invited to participate by the amazing wonderful Samson Contompasis, co-organizer of the event, and the owner of the Marketplace Gallery in Albany.

Artists from across the world converge in NYC to present an epic exhibition benefiting families who have lost loved ones due to the Afghan and Iraq wars. CONVERGENCE NYC will be presenting art to the public, Aug. 27th –29th , at the Historic 69th Fighting Regiment’s Armory located at 68 Lexington Ave & 25th St. During these three days the public is invited to enjoy art and live music, while getting the unique opportunity to meet and mingle with the over 70 participating artists. Fifty percent of all sales will be donated to the NY/NJ chapter of Operation Homefront.

"Grace Before Dying" photo show (Portland OR)

2010-08-26T17:10:17Z

There's a great show up at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland this month, photos of the prisoner/volunteer-run hospice program at Angola State Penitentiary (LA) taken by Lori Waselchuk. Angola has a really high rate of life sentences, the photographer's website states that it's over 85% (!), with so many long term inmates programs where many prisoners are expected to die within walls, programs like this are pretty powerful. This show is only up another week so hurry down if you're in town. Bluesky's website is here, and the website for the show itself is here.

Art Against Empire

2010-08-26T12:58:59Z

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics has just uploaded a couple more online poster exhibitions, including Art Against Empire: Graphic Responses to U.S. interventions Since World War II. Art Against Empire includes my poster "Places the U.S. has Bombed Since World War II," and pieces by Tomi Ungerer, Winston Smith, Art Workers Coalition, Adolfo Mexiac, Rupert García, Alfredo Rostgaard, as well as fellow Justseeders Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, and Favianna Rodriguez. Check out the exhibit HERE.

collage of the week (46)

2010-08-26T12:00:00Z

Wichita outlaws tools for graffiti

2010-08-25T13:17:12Z

Looks like Wichita, Kansas just passed a broad and sweeping bill outlawing all kinds of "graffiti tools." Below is the text of an article from the Wichita Eagle found HERE, and an earlier piece is HERE. The comments are crazy as usual...

Wichita outlaws tools for graffiti BY BRENT D. WISTROM The Wichita Eagle
Leave the spray paint and fat markers at home.

Wichita City Council members passed a new law Tuesday that bans people from carrying spray paint, broad-tipped markers and a variety of other potential graffiti tools on public property or within 100 feet of it. It also bans stores from selling the materials to anyone under the age of 18.

If caught and convicted, violators face a fine of $250 to $1,000 and up to six months in jail.

]]> Police would need probable cause to search people for the banned materials, and they say the law won't stop children from carrying normal, school-approved markers.

The city says that graffiti cleanup cost $280,967 in 2008 and $290,954 last year. That doesn't count tags the parks department or private residents removed.

Police say graffiti is an eyesore, costs businesses and residents to clean up, and often has links to gang activity. A task force assembled in 2008 debated the issues and came up with the new law.

Council members voted 6-1 in favor of the new law. Council member Paul Gray opposed. He said he's seen graffiti on signs above a major Wichita freeway.

"If a person can manage to get up there and spray-paint that, I don't think they're going to be encumbered by an ordinance,'' Gray said.

He said he doesn't think the law will do much to stop graffiti and could be a hindrance to people in the community who need spray paint and similar things for legitimate reasons.

"I think it's unreasonable," he said.

In addition to the new law, City Manager Robert Layton said the city is considering using security cameras to catch people defacing property in some locations.

Wisconsin Wonders

2010-08-25T04:19:53Z

I recently spent some quality time in northern Wisconsin. The best way to spend a summer day in Wisconsin is at a cabin on a lake. Luckily my uncle has a little cabin on a lake just east of Phillips Wisconsin (about 6 hours north of Milwaukee). Aside from swimming, fishing, canoeing and various other outdoor activities this area is home to a very special place, that is Fred Smith's Concrete Park. Smith was a logger in the early 1900's, and later built a bar (which only served Rhinelander Beer!). In his 50's Fred decided to start creating some concrete sculptures which honored the people of his area. In all he constructed over 200 concrete sculptures which he inlaid with pieces of glass. His themes ran from Native Americans, Loggers, Farmers, Beer Drinkers and other people of the North Woods. Smith was truly a visionary artist, he had no intention of selling his work, and simply felt that this was something he needed to do and people needed to see. In the 70's the Kohler Foundation acquired the Concrete park and has been maintaining it since. If you find yourself anywhere near, do yourself a favor and pay a visit, it's amazing. Also at the gift shop you can pick up a 40pg book about the park with great quotes from Smith explaining his work and a T-Shirt screenprinted by the local high school art class honoring the park. I now own both!

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this is Fred Smith in front of some of his work.

Plastic...

2010-08-24T12:50:17Z

My friend Shawn Gilheeney just sent me a cool install he did with his friend Greg, a pile of signs related to our unending consumption of toxic consumer goods... They remind me a lot of the signs I was painting a couple years back, which can be seen HERE. A video of Shawn painting the signs can be found HERE.

Judging Books by Their Covers: 20

2010-08-23T13:25:15Z

Now for a slight break from the usual program. When I was out in Wisconsin a couple years back for a wedding we stumbled upon a small town library book sale, and almost all the books were romance novels and westerns, but they were $1 a box! So I scooped up a bunch of really cool looking Western pulp novels. Very questionable politically, but some of these designs are simply awesome. All of them are from Lenox Hill Press, published in the 70s, and no notation of designer or illustrator.

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Modern Day Slavery Museum

2010-08-23T12:17:07Z

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers have created a touring exhibit called the Modern Day Slavery Museum. It toured the last few weeks around the Northeast of the USA, stopping in NYC.