Water bottled up in plastic has always horrified me, a portend of a future when nothing is safe to drink until it's been processed and the empty bottles litter the landscape for centuries to come. I've been to homes in the rural Shalefields of Pennsylvania where gallon jugs fill every available corner, not just for drinking but for showering and cleaning clothing, since the wells have been contaminated from hydro-fracking for natural gas. Yet plastic jugs of water also make me think of humanitarian border actions, where groups like No Más Muertes position water stations on the US/Mexico border: acting in the interests of baseline human survival needs becomes a beautiful direct action, and these same jugs become beacons of hope.
It is a compromised world, but that doesn't mean we should stop fighting to keep our remaining waterways clean for the indefinite future.
Back to basics with this print: linoleum blocks and spraypaint & stencil, the media of my first attempts at politically-motivated printmaking in the early 2000s.
Note: this edition was printed by hand, rather than on a press. Each print will have slight variations as a result.
