#poor people's art

[longlistshort]

Poor People’s Art: A (Short) Visual History of Poverty in the United States at USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa uses installations and artworks to tell the story of, and expand perspectives on, The Poor People’s Campaign- from its origins in the late 1960s to the present day form, as well as comment on poverty and other social issues. Both educational and engaging, it shows that despite long struggles and some progress, we are still very far from much needed social change, especially in regards to poverty.

The museum also produced a free full color, 48 page workbook that you can pick up there or download as a PDF that can be downloaded from their website.

From the gallery’s website-

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is well known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, yet much less emphasis is placed on his campaign to seek justice for America’s poor, “The Poor People’s Campaign.” This was a multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-racial movement aimed at uniting poor people and their allies to demand an end to poverty and inequality. Fifty-three years after Dr. King’s death, the Reverend William Barber II launched a contemporary push to fulfill MLK’s ambitious brief — one that calls for a “revolution of values” that unites poor and impacted communities across the country. The exhibition Poor People’s Art: A (Short) Visual History of Poverty in the United States represents a visual response to Dr. King’s “last great dream” as well as Reverend Barber’s recent “National Call for Moral Revival.”

With artworks spanning more than 50 years, the exhibition is divided into two parts: Resurrection (1968-1994) and Revival (1995-2022). Resurrection includes photographs, paintings, prints, videos, sculptures, books, and ephemera made by a radically inclusive company of American artists, from Jill Freedman’s photographs of Resurrection City, the tent enclave that King’s followers erected on the National Mall in 1968, to John Ahearns’ plaster cast sculpture Luis Fuentes, South Bronx (1979). Revival offers contemporary engagement across a range of approaches, materials, and points of view. Conceived in a declared opposition to poverty, racism, militarism, environmental destruction, health inequities, and other interlocking injustices, this exhibition shows how artists in the US have visualized poverty and its myriad knock-on effects since 1968. Participating artists include John Ahearn, Nina Berman, Martha De la Cruz, Jill Freedman, Rico Gatson, Mark Thomas Gibson, Corita Kent, Jason Lazarus, Miguel Luciano, Hiram Maristany, Narsiso Martinez, Adrian Piper, Robert Rauschenberg, Rodrigo Valenzuela, William Villalongo & Shraddha Ramani, and Marie Watt.

From the museum’s wall plaque about the images from the artists above-

A multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture, and social justice, Miguel Luciano revisits the history of the Young Lords, a revolutionary group of young Puerto Rican activists who organized for social justice in their communities beginning in the late 1960s. Luciano’s first contribution to Poor People’s Art is a vinyl banner from the public art project Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio (2019), a collaboration with artist Hiram Maristany. It features the photograph “Young Lords Member with Pa’lante Newspaper (1970)” by Maristany, who was the official photographer of the Young Lords and a founding member of the New York chapter. This banner, along with nine other enlarged Maristany photographs, were installed throughout East Harlem at the same locations where their history occurred 50 years prior.

Luciano’s second contribution to Poor People’s Art is the sculpture The People’s Pulpit (2022), a repurposed vintage pulpit from the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem. The Young Lords famously took over the church in 1969 and renamed it “The People’s Church”; they hosted free breakfast programs, clothing drives, health screenings, and other community services there. In this exhibition, The People’s Pulpit features an historic recording of Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri reciting the celebrated poem Puerto Rican Obituary during the Young Lord’s takeover of The People’s Church.

The central sculpture in the second photo-

Afro-Taino artist Martha De la Cruz fashioned her sculptural installation Techo de sin (Roof of Without), 2021, from stolen, scavenged and donated materials found in Southwest Florida. According to the artist, “Florida is home to a large population of Latin American migrants who have ended up in the US largely due to economic pressures, exploitation and veins of power etched by Europe and the US.” Her powerful work deals with the results of this disjunction and the “symptoms thereabouts (e.g. houselessness, fugitiv-ity, government corruption, and income disparity, etc.).” According to De la Cruz, the word “sin” is a common Dominican mispronunciation for the word “zinc.” The sculpture is animated by a single light bulb that turns on for just ten minutes a day.

From the wall plaque about the Lazarus installation (structure in the 3th, 5th and 6th photos)-

Jason Lazarus’s sculptural installation Resurrection City/Poor People’s Campaign: A National call for Moral Revival/A Third Reconstruction (2023) is anchored in the artist’s historical research and several key photographs of Resurrection City. A tent-like shelter inspired by the temporary residences that populated the 1968 mass protest, the interactive sculpture contains simple sleeping quarters and a curated library filled with physical literature and ephemera centered on both the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign and the 2018 Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, co-led by Rev. Dr.William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

The library allows for audiences to trace, listen, and talk about the history of advocating for the poor, from 1865 to the present. Additionally, the artist provides a custom transcription (and a QR hyperlink) to Barber’s 49-minute address on the syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club” in which he carefully outlines his powerful vision for how we might address poverty going forward.

About Jill Freedman’s photograph above-

In the spring of 1968, the talented young street photographer Jill Freedman quit her day job as a copywriter in New York City to join the Poor People’s March on Washington. Freedman lived in Resurrection City for the entire six weeks of the encampment’s existence, photographing its residents as they rallied, made speeches, protested in front of government buildings, confronted police, built makeshift kitchens, organized clothing swaps, and dealt with flooding, petty crime, and illness. One of the most important postwar documentarians, and one of the few women photographers of the era, Freedman captured it all. Freedman’s 2017 book, Resurrection City, 1968-from which this exhibition draws a dozen powerful images-showcases the photographs that she made as a participant in the original Poor People’s Campaign. In multiple ways, Freedman’s images are the sympathetic perch upon much of which much of the present exhibition loosely hangs.

This exhibition closes 3/4/23.

[lingi-15]

[mari-lair]

Tried my hand at a Researcher Siffrin!

The visions plagued me, so have the fella that speedrun their self-destruction

[timethehobo]

Emmy being self-conscious of his age, and maybe even about how he looks. 🥺 Rook loves him anyway.

[pjs-everyday]

it's not too late for a summer beach episode, is it? 🥲

[potatounicoorn]

Dick Grayson - Ruining non-human heroes perspective of humans since 1964

[imvec]

Sequel to Sunshade

[that1notetaker]

Imagine building a family in a terrible world. Some of you die sooner, and you try to make it work. Then everyone, everything is gone, you have less than a minute to process that, and you're alone. Except it's worse! Because your family will be there, but suddenly you're not part of it. The house is in front of you and you don't have the keys.

[luetta]

[hyakunana]

POV: Even with advantage and buffs, your local folk hero just rolled 1 in Intimidation

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

A walking, talking, Major Character Death waahah!

[kaleidoramblings]

Never getting over how Paint the Town Blue and Rebel Heart were wasted on an Act where Jinx doesn't go apeshit even a little, despite having plenty of reason to.

Jinx in S1:

"I'm worried Silco thinks I'm weak." [blows up Enforcers about it]

"I think my sister chose a cop over me." [blows up Enforcers about it]

"I accidentally killed my dad and I'm turning my back on my sister." [blows up the Council about it]

Jinx in S2A1:

"My sister turned bluebelly and is helping her cop girlfriend gas the undercity." [attempts dual-sororicide and blows the Grey into Piltover about it]

Jinx in S2A2:

"My emotional support child who I supposedly developed a deep familial bond with was arrested by Enforcers and taken to prison." [makes quips at and gives the finger to an Enforcer about it?]

Seriously though, a person with zero mental disorders and no abandonment issues would've shown more emotion over having their child/sister arrested than Jinx, notorious overreactor, did. We get one (1) moment of seeing her haunted by her hallucinations and then... nothing. Cool as a cucumber, not even particularly serious, cracking lighthearted jokes and exchanging quips. Who even is this!

And why the hell has Jinx been lying low and refusing to go even a tiny bit ham on the Enforcers when Isha actively wants her to do so. One of Jinx's fundamental character traits is that she has A Person, and she wants to be of value to that person by fulfilling their goals (even if it's in ways they didn't ask of her). So why is she ignoring something Isha really wants her to do! Who even is this!!

And it's not as if Jinx is acting like (kid) Powder either, because you know what Powder did? Build bombs to use on Enforcers. With nails in them!

[schlushiii]

There’s a new Pokémon added almost every week

[thedeskofaltoclef]

Here's the poor man's pitch, artists.

Clef violently waving a comicly large Ace flag like he won a war standing beside Meri holding a tiny little lesbian flag as she smiles showing a lil peace sign with her free hand.

Do it, you cowards

[sclappin]

A Note About Scams and Commissions:

(This post is brought to you by a weird conversation that just happened in my DMs.)

I know that it's easy to get excited about receiving messages about potential commissions, and you may feel pressure, socially and/or financially, to take whatever you can get, and look past red flags if someone says they're willing to pay money for your art.

I want to remind you that if a client seems off to you, and the request raises red flags, you are allowed to say no to a commission request. (Hell, you can say no for any reason! Too complicated, too tight a turnaround for your liking, you simply do not want to draw what they're asking for! But especially if the request seems like there's something wrong with it).

I've encountered this most frequently with pet portraits, but I'm sure they can take other forms. Things I've seen in messages that raise red flags for me:

The potential client doesn't seem to know anything about you. They do not follow you, they do not know your commission rates or if you even have any. They are asking for subject matter you don't really do.

Pricing doesn't seem to matter to them. Details of the finished piece do not seem to matter to them. (This is because they do not want the piece and have no intention of paying you. I believe these are planned to be overpayment scams).

The blog they're contacting you from is very new, and has like one post.

They get very, very defensive and angry if you question the legitimacy of the business transaction. Like if you tell them you don't accept e-checks, or require partial payment up front because you worry about getting scammed, they lose their minds.

They try to make you feel insecure about your art, or remind you that you need the money. This is an attempt to pressure you into accepting the shady commission. I've never had a legit client do this.

I've never had a scam client get as far as getting any money from me, but I've fallen for one long enough that I put several hours into a drawing that I'll never get back before the "client" got really pushy about e-checks. I've had others that seem like they're trying to phish for my personal info. But mostly, it appears that the plan is to overpay the artist, demand the extra amount be returned, and then cancel the original transaction (or have the check bounce) after the artist has sent the "return" payment, so the artist no longer has the original payment AND is short whatever "surplus" amount they "returned" to the client/scammer.

Having this sort of thing happen can be really embarrassing on top of the monetary/labor loss, so people don't always speak out about it, but I feel like it's important to!

(And on that note, if you for some reason want me, an illustrator who mostly draws old-timey riffraff, video game people, and professional wrestlers, to do a picture of your cat: you gotta be normal in my DMs.)

[mywitchcultblr]

If you are an American artist/fan, change your pixiv account region! Because there's new censorship

Number 5. If your drawing has no 'educational/scientific/artistic value' it won't be allowed to exist. These new censorship are absolute nonsense pushed by credit card company and conservative politicians. Fucking bonkers

It's the same thing when Tumblr banned NSFW and they promised that 'artistic nudity' will still be 'allowed'. I hope every purist on the internet realized that when they whine over anime fan art they are repeating what conservative billionaires and politician are pushing:

The death of art...