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Oklahoma
I am self-taught and because of
Francisco Goya I became very interested in political imagery, very early
in life. The black and white political drawings were done in pen and ink, or pencil,
and they range in size from 36" round, down to 3" x 5".
The act of breathing is
political. That said - my first venture into politics began in Oklahoma
in the mid 1960’s, with the creation of a book of 66 illustrations (unpublished),
called “The State of the Nation 1966.”
This was still three
years before it was considered ethical to challenge policies of the US
government, and the price for speaking out was high. I did this because
the Oklahoma I grew up in was a third generation welfare state. Oklahoma
was a place where welfare programs were tested, and the results
contradicted the promises, outlined by LBJ in the “Great Society” and
“The War on Poverty.” The ‘book' consisted of three parts and
spoke directly to those two programs and concluded with “The Age of
Contradictions.”
The work
brought controversy even before it was completed. And upon its only public
showing for an audience of about 5,000 the project attracted some negative
governmental attention.
The
project also attracted local attention. The Governor of Oklahoma, Dewey
Bartlett commissioned me to do six images to help persuade the Oklahoma
legislature to improve the lot of Oklahoma’s public education. That
effort was successful.
California
In 1968, in
southern California I free-lanced during Watergate, mostly against the
Nixon administration and against the 25th Amendment in
particular.
In the late
1970’s the California Chamber of Commerce and the California District
Attorney’s Association commissioned me to create images for “The
Forgotten Victims of Violent Crime”. The topics were provided
– the interpretative art is mine. The work was effectively used
to help elect then State Senator George Deukmejian to the office of
State Attorney General. It was also used to elect the same man to the
office of Governor. The effort
brought media attention to the topic which led to the creation of
California’s Crime-Victim Legislation, which in turn became
California’s Victim’s Bill of Rights. One unintended consequence of
this effort was a societal anomaly that we now call “victim-hood.”
San Francisco
Finally in San Francisco in the
late 1990’s to the present, I became entangled in the quagmire over the
city’s new $200 million Public Library. My work was used to call attention to some of the more interesting
aspects of this continuing dilemma.
I obviously do a
lot of other work, besides pure politics. But I’m still a political
independent, and the fire that began with Goya still burns.
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