OBAMA WINS! Now the work begins…
So much hangs on this man’s shoulders it’s a wonder he’s still standing as tall as he is - the expectations, the dreams, the promises. And it’s not like he’s starting out with a perfect situation; in many ways, he will inherit a mess. It’s like taking over a company in the midst of bankruptcy, or dating someone going through a messy divorce. But he can do it. That is, if we stick with him. So what are we to do now? Take all the energy we gave to making campaign calls or knocking on doors or, let’s face it, reading online papers and blogs and posts from around the country like some kind of political page six junkie and DO something to help this man in whom we have placed our trust. Okay, not him exactly, but someone else: Volunteer to read to kids at a local school; bring food to a soup kitchen or stop to acknowledge someone on the street asking for food or money; enjoyed the phone calls to voters in Florida? - volunteer to help out at a phone bank or train to answer calls on a suicide hotline. Drive less. Smile more. Care about someone who you haven’t given the time of day to previously. See the other side.
Americans, myself included, spent so much time—for good reason—over the past two years to help elect Obama but as anyone who received his frequent, inspiring, and pragmatic campaign emails knows, he can’t do it alone. We have to step up, in ways small or big, and do what we can. Maybe it’s uncomfortable or annoying, but the hope we are voting for can’t come only from the White House. It comes from all of us. It comes from paying attention to something bigger than our own desires and giving time and effort to something beyond our patch of grass (or maybe, for most of us artists, cement). All that campaign junkie stuff? That was just training ground for the real change to come. And we can do it. We elected him; we can make a difference.
I have to acknowledge something here. In an earlier post, written over two years ago in June of 2006, I chided artists for not getting out and talking about real issues, politics, change, and social concerns the way that musicians did. During the past few months, this was not the case at all. Sure, musicians wrote and performed their share of memorable songs about the candidates (who wouldn’t want to write a peppy lyric about Obama if they had even a modicum of talent to come up with one?). But artists have been out there too. We’ve all seen the work of Shephard Fairey by now, and not because he's a promotional whiz, but because he made a powerful image of Obama that inspired millions.
For a while there, it seemed like every day my inbox was flooded with another press release or invitation from an artist or gallery doing their part to support the victory of President-elect Obama. There were artists making work about the election, from a sprawling collaboration spearheaded by Elana Mann to a large art exhibition at the Democratic National Convention. The Republicans got involved too, screening a video by San Francisco artist J.D. Beltran at their Convention. Blum & Poe held an auction for Obama, and several galleries held similar events, including Merry Karnowsky Gallery San Francisco’s Catharine Clark Gallery. Artist Alison Saar created a web page on the Obama campaign site and was donating art to those who gave funds to the campaign. Next came a slew of announcements from local galleries participating in a big Art for Obama event in October: Lightbox, Walter Maciel, Angles, Taylor de Cordoba, and the list goes on and on. Artists and arts professionals did step up and speak out. (Though it's a good guess that IF there is a Republican artist on the LA scene, he/she is either a very good chameleon or has been in hiding.)
If Google’s search engine is correct, this article - the one where I diss artists for not making more noise about social change and politics - is one of the most widely read of any of the writings I have put out into the cyber world. So either artists are masochists who believe their own bad hype, or it really is true that anything with a celebrity’s name gets way more attention than all the other information out there. (The piece in question mentions Neil Young right off the bat.)
Now I know from personal experience that artists can be hard on themselves, but let’s be honest, it’s the celebrity thing that has folks going to this article. If I were shameless enough, I would list a bunch of celebrity names here so that all those foreigners to the increasingly global yet nonetheless small-compared-to-the-world-at-large art world, would see that Artists Do Care! At least, for a time, during this historic election, we showed that we did. I hope we will continue.
Annie Buckley is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, CA
(Copyright Annie Buckley, 2008)
