Juan Jackson, Broadside, $25
Angela Davis, Broadside, $25
Lend a Hand, Collage, NFS
QUESTIONS FOR A FRAGILE TIME, Broadside, $95
The unexpected vibe this past year offered all of us, the opportunity to assess habits and expectations about how our lives work - in personal, family, community, country and global terms – found its way into my studio as well. We artists were some of the luckier ones experiencing the pandemic. We had a place to go, fairly safe from infection, where we could continue our work unencumbered by the kinds of concerns many - front line health workers, teachers, families with young and school age children, and seniors in health care facilities – faced every day. So, it was with a large sense of gratitude and a feeling of considerable responsibility I set out to make new work.
All three of the tasks I undertook were continuations of earlier projects. Two of these were outwardly focused on issues of community, and one a more personal exploration. The WHAT WE WANT project began in 2006 when I first asked community folk and neighbors to consider what they imagined would make our community better. ART IS MY WEAPON, a project first conceived by Chanda Smith Baker several years ago, empowers artists to create pieces, (often but not always incorporating “decommissioned” weapons), to foment conversations about gun violence prevention. The COLLAGE PROJECT, begun just last year, is a way to contend with vision changes by challenging my ability to see and cut fine lines, to do delicate, up-close work.
One of the themes the pandemic reinforced for all of us is how completely and incontrovertibly we are bound up with each other, how every facet of our lives touches, influences, changes the lives of everyone else. Does this settle a unique responsibility upon artists? I do not think so. It places an expectation on each of us to follow what Gandhi wrote about when he said, "It makes no difference what you do. And it is essentially important that you do it."
George Roberts, November 2021
