If They Come For You In The Morning
It Been 2 Years
Posted July 27, 2008 by k_c_ in If They Come For You In The Morning
Two years ago Visual Resistance organized an art show and benefit, If They Come For You in the Morning, for our friend Daniel McGowan. Over 100 artists from the Street Art and Graffiti community donated artwork in support of Daniel and to raise awareness about the Federal campaign against dissent in the USA. Daniel was arrested and charged for acts of property destruction.
The Benefit was very successful, hundreds of folks came out to ABC No Rio and a community of artists directed their efforts against the criminalization of protest.
Since the "If They Come For You In the Morning" art show Daniel has gone through legal processes, negotiated a plea, and was sentenced to 7 years. He has been incarcerated since July 2, 2007 and is serving out his sentence. Daniel was just recently "found in civil contempt for his refusal to answer questions before a grand jury." This, unfortunately, means Daniel will be spending more time incarcerated. The "clock" on his sentence has been stopped while he goes through this rigamarole.
I write this as a reminder of what kind of power our art can have, it can be multifaceted, beyond plastic toys, photo books, and solo shows.Thanks all of those that participated and supported the If They Come For You in the Morning, ABC No Rio and numerous others!
To learn more about Daniel, why he was arrested and his case, go to supportdaniel.org. A current address where he can receive letters is updated when necessary.
New artwork available from fundraiser show
Posted August 14, 2006 by in If They Come For You In The Morning
We've just updated the page for the Daniel McGowan benefit, and have artwork available for purchase online from Swoon, Armsrock, and Eelus, plus a DVD from the Barnstormers and original prints by Kristine Virsis, Claude Moller, Magmo the Destoyer, Nicolas Lampert, and Eric Ruin.
Click here to check it out. More artwork will be added to the sale page in the next few days, so keep checking back!
Benefit show shout-outs
Posted August 1, 2006 by in VR Projects
The If They Come For You In The Morning art show was a huge success and we raised more money for Daniel McGowan's legal defence than we ever thought we could. Thank you to all the artists who generously donated their work, to everyone who came out to support the show, and to all the volunteers who were patient with our sweaty, grumpy insanity. This event could not have been a success without you!
A particular amount of adoration to our heroes of the past week: Steve Englander and all the ABC No Rio volunteers, Jeffrey and Bluestockings Books, Aaron Thompson & art.les.nyc, Ian Kuali'i, James and Evan of Graffiti Research Labs, Mark and Mattie from Fort Whitey, Jonathan Spies, Thadeaus D. Umpster, Angela Coppola, Mona Mady, Marianne, Eliza Calhoun, Josh MacPhee, Chris Stain, Brandon Bauer, Eric Drooker, Aaron Resen, Callie, Sen, Andrew and Brendan Story from Friends and Family, Cristina Chapman, Melissa Morrone, Meredith Sums, Benjamin Persky, and of course, Jenny Synan & Daniel McGowan.
Boundless thanks to you all of you
Picking up art
Posted July 29, 2006 by in VR Projects
Anyone who has not yet picked up artwork from the If They Come for You In The Morning show, please go to ABC No Rio on Wednesday, August 2nd or Thursday, August 3rd, from 5pm - 8pm. If you can't come by either of these days, please email us at visual.resistance@gmail.com. Thanks!
What a night!
Posted July 28, 2006 by in VR Projects
The first night of If They Come For You In The Morning was a huge success. Thansk to everyone who came out and braved the late July heat in ABC No Rio! We put a lot of red dots on the walls and gave out lots of information about Daniel's case so all is going well. For all information about the show, see visualresistance.org/mcgowan. Below are some pictures from the show taken from jabobito's flickr stream.
About purchasing art at the Daniel McGowan benefit show
Posted July 26, 2006 by in VR Projects
We've gotten a bunch of e-mails asking for details on how art will be sold at If They Come for You In The Morning, so here's a quick note to cut through any confusion:
All artwork in the show will be reasonably priced, with prints starting at $5. There is beautiful artwork available to meet every possible price range. Don't go home empty handed!
Selected work in the show is being offered at minimum-bid silent auction. However, the majority of artwork is available at flat (non-auction) prices.
To bid on auction items: Sign up for an anonymous identification number at the table at the back of the room. Bidding sheets will be hung on the wall next to each auction item. All bidding ends promptly at 9pm on Friday!
To purchase non-auction items: come to the table at the back of the room and let us know the item number or artist's name. Cash or checks strongly preferred. MasterCard & Visa credit cards accepted.
Can't make it to the show but would like to bid by proxy? E-mail us at visual.resistance@gmail.com for information on specific pieces.
If They Come For You In The Morning
Posted July 25, 2006 by in VR Projects
This is the eighth in a series of previews from the July 27-28 beneft art show If They Come for You in the Morning. We start hanging the show at ABC No Rio on Monday, so posting will probably be slow-to-nonexistant next week. Here's one big preview of multiple artists:
One of the best things about this project has been meeting incredible artists whose work was previously unknown to us. That is certainly the case with Aaron Resen and Julia Garder, two artists who came from out of the blue and sent us two of the best works in the entire show.
Left: Aaron Resen's gorgeous, delicate paper cutout:
Right: Julia Garder's Fuschia Plant:
Next up are two pieces that reference Judi Bari, the environmental and labor activist who was bombed in 1990 in retaliation for her activism with Earth First. Below, at left is Barry Newman's Who Bombed Judi Bari?. At right is Kevin Pyle's dramatic illustration is an original panel from his chapter on Bari in the book Wobblies!.
One of my favorite artists working anywhere in the world is RB827, whose unmistakeable style and painstakingly detailed technique has made searching out her rare street pieces a favorite hobby of NYC street art enthusiasts. RB has a number of small ink & gouache drawings in the show. Two are pictured below:
Eric Drooker, a World War 3 Illustrated vet and author of the wordless graphic novels Flood! and Blood Song. Eric sent three pieces for the show, one opaque watercolor painting and two ink-on-scratchboard drawings. Two are pictured below:
Finally, one of VR's main inspirations, Chris Stain, sent us a set of amazing stencils on salvaged sheet metal panels. One is pictured below:
This is all just a small sample from the 80+ artists who are included in show. For more information, see If They Come for You in the Morning.
Daniel McGowan show preview: Swoon
Posted July 22, 2006 by in VR Projects
This is the seventh in a series of previews from the July 27-28 beneft art show If They Come for You in the Morning:
Swoon certainly needs no introduction to VR readers. One of the leading lights of the street art movement, Swoon is a Brooklyn-based printmaker who has been working on the streets since 1999. Her paper cutouts were some of the first street art I remember taking note of after I moved to New York, and since then her art has developed remarkably. Her larger-than-life linoleum and woodcut prints are a window to the secret heart of the city's inhabitants.
After a massive installation at Deitch Projects last July, Swoon travelled quite a bit before returning to New York to begin working on building a three-raft scrap wood flotilla that will sail down the Mississippi River later this summer. Her prints are currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, in addition to the walls of Chinatown, Bed-Stuy, Gowanus, Williamsburg, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Austin, TX, etc...
Swoon has three prints in the Daniel McGowan benefit show. Pictured above is a detail from the original two-color linoleum print for the poster she created for the Celebrate People's History series. As a testament to her work ethic alone, the piece is a knockout: each letter of the text is hand-carved from linoleum (in reverse). As far as I know the original print has never been exhibited before.
Also in the show are two prints from Swoon's series of subway portraits, pictured below. The subway series are linoleum block prints with spraypanted stencil. All three prints are on durable, semi-transparent mylar. One of the subway prints is available for online purchase through Visual Resistance.
Swoon was an early and constant supporter of this project --- many thanks to her for all the help!
Detail. More views here.
Daniel McGowan show preview: Doug Minkler
Posted July 22, 2006 by in VR Projects
This is the sixth in a series of previews from the July 27-28 benefit art show If They Come For You in the Morning:
Doug Minkler is a printmaker from the Bay Area who has created posters for a wide range of organizations, including the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, Veterans for Peace, and the International Longshore Workers Union. He writes:
As part of the international Share the Commons movement, I have placed high-resolution scans of of my poster work on this website which you may download and print for free.My work is about planetary preservation. The prints are inspired not by rugged individualism, but by the collective humor, defiance, & lust for life exhibited by those on the margins. Though the site is divided into categories such as war environmentalism and criminal justice i see the entire site under the category of labor. It is my hope that these works be used to boost the spirits of like minded comrades as well as the raise the consciousness of conservative relatives and friends. They are my contribution to the international struggle for peace and justice. Included on the site are some writing I have done on the subject of art and politics.
Current projects: Ban Tasers NOW, Ghosts of Guantanamo, Human Needs Not Corporate Greed ( WRAP west coast homelessnes activists)
Doug has two prints in the show. Both are vibrant multicolor silkscreens on archival paper. Above: Doug's "Campus Predator" poster takes on the duplicitous recruitment tactics of the United States military. Below: "Corporation" gets at the root of the problem with a caustic quote from Ambrose Bierce.
Daniel McGowan show preview: Nicolas Lampert
Posted July 19, 2006 by in VR Projects
Nicolas Lampert is yet another great midwestern artist who uses collage as a primary tool in his printmaking. Working out of Milwaukee, he's involved in a wide variety of activist art projects -- he was a co-editor of Peace Signs, co-organized the travelling Drawing Resistance show, and has written for Clamor Magazine.
His Oil Soldier poster, pictured at right, is a potent example of his collage work, and has been distributed widely as an agit-prop image for the antiwar movement. The poster is in the show (and also available for purchase online)
Nicolas is probably best known for his Machine Animal Collages, a series of collages he began in 1995. He writes:
Juxtaposition has been central to my visual language and the content that I explore. Contrasts and comparisons between animal/machine; nature/industrialism; indigenous/modern nation states; local economies/globalization have often been reoccurring themes. By pairing together opposites, the viewer is left to come to their own conclusion and to consider the reasons, circumstances and future possibilities of the two different entities - both alone and when they merge. The visual statement is to ask questions rather than provide concrete answers....Aesthetically, the machine-animal collage series embraces the low resolution and the deteriorated quality of a Xerox copy. The photocopied images and the cut and paste methods working by hand produces images that become difficult to date. The images could be seen as a relic from the past, a lost scientific manual, or a Dada-like, Max Ernst-like collage image. Or the images could be seen as a contemporary work, a manual for a design for the future.
The Locust Tank piece, pictured at left, is my favorite of Nicolas's collages. At almost four feet wide, the single impossible image has a hint of epicness about it. An even larger version of it was included in the Becoming Animal exhibition at Mass MoCA.
For more by Nicolas Lampert, see www.machineanimalcollages.com. This is the fifth in a series of previews from the July 27-28 beneft art show If They Come for You in the Morning.
Daniel McGowan show preview: Borf
Posted July 13, 2006 by in VR Projects
BORF probably needs no introduction for most VR readers. One of the most original, prolific, creative, and witty voices to come out of the street art movement, Borf had an incalculable impact on Washington, D.C.'s street scene until his arrest last July. Barred from possessing spraypaint or other "graffiti implements" as a condition of his parole, Borf is using new techniques to make art.
Borf has two pieces in the show: an oil painting of an nighttime urban street scene, and the briliant 10-color screenprint pictured here. What I love about this piece is how it distills the sense of joyous rebellion (or righteous mischief) that runs through all of Borf's best work, from his cryptic tags, to his oversized stencils. It's great to see Borf moving onward and upward after a long and difficult year.
Things to look out for in the future include a July 29th "video communique and street party," part of a collaboration between Borf and the Graffiti Research Lab. Download a flyer for that event here.
This is the fourth in a series of previews from the July 27-28 beneft art show If They Come for You in the Morning. For more on Borf, see our March 2005 interview.
Daniel McGowan show preview: Erik Ruin
Posted July 12, 2006 by in VR Projects
Third in a series of preview from the July 27-28 benefit art show If They Come for You in the Morning:
Erik Ruin is another great Midwestern printmaker -- born in Michigan, currently living in Minneapolis, Erik is a stencilist & shadowpuppeteer. He publishes the fantastic Trouble in Mind zine, works on the Prison Poster Project, is currently co-editing (with Josh MacPhee) the forthcoming anthology Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, and on a new puppetshow tentatively entitled SeamsLike.
Erik made a great four-color stencil for the show which demands freedom for Daniel McGowan, Jeff Luers, the SHAC 7, and Green Scare defendants Chelsea Gerlach and Darren Thurston. He explained his motivation:
my piece for the show is one of the more didactic things i've made in a while. i've been focusing on exploring the power of images liberated from slogans & words in general. i think its a real challenge to find a visual language that can evoke an emotional response that's somehow liberatory - whether it's summoning forth compassion, righteous anger, whatever... while still giving people something to think about, something that maybe takes a minute more to figure out... but all this can be pretty nebulous & hard to assess the impact of. which is why it's nice to make utilitarian, informative graphics like this.
Eric's piece is available for purchase online through our site: click here to get a closer look and more info.
Daniel McGowan show preview: Colin Matthes
Posted July 8, 2006 by in VR Projects
Second in a series of previews from the July 27-28 benefit art show If They Come For You in the Morning:
Colin Matthes is one of the great Midwestern printmakers centered around Josh MacPhee's Just Seeds radical art distribution service whose work may be little known to New York City street art buffs but deserves exponentially wider recognition.
He's produced posters for the Celebrate People's History series, co-edits the Cut and Paint zine, was featured in the Paper Politics and Drawing Resistance shows. He also produces the phenomenal art zine Ideas in Pictures. From a Punk Planet review of Ideas in Pictures #4:
The thing about a zine as beautiful as ideas in pictures is that it can never be fully captured in a shoddy 150-word review. You need to hold it in your hands and let your fingers run over the texture of the screenprinted cover. You need to put the your nose up to the page, to smell the sharp toner splashed across the white pages. You need to sit on a park bench, on a weekday afternoon, and let Colin seep into your brain with his distorted line drawings of working class heroes. His chronicle of a strike against Tyson Foods is insightful, "This next series of images is about meat packers who went on strike in the town I grew up in. My interest in the humane treatment of farm animals has led to an interest in the treatment of workers in 'meat processing' industries." It's another nod to the personal as political as art, and it's fuckin' awesome.
Colin lives in Milwaukee, WI and makes drawings, prints, installations, and zines. Keep an eye out for the new zines, Ideas In Pictures #5 (about relationships between business, warfare, and leisure) and Cut and Paint #2 (a stencil template zine put out by Nicolas Lampert, Josh MacPhee, and Colin Matthes).
To see more of Colin's work check out www.ideasinpictures.org. Colin has three prints and one poster in the show, all featured here. Click the images for larger views:
Daniel McGowan show preview: GoreB
Posted July 4, 2006 by in VR Projects
Posting on this site has been slow since the Visual Resistance crew has been working overtime on the benefit show for Daniel McGowan. We've been overwhelmed and inspired by the generosity and sheer number of artists who are supporting this cause by donating artwork for the show. Close to 70 artists have donated over 200 pieces and the show is shaping up to be a real knockout!
So, for the next few weeks we're going to be posting sneak peeks at the work we've been getting in the mail. This first preview is from a painting by Goreb, whose street installations will be familiar to just about anyone who's walked a few blocks in New York in the last two years. GoreB is one of the most wildly prolific street artists working today and a member of the Endless Love Crew. I first noticed his work in Dumbo in the summer of 2004 and he hasn't stopped moving since. GoreB has three paintings in the show.
Read more about the If they come for you in the morning show at visualresistance.org/mcgowan. For more by GoreB, check out his old-school freight graff site, or his flickr page.
