Poster of the Week

Solidaridad con las Costureras de Guatemala
by Marilyn Anderson

”Free Trade” practices of transferring U.S. clothing production to countries such as Guatemala were already beginning in the 1980s. Women earning low wages were the primary workers in these maquiladoras, but unions in Guatemala had to fight for their right to exist and suffered the murder of many labor leaders.

My years of living in Guatemala and knowledge about the traditional arts there made me understand that the women who worked in the maquiladoras were being deskilled. They had become part of the world-wide drive toward globalization – one result of which meant the destruction of traditional cultures.

Struggles continue today to give workers of all kinds in Guatemala the right to join unions. But the image in my poster has a hopeful message in the quetzal bird hovering over the needle worker and her sewing machine. The national bird of Guatemala signifies freedom – in this instance freedom from oppression and lack of labor rights.

Artwork © 2010 Marilyn Anderson.
www.proartemaya.org

Poster of the Week

Good Planets are Hard to Find
by Harrell Graham

The universe contains about 100 billion galaxies each with millions – or billions – of stars. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains our star, the Sun. Out of all these stars in all these galaxies ours is the only one we know with a planet that supports life.

The Earth and its living systems have evolved for five billion years…and now with our technology we have the power to destroy it all.

We also have the power to save it.

Artwork & Text © 1985
harrellgraham@yahoo.com
Photo courtesy NASA

Poster(s) of the Week

Bruce Gilbert
“iRaq”
2004, silkscreen

“The iRaq poster project was created to remind the public that we are at war. A friend and I created the posters anonymously as Forkscrew Graphics, a Los Angeles design group committed to social awareness projects. We simply used the language and iconography of an incredibly visible campaign (Apple’s iPod) to help stimulate dialogue surrounding an important and complicated issue: What is the U.S. doing in Iraq, and what does it mean to us and the rest of the world? We were sold a war that promised to secure freedom to us and to others by delivering democracy to the people of Iraq, and it’s become increasingly clear that it’s done neither. Ultimately the desired effect of the project is to shift the focus from products to people, from consumers to concerned citizens. We want to show that no matter how manipulated the mediasphere becomes, and no matter how many tons of messages the marketing world dumps on the public, there are ways to take the symbols and tools of marketing and use them to disrupt the barrage of commercial communications.”

Artwork © 2004 and 2007 Forkscrew Graphics
Inset photo © Forkscrew Graphics
www.forkscrew.com

Poster of the Week

Xavier Viramontes
“Boycott Grapes”
1973, offset printing

“At the time I made this poster, in the 1970s, I was working with Rene Yanez, director of the Galeria de la Raza of San Francisco. Rene suggested that I do something for the United Farm Workers Union and the grape boycott, which had been ongoing for years. My idea was to remind people that the Mexican farm workers come from a rich cultural background and ought to be treated fairly and with respect. I decided to use a dark brown Aztec godlike figure as the main focal point. The squeezing of the grapes symbolizes the blood and sweat of the farm workers. The intent of the poster was to keep the boycott going, and I think it was successful. It received favorable response from the public and people continue to ask me about it today. Originally a silkscreen, the poster was later reproduced as a lithograph by the United Farm Workers Union. The Boycott Grapes poster was printed in 1973 and is now part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

Artwork © 2007 Xavier Viramontes
www.xavierviramontes.com

Poster of the Week

3459 Species Live on the California Coast
by Robert Giusti for The California Coastal Commission

The California Coastal Commission contracted the poster as a way to raise awareness about the problem of marine debris and ocean pollution. In giving the message that humans are causing these problems for marine life, it also sends the message that there is much that individuals can do to improve the situation.

One of the CCC’s biggest and longest running efforts is coordination of the annual California Coastal Cleanup Day (since 1984). In 2008, over 60,000 volunteers picked up over one million pounds of debris on California beaches and shorelines alone. In portions of the North Pacific Ocean, the quantities of plastic outweigh the amount of plankton by a factor of 6 to 1.

Artwork © 2010 Robert Giusti.
www.newborngroup.com

Poster of the Week

America: Dying for Business
by Hugh D’Andrade

This poster is a parody of a poster that was distributed widely throughout San Francisco in the months following the 9/11 attacks. The original text read “America: Open for Business,” with a picture of an American flag shopping bag and was intended by the artist, Craig Frazier, as a call for people to remain calm and to support local business.

But as the country geared up for war, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, and as the Bush Administration began aggressively undermining civil liberties at home, the topic of consumerism became a perfect target for political parody.

My parody mocks the idea that we can shop our way out of a crisis. I thought then and think now that shopping was an inappropriate response to the situation, which required that Americans rethink our relationship to the world and to each other.

Artwork © 2010 Hugh D’Andrade.

www.hughillustration.com

Poster of the Week

Make a Difference 3 Times a Day
by Caryn Hartglass for EarthSave

In Diet for a New America, EarthSave Founder John Robbins described the often overlooked yet immense environmental cost of modern meat and demonstrated how diets low on the food chain are much more earth friendly. Up until then (the late ’80s), people had become vegetarian for ethical reasons out of concern for animals, or for health reasons, but he was attempting to show how the environmental reasons are every bit as compelling.

It took some time for these realities to be recognized, but in recent years, there has been a greatly increased awareness, perhaps most notably reflected in “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” released in 2007 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The report found that raising livestock is one of the most significant contributors to the serious environmental problems besetting our world. Livestock are responsible, the report stated, for a far greater share of greenhouse gas emissions than even transportation.

Artwork © 2010 EarthSave.
www.earthsave.org