More Masks on the Street

NYC is firmly committed to masks — on the people you see walking around, and on the statues, posters and public art.  You can find them on the streets or on the subway (with instructions on proper wear in all 8 of NYC’s official languages).

The statue masks have the hardest time keeping their shape after a rain, snow and stretching.  Some appear on famous people; others on animals, local ones like the plaster cow outside of my local butcher or symbolic ones, such as Patience and Fortitude, the lions outside of the New York Public Library. But, as I worry about my place on various vaccination waiting lists, the most appropriate masked statue, for me, is the full size, standing bronze of Eleanor Roosevelt on 72nd Street at the start of Riverside Drive.  The statue,  by Penelope Jencks, was installed in 1996 and has become a place for meetings, protests and commemorations.  She lived long before COVID-19, of course, but her life was severely impacted by the pandemics of the earlier 19th century. She had tuberculosis, probably in early childhood, her mother died of diphtheria, she lost a brother to scarlet fever,  and her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suffered from polio — all diseases for which we now have vaccinations.  Firmly committed to equality, public health and the end of income disparity, she would be reminding everyone to wear the masks and get the vaccines, 

What would normally be crowded streets in SoHo and Tribeca look empty now, thanks to the pandemic and the winter weather.  Some of the buildings still have protective panels left from the summer’s protests.  Walking on Prince Street, I found these recognizable celebrity portraits with masks cut & pasted on before printing.  John Lennon, Kermit, and Michelle Obama, among others are wearing their surgical light blue paper masks.

The most recognizable New Yorker of all has been showing up on the street with a blue mask and a small band-aid on her vaccinated arm.     Liberty is currently featured on the  LinkNYC kiosks. Those wi-fi hotspots, which look like giant cell phones, pop up on avenues and plazas.  

So, listen to Eleanor, Kermit and Liberty — protect your health and your communities, get your vaccines and wear at least one mask.

RBG wants you to Vote

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a working feminist, the 2nd woman to serve as supreme court justice, and a hero to vast numbers of women and our allies. The way that she wrote, spoke, did pushups, and dressed were all inspirations to many.  She was not the first justice to individualize her robes — Justice Rehnquist added gold braid to his, but that just inspired thoughts of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.  RBG’s lace collars were noticeable, without being old-fashioned or especially feminine.

Fans added RBG collars to black tops, robes and even black masks.  ‘Fearless Girl,” the bronze sculpture by Kristen Visbal standing akimbo on Wall Street added a white lace collar to her dress. Commissioned by State Street Global Advisors, it originally facing down the Wall Street bull.  I should confess that since I am no longer working in the financial district,  I don’t know if it is a real lace collar. I only really know that she wears the collar in the full page photograph that the New York Times ran in the September 20th edition.  

Today’s street art is a Get to the Vote poster starring Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  It is part of the series “I vote because…”, “this is our moment” and Art InGeneral, which adds public art to street structures.  I recently documented and wrote about the word art poster series pasted onto recycling Big Bins in Times Square and caught the habit of searching out street art while looking down, as well as my usual checking out of pillars and street lamp-poles.  This one was obviously designed to refer to her Brooklyn origins and Brooklyn street attitude.  I am assuming that it is also hanging near the early voting sites in Brooklyn, although I photographed this one on Broadway and 88th Street across from a health food store.  The RBG poster, which is credited to gary lichtenstein editions and Mana loan art,  tells you to VOTE.  RBG’s lace collar, if you look very closely, is a Brooklyn street map.  

When she died on Rosh Hashonah, many social media tributes to RBG riffed off the traditional prayers  “May her name be inscribed…”  or “may she be remembered in ….”  I am sure that she would be pleased to now that her name is inscribed on Get Out the Vote posters from now through the election. Please honor RBG by voting.

Still Social Distancing

6 foot social distancing tools in NYC’s Duffy Square

New York has finally made it to Phase 4, still wearing masks but now able to visit a few courageous museums with large lobbies and to eat at the outside tables of restaurants.  Those are two very separate victories — museums have not reopened their cafes,  coffee bars or even the water fountains.  We are still practicing social distancing, but now with more graphics.

The two most prevalent visual representations of social distancing are foot placement graphics and 6 foot markers.  The subway system and most supermarkets are using similar yellow circles or rectangles showing the bottoms of large shoes with crosshatched outer soles. It makes me think of that scene in crime films when detectives compare mud footprints with the bottoms of suspects’ shoes.  They are 6 feet apart, facing the trains.  In supermarkets, pharmacies and box store versions, they are placed on a path through the aisles and end up waiting for the next available cashier.  As if New Yorkers followed set paths… 

There are a few more creative variations — Ben & Jerry’s has decorated its floor markers with their usual happy Vermont dairy cows facing the counters.  I understand that the Henry Ford Museums in Detroit have adorned their placement graphics with images of shoes from their extensive collections and that some zoos are using animal paw prints.  

People keeping their social distance outside use visual cues on the sidewalk  or on the wall, designating those all-important 6 linear feet. Neon chalk or duct tape are still the art materials of choice, although they have to be re-applied frequently.  The lighter weight metal tubing barriers that police use to specify walkways or to keep roads in place, as at parades, come in 6 feet lengths and can sport plastic covers, just asking for graphics. Institutions that present outside, such as Lincoln Center summer festivals (of blessed memory), use the plastic covers to acknowledge Funders’ names and logos.  Duffy Square,  which frequent readers of this blog may remember as the public gallery for Times Square Arts, is also the home of  the Theatre Development Fund’s bright red TKTS half-price ticket booths (of even more blessed memory).  The barriers are used to keep bargain ticket buyers in 2 lines, past the huge signs declaring which shows are available to the box office booths.  TDF’s plastic covers now have social distancing messages with text and illustrations referring to the season’s shows.  Sad without the shows and the crowds, but nice for people using the area to eat, hang out and look at TSA’s public art, which, this year, decorates the re-cycling bins. Dear Evan Hansen has lonely teen faces staring out of windows and Hamilton compares 6 feet with the 10 paces used in dueling. The graphic (above) for the revival of  West Side Story was probably designed before the director decided to cut the song, “I Feel Pretty.” 

My next blog will celebrate the immortal words of the current Governor Cuomo and so many others —  “Wear the damned mask.”

June: catching up in this time of….

Last June, I blogged about the public art around Bloomsday, Juneteenth and Pride marches, but this year’s June commemorations were sparser public events,  New York City is entering Phase 2 and you can see more people on the streets.  Restaurants and bars that have sidewalk space can open to 25% capacity and the ones still only offering take-out have cleared their frontage.  This has resulted in my discovery of public art and signage that may have been up for a while, as well as new installations. 

The sticker above probably dates from Earth Day, April 23rd, which existed this year, but was mostly on-line.   The COVID pandemic illustrated what humans had done to the environment much better than speeches, rallies and public art.  My blog earlier in the Spring concerned a poster of dinosaurs saying “Extinction Sucks.”   This sticker, which was covered by a construction shed, is more pacifist.  The green tree and white dove silhouetted on a clear blue sky creates a classic signifier for eco-concerns and  Earth Day.   

Many cities now have painted Black Lives Matter texts on streets, inspired by the one across from the White House, put up overnight by the DC Mayor Muriel Bowser.  NYC now has a glorious one in front of Restoration Plaza in Brooklyn, facing the complex that includes the Billie Holiday Theater and Ron K. Brown/Evidence’s dance studios (1368 Fulton Street).  As well as the now standard words and tragically growing list of names in bright yellow, it references the open casket funeral of Emmet Till by encasing the names in abstracted casket shapes.  The work was credited to Cey Adams, as creative director, Dawud West, who oversaw the painting, and Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Director of the Billie Holiday Theater.  Take the A train to Bedford Stuyvesant (i.e., in the other direction than Harlem), and you will be on Fulton Street.  It is worth the trip.  

Statuary was in the news this year — judging monumental art by the careers and beliefs of its subject matter.  Last Fall, Percent for Art had a showing of Kehinde Wiley’s Rumours of War, a glorious take on the European tradition of mounted statues of heroic figures on horseback. Although it was wonderful in Times Square, the young, African American hero in hoodie and jeans was destined for Richmond, Virginia, for the promenade of similar statuary of Confederate leaders fronting the Virginia Museum of Art.  Except  that the other present crisis — the fact that anger over the disrespecting of Black Lives has spilled over to the more general public — has raised public awareness to the point that those Confederate monuments are coming down, or otherwise going away.  This is good news, or at least symbolizes good news.  I wondered briefly if Rumours of War will maintain its power if it ends up alone on the promenade, but even if it loses the shock value of its context, it is a great work.  And there is always  interpretive signage..

NYC has taken down and scheduled for removal a number of statues as well.  Dr. Marion Sims is down, Teddy Roosevelt will move and lose the statues of Native American and African American, currently in subsidiary positions next to his horse.  Columbus is threatened and I have serious doubts about the Remember the Maine memorial across from it (at the southwest corner of Central Park).

But New Yorkers, mellowed by finally achieving Phase 2 by virtue of mask wearing,  have celebrated by putting masks on statues.  Not the proper filtering ones, which are still reserved for medical workers, but the mass market ones.  Even Patience and Fortitude, the lions outside The New York Public Library on 5th avenue, now sport masks — made to order so they fit over the snouts and loop over their ears. 

Protest Stickers Re-Emerge

I live in an area of New York City with 2 major universities, 2 seminaries, an independent graduate school of education, a music conservatory, a major hospital, and a cathedral, so under normal circumstances the streets would be busy with young adult students reading and/or pasting up posters and stickers promoting political activity.  Not this Spring — the dorms were emptied out and while there are still people on the street, they are rushing by, focusing on keeping 6’ from everyone else.  The restaurant windows are plastered with menus and signs explaining how to order take-out or pick-up. Most promote discounts for uniformed medical staff.  COVID may have quieted Morningside Heights. 

But today, my usual walking route paid off with two new political stickers on street light poles. They do not concern COVID-19, but refer to issues that were political crises before and will probably be with us all year.  The fist protests human trafficking of women of color.  The power fist is vise-gripping a flower stem with thorns, a purple flower which is shedding petals. The bleeding hand has nails, properly curved and painted white. The background is pink, fading down to white behind the hand.  The title — Not for (in black) Conquest (in pink) — is in full serif caps, without line spacing.  The poster is credited to #MissingMurderedTrafficked. The detail is unusual — visible nails in these graphics usually have lettering or detailed nail designs, such as Pride rainbow stripes. My guess is that the poster is protesting trafficking which is accused of providing low-paid staff for low priced nail salons.  

The second sticker protests the refugee camps that the Trump administration and ICE have established along the southern border. The horizontal format provides space for 5 twisted cross lines with prominent spikes — obviously representing barbed wire fences, which contain references to concentration camps or any of the other examples of treating people like cattle. The slogan is Close the Camps, this time all in thick lower case, san serif letters. There are white barbs providing contrast on the o, a and p.  Next to the words is the black silhouette of a crouching child.  A toddler, she has a ponytail, but no other detail. There is no credit on this sticker, but there are many groups protesting the mistreatment of immigrants, many associated with the Inter-Church Center.  Last September, I blogged about “Separated,” a street art installation protesting the treatment of immigrants which took up the block nearby.  It also featured barbed wire as a graphic element. 

Earth Day 2020 from inside

 

Earth Day tomorrow and we are all sheltering inside or working outside, but living in the reality of a huge, horrible pandemic.  We mis-used nature and found that we couldn’t just take it all back. The public art that I anticipated — acknowledging and thanking the essential workers — launches tomorrow — so check out next week’s blog.  There have been fewer posters or stickers for Earth Day this year, perhaps because people are not outside, even in my neighborhood, or because things this year seem to be way beyond the reach of a poster.

But I did want to acknowledge this posting that I found on the pole of a streetlight on Broadway.  It is a simple, but strong message.  It is probably the product of a child, based on the use of dinosaur stickers and the pasted-in colored heart.  Possibly a child who has spent time at the Natural History Museum bookstore.  Definitely one whose schools teach evolution, climate change and respect for science.  Would that the President and his followers had listened to those lessons. 

No Earth Day parade this year, but keep the dinosaurs’ message in mind.  Extinction sucks — it doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Fists hiding in plain sight

It is getting harder to find protest art on the streets these days.  Protests are local to the nurses or workers holding signs on the corners outside of emergency rooms or late night warehouses. Unless you are on those corners, they are visible only during the protest or as documented on Facebook.  Still very few street graphics around.  This one is technically not a protest sign, so some of my tags are inaccurate.  This fist is on a book cover.  The power fist of the week is sitting on the ledge, facing out of the window of the Morningside branch of the New York Public Library.   All 93 facilities of the NYPL is closed for the duration of New York’s shelter in place time to avoid too many people wanting to shelter in one of the libraries.   I tried to reserve it, and would have delayed the blog until I could scan the cover, but the Hold software is telling me not to try, presumably until NYPL has set a definite date for re-opening.  When I get my hnds on the book, I will report the designer’s name.

Fight of the century : writers reflect on 100 years of landmark ACLU cases / edited by Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman

The upright palm and tilted, angular fist on the cover shows the Constitution behind it.  You can recognize the large script “We the People…” through the clenched fingers.  

The book itself is a series of essays on individual cases.  Many of them remain in the news as reference points for today’s progress (Yaa Gyasi on integrated schooling and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) or mistakes that threaten to be made again (Steven Okazaki, on  internment and Korematsu v. United States (1944),   There are other books by that name, mostly about boxing, but this one should definitely be read. 

I hope that you are also following the Turbulent London blogs written by Hannah Awcock.  Her documenting of protest signs, mostly in Great Britain, inspired my reporting on public art. 

Public Art at a 6-foot Distance

New York City, where I live, is practicing social distancing, staying inside as much as possible and 6 feet away from others in public spaces.  It is a brave attempt to lighten or delay the sweep of the corona virus, so that it doesn’t overwhelm the hard-working hospital system. This is good for the city and country, but it means that political street art is floating in an empty sea.  The blog is late since I have been delaying posting until I found fists or slogans on the street.  

We are allowed to go to grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware shops, and the post office or just out for exercise.  I generally try to schedule some combination of tasks and get in a 2-mile walk. This morning, the walk was to one of the weekly Farmers Markets, which count as grocery sites.  The 6-foot “come no closer” spans are marked on the sidewalks with neon-toned chalk, pink, light blue, acid green.  I went east that day, to Manhattan Valley, which is a part of the Upper West Side, just west of Central Park and south of Morningside Heights.  It is unusual in Manhattan because it has an assortment of housing projects — Mitchell-Lamas, subsidized housing and a new set of condos.  For a 3 block stretch of Columbus Avenue, the condo towers host an outgrowth of box stores — very rare in Manhattan.  There are national chain stores stacked on top of each other.  Except for a Whole Foods at one end and a Starbucks at the other, they are all now closed for the duration. Only one of the stores boarded up its windows — a Sephora, whose double wide windows are covered with a black wooden board.

Someone must have been inspired by the idea of a “blackboard,” because s/he used the neon chalk to inscribe a slogan in blue sidewalk chalk.  The chosen motto (correctly credited) is from Coretta Scott King: “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassion of its members.”   King, whose independent role as an orator and advocate is sometimes forgotten, used that phrase in a speech on January 15, 2000, commemorating the adoption of the Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday holiday.  As well as the blue sidewalk chalk letters, there were little pink hearts drawn around the word community. Boarding up store windows  usually seems prejudicial, assuming that the window needs protection against an attempt to steal.  But the chalk message turns the black board into welcoming public art meant for the pedestrians in the neighborhood. For me, this is both personal and public art and I thank the sign maker.

Fists to wear

It was cold and snowy, but I spent the 2020 Women’s March as usual helping the cause and attendees as a march monitor.  This year, I was at the north end, helping groups and individuals thread through the police traffic barricades. I prefer the north end, across from the Dakota on Central Park West and 72nd St, since I can see the posters and outfits while we welcome them to the March.   The individuals, families, school and union groups subway to Broadway and walk west so we can see them coming. We worried that the weather would keep people away, so I was cheered by the huge contingents is from IATSE, Local One, the union for stage crews and backstage theater employees, but I am also fond of the student groups who arrive with teachers, bright posters and elaborate hats.  This year’s crop of posters featured puns, anatomical illustrations and anger.  

There is a wonderful exhibition on Posters from the 2017 Women’s March at Poster House, the welcome new museum on West 23rd Street.  The over 200 examples on display were rescued from re-cycling at the end of the Boston March that year. If you have not visited the museum yet, you have until February 10 to see that exhibit.  There is a wall of pink oak tag with hand-lettered slogans, but, of course, my eyes went to the many posters that integrated the power fist inside the woman’s symbol — what is now a universal icon for shared anger and support for one another’s causes.   The Museum has integrated the symbol, augmented with P and H in its puffy lettering, into its most pragmatic graphics. The square part of an admission ticket that detaches and lives on your jacket.  

Poster House is at 119 W. 23rd Street. Also on view are some wonderful hand-painted movie posters from Ghana for screenings of American horror and thriller films.  The Toxic Avenger never looked as scary. http://www.posterhouse.org

Housing Works, a healing community which raises money for housing and advocacy on AIDS/HIV, has added a new graphic design to its usual stacked bars and pink triangle. For that design, which they use on marquees, verandas and flags for their fabulous thrift shops.  See my blog from a few years ago for more on Power and the Pink Triangle.  The new pledge-gift is a fabric bag,  designed featuring an closed fist outlined with a wide line. It is a neon pink. I may be reading too much into it, but it seems more optimistic than the usual dusty rose.  Visit http://www.housingworks.org.

Fists and Variations

The National Art Education Association, like the American Alliance of Museums and so many other professional organizations, supports an on-line forum for members.  NAEA’s discussions range from practical advice on classroom practices to the highly theoretical letters on whether graphics count as art.   Recently, the forum has been politicized, including correspondence on dealing with cultural appropriation and de-colonizing K-12 art classes.  One teacher recommended  lesson plans by posting a link to the Black Lives Matter at School site on WordPress, http://www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com.  

I followed the link (being currently involved in compiling a resources page for a series of Toolkits) and was astounded by the deep visual content of the site.   Like the parent organization, Black Lives Matter at School features  power fists in its logo.  BLM adopted a universal human symbol with a fist inside the circle, which can still be seen on t-shirts.  The educators’ visual materials use a range of placement and angles to create more dynamic variations.  Many tip the fist so that the clenched fingers form a diamond pointing upwards from the wrist. The BLM monogram on the Twitter and YouTube sites places the angular fist on an extended leg of the L.  The Black Lives Matter at School coloring book (cool idea for a Christmas present) has the fist emerging from an anatomical shape of a heart. The Black Teachers Matter sign, in black on red ground, features a fist emerging from a shirt cuff, gripping two pencils. It reminded me of the 1970 Census poster in Power in Print, the NYPL Schomburg Center’s exhibition which I featured in my January 2018 blog.  

The Black Lives Matter at School blue circle graphic (pictured here) places three light grey upright fists in the center of an urban skyline.  Above the silhouetted buildings is a young woman in profile. She has brown skin, emphatic eyebrows, glasses, corn-row braids and a book-bag.She looks very strong.  It reminded me of a Girl Scout merit badge, if one had been created for Linda Brown, Ruby Bridges, and the other children whose courage was proven when they integrated schools.  

Black Lives Matter at School sponsors a design contest for students to develop the next year’s campaign logos.  Results of the 2018 and 2019 Student Creative Challenges are posted on the website’s page (follow the link from the navigation options at the top of the opening page).  There are crayoned examples from young children of  protesters with out-of-proportion arms and fists in bright yellow. There is a graphite, anatomically accurate, fist emerging from chains by an older student in Philadelphia.  One 2018 poster, with the prompt “In a school where black lives matter, we…” collages the text of the challenge as if it was on an old-fashion news zipper (or, more likely, a cable news channel’s under-screen text). Black figures on a yellow ground emerge from behind the text.  The one on the poster’s left side has a raised fist.

My thanks to the art teacher who posted about the Black Lives Matter in Schools’ curriculum project for reminding me about the website.  Let me alert you to the graphic content even if you are not in art or education.    I’ll let you know when the site posts  examples of graphics and student work from the 2020 challenge.