Protest Project: "What's the Problem?"

The Walker Bill was a very influential part of the news that effected all of my classroom discussions. I do not have a solid argument for being against the act but to see it upset so many people and to cause such an up roar grabbed my ears. I attended the Chancellor’s presentation of the bill to the faculty and students. As informational as it was for me, I noticed a lot of the questions unanswered. If the question was answered it appeared to be not what people wanted to hear.
There were so many things in question that I wanted to capture more then one argument, which began the idea of an 8”x8” series of computer animated images. Initially I wanted to capture other perspectives including being for the bill, but I had a hard time wrapping my mind around an idea.
One of the shocking things that came up in the Chancellor’s meeting was the idea of Madison leaving the University of Wisconsin system. They question was whether this would affect the other universities considering Madison to be the biggest and most well known of the system. My first piece I took a building from each UW school and stacked them above Madison’s building at the bottom. There are two stick figures pushing and pulling Madison in the same direction. The government is the man pushing, and the people of Madison represent the one pulling.
My second drawing is good old Governor Scott Walker himself. My initial plan was to have him saying something contradicting to himself, but I didn’t want the words to consume my piece and I could not think of something good enough for my satisfaction. It turns out the empty word bubble work. There are not answers to these people’s questions.
My third piece is addressing a couple ideas. In class we watched the video where a state representative called the protesters and state workers pigs. There was also a concern at the Chancellor’s meeting about losing retirement and losing large segments of their checks. I drew a piggy bank with money going in and two stick men taking money from the bottom. This is to represent the taking of money earned.
There were some other ideas that I did not get a chance to incorporate. One issue talked about was classroom sizes. I was going to take an 8”x8” spread and smash a bunch of sketched kids into the square with a classroom number at the bottom. For one of my ideas from the other perspective, I was going to draw a bunch of state workers portrayed as animals being lazy.
My ideas seemed to be direct representations of concerns and what is happening. It has a satirical feeling and is simplistic drawings with minimal color. I wanted minimal color because I wanted the three pieces to be cohesive and maintain a cartoon style.
Nancy Spero was a person who stuck out in the presentations in class. With out any intentional plan, I feel that my piece can be relatable to her art. She uses these solid simple forms. Though hers appear to be in a more abstract context, they both tell a story. Her soft colors also reflect the color choices I used in my protest pieces. Both our works also extenuate bold solid lines creating forms, yet her pieces flow more as on as mine has a stronger contrast with the background.
Andrea Bowers is another artist we spoke about briefly in class that seems to share some quality in her artwork with my protest piece. Her artwork has strong black and white contrast with the background, which I find my pieces also have. Also, Andrea Bowers uses minimal color that I also tried to accomplish. I get very nervous when applying color, especially to a black and white outline. I’m scared to lose that strong sharp relationship between the subject and the background that I find appealing. I find it easier to read the subject and to appear to be very confident.
As thrilled as I am for the individual pieces, I am not completely satisfied as a whole. I do not feel as though I have captured enough of the ideas, and perspective I initially tried for. I feel as though the three drawings alone to not speak of this problem I was trying to get across. I wanted people to be overwhelmed with the contrasting ideas and shocking concerns and possibilities Walker’s Bill has struck up, because that was the feeling I was experiencing as this issue unraveled. I want to continue to ad to this project and hopefully I can get to that final emotion I was shooting for.