Not Neutral

Teressa Raiford, whose campaign flier WalkingMarj helped with, has big plans for November 22 at the Portland Art Museum. She is one of the “community partners” involved in the Hank Willis Thomas exhibit. On the 22nd, she will take over the second floor of the exhibit hall and, with full cooperation of the museum, install screen printing facilities, play music, offer workshops for children, and have talks for adults. One of the talks will be her own, on the “commodification of art,” her examination of the ways protest art can be diluted by commercialism or disparaged by elite consumers who value art only by the price it can be sold for. Teressa’s screen printing project on November 22 is the production of T-shirts in Thomas’s “I AM” series (see extra). She plans to give them to children to wear in the Martin Luther King, Jr. March in January, and also to include them in gift bags with hygiene items for unhoused people.

Our project today was to make some photos of her in the the exhibit, photos that she can use to publicize the activities planned for November 22. I made this portrait of her inside the installation called 14,719 (2018). There are 14, 719 stars, each representing a person shot and killed by someone else in the United States in 2018.

I take this opportunity to thank Connections and Pilipo once again for the gift to me of a membership at the Portland Art Museum. I am grateful for our Blip community in many ways.