To turn out vote, artists made a PAC
If you happen to be driving or walking down Third Street in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood this weekend, listening to podcasts and worrying about the state of the country, make sure you look up when you pass 22nd Street.
At the corner you’ll see an unusual blue billboard. It’s decorated with an alien spaceship, a diverse group of human faces, and a mysterious suggestion that the 20th century return in peace.
The billboard, designed by William Scott of Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center, may startle you out of your feelings of political rage for a moment — and that’s the point. It’s part of one of the largest public art projects in U.S. history: the 50 State Initiative, which includes artistdesigned billboards in every state in the union.
For Freedoms, the super PAC that sponsored it, has an unusual political mission, bringing creativity to civic participation and direct action.
Just in time for the midterms.
For Freedoms was founded in 2016 by two artists, Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman. Thomas, 42, has a special relationship with San
Francisco — he attended California College of the Arts, which is leading For Freedoms’ 50 State Initiative in the Bay Area.
Last week, he was in town participating in some of the town halls, student talks and art exhibitions that make up For Freedoms’ daunting slate of national programming. I stopped by CCA’s Hubbell Street galleries — where there’s a For Freedoms-sponsored exhibit of Bay Area artists working along the themes of creative community engagement — to talk to him about the political discourse, art versus politics and the Bay Area’s art scene.
For Freedoms started out as a humorous conversation between two friends, Thomas told me. A friend of his had suggested he run for a U.S. Senate seat
in New York. Thomas declined (laughing, as he remembers), but the suggestion gave him an idea.
What if artists had their own political super PAC?
How might their creativity affect the political discourse?
It turned out that artists all over the country were thinking about the same things, which is how For Freedoms grew so fast in such a short amount of time. Local artists have helped to develop the programming in their own communities, and their ideas about what creative civic engagement looks like are as varied as they are.
At the Gibbes Art Museum in South Carolina, for example, visitors were encouraged to design lawn signs. Two artists, Jenny Polak and Regin Igloria, are walking from Chicago to Gary, Ind., to draw attention to deportations.
“We didn’t come into any community and tell any of the artists what to think or how to make connections between their practices and the politics of the area,” said For Freedoms’ program manager, Emma Nuzzo. “The connections were already there. We just provided a framework, an organizing principle.”
Thomas said he sees the overarching mission of For Freedoms as being about bringing more nuance into a political discussion that’s been overrun by simplistic rhetoric and false advertising. While the politics of most artists can be assumed to lean to the left, the point is not to encourage turnout for a single political party.
“I spoke to one donor, and she told me she was to the right of Attila the Hun, but she loved what we were doing,” Thomas said. “The purpose is to challenge the accepted ways of thinking in our political discourse. It’s about making space for nuance.”
The Bay Area has proved to be a particularly enthusiastic partner for Thomas. There have been exhibitions, talks, educational events and programming at local institutions ranging from the Oakland Museum of California to the Whitney Modern Contemporary Fine Art Gallery in Los Gatos.
Thomas said that when he went looking for places to host For Freedoms events, the Bay Area was his first port of call.
“The Bay Area has this incredible history of artists taking their work from the studio to the street,” Thomas said. “And because CCA has this history of encouraging artistic practices that are engaged with the context of community and politics, they made sense to me as a natural partner.”
As for CCA, the institution saw helping For Freedoms as an opportunity to connect the Bay Area’s art community around the idea of civic participation.
“We thought, if we can’t hit this thing out of the ballpark in the Bay Area, what other part of the United States can?” said Jaime Austin, CCA’s director of exhibitions and public programming.
In his talks with CCA students, Thomas has spoken to them about the importance of continuing their political engagement after the midterms.
If you’re not ready to think about life after Tuesday, Nov. 6, yet, that’s OK. Just know that there’s a super PAC of artists roaming the country, reimagining the world of politics. All they want is for you to vote.