Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!!!

In Oshkosh, Wisconsin, we were quite aware of Former Senator Gaylord Nelson’s proposal of a day to be set aside to focus attention on environmental concerns. My father, who I affectionately refer to as the Lorax, has been an environmental activist for as long as I can remember. I knew that there would be an “Earth Day,” well before my third grade teacher, Mr. French, explained it to our class. He added that our class would join university student protesters by collecting garbage after lunch on that day.

Rose C Schwartz “Campus School” was one of the last elementary schools that was part of a state college university; the University of Wisconsin, in Oshkosh. (And yes, Oshkosh is where they make the overalls.) Mr. French allowed us to sit where ever we wanted as long as we paid attention. We were allowed to get up and move around the classroom: we were not restricted to our seats. It was the era of streaking on college campuses and the push for freedom was in the
air. My mother would be diagnosed with paranoid psychophrenia within the next two years and this too was in the air. I was given an over abundance of art supplies, but was not allowed coloring books, because they “make you stay in the lines.”

A protest demonstration? This was right up my alley, or so I thought. I would make a poster. (Aside from having an eternal love of art, to this day, I can dress in my sternest “lawyer/librarian look” and people seem to still see the hippie chick underneath; often calling me on it.)

I went home after school and started thinking about my project. I was not sure what to do. I got an after school snack and sat at the picnic table that doubled as our dining table. My father had left his newspaper open on the table and I could not help to notice the pictures on the page. Being an environmentalist, he had been reading articles about Earth Day and the paper was spread open to these pages. The political cartoons mirrored the subject matter within the articles on the pages and I noticed one in particular.

In the middle of the page was a dark cartoon of an oil slicked and polluted landscape. In the foreground was a single flower growing up through a crack in the paved and polluted ground. Covered in grime himself, a man on his hands and knees was looking at this single flower like a dehydrated man at death’s door who realized the water was a mirage. The image had a powerful, simplistic clarity and heaviness that I could actually feel. I asked if I could have the cartoon and was told that I would have to wait until after my father had finished reading the paper. He did not finish until after my bedtime, so I would only have one afternoon to complete my project. I still was not sure just what I was going to create and this gave me time to think about it.

My father’s soul yearned for years to express the artist that he really is, but the home he was raised in did not support the humanities as an appropriate career path for a man. It took retirement for him to begin to express himself regularly through his painting. He took the time to explain to me the idea of leaving blank space to draw the eye to the heart of your message when making a poster for the purpose of a demonstration. He was the first to teach me the motto K.I.S.S. - keep it simple stupid (or for the sensitive, "silly"), as an artistic tool. He would say, “the best artists know when to stop.”

I was trying to think about what I thought that the cartoon man would say. It suddenly came to me that the man wouldn’t have very much to say at all. The sadness on his face said volumes. I thought that all he would have to say is “help.” This single word was all that I had to write on my poster. I knew that it worked the moment that I thought of it, and I got right to work.

I glued my inspiration in the upper center of the piece of tag board and got to work stenciling my letters. Being young and not having mastered straight lines, as of yet, the “p” and exclamation points drooped downward, below the invisible line of writing. I was frustrated and angry at the gap between what I had intended and viewed in my mind and what my hands had actually been able to create.

It felt the same as a stained glass lamp that I designed and made fifteen years ago. Despite how this lamp keeps winning prizes, all that I can see in it is what I would do differently if I were to make it again. It was an experimental piece, so I just used glass that I had in my studio rather than investing what I would have chosen if given a budget.

As dissatisfied as I was with the result of my effort, I had no choice but to use it. I had no more tag board.