Babylon Falling-Blog-

The Art of Democracy: War and Empire at Meridian Gallery

Artists across the country, animated by response to events of the last seven years and mobilized over the past two years by Art Hazelwood, a San Francisco-based printmaker, and Stephen A. Fredericks, president of the New York, Society of Etchers have organized a series of forty exhibitions entitled Art of Democracy. The exhibitions, spanning the United States from Washington State to New Hampshire, including Puerto Rico, will analyze what went wrong within this millennium with an America that was admired not so long ago.

San Francisco’s non-profit Meridian Gallery will host the most comprehensive of the Bay Area shows, Art of Democracy: War and Empire, from September 4 to November 4. Each national exhibition and event has its own sub theme; Meridian Gallery chose War and Empire. In addition to the exhibition featuring more than forty artists, an extensive schedule of related films, concerts, and lectures is conceived as an integral component of the show.

Participating artists: Scott Anderson, David Avery, Will Barnet, Jesus Barraza, Sandow Birk, Fernando Botero, Mark Bryan, Enrique Chagoya, Guy Colwell, Robbie Conal, Francisco Dominguez, Eric Drooker, Ala Ebtekar, Kevin Evans, Bella Feldman, Stephen Fredericks, Juan Fuentes, J.C. Garrett, Art Hazelwood, Mary Hull Webster, Frances Jetter, David Jones, Hung Liu, Roberta Loach, Mary V. Marsh, Fernando Marti, Doug Minkler, Claude Moller, Malaquias Montoya, Pat Oliphant, Ariel Parkinson, Francesca Pastine, Patrick Piazza, Phyllis Plattner, Gary-Paul Prince, Rigo 23, Favianna Rodriguez, Ben Sakoguchi, Jos Sances, SF Print Collective, Mark Vallen, Gee Vaucher, Howard Whitehouse and Richard Linder, William T. Wiley, and Bruce Yurgil.

More info here

Thanks for the heads up Emory.

Our good friend Matt Simon is on the road, traveling by train across the country. Being a son of the gentry he is of course a paying customer on Amtrak. Although, as a witness to the savage beating which he endured at the corporate job he so recently left I can’t say I hold the luxury against him.

Follow the journey through his eyes on his photo blog at http://diridon.typepad.com/

RIP, fancy future watch

We provide an outlaw view of the underbelly of the beast during the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

All images were created by either Tim Hussin or Noah Rabinowitz

Check it out at http://drunkatdnc.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the link Shaun

Pig buttons, pig bumper stickers, pig ads in the New York Times, pig campaign offices all over the country! Far out! Everybody kept asking us, “We know what you are against, but what are you for?” Finally we found something to be for: a pig for president! At last, a positive program!

Sitting here reading about everything that’s been going on down in Denver at this year’s DNC and as the big speech approaches tonight my first thoughts are to Chicago in 1968, the Yippies, and just how much things have changed, in terms of protest and the counter culture, in the years since.

Click the picture above to read, in full, an article that I scanned from the December 1969 issue of Ramparts magazine written by Jerry Rubin about the Yippies’ experience in Chicago at the DNC in 1968.

If the FBI wants to bust those who really created Chicago, they have to indict Holden Caulfield, Caryl Chessman, Elvis Presley, Charles Van Doren, Marilyn Monroe, Mary Jo Kopechne, Oswald Augustus Owsley, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the Rolling Stones, Sherman Adams, Ken Kesey, Walter Jenkins, Billy the Kid, Bobby Baker, Tim Leary, the Lone Ranger, Gary Powers, Antonin Artaud, Abe Fortas, Country Joe McDonald, Gus Grissom, Lloyd Bucher, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Piersal, John Dillinger, Sybil Leek, Humphrey Bogart, the Marquis de Sade, Charlie Chaplin, and Rin-tin-tin.

For more on Chicago 1968 and Pigasus see Judy Gumbo Albert’s recollections of that time, The Battle of Chicago, over at Counterpunch.org

Megan Wolfe from Fecal Face just put up some pictures that she took at David Ball’s show last Thursday.

You can see the rest of them along with her comments over at the Fecal Face website here

It was nice to meet you Megan…also, good looking on catching that crazy old Chinese lady snatching the Mao ad off the door.