Wow! What an honor it is to install a set of Victory Garden of Tomorrow posters in Portland Mayor Sam Adam's office. The set of six prints will hang in the Administrative office for the entire summer. I hope they provoke conversations and new thinking (I wonder if the propaganda will work?).
Special thanks to Pollyanne Birge, Arts and Culture Director for extending the invite and making the arrangements.
This June (2009) I worked for an afternoon at a VBC site at Madison High School in Portland, Oregon. They're putting up a covered outdoor classroom space designed by Sebastion Collet. It will feature cob walls (clay-straw mix), benches, and a living roof.
The process is very hands-on and totally accessible. Its the only building site I've been on where I was barefoot the entire time. Glass bottles were cut and taped end to end to make little windows in the cob wall. Building up the cob is done entirely by hand and is really very fun. To work the clay and straw into shape for building, we had to dance on it for a bit in barefeet. nice.
Click the picture to see the whole set of pics.
Go to the website to learn more about VBC:
City Repair
The Victory Garden of Tomorrow
Come see the poster artwork of Joe Wirtheim
June 4th - July 31st, 2009
Reception for the Artist, June 4th, 6pm-9pm
WHAT: See an Original Poster-art collection of New Homefront Propaganda -- Screenprints, Paintings, Giclee prints.
Learn more about the work: www.VictoryGardenofTomorrow.com
WHEN: Reception First Thursday, Thursday, June 4th 6-9 pm
WHERE: Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC)
917 SW Oak St. #218 Portland OR 97205
(near Powell's, above Reading Frenzy)
503-827-0249
http://www.iprc.org/
Project Statement:
The VGoT is an Art Project posing as a propaganda campaign for new American homefront values. The style draws from mid-century war propaganda, and the messages are inspired by the 21st century sustainability movement. The campaign is designed to access America's history of ingenuity to overcome adversity, and apply those values to fighting modern problems.
The VGoT is deployed as a series of poster images that are giclee printed, screen printed, or painted on panel.
Learn more about how WWII Victory Gardens and the NYC World's Fair of 1939 influence the work at:
www.VictoryGardenofTomorrow.com
"The Victory Garden of Tomorrow" is the artwork of Joe Wirtheim since 2005.
I've been working with a student publication at Portland State University called The Portland Spectator. It circulates about 1,000 on the school campus. Its been an interesting job for me, because I've been given a lot of freedom to do editorial design, layout, and illustration. All things I enjoy and have been wanting to get better at doing. But my duties are also to be an Editor for content, which has been quite a learning process; but one that has been very enlightening. The whole project has kind of taken over my brain, and I may have found some kind of calling here. I'm thinking about applying for the Editor-in-Chief position for next year, which really has a lot of reign over the mission and direction of the pub. I'll probably go for it -- this could be the career stepping stone I need.
UPDATE: I got the job! What a great opportunity. There's actually a lot of freedom to hire a staff, raise money, cover what we want, build a brand reputation, while using all the resources of the school--its actually better than a commercial pub would be in terms of freedom and experimentation. Its going to be a good year.
Recently, someone emailed me who works at a garden center, and they showed the folks at the center the Victory Garden of Tomorrow poster and tried explaining the concept behind it. The garden center people didn't get it. I guess we could just shrug and say its just "visual art". Which it is.
But that's only part of the story, and doesn't honor the American history and tradition of rolling up the sleeves and DOING something in a crisis situation. Today, there are people in crisis situations who need better nutrition, better ways to save, and creative solutions to basic household expenses.
The original campaign was all about supplementing rations in a time of food/money scarcity (it was WWII). Recently when I look in the media there are stories of people of all walks of life in very tight situations often relying on a food bank. What's in the foodbank? Canned and processed food. From a health standpoint this is bad, and in economic terms we are relying on the industrial, mass scale food producers to give us something we could make ourselves at several times greater the quality and nutrition. Salty, conventionally grown, preservative laden canned vegetables is no way to feed a family, we now know. Neither is processed foods made with corn syrup and white flour. Supplementing your rations is a genuine expression to have for ourselves fresh greens and vegetables from the thing that we are so desperately trying to hold onto: our own backyards.
Some Victory Garden slogans are coming to mind:
Make those yards work for you! Supplement your Rations. Better Nutrition Means Better Gardens.
See also Slow Food USA.
And this is very exciting: NY Times: Obamas Prepare to Plant White House Vegetable Garden and finally, from MSNBC:
I've been kicking around these new designs. Actually the "Remember" one is a redux of an early design. I'm just getting tired of looking at them and need other eyes see what's up. What do you think? I may have some proof prints made so I can get a better sense of the color.
This week I saw an overwhelming wave of support for the "Victory Garden of Tomorrow" artwork. It seems everyone wants a poster from Esty (yah!). But that means I have to be ready to do some serious shipping. So of course I turned to Scrap - an awesome nonprofit storefront who deals in donated office-type leftovers. There I scored a pile of mailing tubes for posters. Now I'm ready for anything! If I have time I'll try to put some cool stencils on them.
And! Not only have I been receiving orders, but I've been able to make some connections for the VGoT to partner up and do some work for others. I want to be tight-lipped about details right now, but there will be plenty to say by this spring.
This project is getting super exciting right now, thanks to all the support I'm getting! All your comments and insights have been so inspiring. Thanks!
So I'm taking a communications class called "Sex and Media". We do a lot of critical theory stuff, so in class we watched this Nigella clip and noted how it (and many other cooking shows) are taking their plotline ques and format from porn film, in this case a masturbation scene. Its a stretch, I know, but watch this and you may be convinced. Keep in mind forplay, action (work, work), and of course the swapout where we cut to the money shot at the end. I never wanted a chocopot so bad.
Magnum Photos hosts these beautiful photo essays. This one by Paolo Pellegrin is a series of images he took on Wall Street a couple of months ago when everything was tanking. The black and white makes them timeless and his voice over is pretty cool, too. Lends a strong sense of drama to the whole thing.
Etsy is pretty great. It's not the flea market that is ebay, its not quite a high-end boutique, but seems to fall somewhere in the middle-where you never know what you're going to find. And really, the imagination is the limit.
Just look at this: someone is making neato little moss terrariums in jars. I want one! (hint, hint)
I have been a big fan of the author and journalist Michael Pollan ever since I read "Botany of Desire" two years ago. Insightful and educational, it discusses the stuff we deal with everyday: our food.
Now to top it off, Pollan has written an open letter to the next U.S. President about reforming the food and agriculture industries. The New York Times Magazine published it in their Food issue and you can read it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
Its a big item to read, so if you want the broad strokes listen to his October 20 interview on Fresh Air as a podcast here:
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=4985908
His basis is that government subsidies are influencing the kind of foods that are cheaply available, namely wheat and corn syrup. Those subsidies also negatively impact farm diversity and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Besides government policies, he also makes plugs for revitalizing food culture, making it a regional thing again, and a point of education (for instance, make school lunch part of the curriculum).
I realize Pollan is doing some dreaming, and reponses to his letter have pointed out the tough realities of reform, but I say there's nothing wrong with a dreamer. I wonder how these ideas will influence the Victory Garden of Tomorrow art project?
I just love books, especially little books, and especially hand made interesting books. That's why I put together this little item to sort of accompany some of the Victory Garden poster artwork I've been making.
Special thanks to Pamela Price at Red White and Grew Blog for contributing an article about the History of Victory Gardening. You can learn more about what it is and what's inside at my
Etsy store.
I am an artist, editor, and Communication student living and working in Portland, Oregon. I enjoy watching film, reading books &stuff, and often somehow become involved in odd little social/work adventures. Besides that, I do a lot of thinking about my generation's place in history and its contribution to the American story - that's what my art generally concerns (&stuff). I am an AIGA member and a member of Portland's Independent Publishing Resource Center. Feel free to drop me a line: jwirtheim at gmail.com.
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Examine's the world's complex and interwoven mythology, folklore and religion, providing an understanding of the essence and genesis of humanness.
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The Fourth Turning
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Asphalt Nation
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Discussion of the cultural mores that helped create America's current car glut--namely, our attitudes toward land use and growth management.
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