This attractive offering serves as a primer on using graphics and visuals as forms of public communication. Author Nichols is a social- and racial-justice activist who provides considerable and helpful artistic advice through the lens of public protest. Assuming no previous knowledge, she introduces past and current protest movements, identifies the meanings behind their associated slogans and symbols, and explains why these choices make an impact. Nichols encourages readers to create their own protest art, offering practical guidance on basic components (color, font, word choice), media (sticky notes, poster board, chalk, collage, photography), and display (leaflets, signs, T-shirts, memes, guerrilla art, flash mobs, culture jamming, and projection art). Appropriately, pages are set off in dramatic blocks of color wrapped around all kinds of graphics, such as highlighted quotes, original art, and reproductions from innovative street artists, including Banksy and Keith Haring. Nichols calls herself an artivist, and this fresh guide, which introduces a diverse array of artists and activists and offers insightful tips about art, should inspire aspiring artivists like her. * Booklist *
Each chapter ends with steps readers can follow to make their voices heard through creative and beautiful art that is full of meaning and emotion. This book would appeal to teens who are ready to take on the injustices of the world as well as art teachers who will be inspired to include protest art in their curriculums * Booklist, Kirkus starred review *
Art is about observing and reflecting on the world and then expressing ideas, feelings and thoughts about it. It forces us to create structuresand systems of understanding, and then step outside of them to create new ones when the old understandings no longer make sense. Art isproblem solving; it teaches us to plan, to process, to improve. These are very important concepts for children to learn at an early age. When I was young, most of the people I knew thought of art as a hobby, or something children did but put away as they grew up. Only the trulyexceptional people made a career of it. When I told my friends' parents I was going to be an artist, they responded, How can you make aliving as an artist? - as if there isn't an artistic component to everything we do. They thought this because historically, art has been seen asthe playground of the privileged. We couldn't afford to sit around and daydream all day, and if we did make something, it was craft. Buttechnology has been a transformative force for art. It provides the resources, information and time to create. We don't need a guild, a master'sdegree or a 20-year apprenticeship; we can download an app. Three new books demystify the art world and make it accessible to budding young artists. They show them the many different ways in whichthey can participate in the art scene and that their art can engage with others across the globe. In the picture book Making a Great Exhibition, by Doro Globus and Rose Blake, Viola is a sculptor and Sebastian is a painter. We see them intheir studios creating art. We learn about how they see the world, their artistic process, and what happens when their artwork is picked upfrom their studios and travels thousands of miles to a museum. At the museum, we see all the different people working behind the scenes inthe days and months leading up to the opening night of their joint exhibition. In addition to the curator, lighting designer, registrar andcommunications manager, there are art handlers, docents, educational staff and much more. Blake's illustrations use clean swaths of bold color with graphic yet intricately painted figures and details. This style lets the visuals tell thestory. Labels and brief bits of text elucidate the process without cluttering the page or detracting from the images. The language is simple,clear and precise, making it easy for children to understand all the various ways they could take part in making a great exhibition. Art of Protest, by De Nichols, is a compendium of modern protest art practices. Nichols's own journey from social work graduate student andteaching artist to artivist (artist activist) provides its narrative framework. (Her Mirror Casket, whose reflective surface allows us to seeourselves as both voyeur and victim, was created with the help of six other artists in the aftermath of the 2014 Ferguson, Mo., police killing ofthe teenager Michael Brown Jr.) How to activities are paired with basic protest art methodology - symbols, colors, fonts, etc. - and historical context. For example, theCreate a protest sign activity precedes a passage on the I Am a Man posters for the 1968 sanitation workers strike in Memphis. Groups likethe feminist Guerrilla Girls in New York and individuals like the artist Banksy, who blur the lines between fine art and street art for thepurposes of satirical social and political commentary, are featured. Initiatives like the Thousand Paper Cranes (Japan/antiwar), as well as theUmbrella Movement (Hong Kong/democracy) and South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, are also highlighted. Sometimes the information is repetitive, and the narrative doesn't flow seamlessly, but what stymies me is the brief history section.Passages like this one - which is the book's full discussion of Egypt's contribution to protest art - are misleading (especially given the lack ofcontext and sourcing): Political satire has been used as far back as ancient Greece and Rome and perhaps even earlier. Ancient Egyptianartwork depicted men as animals. This severely minimizes Egypt's long satirical history and its influence on Greco-Roman culture, not tomention that the type of animal depiction is never explained. I wish the writer had dug deeper * New York Times *
What did you like about the book? With its backless binding and chip board cover, this manual for creating art and presence for a social cause is edgy and attractive. The author, an artivist in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, explains the role of protest art throughout history and gives examples that will resonate with young adults and others interested in the role of creativity in grassroots activism. There are pictures of art from Keith Haring and Jacob Lawrence, quotations from Nina Simone and Ai Weiwei, and lots of easy to parse information about using color, poetry, music, symbols, and typography to make a point and galvanize support. Each chapter has a Try This: section with exercises for getting creative juices flowing. The five illustrators' art is bold and offers wonderful stylistic examples to readers. The pages are printed on different colored paper, extending the edgy zine feel for the book. Anything you didn't like about it? No -- Stephanie Tournas
