STARTUP 4 | Page 94

Local food biodiversity is put at risk along with cultural tradtions related to local foods provided by seeds. The process worked, and presented me with the opportunity I was looking for. Now, to answer the proposed answer.

I started with a conspiracy theory that I've across as an activist, and is one I will be dressing in my next project. One can ask what's the difference between an investigative journalist and and conspiracy theorist, credibility for one, however patterns exist in conspiracies and the ability to identify legitimate ones leads to the investigation, and ultimately the existence of a conspiracy exposed by the journalist.

To my surprise, this theory I pursued had legs, and I ran with it for my application. While I didn't get the fellowship, I found enough content to merge my seed activism and art.

In 2017, a local art studio, McArt à la Carte in Woodbury, New Jersey converted their retail space into a gallery. As a member of an artist group connected to the art studio, we got word that they there were four slots of time available for shows. I jumped on it.

The space was small, and I thought that would be helpful for editing. It would force me to get very specific. Two things didn't feel right. First, I was telling a story, and all the pieces would be part of the whole. The pieces would be informational and not likely to sell. Second was how would I incorporate original expression into the show beyond the mechanical creation of juxtaposing facts?

The power of art travels with the piece, and as the artist who creates that power, I needed to put my art into my show. Thanks to a critique by Loren Dann, an artist who I know through the artist group we belong to, I realized that.

I had another realization, the original concept I was working with would be more effective as a multimedia show. I was getting concerned about this as the show dates were approaching. My original concept wasn't going to work, and I had a show to produce. Concurrently, the local farming history storytelling project I mention earlier was coming along. I expanded my proposal. I added collecting historical stories about the the food sovereignty activists I work with who who honor the past through preservation, and who innovate and create the future of food sovereignty in the area.

I was using the iconic revolution fist to create commercial posters not art. It was becoming apparent to me that this forced approach to create posters as commercial products to sell was not creating art. My work as commercial art director for printed marketing material was reflected in these posters.

One thing that the creative process has taught me is to follow it's wisdom, to get out of my own a way, and listen. The more I worked with the iconic fist, the more I became comfortable with expanding the use of it. Much like the way I chose to expand the conversation about seed saving to food sovereignty, I chose to take the fist and use it as a creative and design element.

I started with rebranding my logo for the Library's Seed Bank to a sunflower using the fist as the petals and reducing the just the top of first to represent the repetitive seed pattern in the center of the sunflower. It worked, and opened up a whole new approach. The fist would become a creative element. I created 11"x17' sheets of small fists as the dot pattern that offset printing uses to capture ink off the roller and apply to paper to make up the four color process, or, as the resolution of digital images.

As the revolution fist became an art element used to compose the final pieces, it embodied the revolution directly into the art which was about revolution. Now to apply to seed saving and food sovereignty.

Since the storytelling project I'm developing was now about the history of food sovereignty and the almost three generation bridge of current activists from then to today, the process showed me that using public domain images would ground the art in the art in the past, and the digital process I was using to compose the art, would revolutionize these images. This is why I love and live the creative process. It's incredible when divergent elements are funneled through it to create something new.

While researching the public domain images, I came across the noted Victory Gardens posters that the United States government developed to enlist gardeners in the war effort. Propaganda about growing food. How appropriate.

WWI AND WWII were raging, a dark time for world history, and my government was using propaganda in a good way, so I ran with that. The food sovereignty movement is a response to a dark time for the food system, and it is a revolution against an increasingly centralized one. My show, Growing the Food Sovereignty Revolution, Propaganda by Jeff Quattone closed on June 16, 2017. The work is strong and I couldn't be happier. There were14 pieces in the show, and I wouldn't change a thing about any piece. Five pieces sold.

An interesting side note, once I hit my stride with the art, it occurred to that I was making a statement against this highly processed food system with highly processed digital collages. A bit hypocritical if you think about it. The process challenged once more, and I ended up creating a collage by hand. I used Prismalcolor color pencils on black and white laser prints for the center piece. I haven't used these pencils in close to 30 years. I've held onto them all this time, and this was why.