#HowlAtHome Activity #5: Poster Art for Pride

I was honored to be asked by Katherine Cheairs at Howl Arts to contribute my take on poster art and suggest a Pride poster-making activity as part of their #HowlAtHome initiative. I thought about my favorite ideas regarding posters. Scooter and I were at Van’s house, after not being there for a few months, and we made some posters with acrylic paints and poster board. We talked a lot about vintage gay protest posters from the 70s. Above, you see Van and I holding posters we came up with. I painted LGBTQIA_ 🎉?+ (Scooter mentioned the “party hat” emoji represents drag artists) and Trans Lives Matter: Nina Pop, Scooter painted I Am a Faggot and Faggots Are Fantastic and Stop Bugging Gays, and Van painted Love Power, which ended up being the cover of the initiative. As howlarts.org puts it:

Creative Art Activities in a Time of Social Isolation Poster Art for Pride with Jorge Clar

We’re putting together arts activities inspired by our signature Vega Arts Workshop Series. Anyone can do it! No background in art-making is necessary to complete these activities using simple, low-cost materials found in your home, or easily acquired at essential services locations as well as online retailers. A new activity will be shared every two weeks.

#HowlAtHome celebrates PRIDE through the power of posters. Though we might not be able to gather together for this year’s pride march as we’ve done in the past, we can still show our support, excitement, and solidarity through Poster Art. We are excited to have our beloved, Jorge Clar, share with us his passion for the power of posters.

The modern poster took off in the 19th century when the printing industry perfected color lithography and mass production. Author Roger Marx, in his book ‘Masters of the Poster’, said the proliferation of placards on the streets of Paris turned them into “the poor man’s picture gallery.” Advertising products and services, the commercial success of poster art led fine artists like Jules Chéret—“the father of the modern poster”—, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso to explore the format. In the 1960s, there was a resurgence in the popularity of posters with the rise of Pop Art and protest movements. Personally, I am a big fan of Swiss posters from the 1960s and 1970s, specifically those designed by Josef Müller Brockmann, who made bold graphic statements using the Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface, which was also an integral part of New York City subway signage during the 1970s. I also love Bauhaus posters, especially the ones by László Moholy-Nagy, a Hungarian painter who taught at the school, which show a masterful balance of line and color. As a young child, I was fascinated by street posters, and velvet posters with images in fluorescent color. When Puerto Rican beauty queen Marisol Malaret won the Miss Universe contest in 1970, my uncle gave me a handful of posters with her likeness wearing a tiara. I was so excited I climbed the mango tree in my backyard and hurled the posters into the air, hoping they would fly. My uncle, who was gay, would plaster posters of Raquel Welch in a bikini and Charles Bronson barechested in his den, and I was fascinated by these images. —Jorge Clar

Tag photos of your artworks on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with #howlathome and #howlhappening to share your creations with us and connect to everyone who Howls at Home! Please email an image of your final project to Katherine Cheairs, Howl education director, at [email protected].

Activity #5—Poster Art for Pride

For this activity, think of what a poster can do to help celebrate LGBTQIA+ Pride. Conjure a symbol of queer pride; think of what being a part of this spectrum means to you. Posters throughout history have been crucial in the spreading of ideas. Using simple graphic elements, one can make a statement that can be seen from a distance—across a room, displayed on a window, or carried outside, depending on the circumstances. Ideas for your poster can include notable figures of gay liberation or a statement related to your own experience.

Pro Tips: As part of my artistic practice, I do performances that incorporate line drawings, which in turn include words. These elements informed my choices for these poster designs. I used tempera paint and a one-inch wide paint brush in creating the posters. These were done on poster boards which are readily available at drugstores. You can use brown craft paper, upcycled cardboard boxes…any rigid surface of your choice. Your recycling bin is a great resource! Depending on the surface, you can decide whether to use markers or paint. If using markers, I recommend Japanese Posca wide-tip paint markers which you can get online, or chisel-tip Sharpie markers, available at most drugstores. I have included a short instructional video on how to do simple hand-lettering with either a brush and tempera or chisel-tip marker.  —Jorge Clar

The Owl, the Bear, the Ladybug, and the Bunny

As Scooter’s Homo Eruptus show closes this Sunday, March 17, I reflect on a moment right before the opening which took place on Valentine’s Day.

Scooter had mentioned it would be fun to attend the opening wearing costumes, and so we started coming up with a plan. He wanted to dress as a bear; I decided I’d be an owl. Van opted to go as a bunny, and Joel as a ladybug.

A couple of hours before the opening, Scooter went to Joel’s apartment and painted Joel’s face. I got there soon after and put on the owl costume to get used to it. Van arrived a few minutes later. Scooter and he tweaked their costumes by cutting the sleeves off a shirt Scooter was going to wear over his bear suit and putting the sleeves on Van’s bunny suit for visual continuity.

Scooter accompanied a fully-costumed Joel to Atlas to grab a bite. Van and I were still adjusting our costumes, so we stayed at Joel’s. As it was almost time to head over to Howl! Happening, Scooter came to get Van and I and put on his costume. Joel would meet us at the gallery.

So, costumes in place, we headed on to the street. It was fun to be encased in masks as in capsules traveling through the East Village. We had reminisced earlier about how much fun we had trick or treating in Ocean Grove when I wore a sheet with holes as a ghost and Scooter wore a Freddy Krueger sweater.

Hand in hand, we walked down Second Avenue, people saying things like ‘you guys are awesome.’ We laughed and said ‘hello’ and ‘excuse me,’ and a marvelous sense of elation came over us…we were having a magical moment. Scooter said he hadn’t had this much fun in years.