Political art and Mayworks Workshop with Favianna Rodriguez

On Monday evening i participated in an art workshop given by Favianna Rodriguez as part of Mayworks: Festival of Working People and the Arts which runs until May 3 here in Toronto. It's not often that i'm a participant in a workshop given that i am, so often, the one giving them. It was great to kick back and learn about Favianna's work as a printmaker and digital artist. Amongst other things (about which you can read on her website) she has collborated on a new book royalty-free political graphics: Reproduce and Revolt - which includes work by many artists including Eric Drooker and Rini Templeton - both of whose work i've used a great deal over the years. I was pleased to learn from Favianna that it was she who originally set up the Riniart website. Favianna began the workshop with a slide show of some of her work and a description of some of her design practices. Much of this is in included in a sixteen-page section of Reproduce and Revolt called "Design for Social Change: A Step by Step Guide for Designing Political Graphics" in English and Spanish. Most of the workshop time was devoted to producing posters using artwork that avianna had photocopied on various colours of paper. Above is what i produced. I was really pleased to learn a new form of lettering: Favianna described how you could cut a strip of paper the height of the letters, then cut the strip into the number of letters of your word and, finally, cut each block into its appropriate letter. Pretty cool!