I struggled to write this post about the creation of the linocut relief print Cool Cats Vote Democrat. It felt caught between explaining the importance of voting, political action, and the intricacies of the printmaking process. Then the news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing hit.

It’s a dark time in the nation’s history. The US is on the path to fascism under Trump: Rubber bullets and tear gas used on innocent civilians, the promotion of America First in education and global politics, the approval of white nationalism, families separated by ICE and locked in cages under unsafe conditions, forced sterilization of migrant women, and almost 200,000 dead from COVID-19. The list goes on.

Cool Cats Vote Democrat came from my sense of compulsion to create an artwork to remind people to vote in the momentous 2020 election. The four color relief print takes inspiration from the WPA and New Deal prints of the 1930s and 1940s (which also served as a model for the relief print Use What You Got) as well as Shephard Fairey’s iconic Obama “Hope” poster.

All that doesn’t matter right now. This is not an election to sit out. Go vote. Vote Democrat.