Meet Rachel Schragis, OWS Artist & Booklet Contributor

[Huey P. Long]

Project Update #4: Meet Rachel Schragis, OWS Artist & Booklet Contributor
Posted by Andy Stepanian
After the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City was penned by the Call to Action working group and read aloud to the New York City General Assembly, Rachel Schragis, an artist with the Arts & Culture Working Group of occupy wall street was inspired to illustrate this flow chart detailing the issues within the declaration.



Rachel's flow chart was then hand-screened as part of a limited edition of 200 prints by New York City's Printed Matter Inc, hosts of the now famous New York Art Book Fair. In an effort to make the poster accessible to everyone The Sparrow Project helped Rachel print 5,000 posters, they are set to arrive in New York next week. We also will be including her illustration in the center spread of the Declaration booklets!

The poster itself has drawn the attention of both political media outlets and the fine arts community. Rachel was interviewed by Jesse Meyerson for Truthout.org about her process and Rachel was featured by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice on thier website. The critically acclaimed art magazine Art in America will also be featuring Rachel's flowchart in their next issue!

As a thank you for your support we will be giving a 27"x27" offset poster with Rachel's flowchart to all donors who pledge $25 or more.

As our deadline approaches we are asking everyone who reads this to let everyone know about our effort on kickstarter, to double your efforts, and where possible increase your pledges. We know with your support anything is possible.

All the best,

Andy

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1385231108/help-publish-the-declaration-of-occupy-wall-street

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How Do You Illustrate Corruption? Artist Rachel Schragis Explains
Saturday 5 November 2011
by: J.A. Myerson, Truthout | News Analysis
Rachel Schragis is a 25-year-old New York City-based artist, educator and activist who created a flow-chart visualization of the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. Since the image was posted on Facebook, comments began pouring in and the image was disseminated widely, not only among Schragis' friends, but eventually by complete strangers.

http://www.truth-out.org/how-do-you-illustrate-corruption-artist-rachel-schragis-explains/1320434040

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Jews For Racial & Economic Justice
JFREJ Member Illustrates the Occupation!
JFREJ member Rachel Schragis's drawing of the Occupy Wall Street Movement's Declaration, The Flow Chart of the Declaration of the Occupation of NYC, has inspired people throughout the world. Within days of posting the image on Facebook, it was reposted across the internet, every place from Al Jazeera to the Art Info blog. Emails continue to pour in from around the country from people seeking copies for their homes, classrooms, offices and local occupations. It is currently on display at Printed Matter and Bluestockings Radical Book store, with more to come. In response to this outpouring of interest, OWS is sponsoring a large poster edition, available soon. More information about Rachel and the project can be found in a great interview at Truthout.org.

The Image has been selected to be included in a pamphlet version of the Declaration to be distributed at OWS events in the upcoming months. the organizers of this project are currently fundraising to print 100,000 copies. Fore more information on the printing, click here.

Yasher koach to Rachel and her support of the Occupy Wall Street Movement!

http://www.jfrej.org/2011-11-30/jfrej-member-illustrates-occupation

[Huey P. Long]

1. .

[lunatica]

2. I love that poster! Here is a larger version

It's a brilliant illustration of a concept!

[Huey P. Long]

3. Thank you for that. The Truthout article is fantastic. I highly recommend that read.

[Huey P. Long]

4. .

[Huey P. Long]

5. From Truthout-

J.A. Myerson: This is a remarkable document you have produced. How did the idea for this come about?

Rachel Schragis: The most direct answer to that is that I read the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City and said immediately, "This is a flowchart. I should make this." The last couple of years, I've been working to make flowchart-making into a creative craft that I have a specialty in. This came out of making sculptures in college and making flowcharts to plan them and finding the flowcharts be more successful objects, in some ways, than the sculptures that I was making.

At first, I just started making this one to figure stuff out for myself. I try to maintain that as a motivation. If there's a set of information that you need to make sense of, make a flowchart out of it. And that impulse, that it's for your own sense-making, will come through and avert possible preachyness. So, I printed out the document and started by asking, "What are the themes?" just for personal clarity about the movement, not even really thinking I was going to make something.

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JAM: It recalls those Greek diagrams of the universe.

RS: People have been saying mandala a lot, and I've been like, "Yeah, it's kind of hippie, sure, sure." People are like, "You should make it pretty colors." I'm like, "No. Black and white. Enough of the mandala thing." Or really, what I mean is, enough of this appropriation thing. Mandalas are gorgeous, but I don't want to make something that looks like I'm copying them, because I'm not Buddhist and I don't want to play in to a history of aesthetic co-optation. The circle is a universal form with all sorts of associations from throughout history, so it's no accident that a circle was the solution to the design problems of this project. I am humbled by the comparison to both mandalas and ancient Greek diagrams.

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http://www.truth-out.org/how-do-you-illustrate-corruption-artist-rachel-schragis-explains/1320434040

[Huey P. Long]

6. .

[Huey P. Long]

7. kicking because she is brilliant. -eom