NATE LEWIS, ‘Remember What They Did’ Billboard Campaign Seeks To Inspire Voter Turnout

 

‘Remember What They Did’ Billboard Campaign Seeks To Inspire Voter Turnout

By BILL O’DRISCOLL • SEP 7, 2020

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  This billboard designed by Nate Lewis is posted on Washington Boulevard, in Larimer.

  IMAGE COURTESY OF REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID

Artist Nate Lewis spent nine years as an ICU nurse in the Washington, D.C. area. And the Beaver Falls native has been more than a little aggrieved by public discussions of the coronavirus, especially how Donald Trump has downplayed the pandemic. But a new billboard campaign is giving Lewis and other artists a chance to shape the debate themselves.

Artist Nate Lewis grew up in Beaver Falls.

CREDIT REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID

“There’s a lot of trust that has been lost because of the President, really — his disregard for science and his disregard for caring for people,” said Lewis.

Speaking of the virus on July 1 – and echoing a frequent talking point of his — Trump said, “that’s going to just sort of disappear, I hope.” The illness has now claimed nearly 190,000 lives in the U.S. Trump’s words are featured in Lewis’ contribution to Remember What They Did, a new, artist-driven billboard campaign meant to spark voter turnout in battleground cities.

Lewis’ design pairs Trump’s quote with the image of a CT scan of a COVID-19 patient. Lewis used the image because “it’s an eyewitness account… about how real this virus is.”

In late August, the billboard was pasted up high over Washington Boulevard, in Larimer, and on North Craig Street, near Bigelow, in the Upper Hill District. In all, there are four Remember What They Did billboards in Pittsburgh, and 10 others split between Detroit and Milwaukee. The campaign targets communities with high concentrations of voters who are young, Black, or Latino. A spokesperson for Artists United for Change, one of the nonprofit groups behind the initiative, said it will ultimately include “dozens of billboards … and hundreds of street art posters” in six cities total.

Artists United for Change is a political committee tied to progressive groups.

There are now seven billboard designs, each by a different artist. The artists include internationally known names like Shepard Fairey (known for his “Hope” poster of Barack Obama) and Swoon (a.k.a. Caledonia Curry, who coincidentally just opened a solo exhibit at Pittsburgh gallery Contemporary Craft).

Six of the seven billboards feature Trump quotes, including “fine people on both sides” (describing counter-protesters clashing with white nationalists in Charlotesville, Va., in 2017), and “When the looting starts the shooting starts,” regarding social-justice protests in May. A seventh billboard targets Sen. Lindsey Graham for saying “I don’t care” in regard to the lengthy detention of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The initiative’s partners in Pennsylvania include liberal group Keystone Progress. All the billboards feature the injunction “Vote Them Out.”

Lewis’ artwork has been exhibited in galleries around the U.S. He said he left Beaver Falls in 2003, after high school, to study nursing. He took up art while still a student. In 2017, he quit nursing and moved to New York to pursue art full-time. He now splits his time between New York and Washington.

Lewis’ work is often politically themed, and he said he hopes Remember What They Did inspires discussion.

“I hope that it reaches the young people … who aren’t pleased with the current administration, who aren’t pleased with the continual division that’s being sown,” he said. “I hope the people who want to vote the president out, that it sparks them to take action, really, to spread that action, to vote and use their right so that we can hopefully just move forward.”

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY’s solo “The Dark Re Imagined” opens Saturday 9/14/19

Inspired by evolutionary biology, ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY pushes the boundaries of printmaking in her solo exhibition “The Dark Re Imagined”. In this series of artworks she has collaborated with scientists and integrates fungus, lichens, animals, decay and broken insects.

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ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY The Dark Re Imagined September 14 – October 9, 2019 Opening Reception Saturday, September 14th from 2-6pm Artist Talk at 4pm EXHIBITION LOCATION Morton Fine Art 52 O St NW #302 Washington, DC 20001 HOURS Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 5pm Sunday – Tuesday by appointment

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, Just One Day 2019, 36″x24″, painting, found objects and plastic on canvas

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, Amethyst Deceivers 11, 2019, 36″x48″, wood engraving, thread, painting on canvas

About The Dark Re Imagined My current work on fungus and lichens, broken insects and evolutionary biology is not scientific in the sense of medical illustration but a continuation of a life time artistically reacting to mortality’s hold on our subconscious. My earlier work was more overtly psychological. Now I glory in exploring texture and new methods of printmaking. After decades working alone I embrace collaboration. Working with other artists and scientists who all share passion for their chosen subjects and understand mine, they are generous in answering my questions with care and enthusiasm. As the young entomologist, Rebecca Cathleen Wilson told me in one of our many conversations, “we study insects because we love them but to do so we have to kill them, working with you gives them another life”. – ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, 2019 Available artwork by ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY in her studio

About ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY Rosemary Feit Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work is housed in over forty major museum and library collections worldwide, including Yale University Art Gallery, the New York Public Library Print Collection, the National Museum of American History, Harvard University, and the Papyrus Institute in Cairo, Egypt. In 2012 over five-hundred of her prints were acquired for the permanent collection of Georgetown University Library, Special Collections. She is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (Bellagio Italy), an Alpha Delta Kappa Foundation National Fine Art Award and a fellowship to Georgetown University Medical Center as the 2007-2008 Artist-in-Residence. Her solo museum exhibitions include the Butler Museum of American Art, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. In 2014, a retrospective of her prints, paintings and installation work was held at Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum. Her larger public art has been installed world wide, including at Burning Man and at Culture Summit 2017 in Abu Dhabi. Articles on her work have been featured in magazines including Art in America, Juxtapoz, and American Artist Magazine. She has fully illustrated books for Simon & Schuster and William Morrow as well as for fine art presses. While an artist in residence at Georgetown University Medical School, Feit Covey wrote one chapter and illustrated the text for the book, Maldynia: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Illness of Chronic Pain, published by CRC Press. Previously she worked with a brain tumor patient for three years chronicling his illness artistically. This work was featured on Studio 360, Public Radio International, and in articles for The Los Angeles Times and CR Magazine. Since 2017 she has collaborated with evolutionary biologist Paul Andrews working on a ground breaking book using evolutionary biology to understand depression and evaluate pharmacological and psychological treatments for depression. This work will be published by Oxford University Press in 2020 or 2021. An article on this work appeared in Sci-Art Magazine in 2018. Currently, she is working with two botanists and an entomologist who have greatly aided in inspiring and informing her most recent series of work. She is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

About Morton Fine Art Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora. Morton Fine Art 52 O St NW #302 Washington, DC 20001 Wed – Sat 12pm-5pm and Sun-Tues by appointment