Natasha Mayers

MY AHA!

natashamayers — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:30:45 +0000

Request from Robert Shetterly:

Everywhere I go, kids, and adults, want to know how you got started. What was the defining moment that triggered your dedication to fighting for justice or peace, or the environment? What was your epiphany? Your AHA! moment? Were you a child or adult when this awareness came about? What kind of change was necessary in your life? What courage?

We want to put your story up on the Americans Who Tell the Truth website right next to your portrait. We think it will add a personal quality that will help young and older people identify with your work, and help them make the decision to act themselves. It will demystify the movement from bystander to activist…. that little leap from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Natasha Mayers’ Awakening

In 1982, I read an important book that stirred my conscience, Bitter Fruit, by Stephen Kinzer, about the overthrow of the democratically-elected leader of Guatemala by our CIA.*
I went to a teach-in about Central America and heard a remarkable German theologian (Erhard Kepler?), urge us to action: “Every drop counts, even if you think it is like pissing in the ocean. No matter how insignificant your action might seem, you must do it to get beyond the powerlessness, the cynicism, the paralysis.”
I was nearing 40, I had a young child, and had this new sense of responsibility for the state of the world. If I wasn’t going to do anything, who would?

A march was organized in Portland to mark the anniversary of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination in El Salvador. Peter Gourfain designed a banner that was so beautiful that I cried. I made a boring poster. I didn’t know how to make a visual statement without words and I wanted to.
I wanted to make art that could move people to action, that could stir their souls.
I thought the only way I could learn how to do it was to go to Central America and see it firsthand.

There was an artists’ brigade, “Arts for a New Nicaragua”, which formed out of Boston, invited by the Ministry of Culture to come down and paint murals with Nicaraguan artists. Some of us painted a mural on the outside wall of a soap factory in Granada. Workers made suggestions about content and told stories. It became a talking wall. Even the food vendors would park in front of it because it drew so much attention. I also helped a group of young people paint their own compelling vision of the new Nicaragua.

That gave me a new awareness of what an artist can do. I saw a government that validated and recognized its artists. I saw a community of artists at work It changed a lot of my attitudes about the power and effectiveness of art, what my art should be about, and what my role as an artist in the community of artists and non-artists could be.

Essay by Rob Shetterly for my Signs of the Times exhibit announcement

natashamayers — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:50:01 +0000

Artists, if they have any obligation to their culture, are obligated in times like these to tell the truth that strips away denial, to tell us what we need to know to lead honest lives, make moral choices, and advance the cause of hope in our communities. When politicians, corporations and the major media are complicit in hiding the truth, the burden on artists is immense. Natasha Mayers has always assumed that burden. And, if there was ever a show that was more than the sum of its parts, her Signs of the Times is it.

With these constellations of potent images, Natasha decodes the mystifying density of symbol and sham and lets them sound like sirens. She presents the colorful bars and stripes of military decorations and exposes what is really being honored and rewarded. But their purpose is the opposite of what you might expect. Yes, they are shouting, “Emergency!” But they are not telling you to be fearful and run for cover. They are not telling you to let the experts handle it. Instead, the paintings are asking you to stop and think and feel and act. With the little girl scout who hides her eyes from the dark swirl of bones and skulls engulfing her, Natasha is saying our innocence is long gone when the witnessing eye of the torture victim is also the eye of the storm, is the “I” addicted to oil, and the eye of fire at the top of a smokestack. All our symbols are complicit in an unsustainable, hypocritical, and violent life style. See the hand that fondles the clouds and makes them weep. See the reduction of human lives to speed bumps before the juggernaut of imperial power. As art, Natasha’s paintings succeed because they transcend broadside. Full of ambiguity, humor, allusion, and innuendo they invite the viewer to collaborate in finding meaning. They are powerfully and intensely painted, their raw, bright, patterned style perfectly matching their message. She uses her immense imagination to tease layers of meaning out of images. A fearful helicopter gunship becomes a heart with rotors becomes a flying charnel house becomes the big brother eye in the sky. Installed in poetic groupings, they seem like gnarled musical phrases, the visual representation of snarls and moans, snickers and sighs. When I was visiting Natasha’s studio to preview the show, she asked me, in looking at the paintings, if I saw hope anywhere. I said yes because there can be no hope without the truth. Until we are willing to face the worst aspects of our culture, we can not begin the process of reclamation. Natasha’s paintings command us to open our eyes, to see through the hype, the fear, the patriotic myth, the symbol. They are saying that if we care for ourselves, we must care for each other.

Robert Shetterly: “The Obligations of Artists” convocation talk at USM-Lewiston-Auburn

natashamayers — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:45:42 +0000

First I want to thank the University of Southern Maine and Robyn Holman for promoting this exhibit — my short talk will make it clear how important I think it is.
(INSERT FROM END OF TALK: This show of Natasha’s is very important because it rejects the creative economy in favor of the sustainable economy. It embraces the creative society, makes its allegiance with a just economy and a humane community. Natasha, when most other artists were looking the other way, always recognized that the house was on fire, because she has always had the imagination and courage to identify with the disadvantaged and outcast whose world is always in flames.
The obligation of the artist in times like these is to explore, to report, to reject cant, to spit out the artificial sweeteners in our
commercial, suicidal brew. We honor explorers because they are courageous. William Sloane Coffin said there are no other virtues without courage. So we honor the artists who have the courage to tell us the truth. For this is what Keats meant about truth and beauty, they can not be separated. And if compassion and justice are virtues ( and beautiful), they will not exist if there is not courage to demand them. Without that courage we will not survive — either individually of collectively.
James Baldwin said :
People who shut there eyes to reality simply invite there own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
Natasha’s paintings show us the reality we have ignored and the destruction denial has wrought, and they make plain what price the monster exacts from our earth and our souls.
Natasha said recently that she has never been better known than she is now and at the same time she has never been poorer. As long as truth and courage are incompatible with the power and money, we will all be in peril. I love Natasha for her conscience, her courage, her compassion, her great talent, her good spirits, her persistence, her insistence that we attend to the victims of our duplicity, her refusal to never shirk the obligation of an artist in our society)

A Dream of Trees Mary Oliver
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way from everywhere.
There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.
I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?
When I ask children why they make art, & how they feel making it, the usual replies are:
Entertainment.
To put something on the wall — decoration
To feel good
To make something beautiful.
And always some kid will say, Making art makes me feel most myself. Unlike other subjects in school, when I make art, I’m an individual.
One doesn’t have to be a cynic, just an observer, to wonder if because art promotes individual thinking, feeling, and discovery, promotes self knowledge, the investigation of conscience, that art programs are not being funded in our public schools.
We all know that our culture no longer values individuals. It values over working, no-time-for-the-kids, complacent consumers. Parents trying to make millions or simply trying to make the most of humiliating jobs — they agree that kids need to know how to divide 130 by 17, and that Custer’s mistake was strategic rather than moral.
Art education is an effete luxury, cute for the first grader, a waste of time for the tenth grader who needs a job. And we’ve got TV for entertainment.
So, if you are not encouraging a generation of children to explore their individuality and consciences through art and not rewarding that search, you are also not teaching them how to respond to art. It’s very hard for homogenous people to understand heterogeneous images and words that challenge their vestigial imaginations. Art teaches us to think & feel deeply and with subtlety. What’s a harried, unsubtle, flat screen mom or dad supposed to find in serious art other than resentment at its demands?
But the problem isn’t just that our society fails to encourage art education, art discovery, many of our artists choose the hermetic gimmickry and ingrown conversation of the art world. Curious people looking to art to explain or tell the stories of their lives, looking for an affirmation of conscience, won’t find it there. Rather they find themselves in the presence of an objet d’art that aspires to be a prestigious investment hung in the lobby of General Electric’s corporate headquarters before moving on to the new wing of the museum, both the wing and the art the tax deductible gift of GE’s billionaire CEO. The more expensive and irrelevant the art work, the better.
It is not a long leap from the corporate world’s expansive embrace and simultaneous neutering (this is an important topic, how our culture seeks to, at once, embrace and castrate messages and people subversive to the status quo) — it’s not a long leap to our own “creative economy.” Tony Hoagland’s poem Hard Rain
puts if very well.
Hard Rain

After I heard It’s a Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood there’s nothing
we can’t pluck the stinger from,

nothing we can’t turn into a soft drink flavor or a t-shirt.
Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it
using smiling, white-haired people

quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes
in the Everglades, where the swamp has been
drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hole golf course
with electrified alligator barriers.

You can’t keep beating yourself up, Billy
I heard the therapist say on television
to the teenage murderer,
About all those people you killed—
You just have to be the best person you can be,

one day at a time—

and everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,
because the level of deep feeling has been touched,
and they want to believe that
the power of Forgiveness is greater
than the power of Consequence, or History.

Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
are covered with blood-
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
Signed, America.

I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,

but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth—

whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.
So, why should we as artists and as a society not be humbled with appreciation for an Arts Commission and enlightened state government that tries to enhance the art biz in Maine? What’s wrong with artists enlisting as the good soldiers in the battle for a positive state balance sheet. Win/ win. The problem is that artists are rewarded then for the tax & tourist money they attract rather than the probings of their unfettered imaginations and their willingness to use their freedom to tell the truth. A good soldier in the creative economy, like a good soldier in the market economy, makes something that sells. Serving the public, the common good, is reduced to ringing the cash register rather than leading people to epiphanies of thought and feeling that they need to know to become fully human and fully humane. What sells is what comforts, not what confronts.
When Arthur Miller said, “I think … the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget,” he was not suggesting that people have forgotten how to be willing cogs in the economic machine, he was saying that those willing cogs have forgotten their essential humanity as they compromised their lives away, in fact, become participants in a great exploitation of humanity for the benefit of business.
There is no true art without truth. So, the first obligation of the artist is honesty, witnessing for the truth. What Brad Will died for in Oaxaca a couple of weeks ago. Witnessing for the truth is subversive because it must strip away the masks of hypocrisy. We also all know that when we have serious problems, we can’t fix them if we don’t face the truth about what they are. If the problem is global warming, installing heavy duty windshield wipers to wipe away the heavy duty rain won’t help because the problem is in the brakes, there are no brakes on the system which is causing the problem.
It’s the obligation of the artist to air out our minds & hearts, to throw open the windows & doors of a self-satisfied society whose economic engine runs on exploitation and collateral damage, to show us what’s gnawing in the walls, swaying the roof, and grinding away under the floorboards. I know, some of you are thinking, but what about Matisse, don’t we all need Matisse? Of course we do, but not when blood is dripping from the ceiling onto his old easy chair. Not when the house is on fire.
This show of Natasha’s is very important because it rejects the creative economy in favor of the sustainable economy. It embraces the creative society, makes its allegiance with a just economy and a humane community. Natasha, when most other artists were looking the other way, always recognized that the house was on fire, because she has always had the imagination and courage to identify with the disadvantaged and outcast whose world is always in flames.
The obligation of the artist in times like these is to explore, to report, to reject cant, to spit out the artificial sweeteners in our
commercial, suicidal brew. We honor explorers because they are courageous. William Sloane Coffin said there are no other virtues without courage. So we honor the artists who have the courage to tell us the truth. For this is what Keats meant about truth and beauty, they can not be separated. And if compassion and justice are virtues ( and beautiful), they will not exist if there is not courage to demand them. Without that courage we will not survive — either individually of collectively.
James Baldwin said :
People who shut there eyes to reality simply invite there own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
Natasha’s paintings show us the reality we have ignored and the destruction denial has wrought, and they make plain what price the monster exacts from our earth and our souls.
Natasha said recently that she has never been better known than she is now and at the same time she has never been poorer. As long as truth and courage are incompatible with the power and money, we will all be in peril. I love Natasha for her conscience, her courage, her compassion, her great talent, her good spirits, her persistence, her insistence that we attend to the victims of our duplicity, her refusal to never shirk the obligation of an artist in our society.

Why there might be no more images of mine on Common Dreams

natashamayers — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:58:06 +0000

Dear Common Dreams Editor:

Next week (May 1) is the end of the first year of my volunteering as artist-in-residence for Common Dreams. Thank you for the opportunity to create and show my images on your important and superb site.

At this point I am not sure what to do. Because of a significant lack of communication, I have had a dificult time knowing if Common Dreams even values my work. I think/hope my images help bring more attention to your site–but I have no way of knowing (aside from the many positive personal emails I have received over the year from your readers). I would like to know how you feel about my work and what you think is the next best step.

I have been working almost full-time making the images which appear on Common Dreams. When I first started, I didn’t realize the nature of the internet and how people can and WOULD just make their own prints of my work. While this project has given me visibility and has helped my personal artistic growth in many ways, I feel the amount of time and effort l spend posting daily images cannot continue without some financial support. If you are interested in continuing to use my images, I would like to talk about a financial arrangement. If you are unable to budget anything for the art, I might be willing to provide you one image/week, (maybe to appear on Mondays and Tuesdays), in return for your continued sponsoring of my high speed internet.

It has been a good year! I would very much like to begin a conversation and reach some sense of resolution before May 1.

Thank you.

Natasha Mayers mayersnatasha@gmail.com

A SELECTION OF Comments received by Natasha Mayers about Common Dreams art (May-June)

natashamayers — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:00:13 +0000

Dear Natasha, your art has been illuminating.. necessarian..gut wretching.. winningly instinctive.. .. remote and warm. Thank-You

luv the texture’d spread of it all!

that extra heartbeat! you really put it out there..Kudos. Judy

Hi Natasha,

I wanted to introduce myself to you because I watched and absorbed each and everyone of your artworks
created on commondreams last year.
I am a public school art teacher and did indeed share your work with my students
and your work blew them away. I can think of no other artist I have ever shown them
who made such an impact.
As an artist myself, I must tell you I so respect your visceral candor, your
unapologetic witness, your commitment.
I wish I had the money to pay for a book of your work and help you
write lesson plans for art students based on your work.
That is my dream.
Thank you for your energy and dedication to
sharing your powerful views with the internet world.
I know my students and I are forever changed by looking and interpreting
your work. Shana

Natasha, Natasha — who are you? Are you famous? Does the New Yorker know your work? Or Mother Jones? Harper’s? I’m sitting in front of my little computer tears running down my face. You are a force of nature. Powerful, powerful stuff! Robert W.

I am so pleased your work will be a continuing presence on Common Dreams. You have left me both breathless and full of hope. Not since my first sight of Guernica have I been so moved. I am a 74-year old grandmother whose belief still survives that we can leave a better world for all children. Your stunning work strengthens that belief. The world is not often a pretty place. Your special insights into what most would rather not see are what can truly engender change. It is perhaps more important to recognize what we abhor than to blindly avoid having to feel the reality of our surroundings. Not only is your work wonderful artistically, it shows your courage in these politically poisonous times. Norma G

Your understanding of how a partial truth hides the real truth is so intuitive….Peter S

I humbly sit in the piney-smelling pews of your cathedral of talent. Your paintings jar me but are so beautiful they add a reassuring comfort too – so I’m aware that jarring and comforting are contradicting one another – don’t know – complicated… but simple… Amen! From Reverend Billy:

Natasha, it looks great ! What a great gig. You do fine saying things in your own words. Don’t take lessons from pompous artists’ statements in catalogues etc. Just say what you’re up to and why! Lucy Lippard

I love what you have added to Common Dreams because as a former investigator I learned that most often 85-90% of what is communicated even in an interview is done so by kinesthetic and not the verbal content. Your visual representations add an entire new dimension to the progressive comment on the blog that really is like the spices and seasonings that make food delicious rather than just healthy bellyfill. Keep listening to your gut and share your visions with us, O wise woman. Tim McC.

Thanks for all you do to keep us all better informed.
I love your art. Wow! The one today with the yellow star in the blue field in the center of the images of blocked faces is haunting and historical. Wonderful. What a great conscience you have. I’m glad you are working with CommonDreams.
Thank you for your awesome inspiration and intention! Roxanne A
I cannot imagine a more arresting image.

Your art work that has been displayed on the Common Dreams site is very moving. I was a Navy Corpsman who served in Vietnam (‘68/’69). I have been against the war and the “Bush”…..since the beginning! I believe your work makes a very strong statement about humanity, and what is going on in our world. It is only through artists (poets, painters, photographers) that the true word is spoken. Thank You!
Thank you for posting your artwork on Common Dreams, I find it very thought provoking. I work in immigrant rights in Los Angeles and this piece called the border fence spoke to me and the work we do.

l keep checking your images though not every day in any case………… it’s wonderful……. in the tradition of daumier etc. congratulations

Editor, Kudos for all this great art I have been getting every day along with your news stories. The “March of the Penguins” picture is priceless. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time! It gets a bit tedious wading thru all those stories day after day and it is always a surprise to happen on one of those incredible paintings by Natasha. Thanks to everyone who made this happen. It is a fantastic concept.

-I am thoroughly enjoying your art works that concentrate the eyes/mind/heart/soul on critical issues, especially life and death in war zones wrapped up in sagas of greed and indifference
Hi Natasha — I work for the Steelworkers Union………I was struck by your luminous paitning and knew what it was before I clicked and read your words. I was particularly interested in it because I work with victims and families after catastrophic accidents and fatalities. ….I live in Pittsburgh, so even though your painting is probably a refinery, it could easily be the stacks of any steel mill around ehre or anywhere else. Congratulations on your vision. your art is wonderful!

Even my brief glimpses at your artwork have impressed me and have enhanced my experience of Common Dreams. In fact, I’ll bet it’s something that sets them apart – I love your current design and imagine it would be a popular sticker or t-shirt. Thanks for adding so much to progressive news!
Your depiction of US clad in camouflage is telling, and true, and
brilliantly conceived. Lord have mercy upon on all!

I head up our network of progressive women state legislators nationwide -
So our crowd all saw your cartoon image today on Common Dreams and are circulating it. We’ll have our national conference in Washington Sept 30.
WAND Communications Director Mary Babic circulated your cartoon and I’ll share your message with her as well! You have a new set of fans in us!
peace,
Senator Nan Orrock

Just wanted to thank you for the inspiring art work. You should know that in these dangerous times, there are a lot of people, like myself, who support your work. I believe that what you’re doing is a form of communication. Your work accomplishes something, but no doubt, there’s always so much more to do. It can be hard to feel complete or satisfied. Perhaps there’s a grim satisfaction that you’ve brought some attention to others, such that they focus on these problems. Perhaps it brings some relief… but it’s like shifting sand that keeps moving. In a way, if an artist communicates (in the way that you have) to the rest of the world what is happening, they’re trying to negotiate for something positive. Maybe that’s the reason why those in charge of perpetuating wars do not like to have artists around.
In the end, we must look at reality. We’re required to look at it. We’re required to do what we can about it. If we don’t… who will?

Your art work on Common Dreams is breathtaking…and very emotionally moving. I was struck by the Iran one at first and now the us map and the corn grenades after I looked at all of them. THANK YOU FOR BEING YOU AND DOING THIS. It goes into our psyches in such a different way than words , printed or oral…as the one woman said,,like Guernica. many Guernicas you are making…I had forgotten how much this form of thought and protest means to me,,and in general sometimes I think it calms my rage, and at the same time arouses me in a quiet way..too..hard to explain.

Just want to thank you again for your complex and thoughtful work
-I do like your work…both my husband and I love art…are politically progressive..angry (very angry) at what has happened to our country and the destruction of the rule of law and individual rights by the current administration. I am a criminal defense attorney and so the suspension of habeas is particularly disturbing.

The juxtaposition of cultures, colors and patterns on your most recent piece is quite thought provoking…If americans were a little more illuminated about the art and cultures of the countries on this planet that end up being labeled ‘Evil’ and eventually invaded and destroyed, it would be quite a bit more difficult for the right wing pundits to convince them to go along with the Oligarchy’s agenda!

How the hell do you do it?
I’m a regular. Thanks for the little hit of another reality every day.

We are absolutely thrilled to see your work on Common Dreams
Your contribution to the movement for peace with justice in the world, as an artist and an activist, is immeasurable. Your work speaks volumes for all of us in the struggle. Thankyou!

Thank you for your work. You make a statement with your pieces that it would take thousands of words to express

Thank you for your art, your intelligence, your color, your passion and energy.

I love getting your art on a daily basis. Kind of like a candle flame in the darkness.

You’re work is an inspiration! Lately, I feel my art should try to be more than just pretty pictures – you’ve definitely opened the door for other artists to speak out against injustices through the creative process.

I like what you paint, put together. I appreciate your ideas about touching on our values to make us aware. I look forward to your versions of what can influence us all for a wise change, as visual is my mode of learning.

Just wanted to let you know I *love* your pictures on CommonDreams.org. Beautiful! Stunning! Disturbing! Thought-provoking! I just wanted to drop you a comment and tell you how inspiring and thought provoking I find your art work that I see every day on Common Dreams. I don’t understand how you churn them out so fast, but keep up the good work. As bleak and dark as they are, I find them to be truthful, brilliant, poignant, and current. Hats off to you.

Natasha, I just had the great pleasure of looking at your art work. You are doing just what an artist is supposed to be doing. Each picture hits you right in your heart and soul. They tell a story, and I keep wanting to go back to that story even though most of them are so sorrowful. I love the way you use color, and I love the way your art work reaches out to show that you have deep feelings for the suffering of others. You could throw away the New York times because you make the news interesting and meaningful.

I’ m 49 aged woman in South Korea.
I found your name Common Dreams News Letter first.
Your work is holding me, I don’t know why.
But I remember your says compassion must be translated into action.
I never act until now. I have worked and feed kids after marriage.
Now I think I have only 10 years until 60.
I don’t know why I take your work on my blog, but I’m sure I do it again.
I hear CNN or BBC everyday. Sometimes I fall in deep sorrow.
I want to start painting, but I have no idea where I start.
Could I start this on my age?

Super to see a relevant complement to a news site (Common Dreams). Have appreciated all your pieces. Art is the message. And good art does not match the furniture.
Well, sure…I’m a serious fan. Some real heartbreaking images you’ve created, m’dear, but then, we live in heartbreaking times….

-Your work is the first thing I seek out on my daily rounds of the progressive sites. Thanks so much for your efforts

-I hope that Common Dreams passed along to you my message to them that having your artwork on their homepage is wonderful, exciting, provocative in the very best sense of that word. In a word—I love it!
-I really like your art. Look forward every day to Common Dreams — that did not used to be my favorite “alternative” source (the only sources I read).

-wow, you are really pushing some powerful images. I look foreward to Common Dreams everyday and yours is the first thing I click on. Your work lately has been quite edgy

To order prints/originals of images: All images appearing on www.commondreams.org since May 1 can be viewed at www.flickr.com/photos/natashamayers

natashamayers — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:53:24 +0000

Color prints, approximately 11″x17″, signed, suitable for framing $35 (mounted on foam core, shrinkwrapped, ready to hang $45)

I DON’T EARN ANY MONEY MAKING AN IMAGE EACH DAY FOR COMMONDREAMS.ORG. I RELY ON OCCASIONAL SALES OF ARTWORK TO MY LOYAL FANS TO KEEP ME GOING.

When you buy 3 prints, I’ll send a fourth one to your Republican Uncle for free.

Original acrylic paintings and drawings ( where work has not been altered in photoshop) starting at $150+

Shipping in USA $5 ($2 for each additional one)
International shipping $15 ($5 for each additional)

mayersnatasha@gmail.com
538 Townhouse Rd.
Whitefield, Maine. 04353

Artist-in-Residence (Maine Arts Commission)

natashamayers — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:59:25 +0000

Natasha Mayers

This artist is an Education Artist.

Natasha is a painter who supervises group murals on or off walls, indoor or outdoor, working with any theme. Recent subjects have been the history of immigration, the world’s bio-regions,local heroes and heroines, and community history painted on utility poles. She teaches a variety of art activities appropriate for multi-cultural education, parades, or dealing with personal or global issues. Natasha is interested in collaborative residencies, combining painting with other art forms, leads teacher workshops in mural painting for the classroom, and has extensive experience with schoolchildren of all ages and adults with disabilities. She has supervised over 500 murals! Currently she is teaching drawing at the university level and is artist-in-residence with Peace Action Maine. She recently received the second annual Arthur Hall award for “an artist whose work, community service and commitment to their craft inspires others around them to reach to their highest potential”

Contact Information

–>

Contact Information

538 Townhouse Road
Whitefield, ME 04353
Phone: 207/549-7516
Email: mayersnatasha@gmail.com

Category:	Artist
Preferred Audiences:	grade 2 and up
Seasonal Availability:	Year Round
Geographic Availability:	International
Fee:	$300/day plus travel and materials
Disciplines:	Mural painting,Design(costume,light,sound), Drawing, Painting, Sculpture

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM COMMONDREAMS.ORG

natashamayers — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:28:40 +0000

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM WWW.COMMONDREAMS.ORG
Today we are adding a new visual feature to our site: a daily artwork by Natasha Mayers.
We would like to take this opportunity to introduce our readers to Natasha Mayers, Common Dreams’ new artist-in-residence. She has been called Maine’s most committed activist-artist.
We couldn’t resist Natasha’s offer to make a piece of art for our regular email of headlines, news, and views.
Our intent for this new collaboration is based on the following proposal from Natasha to Common Dreams:
The art will be about a current issue. Like a political cartoonist “commenting” on the news, I will create, in a photo collage or painting, a playful and/or deadly serious response each day, a thought-provoking, open-for-interpretation visual image. I will want it to be a surprise for your readers, something fresh and unexpected to look forward to seeing.
Since I often work in series, expect to see the same issue dealt with in various ways for a few days, with a touch of irony, humor, pattern, exuberant color, and eccentric configurations.
Art can play an important role in helping us see, ask hard questions, and in moving us to act. It can sometimes touch us and make us feel, not just know, the important issues. Art can help us feel our feelings when things are scary, and help us reflect on who we are and what we are doing as a nation. It can help us get more in touch with our unease about what’s going on, and help us sense the emergency and the madness of it. Grief can open the heart to courage and compassion, and outrage can move us to an active and moral response.
Natasha would also like to find and present images about current events by other artists. We hope to expand the collaboration in the coming months.
To see a comprehensive list of shows she has been in, publications, collections, etc. Check out her site at http://natashamayers.wordpress.com/
Check out her artwork stored at http://www.flickr.com/photos/natashamayers/

Natasha Mayers Bio

natashamayers — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 23:52:13 +0000

Natasha Mayers has been called Maine’s most committed activist-artist. She has supervised more than 500 murals as a touring artist with the Maine Arts Commission since 1975. The painted utility poles in her town which depict local history were featured in Lucy Lippard’s book, The Lure of the Local. She is artist-in-residence for Peace Action Maine, and was a National Endowment for the Arts Millennium Artist, creating community art in Portsmouth, Ohio, exploring local views of identity, values, and sense of place, to demonstrate how involvement in the arts can improve the quality of community life. In 2005 she received the Arthur Hall Award “for an artist whose work, community service and commitment to their craft inspires others around them to reach to their highest potential.”

Natasha was awarded the Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission in 1998, the Artists Projects: New Forms Award from New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Zorach scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1976.

She has taught students from nursery school to college and in diverse populations: immigrants, refugees, prisoners, the homeless, and the “psychiatrically labeled.” She organized “Warflowers: From Swords to Plowshares,” a 2005-06 traveling exhibit by 44 Maine artists, launching discussion about economic conversion of defense-oriented launching discussion about how to convert from a defense-based economy.

In her own painting, Mayers often explores themes of peace and social justice. In her State of War series, by placing images of war onto Maine’s landscape, she effectively asks, “How would we feel if it happened here? “An empathetic response,” says Mayers, “requires imagination.”

In the artist statement for her most recent show, Natasha writes:
“SIGNS OF THE TIMES” is a daily visual journal of intruding news images and events and feelings, my attempt to make sense (and nonsense) of the times in which we live. Individual painted signs and symbols are configured into larger asymmetric “signs” with compound meanings.In this body of work, I am using the abstract language of road signs combined with painted news images….. to make a playful and deadly serious statement that reflects recent world events. These invented and found images are drawn from Maine to Guantanamo, New Orleans to Iraq, France to Afghanistan.) It may be simultaneously seen as a cry of joy and a cry of rage, a damning critique of our government’s policies, but also an artist’s coping mechanism for living with the onslaught of news.

Her portrait was recently painted by Robert Shetterly as part of his Americans Who Tell the Truth series (www.americanswhotellthetruth.org), with these words of hers:

“We need artists to help explain what is happening in this country, to tell the truth and reveal the lies, to be willing to say the emperor has no clothes, to create moral indignation, to envision alternatives, to reinvent language. We need artists to help us come together and share our voices and build community around powerful issues concerning our roles in the world and our planet’s survival. Compassion must be translated into action.”

Report on Venezuela: A Thriving Work in Progress

natashamayers — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:11:00 +0000

The Lincoln County News
February 21, 2007
By Natasha Mayers

Just back from a two-week study tour in Venezuela with Global Exchange, I am inspired by what we heard and saw. Many Venezuelans urged us to let people here know that “Democracy is alive and well in Venezuela”, “there’s no dictator here”, “for the first time we have hope”, and “we don’t need any lessons in democracy from the United States”.

In fact, region-wide polling by Latinobarometro shows Venezuelans nearly tied with Uruguay for first place in considering their country to be democratic, and again second only to Uruguay in their satisfaction with their democracy, as well as the most politically active of any Latin American country. These results, plus Chávez’ landslide victory in December with 63 percent of the vote (the highest of nine elections in Latin America last year), indicate that the government is delivering at least some of what its citizens voted for. Chávez, elected in 1999, has helped redistribute wealth and increased social services, including greater investment in education and health care and housing.

Nineteen of us, ages 24-75 (three social workers, two teachers, a law-yer, a union leader from Great Britain, a minister, and others), attended two to four meetings a day with the human rights commission, the major opposition party, the state-owned oil company, the women’s bank, three cooperatives, an adult education class, a health clinic, political scientists, a former Maryknoll missionary, the Afro-Venezuelan network, a community TV station, and more, in an attempt to see for ourselves how Hugo Chávez’ “Bolivarian Revolution” is working.

Images of Simon Bolivar, in all sizes, greeted us from many walls around Caracas as we crisscrossed the city: the great Liberator on his white horse, Simon with his girlfriend, Manuela, Bolivar with other Latin American heroes, José Marti and Miranda, and sometimes with inspiring quotations like “help me to speak truth to the strong and not to say lies to win applause from the weak” or another, “Be audacious when you plant, be prudent when you implement the plan.”

Some 47 percent of Venezuelans, mostly poor, buy subsidized food (40 percent off) at more than 15,000 “Mercal” centers established by the government. Much of the packaging has articles of the recently rewritten Constitution printed on it, to teach people their rights. On the soybean oil bottle: “The State guarantees to the elderly the full exercise of their rights, respects their human dignity, their autonomy, and guarantees them social security to assure their quality of life…” On the white flour: “Education is a human right and a fundamental social duty, democratic, free, obligatory… nourished with values of national identity and with a Latin American and universal vision…” Imagine our Bill of Rights feeling comfortable on the kitchen table! Imagine that we would all know our rights! “The Venezuelan people are now armed with ideas and the Constitution,” the former missionary told us. And indeed, at three different times, people on the street pulled out their copies of the Constitution to show us that they are participating in this Bolivarian process that is underway.

Organize yourselves into cooperatives and we will hire you, said the government. There were 800 cooperatives before Chávez, and now there are 200,000. We visited with some of the women making shoes at a co-op in Caracas and 70 others (former housewives) sewing shirts at a co-op in Barlovento. “We used to sit around watching our children grow up, then we took care of the grandchildren, and then it was time to die,” one woman with a gold-tooth smile related, and another woman chimed in, “We thought our future was set. We were hopeless.” A third quickly added, “But now we get to go out everyday, be with our friends, and bring money home. Now we are very happy here.” One woman got the others to laugh when she reported that her husband even has dinner ready for her when she gets home. (Minimum wage is $250/month.)

We also visited a cacao plant nursery coop, which grows replacement trees. The co-op members took classes in “cooperatism” (the common pursuit of the same goal) and work skills for 3-9 months and were responsible for the planning before the funding from the government came through. They will be responsible for the success or failure of their business, but the government buys most of what they are making, so there is some guarantee of success. The agricultural co-ops also sell most of their produce to the government, which distributes it to the “Mercals”.

Venezuela imports 80 percent of food needs. The government has distributed more than 4 million acres of state land to 200,000 families, along with credits and assistance and tractors and training, to try and increase the agricultural production of the country (which is only 6 percent of GNP). This is only half of the planned transfer of lands and people. Oil production since the 1920’s killed off other sectors of development, with 88 percent of the population now living in cities. Two thousand health centers have been created, staffed with doctors, mostly Cuban, who are available 24 hours a day. New houses and housing developments are everywhere and in every stage of construction.

We had an inspiring meeting with the directors of Bankmujer, the women’s bank, set up in 200l, modeled on the Bangladesh micro-credit model. The five women took turns telling us enthusiastically about their work: “This bank wasn’t created to make more capital, but to organize women and make them more productive. We are not interested in an increase of capital, but in social investment. The loan is like the hook to attract women. We are interested in the general development of women in this country. Our main interest is to promote solidarity among women so they can help each other. We help the most impoverished and oppressed and empower them to make the community grow. We provide education, self-esteem, and gender workshops. We have given 70,000 low-interest loans, created 292,000 jobs, and have helped 1,400,000 people. The bank is giving priority to agriculture and food security loans. Loans range from $1,000 for an individual to $83,000 for a cooperative.”

When I asked them to share their favorite stories, they positively beamed with pride as they told us of women who had never been in a bank before, of people who had been in debt forever and now had a thriving market business, and of women who received loans, who now have become Bankmujer representatives.

We had a very full and balanced report from the head of PROVEA, the human rights organization, who told us, “We have a democratic government with some authoritarian features. It is not a dictatorship, and it is not like Cuba. There is no surveillance here, and no intimidation of people by the government. No freedoms are restricted by this government.”

The annual report issued by PROVEA lists the positive changes which he recited to us: “The government’s policies are addressed to help the poorest people, levels of poverty have decreased, education levels are increasing, illiteracy is down, agrarian reform is underway, with lots of financial credit for small businesses. The government is promoting cooperatives, there’s a lot of political participation by the public, lots of freedom of expression. Chávez has not tried to limit speech. The Constitution is advanced on human rights.”

Then he went over the report’s negative findings: “The greatest threat to human rights is the concentration of power. The other public powers that could control Chávez are just doing what he says, which could lead to an abuse of power. There’s a strong presence of military around; police harassment has increased. It is hard to get a job in public administration if you are anti-Chávez. Violence in jails is terrible (but has always been).”

While we were there, the Enabling Laws were passed to accelerate what papers in the U.S. referred to as “Rule by Decree” and Chávez’ “Superpowers”. Venezuelans weren’t concerned. They explained that 4 or 5 presidents before Chávez had used this power, and that Chávez had also used it twice before to “deepen democracy” and to accelerate the social and economic development. He is still bound by the Constitution and 10 percent of registered voters can petition to rescind any laws.

Some of the colorful murals we passed on city walls had oil wells. ” Now it belongs to everybody” or “Now it is ours” was painted on each one in big letters. And indeed, when we spent four hours at PDVSA (“company of the people of the world”), the state-owned company with the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East and the most natural gas in South America (and the second largest corporation in South America), we discovered that oil revenues are being used as an instrument of development for the Venezuelan people. And it seemed that profit was not the motive. PDVSA’s goal for the next five years is to reduce poverty in Venezuela from 65 to 30 percent. (We spent a day visiting one of their 3400 social and economic projects, which included a large health clinic, employment training center, childcare center, shoemaking cooperative, and vegetable gardens.)

We were told, “It is also the responsibility of Venezuela to help poor countries afford energy and use oil to foster initiatives for regional cooperation.” Venezuela is building natural gas pipelines through Colombia and Panama, also to Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, and the Caribbean islands, to provide energy for South American development at discounted rates. Citgo, its subsidiary in the US, provides cheap fuel to some of our country’s poor communities.

Lots of people I talked with, mostly from the middle and upper class, were anti-Chavez, complaining about the police corruption (which has always been a problem because they are underpaid and under the control of the local mayors), poor quality of food and shortages in the state-subsidized markets, the lowering of educational standards now that there is a new community college system available to all, and the political polarization of the country.

“Venezuelans don’t like to work; they like to party. It’s a capitalist, consumer society, and socialism doesn’t have a chance here,” a computer-programmer told me. “People are hypnotized by Chávez and act like clapping seals,” confided the meticulous doctor I visited for a chest cold. The head of the opposition party, Primero Justicia, told us: “We are concerned that the international view is that we are allied with Cuba and that Chávez is buying political support internationally, instead of investing in Venezuela.” Several people who don’t like Chávez personally did readily admit that things were better for most Venezuelans.

With everybody talking politics, with people coming up to us on the streets asking our opinions and telling us theirs, I’ll share some of what troubles me. There is no strong women’s movement. No abortion is allowed, even in case of rape or incest. The air is filled with diesel fumes. Even with a fast clean subway, there’s always a traffic jam. There’s garbage in the ravines in the barrios. The toilets don’t always have enough water to flush. They speak Spanish too fast. The women are too beautiful. There are too many Simon Bolivar murals. But what troubles me most is that Venezuela is a thriving work in progress, a model of a participatory democracy, which deserves to have a chance, instead of having to fend off U.S. attempts to bring it down.

(Natasha Mayers is an artist and political activist who lives in Whitefield.)