Being Aware
Media: monoprinting, screen printing, relief printing, and print collage
Paper: Various cotton printmaking papers
Size: 30 x 22” (76.2 x 55.9 cm) and 22 x 30″ (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Year: 2026
Being Aware (2026) is a series of eleven original prints, each incorporating a relief printed symbol from the artist book Fear (2002). Over two decades later, the issues addressed in Fear still exist.
The original 2002 statement for Fear reads:
Reflection on our nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks. Ten symbols address issues including the manipulation of information, ownership of knowledge, validity of truth, and ways communication manifests cultural identity.
The 2026 statement for Being Aware reads:
Journalist and author David Brooks wrote that “Democracy is conversation. It is compromise. It’s a series of very subtle and very challenging social skills across ideological differences.”
As a citizen and cultural worker, I believe our 250-year-young experiment in democracy can work and set an example of how a just and free society operates. To succeed, it requires “We The People” to put in the hard work. Art has the ability to aid reflection on complex issues across a broad ideological spectrum of diverse citizens. The works in the Being Aware series aim to encourage deeper conversation about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of the people, by the people, for the people.
Through revisiting these symbols, Being Aware invites us to see the world as layered, complex, and full of possibility, affirming the power of diverse perspectives to challenge divisive strategies, overcome ignorance, move beyond narrow fundamentalist viewpoints, and inspire curiosity and wonder.
What demands critique is the negative tribalism and hatred directed toward those who identify differently than oneself. This hatred is being echoed from the highest levels of government and amplified through grassroots movements that seek to control language, dismiss diverse perspectives, and undermine knowledge. Debate and dialogue are being replaced with threats and intimidation, fundamentally reshaping the fabric of public life.
An open and honest conversation about what is unfolding here is not optional. Civilization demands it, particularly as artificial intelligence carries the power to aid in upending core human values that we should instead be working together to secure.
Pages from Fear
Statements for Being Aware prints
Being Aware 1
Wedge issues are weaponized by political influencers to fracture coalitions and opposition, diluting the power of unified groups. When ideological battles are fought with wedges, truth becomes the casualty and civil society decays. Here, a hawk and a dove calmly face each other while embodying opposing metaphors: hawks favor conflict; doves seek negotiation. A small wedge turned upright representing “We The People” stops the larger wedge. This David and Goliath dynamic holds only if we refuse exploitation by politically motivated culture wars. Speaking honestly to those we presume are adversaries, and speaking truth to power, is democracy in action.
Being Aware 6
Democracy is an experiment. Embracing honest conversation about our democracy’s past, present, and future, celebrated, flawed, and unspoken, expands possibility and protects freedom. Vigorous, respectful debate is not a threat to democracy; it is democracy. Symbolism here includes right/left brain thinking divided by a wishbone, ideological competition charts becoming the nation’s EKG pulse, and red and blue flags merging into purple at the center. Let’s talk.