I got this email today from Delia Brown,  an artist I love.  (her feature will be running this November) Back to the matter at hand,  please read her powerful words and get out there and vote.   Lets make this happen.  (self portrait paintings by Delia Brown)

I know I don't need to communicate to any of you just how important this election is - Most likely the most important we'll see in our lifetime. Not just because we need new leadership in a dire way (we've been needing that since the last couple of elections), but also because of the historic and amazing possibility of a president of color in the White House!! And, a president who is very learned and even poetic in his articulations and observations? For me, and I know for many of you as well, totally inspiring and exciting.

I know we've all been inundated with appeals for campaign help. I apologize for adding to that influx of stuff. Meanwhile, I feel a need to reach out on a very personal level and share my feelings about our responsibility -- as creative, intelligent, progressive-minded Americans -- as to what we really need to do to contribute. I want to encourage you all, if you haven't already done so, to reach deep inside for a moment in these crucial last couple of weeks, and determine if there is anything more you can do to move this campaign towards victory.

This hasn't been a great financial year for a lot of people. It has kind of sucked for me, frankly. But rather than decide that I couldn't give, I realized that I couldn't NOT give...If I didn't do all I could for Obama, I would have no leg to stand on and complain if we end up with another disastrous conservative in office. I'm talking about tithing, people! I have given a big percentage of my income this year to my man Barack. I do wish I had been able to spend more TIME hitting the road and knocking on doors on his behalf, and am regretful that my travels beginning tonight which will keep me out of the country for the next 3 weeks prohibit me from going down to Pennsylvania again. Lela Rose is my personal hero right now - She has been shlepping down there several times a week for the last month and I've seen her in action, working the streets and registering voters and giving the most inspiring shpeels to some of our confused or uncommitted co-patriots.

So, if you are thinking about that pair of Louboutins, buy them! But then give the same dollar amount to Barack Obama, and you can wear them when you go out to celebrate his victory. It won't be any fun to be looking good in another sad Republican regime.

If you can't cough up the cash, considering spending a day this weekend down in Pittsburg or Philly. It is really a fun way to spend the day. Your help is needed! I know that PA is already slated to go for Barack, but we need a BIG victory. We can't leave any margins for error. Those of us who know that a lot of healing needs to start taking place here at home, we need to participate in that healing by helping Barack get elected.

Here is the NY State "get involved" page:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/nyhome

OK, I'm gonna get off this pulpit now, and get my ass to the studio, and hope that if there is one or two of you out there who might be inspired to action, you will act on it now! The world will really thank you, and you will be very glad you did. I apologize for preaching, but I just had to send this word out as I get ready to leave the country when it is laying so heavy on my mind.

Lotsa love,
Delia

I was shocked to find out that there have been 23 hijackings and attempted seizures off the Somali coast since mid-March. (Intern. Maritime Bureau)   When Vivienne Westwood created her critically acclaimed pirates collection, I doubt this is what she had in mind.   Weren't pirates characters from big Hollywood action movies, with gorgeous movie stars swashbuckling about in Keith Richard's makeup?   I don't know, maybe I have been sleeping under an art rock, but I thought this was worth blogging about.
 

Somali pirates have launched what the International Maritime Bureau calls the biggest surge of piracy on modern record, attacking more than 60 vessels this year off Somalia and in the adjoining Gulf of Aden. The Gulf of Aden, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal, is the main shipping route between Asia and the Middle East to Europe.     For the first time, they attacked a passenger ship carrying 302 civilians, mostly British and American. 

"The southern coastline is among the most dangerous in the world," said Mr Mwangura. These criminals have not only stolen valuable cargo, they are now taking hostages.

I hate to be a fatalist, but no where is safe. .

Washington post article

Jill Greenberg has been around a long time.   She's a very successful commercial photographer and has had some success in the "fine art" photography world.  Although it looks just like her commercial work hung in a "fine art" gallery if you ask me.    Like McCain or not, is beside the point here.
This scandal is all about ethics.  Deception was employed to manipulate a public figure who's only fault is that he is a political candidate running on the Republican ticket.    Yes, he's a warmonger, but make a painting if you want to address that.       Unfortunately for him, McCain was the pawn that Greenberg manipulated; unbeknownst to him.   The above images are before and after "personal" shots that Jill did, below is the unretouched cover where he looks like shit, she purposefully left red eyes and bad skin.

A little backround about her.   Jill is the same photographer who shot "crying babies" a couple of years ago and had a billboard on Highland Ave advertising her show at her gallery.     During the shoot she asked the parents to leave the room for a few minutes and proceeded to upset the children, take candy away, yell at them, do whatever it took to get a shot of them crying.      As a mother, I wonder why would you do this?
  Ms. Greenberg is terribly self involved.     Stick to bears and dogs- Jill.
 
Her legacy, aside from her work, she will be remembered as the photographer who ruined it for everyone else.    The repercussions are as follows:
photographers will have less control on the publication of their images. 
-magazines will have less chance of getting public figures to pose and if they do will demand photo approval.
Here is the quote Jill gave PDN about the shoot and how the shots were done.


Greenberg asked McCain to "please come over here" for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. "That's what he thought he was being lit by," Greenberg says. "But that wasn't firing."

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. "He had no idea he was being lit from below," Greenberg says. And his handlers didn't seem to notice it either. "I guess they're not very sophisticated," she adds.  In the meantime Jill was fired by her agent and sued by The Atlantic.    She has since gone back to Bruce at Artmix who was her agent (and mine) a few years ago.     What she really needs now is a PR clean up crew to do some damage control.

   
PDN article

We've all heard the hype.   The teen pregnancy, the anti- environmental stance, the pro drilling policies.   (Although she isn't in bed with "big-oil")  I guess she was against teaching sex ed because she couldn't teach it at home to her own kid.    Hey, I get it, we all make mistakes.     This election should not be about gender or race.   It's about issues- and in this case bad taste or poor judgement.   Can someone get a PR clean up crew in there for damage control.    In this day and age, do you really need to be photographed with a giant grizzly bear under your ass?   Love the giant crab.  (There is a similar portrait of her in Newsweek this week on the same rug)

Now these images may not offend the 60 plus middle American somewhat uneducated constituancy of the shrinking Republican party.   But I find it offensive.   I know I have to keep my values in check, but come on.    Is this a woman I can look up to?  Maybe if I wanted to take woman back 100 years in terms of the progress we have made.    


Didn't McCain do a little backround check to see what he was getting into, I guess this just shows his lack of judgement.    It is a sad day in America when the best the Republicans can do is the McCain- Sarah Palin ticket. 

PROUD TO SAY THAT LIPSTICKTRACEZ IS PRO-OBAMA.