Draw is Life: Crisis art and ICE storms

What is this column? I’m going to do that classic “answer by saying what it’s not” thing. First, it’s not going to be the definitive answer on anything. It’s not going to be “the way”, I’m not going to preach from on high on how things should be done.

I draw for a living in an age when folks are trying to crack the code to make art, but I want to share the human experience behind the images you all see. This business is wonderful and treacherous, I’ll share stories here about how I get by.

If that’s instructive, then cool. But none of this is gospel.

My name is Mike Hawthorne, and welcome to Draw is Life

Gustav Richard Steinbrecher after Alfred Rethel, Death the Strangler, The First Outbreak of Cholera at a Masked Ball in Paris, 1831, 1851, C

I make comics.

I can’t think of a sillier thing than that when compared to what’s going on in the world. Bombs are dropping on civilians, kids are being separated from their families, government agents are shooting people in the street, all while I draw from the comfort of my studio.

I can’t think of a sillier thing to be doing with my time.

And yet, I do it.

Throughout each day I take time away from drawing comics to walk my dogs. Lately my dogs and I have seen armed men with armored vests in our neighborhood. Unlike the videos I’ve seen online, no one is confronting them here. These guys aren’t even wearing masks.

I’m not surprised. They’re in a poor, working class, immigrant neighborhood. Most folks are just staying indoors and avoiding conflict at all costs because they know what conflict costs.

Keith Haring, Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death, 1989, Keith Haring artwork © Keith Haring Foundation

Years back, before all the current “bad guys” were running things, my neighbors’ home was raided. It was directly across the street, so I had an up-close view of a full-on SWAT team with militarized armored vehicles serving a warrant on a middle-aged Mexican mother.

A warrant for a misdemeanor.

I have brave neighbors who have come here from Haiti, Mexico, South America, the Dominican Republic, and more. They have families they’re worried about, so no one has been confronting these ICE guys in our neighborhood. Not out of cowardice, but out of caution.

I confess, when I have to pass these armed federal agents I do so with a nervous heart. I’m American, but I’m Puerto Rican and I know anything could touch off an encounter with these guys. It’s such a concern to my family that my kids have asked me not to speak Spanish in public if I don’t have to. If they’re out they’ll sometimes call frantically when they spot an unmarked van, worried I’ll go out with the dogs.

My last name is Hawthorne, but it wasn’t supposed to be. My family name is Otero.

My mother, who passed away decades ago, was a little Afro-Latina who came to the mainland when she was fifteen years old. She experienced racism from the moment she arrived. She learned the hard way that her skin, her accent, her face put her at risk.

Blanca Iris Otero, and some goofy little cowboy.

My mother was the “other woman” to a married white man who quickly abandoned her after he got her pregnant. Her experiences showed her that she and I may not have been valued here on the mainland, but a name like “Hawthorne” would serve me in ways that the name “Otero” would not.

All of that is to say that I understand the cautious fear my neighbors live under and am aware of the good fortune I was gifted by my lost mother.

There is a terrible logic and a screaming inequity to it.

As an artist, I don’t scream. I make.

I made a book about my mother’s story, but I had years…decades to process our pain and extract art from it. I had that luxury of time to serve her story.

I feel a pressure to make work about our current time of crisis. Work that meaningfully rises to the occasion. Only I don’t want to do performative work to show what “side I’m on”. I don’t want to make work that is hollow gratification for whomever glances at it on Instagram for a second before scrolling on.

The history of art during times of crisis, times of protest, is rich. When I think of protest work my mind goes to Picasso’s Guernica. It’s not really a painting I love, if I’m honest I think Goya’s Third of May is more powerful, but Guernicastrikes me as the kind of protest work that does its job so well the world had to notice the catastrophe that inspired it. Hell, it made the WW2 German’s uncomfortable enough to commission their own art in response to Picasso.

Francisco Goya’s “This is what you were born for,” from his series “The Disasters of War” (1810-20).

Cleary, meaningful artwork that changes and deepens how people think of an event can be made. I just haven’t quite figured out my way of doing it. Mainly because as soon as I steal away a moment to think about how the times are affecting me and my work, another cataclysm hits. Another bomb, another body, another horrendous injustice. More and more keep coming, fired off at a machine gun’s pace, ‘till I feel like all I’m doing is ducking for cover.

I suppose I’m overthinking it. I should get over my shit and draw a piece of some superhero beating up or choking out an ICE agent, but that feels like an insubstantial response when I walk out my front door and see these guys prowling my neighborhood for brown people to terrorize.

As I go safely into my studio to draw, I know I need to spend some time on honest reflection, to think on what all this means and distill it into something that would serve my neighbors, not something that would entertain the masses.

I don’t know how. Not yet.

Not yet.

Just give me some time.

Happy drawing.

Image © MoMA / Flag © Jasper Johns 1954-55

References:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/21/art-in-a-time-of-war

https://www.whitecourtart.com/blog/art-in-times-of-crisis/

https://whitney.org/collection/works/46387#

https://www.myartbroker.com/collecting/articles/art-as-activism

https://muralarts.org/artworks/la-borinque-a/

https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/art-protest-public-space

My daughter Maria’s new Substack newsletter is a great read. Go check it out!

Creating an empathetic space within your writing.

I have a sketch event planned with the folks at Raremarq. It launches this week, and I’ll be posting a new piece of art every day from the 2nd till the 14th - Valentine’s Day!

Follow me over on Raremarq for more info and to be notified when the event starts.

Thanks!

Your boy,

Mike