Kenny Cole, a visual artist living in Midcoast Maine, was at SPACE Gallery on Veterans Day. Cole was overseeing Maine Draw-A-Thon, an event designed to get people using art to reconsider how war dollars can be spent. The event was put on in conjunction with the Bring Our War Dollars home campaign. Cole was kind enough to talk with us about the event immediately after it was finished.
Links:
Bring Our War Dollars Home
http://www.bringourwardollarshome.org
Maine Draw-A-Thon
http://mainedrawathon.blogspot.com
Kenny Cole:
http://www.kennycole.com
Code Pink:
http://www.codepink4peace.org
Us (These Machines Kill Fascists):
http://www.facebook.com/tmkfascists
http://www.twitter.com/tmkfascists
These Machines Kill Fascists [TMKF]:
What were you trying to accomplish with the Draw-A-Thon?
Kenny Cole [KC]:
To get together with other artists, which was the first thing that was fun about it in my book. I wanted to meet other artists and draw and specifically come up with ideas about how we can better spend the money we spend on war and to visualize that through art.
TMKF:
The room was full, pretty much all day.
KC:
Yes. There were lots of people. We had a bunch of tables set up and people brought their own materials and needed very little coaching. It seemed very easy for them to come up with ideas on how to better spend our war dollars. It's kind of like a no-brainer; anything other than war is good.
TMKF:
You said earlier that you had some veterans come in off the street after the Veterans Days Parade.
KC:
Bring Our War Dollars Home was involved in the Veterans Day Parade and Lisa Savage [from Code Pink Maine] made fliers to try to get people in here who were looking at the parade. We were offering to - in addition to coming up with better ideas of how to spend our war dollars - draw portraits of veterans. We did have some veterans come in and I don't think they really knew what was going on, but it was a very interesting experience. I made a portrait of a Veteran and I talked to her for a little bit. I asked her why she came and she said, "Someone handed me a flier and I came in." We chatted and I asked her, "If you could spend the war dollars on something else, what would you spend it on?" She said she would spend it on athletics for kids. It was an interesting kind of engagement that we had, kind of like cold sales.
TMKF:
So you were simultaneously engaging a crowd of people who think we should be spending money differently, but you also had this opportunity to talk with some people who might not be on that same page.
KC:
Yes. I think it was kind of set up to preach to the choir, so that little bit where we positioned ourselves to have this on Veterans Day when there was a parade, we thought that maybe [some people would come in like that]. It didn't happen a lot, but I think that was probably most interesting, the crossing over and reaching out to those people. I think it's kind of a tricky thing to on Veterans Day bring a veteran into a place that is kind of anti-war. I think art makes it somehow OK, and it worked.
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kenny cole Bioby ferrelfilm109 views
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