social justice | art by mags!

well here we are, almost a week after the fascist won the white house. the news keeps getting scarier and scarier every day.

starting at 3am the night of the election, i’ve had a run on my “keep loving keep fighting” shirts on etsy. i’m down to only a handful left in a few sizes, so i decided to make a teespring campaign to be able to continue to offer the design for those who are finding solace in its message. (it’s the busy season for my pet biz so i’m working nonstop and don’t have the time to handprint more shirts, so i’m outsourcing it.)

https://teespring.com/keeplovingkeepfighting

for every shirt sold, $1 will be donated to the ACLU.

there are womens as well as mens cuts of shirts, and a few different color choices. there’s crew and vneck options, and even a hoodie.

i know it’s a little early to be thinking about holiday shopping – and also, who can even think about christmas at a time like this? – but if you are going to be participating in the upcoming gift giving season, please consider shopping locally and supporting independent artists and businesses, as well as those owned by minorities and women. (and realize some of us choose to utilize print-on-demand/drop shipping services like teespring because we don’t have the resources to run a full-fledged tshirt shop.)

for the last couple of months i’ve been focused on this design, which i sketched out by hand in the days after the pulse nightclub shooting in orlando back in june. in the week following that horrible event, i was using #keeplovingkeepfighting as a hashtag on social media, in solidarity with the victims, the orlando community and the greater lgbtq community. i drew the graphic as a visual representation of the hashtag, knowing as soon as i drew it that i wanted it to be a t-shirt design… which i originally hoped to print up to wear to our own gay pride parade here in new orleans.

well, that didn’t end up happening – it took me a lot longer than i expected to get the pen and ink design worked up properly and then a screen made so i could print t’s -Â and in the mean time, #altonsterling and then #philandocastille were shot and killed by police and i attended a rally first in new orleans that drew thousands to lee circle in support of #blacklivesmatter and then in baton rouge, la which turned into a super scary standoff with heavily militarized riot police. i wished again i’d had the shirt ready to wear by then, but instead i made signs to hold at both rallies that simply said “keep loving, keep fighting.”

i realized that this hashtag, this phrase, embodied the sentiment i most wanted to put out to the world in the wake of all the awfulness happening around us. and i realized that it was a sentiment that transcended many different social justice pursuits. because it is a reminder to both keep loving – ourselves and each other, taking care of ourselves and each other, with love always in our hearts – AND to keep fighting, keep persevering, keep struggling for our rights and for justice. it is a sentiment of inspiration, of hope, of strength, of resistance, of community, of love.

and so, finally, weeks later, i had made a screen and got some blank shirts and printed some up. i wasn’t even sure it was going to look right as a one-color t-shirt design, but as it turns out, i think it looks great. eye-catching. i’ve sold a few here and there via fb and word of mouth, and now the rest are up for sale in my etsy shop:Â https://www.etsy.com/shop/artbymags. i have both red/black and grey/black versions. $20 + s/h… while supplies last. (limited supply so don’t sleep!)

i’m working on an order for stickers with this design right now, and intend to make some 12″ x 12″ paper prints using spray paint backgrounds, so stay tuned.