Lettering For A Change
Sometimes, when there aren’t words for a particular moment in time, there is art to help us understand what we are feeling.
I heard about the mass shooting at a school in Texas late in the day that it happened. That Tuesday, I was home ill and my husband broke the news to me.
I am not okay. I am exhausted.
While I’d normally be trying to create as much artwork as I can, even while under the weather, the heaviness of this school massacre along with the racially-motivated one in NY that preceded it just wore on me.
What do you say? What could you possibly post in such a time of loss?
I scrolled past a post on IG where someone was TikTok-ing to “Today’s gonna be a good day, it’s gonna be a good day,” and it just made it worse.
I know the algorithm isn’t smart enough to know when to quit. But, still…the heartless thing was just twisting the dagger in the wound even more.
Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda.
~Proverbs 25:20 (ESV)
Yet, while thousands of affected Americans have cried out for gun control reform, it seems their cries have gone unheard. This latest school shooting was the 30th K-12 school shooting since the start of 2022.
I do not have to tell you that as a mother and an educator that I am concerned.
As I scrolled on, not even knowing what I might have been looking for, I stumbled upon some artwork that I thought I’d share (with the permission of the artists, of course). These pieces helped me to decipher a little bit of what I was feeling. They might do the same for you.
This post is by Mika of The Rebel Neon. I love Mika’s colorful work…and I love even more that here, it’s making a statement about the country we live in as it sits atop the word play. Truly, any reference to color of skin in front of the words “Lives” and “Matter” could potentially cause someone in the room to roll their eyes and suck their teeth. But, in this case, referring to children and completely omitting the color of skin-pointing to the most innocent among us-you can’t help but see the truth of the phrase despite the politics surrounding it.
After so many mass shootings in this country, passing into law measures that would protect its citizens from acts of terrorism should be a no-brainer. But, since it’s not so clear for many people that oppose gun law reform, Ndubisi Okoye created this striking image that calls attention to the very guns being used for these massacres and urges the viewer to do something…Beyond that, the caption itself is an arresting argument that dispels the myth (or widely held belief) that changing laws surrounding gun control has to be a long process. He asks his visitors to consider how quickly legislation was passed that offered more protective measures for the families of Supreme Court justices after peaceful protests were held in front of their homes with no reports of active shooters at all. The law passed in about a week. Mr. Okoye follows up with the directive to keep that same energy for the people and children of this country. If laws can be changed at just the anticipation of a threat to the safety of an elected official and their family, how much more so should they be changed at the evidence of actual terrorism executed upon the lives of the people they were elected to serve? (Added with permission on May 30.)
Nadia Fisher, the activist and illustrator behind the IG page, ariadelsole, can always be counted on to address the issue with art so beautiful, you never see the punch in the gut that’s coming from the text. Here, she is re-using a post from last year…from a past school shooting. She writes about how she is tired of it and how the laws support making gun purchases easier while banning books in schools and making it increasingly difficult to exercise the right to vote in this country, etc. Her justifiable rant is backed up by the facts that last year at least 17 states had enacted 28 new laws to suppress voting, and over 1000 books were banned in the past year alone, while over that same amount of time, there has been no traction on passing HR 8 which would expand federal background checks for firearms. Meanwhile, our children, unaware of any of these reindeer games, are just being kids, completely oblivious to it all.
Which brings me to the last piece I must share…
Pan Cooke, an artist that I admire for how timely and relevant all of his work is, shared this piece.
Please take special notice of the call to action to text ACT to text to 644-33 in the caption there…
While I do believe in and am a witness to the power of prayer, I also believe that faith without works is dead (James 2:20). Just like, I cannot pray and believe for excellent health and a trim waistline while I’m eating fast food every day and constantly putting off exercise (get it together, Stacey 🙄), I can’t think and pray the pain of immense loss away. We cannot think and pray gun violence to magically end. We have to walk out the steps of what it will take to get there today, believing that our thoughts and prayers along with our efforts to instill the right leadership in every office will someday return a harvest of greater gun control and greater peace in this nation. Otherwise, just like Mr. Cooke’s very powerful piece here, our thoughts and prayers without corresponding action will do nothing but end us right back here at the next massacre.
And the children this nation has lost will have died in vain.
Every once in a while, we have to just take a beat. We have to pause and give ourselves a moment to feel the moment we are in. It’s not a time to be sold to. It’s not a time to be following trends. It’s just time to stop, feel what we feel, reassess and find a way to do something that will bring about some change, however small.
For me, this was one of those times.
And sometimes, it takes artists like these listed above to light the way. I’m grateful to have found their work this past week.
Please take a moment to learn how you might help the victims of The Uvalde School Shooting.
