Posters for a Green New Deal: In the News and In the Wild

November 05, 2020

It’s been two months since the launch of our new book, Posters For A Green New Deal: 50 Removable Posters To Inspire Change. We’ve loved sharing our art and message with you and it’s inspiring that our posters resonate at a time when big bold changes and global cooperation are needed most. Our book is a collaboration with Workman Publishing and 50 independent artists in support of Sunrise Movement, an organization working to slow climate change, and we’ll continue to spread our message of art, activism and excitement for a Green New Deal into the new year and beyond. Without further ado, here’s what people are saying about our Green New Deal poster book, which can be purchased on our website and wherever books are sold. Thanks for all the love for our new book everyone!

Posters For A Green New Deal: 50 Removable Posters To Inspire Change has been really well received so far! It’s been described as timely, substantial, and gorgeous. It’s a perfect gift for progressively minded friends and family, or you can get it for yourself like Trisha Ray (above) who said, “Just picked up this book of amazing Green New Deal Posters! I’ve been waiting all week to go and buy it. As I’ve been on the hunt for some artwork to spice up my very white and bland walls, discovering this book of removable posters was perfect. Always here to support activists, artists, and local book stores.” It’s so heartwarming when we hear comments like these, so please keep them coming. We love hearing from you.

In September, Posters For A Green New Deal: 50 Removable Posters To Inspire Change was reviewed by LA Weekly, the best source of arts and entertainment events in Southern California. “At a hefty 11×14 inches, and with 50 removable plates, the book is a really satisfying object as well as a source of mindful decor. The full spectrum of posters ranges from the throwback to the modern day, with street art, crazy font design, landscape painting and bouncy surrealism, illustration, conceptual schematic and architectural scenes, psychedelic solutions, cribbed advertising language, upbeat almost children’s book energy and more adult and even dire sensibilities, fantasy, fable, and pure poetry.” We love that description and we’re grateful for the wonderful review! Read the rest of the review and then head to CAN for the book.

Print Mag recently included Posters For A Green New Deal as one of the best 30 art and design books of 2020, and we’re so honored. Here’s what they had to say: “These oversized and removable posters, designed by 40 illustrators and representing a wide range of artistic styles, meet the issue of climate change with urgency and passion.”

So crazy to come upon Green New Deal posters in the wild in San Francisco! Someone pulled We Need A Green New Deal by Aaron Perry-Zucker and We Demand A Green New Deal by Shane Henderson from the book and posted them on the community message board outside Beanbag Cafe on Divisadero Street in San Francisco. Everyone who passes by can see the artwork and this is exactly why we made our Green New Deal poster book in the first place – so the art could be used to inform the general public and communicate the possibilities under a Green New Deal. (Will the ‘poster poster’ please stand up so we can thank you properly?)

We checked something off our bucket list when Sierra Magazine, the national magazine of the Sierra Club, reached out through Workman (our publishers) about a feature on our new book! They wrote that Posters For Change: 50 Removable Posters To Inspire Change is a “beautiful and thoughtful reflection on the core values of the environmental movement” and “represents a wide range of artistic styles and pairs each featured image with pithy text.” Thank you Sierra Magazine for the wonderful article!

They also had a chance to interview CAN artist Brooke Fischer about her posters, AOC: Green New Deal and a botanically-themed Green New Deal, and about her path to becoming an activist. Brooke said, “All my art has been very nature-driven, because I want to promote a stop-and-smell-the-flowers perspective and force people to study the singular beauty of a plant or butterfly. With our planet in peril, I just couldn’t deal until I started combining natural elements with messages I care about. It’s about engaging people in important causes, but in a lovely, passive, enjoyable way.” Be sure to read the full Sierra Magazine article.

Posters For Change: 50 Removable Posters For A Green New Deal would not be the book it is without the artists whose posters are included in it! To curate the book we reached out to our existing community but also to a lot of new artists all over the world in places like Greece, Austraila and Ukraine. Artist Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik (above) is a California-based comic book artist with a poster in the book, Green Lantern, Green New Deal and Patrick Herschberger in Michigan, adapted his Earth Day 2019 mural into a poster, The Green New Deal.

Mandy Sloan in Arizona, whose Unite poster is also included, told us, “I feel so honored to have my work in this book amongst so many other amazing artists. I couldn’t believe how beautiful and well thought out each page is, bringing awareness that we can’t stall any longer. The time to take action and care for our environment is now. We owe it to our little ones. And as well, my kids love the art in this book. It’ll be very special when I can talk to them about the posters and topics in this book.”

It feels like 100 years ago instead of just eight months, but we had an actual live in-person Green New Deal poster show last March, a week before the pandemic closed everything down! We got together with the Living New Deal, Sunrise Movement Bay Area and Canessa Gallery to put on a great party that showcased a lot of the art in the book. You can read all about that fun time (man do we miss parties) in our blog post, Posters for Social Change: Green New Deal Art Show. Raising awareness for the Green New Deal has been at the top of our agenda at CAN since introducing our very first posters almost two years ago and we’re very happy to have so many artists making art for this important cause.

Thank you for reading, for activism-ing and for your support of our new book, and we hope you stay safe and well! ~Team CANWe Partnered with Merrell (Again!) on See America Art Inspired Trail Running Shoes

May 27, 2021

We Partnered with Merrell (Again!) on See America Art Inspired Trail Running Shoes

Do you know who loves the outdoors and helping good causes as much as we do? Merrell shoes! We enjoyed our first collaboration with them so much we did it again – introducing a new line of trail running shoes inspired by See America posters of our nation’s most celebrated through-hikes, the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. One part inspiration and one part commemoration, our new shoe collection helps support Earthjustice organization. Integral to the collection are amazing poster designs the shoes were inspired by, from artists Brooke Fischer, Jonathan Scheele and Annie Riker. We really hope you love reading the story of how this project came to be. Our heartfelt thanks to Merrell for always being down to party with us in support of a worthy organization!

This summer, we’re counting on the restorative properties of Mother Nature to keep us grounded as we all get reacquainted with our new normal, whatever that is! Fellow hikers and trail enthusiasts will know that nothing compares to the majesty of U.S. national parks, and that some of the longest hiking trails in the country, like the Continental Divide Trail, the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, are equally amazing. These three trails were chosen to inspire our new See America trail running collaboration with Merrell, and the resulting Nova 2 trail running shoes for both men and women came out great! Styled after the vintage vibes reflected in the iconic See America poster series, the limited-edition Merrell Nova 2 lets you take a piece of the three most famous trails in the United States with you wherever you go. It’s the perfect escape vehicle for when you’re ready to answer the call of the wild.

Our first design in our new trail running See America project with Merrell is based on the Pacific Crest Trail poster by LA-based artist Brooke Fischer. The Pacific Crest Trail stretches 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada along the mountainous crest of the Cascades into the Sierra Nevadas and through the Mojave Desert winding through Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, and overlapping with the John Muir Trail for most of its length. About her design, Brooke says, “I have always found John Muir’s love of nature and writings to be so inspiring, and my favorite of his quotes is, ‘In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.’ Our experiences in nature feed our souls and give us a greater understanding of life as we see it between the pines.”

Next up in our See America x Merrell trail running shoe collection is a design based on Jonathan Scheele’s Continental Divide Trail poster, which perfectly captures the beauty of the Continental Divide Trail with its towering peaks and open fields. A frequent contributor to CAN’s art campaigns, Jonathan lives and works in Tennessee and loves to hike as often as possible, either at local parks or on summer trips out West. Sales of both the poster and the shoe – and in fact our entire See America collection – give back to Earthjustice.org, dedicated to building a better future for our planet!

Annie Riker is an Asheville, NC based artist who contributed the Appalachian Trail poster to our Merrell trail running See America project. “Max Patch, a stretch of mountain meadow along the Appalachian Trail, was the first hike I did with my family after moving to Asheville. It was fall, so the colors of the trees below us looked like a beautiful patchwork quilt and the 360-degree views of mountains all around were incredible. We sat up there for hours nibbling on the fruit and crackers we had packed while watching kids with kites and a few Appalachian Trail thru-hikers pass by. The beautiful views, and the on-top-of-the-world feeling was something I wanted to capture in the creation of this poster.”

We worked hard on this project and we’re so glad we can finally announce it! So far the shoes have been a big hit. If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, you can read all about our first collaboration See America x Merrell Hiking Boots to learn more about. Thanks to Christopher Wachter and baby Gus for the adorable photo, and thanks to you for reading about our new See America trail running shoe project with Merrell. Have a wonderful summer and we hope you get many chances to enjoy the great outdoors!! ~Team CAN

Posters for Social Change: Green New Deal Art Show

March 24, 2020

With everything going on in the world it’s hard to believe our Posters for Social Change: Green New Deal Art launch party was only a little over two weeks ago! It was a truly magical night, packed with artists, activists, Bay Area locals and art lovers of every age who turned out in support of the Green New Deal. And even though our show has temporarily closed due to California’s shelter in place order, the posters remain up on the gallery walls and they’re definitely etched in our hearts. We’re so happy to share some highlights of the evening with you and be sure to check out the video too!

The party kicked off on Friday, March 6th at Canessa Gallery in downtown San Francisco, and we cohosted the evening with our friends from the Living New Deal. Canessa Gallery is over 100 years old and was the perfect backdrop for the over 100 contemporary Green New Deal posters and vintage WPA Federal Art Project prints we installed! The gallery survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, and the space was once a print shop where activists gathered during the 1930s and 1940s. Not only was the space beautiful but it was full of history as well.

We timed the show to coincide with SF’s First Fridays Open Studios downtown art walk and throughout the evening, we livestreamed the party on social media so remote fans could still experience it firsthand. This was wonderful because several artists had work in the show but were unable to be there in person, so watching on our Instagram was the next best thing! Artists Christopher Wachter and Clare Rickard each contributed a design to the show and were able to attend in person which was amazing! Equally amazing was seeing all the art together in one place and thinking about how some of the posters will look in our Green New Deal book (coming September 2020).

During the show we hosted a mini CAN popup shop and sold Green New Deal posters, books and limited edition Green New Deal pins, and it seemed like folks were eager to take things home with them! We capped off the evening with discussions led by CAN and the Living New Deal, as well as a rousing protest song led by special guests from Sunrise Movement. Best of all, the show was proof of our mission at CAN that art truly is the best way to inspire social change, and that by bringing people together around a common cause we can make the world a better place.

Want to know about CAN and the Green New Deal? Be sure to read our previous blog posts Introducing Posters for a Green New Deal and People Will Say It’s Propaganda for more about how our company was inspired by the WPA and New Deal. Remember to keep an eye out for our Green New Deal tear out poster book launching in September 2020 and featuring a lot of the great art in our show! In the meantime, you can buy all of the posters framed or unframed on our website. ~Team CAN

We’ve Given Away 6,000 Free Masks (and Counting)

August 24, 2020

Creative Action Network is excited to announce our new face mask collection that gives free masks to frontline workers! For every mask we sell, we donate a mask to a essential worker who needs one. We’ve already distributed 5,000 free masks since July and we’re so grateful to everyone who helped us get this project off the ground. A huge thank you to Coworker.org for getting our masks out into the world and to Economic Security Project for their generous support. Thanks to all the artists who contributed designs to this project and for always being so enthusiastic about our art campaigns. And thanks to you, our customers, for helping us get more masks into the hands of essential workers who need them! Our mask collection is growing fast and we thought you’d enjoy the story of how it all started. Thanks so much for reading and as always, thanks for wearing a mask! ~Team CAN

In March 2020, we reached out to our artist community with an urgent call for mask art in support of workers as the pandemic grew. We were happily overwhelmed with great designs from artists who wanted to lend a hand! Then we started hustling to bring the masks to market and and to get them into our shop, which was extra challenging because we were doing it in the middle of a global pandemic. We recognized the need to get free masks into the hands of workers across the US, and we wanted to try a buy one, give one program, so we kept on working to make it happen. This summer, we hit the ground running with our first batch of masks!

We started selling masks in July and they’ve been a hit so far. Our goal when we launched was to get as many free masks into the hands of essential workers as we could, as quickly as we could. We’re proud that we’ve donated 5,000 masks to people who need them already, and it’s exciting that photos of our masks being worn out in the streets are bubbling up from Coworker.org partners and on social media. In a world where we’ll all be wearing masks for the near future, we’re glad to be helping out!

Our partnership with Coworker.org is how we’re getting free masks from our mask collection into the hands of essential workers. Coworker.org is a group of dedicated organizers working to shift power into the hands of working people all across our country, and through their network of organizations that support workers we’ve given masks to Freedom To Thrive, We Dream In Black, Healthcare Professionals & Allied Employees Union Local 5058 and many more worker causes. Thanks to Mrs. Elaine, a childcare professional who has barely stopped working during the pandemic, her coworker and North Carolina Central University cafeteria worker from Durham, NC for sending us photos in their CAN masks!

Coworker.org also put us in touch with Shanise Renee, a campaign organizer in Durham, NC who shared a cute selfie wearing a free mask with her son. Shanise is wearing our most popular individual mask, We Can Do It Vote! by David Hays, and we’re now offering variety packs of five and ten masks like the Workers Rights variety 10-pack too. In addition to helping essential workers like Shanise, sales of our mask collection also support the independent artists who designed them, and we’re receiving new design submissions all the time. Look for our second and third batches of new masks this coming this fall!

Speaking of artists, we also want to acknowledge the artists who contributed their mask designs to our campaign. It really has been wonderful to see the creative community rally during the pandemic by raising artist voices and talents to help make things just a little better for all of us. Thank you to Rocky Casillas (pictured above), Roberlan Borges, Amy Smith, David Hays and Susanne Lamb for being a part of our first ever face mask campaign! ~Team CAN

Immigration. Never before in modern history has that word been as charged or controversial as it is in our current political environment, in the United States and across the globe. With all the noise, news and nonsense these days it’s easy to lose sight of the millions of meaningful, hopeful success stories that immigrants all over the world have shared, including our amazing community of talented folks!

Introducing Posters For A Green New Deal!

March 18, 2019

“The country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932

“This is going to be the (Green) New Deal, the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil-rights movement of our generation.”
– Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 2019

Nearly 100 years ago, staring down The Great Depression, our government put the nation’s artists to work with President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Its artists, their art, and the story of America coming together stands out in history as a model for tackling our biggest problems, and inspired us to start CAN in the first place. We even made sure our name had three letters, just like the WPA.

Check out our new book, Posters For A Green New Deal: 50 Removable Posters to Inspire Change and our full collection of Green New Deal Posters here!

Today, we find ourselves in a similar position, facing down climate change, income inequality, racial injustice and more problems too big for small solutions. That’s why we’re so excited to join the movement advocating for a Green New Deal: a set of progressive legislative proposals aimed at, among other things, curbing the effects of climate change and transforming the U.S. economy and infrastructure. While the Green New Deal is still in its infancy, at CAN we’ve taken up the charge of helping the public understand and imagine what could be possible with this exciting new set of policies — just as the artists of the original New Deal helped to inform and advocate for those innovative programs over 80 years ago.

Our Green New Deal campaign premiered on March 14, 2019 in Washington D.C., at Bold V. Old, a daylong convening where speakers including Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris discussed bold ideas for our biggest problems, including the Green New Deal. On March 16 In Oakland, CA, Creative Action Network joined artists and activists at the Green New Deal Create-A-Thon, where youth artists from the Sunrise Movement and others worked on new designs for the collection. Youth activist Rio says that after seeing videos of Greta Thunberg leading student climate strikes in Europe, “me and my sister were empowered to make some sort of difference.” Rio and his sister Maddy recently rose to internet stardom when their student group confronted Senator Feinstein about the Green New Deal a few weeks ago. Maddy says she is now “trying to make my voice be more heard, go to marches, and more creative stuff, definitely!”

Our Green New Deal campaign is now open for anyone and everyone to contribute their own design. As contributing artist Sayada Ramdial puts it, “Broad changes meant to better society and the environment we occupy are imperative, and with many different industries and people working together, hopefully we can make this bright future a reality!”

All posters are available for sale, with proceeds supporting the artists and Sunrise Movement, a coalition of young people uniting to stop the climate crisis. Select designs are also available as buttons, apparel, and print-at-home poster packs.

#MoneyForThePeople: Workers, Money and Art in the Time of COVID-19

March 17, 2020

These are crazy times. Things felt uncertain before COVID-19 came along, but now we’ve all been told to shelter in place, keep our children out of school and basically put our lives on hold until further notice because of the pandemic, which is also causing a huge economic downturn. Bleak as things might seem, at CAN we’ve been asking ourselves questions like, “What can we do to make things a little bit better?” and “How can we use art to make a difference in this specific global moment?” After huddling with our artist community and our friends at The Economic Security Project, we’re launching our newest art campaign, Money for the People!

Money for the People is a crowdsourced art campaign aimed at shining a spotlight on the millions of workers worldwide suffering economically due to the effects of the pandemic, and helping raise awareness of the need for immediate cash relief to people RIGHT NOW. We’re seeking timely and meaningful artwork that illustrates how COVID-19 is impacting everyone’s lives, and we’ll use the power of social media with #moneyforthepeople to carry the message around the world. Money for the People artwork may be downloaded from this blog post (click each image to download hi-res version) and used to promote the cause with artist credit. We encourage anyone and everyone to contribute art to our Money for the People campaign! (Artwork above by Laura Makaltses, Trevor Messersmith, Rocky Casillas, James McInvale & Kamilla Heinze).

If we can elevate this problem to the highest levels, if we can encourage lawmakers increase calls for immediate aid packages and if we can put more money into people’s pockets with our art, together we can make a difference. The landscape of the pandemic and its impact on our daily lives is changing every day, but one thing remains constant: we’re resilient and we know that unity, togetherness and caring for each other during this time will get us through. (Artwork above by Rachel Winter, Shannon Anderson, Roberlan Borges & Kamilla Heinze).

The artist community has quickly rallied around the cause and we’ve gotten some wonderful artwork already, and we’re so grateful for the hugely creative folks in our world who are always ready to pitch in. A huge thanks to artists Rocky Casillas, Roberlan Borges, Shannon Anderson, Rachel Winter, Laura Makaltses, Kamilla Heinze, Trevor Messersmith, Yael Pardess, James McInvale, Sayli M. and Rossa Cole for making such great art and getting it out into the world so quickly! Please share this blog post and spread the word, and we hope you all stay healthy and safe out there! ~Team (Artwork above by Yael Pardess, Rocky Casillas, Rossa Cole, Sayli M. & Kamilla Heinze).

More work continues to come in and we invite you to join our campaign. Submit your design to Money for the People here!