Over the course of a few days in mid-September, posters cropped up in cities across Ohio.
They are royal blue, teal, red and white with bold designs: a ballot box as a speaker, a dove carrying a banner, a hand picking a petal of a flower.
And all of them have the same message: VOTE!
“They stand out nicely. I'm really happy with the way they're fitting into the landscape,” said artist Shepard Fairey.
The South Carolina-born street artist and activist is best known for his early “Obey” campaign which featured a stylized image of Andre the Giant.
But this election season, Fairey teamed up with an Ohio arts movement and a slew of local artists to spread one crucial message: art can – and should – play a role in civic engagement.
The arts at the ballot box
Fairey, with the help of arts students, put up the temporary wheat paste posters in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton, and painted one, large permanent mural in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood to spread the message.
It’s part of ArtsVote Ohio’s campaign to get Ohio’s creatives to vote this November.
“We're really leaning into the idea that peer to peer messaging is the most effective way to compel somebody to get to the polls,” said Sarah Sisser, executive director and CEO of Creative Ohio and a driving force behind ArtsVote Ohio.
Sisser said Ohio’s creative sector, which includes visual and performing artists, musicians, designers, and others, is about 157,000 strong and makes up about 3% of the state’s annual gross domestic product.
“With numbers like that, we can certainly have an impact in an election this election cycle and going forward,” she said.
ArtsVote’s aim is two-fold: use art to inspire everyone to vote and to remind artists to vote for what matters most to them as artists.
“It’s perfectly acceptable that arts and humanities, arts and culture, the support of those endeavors be at the top of your priority list when you're going into the polls,” Sisser said.
ArtsVote Ohio is non-partisan, but Sisser hopes the organization will help artists and arts patrons keep arts funding and issues top of mind when they go to the ballot box. In Cuyahoga County, for example, voters are considering renewing a tax on cigarettes that generates money for local arts and culture initiatives. Ideastream Public Media benefits from the arts tax in Cuyahoga County and has contributed to the campaign to expand it.
“I don't think it's naive to say that arts, at least in Ohio, are not a partisan issue,” Sisser said.
Picking up steam
The national ArtsVote movement started in 2020, but Sisser said the effort here only really ramped up late last year. Before that, ArtsVote Ohio mostly reshared resources from the national page.
Now, ArtsVote Ohio is educating Ohio artists with tools like a “funding trail” that shows how arts funding moves from the federal government to state and local levels.
ArtsVote is also handing out 3,000 nonpartisan yard signs designed by a dozen Ohio artists. They include everything from a colorful bird saying, “your vote is your voice” to the stripes of an American flag falling into a crowd of people.
Dan Gerdeman from Pickerington contributed his work to ArtsVote Ohio’s online campaign, which is open to all Ohio artists. His cartoon featured candy and the message, “Voting is sweet.”
“As an artist, I have a voice, and I want to share that voice. I just think it's a privilege to be able to vote,” Gerdeman said.
Arts groups are also hosting postcard parties where artists can send voting reminders to their creative friends. And, before the state deadline, nearly every ArtsVote event included the opportunity to vote.
18-year-old Audrey Osman of Loveland registered when she attended a September artist talk with Fairey at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.
“I think it's really important for even young people, because I think that sometimes we can be a little afraid to vote and that maybe our vote won't matter,” Osman said. “I think that we should vote. Even though we're young, we still have opinions, and I think that we can definitely make change.”
Osman’s message to other young folks and creatives echoed Fairey and ArtsVote Ohio’s message: “please vote.”
Voting as expression
Fairey knows first-hand the impact that art can have on the democratic process. His Barack Obama Hope poster became iconic during the 2008 election. A New Yorker art critic called it “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You.’”
Fairey used his talk in Cincinnati to remind the audience – which included folks from as far away as Detroit – that a robust democracy “creates the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”
Fairey thinks his art and the work of other Ohio artists can help shape culture.
“I think the public space is a really democratic venue… so when you see something that is message oriented and art oriented, it stands out and it actually is a little symbol of individual expression,” Fairey said.
And he believes in that individual expression – on the canvas and at the ballot box.