Please join us on Saturday, April 5th, for a sign-making workshop co-led by Santa Barbara-based artist and activist Sofia Lenore Smith Hale and UCSB Professor of History Dr. Diane C. Fujino. From the Civil Rights Movement, efforts to unionize agricultural workers, and anti-war demonstrations during the 1960s to the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter protests of this century, the creation of hand-crafted placards has been a critical tool in advancing social causes. 

This hands-on, making-based session will explore the history of where art and activism collide and offer participants the tools and space to craft urgent, personal, and impactful messages. As we consider the role of language in contemporary political discourse, as discussions around terminology and speech have become increasingly contentious, what language would you want to share today?

Participants will leave the workshop with a greater understanding of the historical role of political graphics, as well as a sign of their own making. This event, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Public Texts: A Californian Visual Language, is free and open to the public, but space is limited. Please RSVP at carlyleconstantino@ucsb.edu. All materials will be provided.

Support provided by UCSB Arts Equity Commons. 

Diane C. Fujino is professor of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her research examines Japanese and Asian American activist history within an Asian American Radical Tradition and shaped by Black Power and Third World decolonization. Her current book project examines Japanese American activism in the early Cold War, arguing that alternative pathways existed to the rise of the model minority trope that disciplined Black militancy and decolonial movements abroad—activist struggles that created possibilities for “deep solidarities” and radical democracy. 

Alex Lukas is Associate Professor of Print and Publication at UCSB. He is also the curator of the exhibit, Public Texts: A Californian Visual Language, currently on view in the AD&A Museum. His interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of place, human activity, and history; seeking to aggrandize the everyday, question historical narratives, and archive the individual. His fieldwork, research, and production reframes the monumental and the incidental through intricate print publications, sculpture, drawing, painting, video, and audio collage. 

Sofia Lenore Smith Hale is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and student of the earth. Their work centers on attuning to the conversations between our bodies and the land to support healing from colonial legacies of disconnection and domination. They are devoted to their creative practice as an essential way of protecting joy and calling new stories into being.