Usually, I don’t talk much about politics. It’s an old habit — I was a journalist and one of the cardinal rules is that you don’t talk publicly about politics. The reason, for a reporter, is that if you do, you can’t be sent to cover anything connected with politics. People will say you’re biased.
Well, all humans are. But if you have ethics, you try to keep an open mind and listen to what people have to say. I once covered the campaign on a very divisive issue, and I had strong opinions about it, but I’m proud to say that listening to the story (it was for radio), you wouldn’t have known where I stood. I took heat from people on both sides for supporting the other side, a good sign as it meant I was being objective. Everyone was mad at me.
Current events are such that I could no longer wear my reporter’s muzzle. I know friends who do. That’s the job. They have “the calling” to be journalists, which is often a hard job, reading through the research to get the facts, keeping a straight face while people try to lie to you, keeping long hours, going without sleep, and there’s not the kind of job security there used to be. Newspapers and magazines have cut back, and tv news is mostly sound bites.
I tried every time out of the gate to do a good job as a reporter. If you take the money, you do the job to the best of your ability. But I never had the calling, the insatiable urge, to be a reporter. And now, I can’t keep silent. I just can’t. It’s too important. Racism is making its return. It never goes away completely, but it was limping. Now, it’s open again, hostile, angry. People are shouting at each other, not listening. You see it on the news and then think that’s how it is everywhere, but of course it isn’t. There are still good people, and it’s time for us to stand up and be heard.
This is the first overtly political sculpture I’ve ever created. It began as a polymer clay piece, very heavy. The expression came out just the way I wanted it, eyes bulging with anger, closed tightly to avoid seeing what it doesn’t want to see, no ears to be bothered by what it hears, mouth wide open, spewing rust and ragged edges and creating the chains that it will in the end enslave it.
But it wasn’t quite “there.” All of my sculptures get names, because most of them have faces. I think of them as “kennel names,” like those given to purebred dogs. They have official names, like Emily Morningstar’s Quiet Riot of Glendale, and they have nicknames they’re called by the people around 
them, like “Puffy.” So this one was “Bubba.” I would talk to Bubba while working on it, urging it to cooperate. My friend Mary named it “Voldemort,” like the Harry Potter villain. She also had a suggestion — the chains were too shiny. Valid point (though not the Voldemort label. It has a nose!).
It took time to “pickle” the chains, chemically aging them. They are recycled metal, but somehow were in pristine, shiny condition. Not any more! I soaked them in vinegar with a piece of rusty metal. And the surface wasn’t quite there. So I treated it the way I do my other pieces and layered it, layers of paper of different types, then painted with acrylics.
In the end it was definitely Bubba and not Voldemort. It’s just what I wanted it to be. The surface (like a dark green wood) has a satin finish and begs to be touched, but there’s that dangerous mouth…
That’s the problem with ignorance and hate. They’re seductive. They tell us that we are better than other human beings, more deserving. That it’s okay not to have to think about anything very hard — those easy answers that feel right, even if the facts say otherwise, are comforting because they don’t challenge us. But in the end, we can’t chain someone else without at least chaining ourselves. The razor wire we spew cuts our own mouths as it comes out. As we get angrier and angrier, adrenalin flows, cutting off our judgement, making us feel strong and vital.
We’ll find out soon if Bubba is about to be in his first show. His official name is “Bliss,” from the old saying that ignorance is bliss. You see how euphoric some of the people are who are screaming at strangers at political rallies, and you see what the saying is about. It isn’t blissful later on when you have to pay for what you’ve said and done, but in that moment, fired up, excited, ignorance does become a sort of bliss.