On the first Wednesday of the month, our city hosts an Art Walk. It’s a place where local artists set up booths to showcase their work, food and beer vendors come out to fill our tummies and usually some kind of band is playing to set the mood. It’s a great time to check out the local talent, hang out with friends and support our city. We don’t make it to Art Walk nearly often enough, but the teen and I went down this week to hang out for a bit. In addition to seeing what the artists had to offer, my friend, Jaime was going to be out there with her adorable photo booth, The Tin Can, and we also wanted to show our support for our local Museum of Contemporary Art.
You see, our little (big actually) city, has some growing to do. It’s embarassing really so I hate to even say this, but one of our upstanding *insert sarcasm* city councilman decided that he was offended by a certain photograph that was currently on exhibit at MOCA. It was a photograph of a pregnant woman lying on a couch with her breasts exposed.
*warning nudity below*
It’s so scandalicious right? I mean, she’s totally giving that come hither look? Obviously children are going to look at it and commit sin with their mind! *insert annoyed emoticon that is annoyingly missing from my emoticon library*
It seems if your art has boobs on display, it must be pornography! Because obviously if boobs are in the photo, it’s for sexual reasons. 🙄 This city councilman doesn’t think this photo is family friendly and was so offended by the photograph that he wanted the mayor to pull the museum’s funding. Seriously?! Not take the photograph down…not remove the exhibit…pull.the.funding! Not that any option would have been acceptable, but he really just went straight for the jugular, didn’t he? Thankfully our mayor did not agree with said city councilman, but just in case there was any doubt about what we, the people of the city thought, there was going to be a rally outside of City Hall during Art Walk to show MOCA and our city how we felt about this councilman attacking our art and culture.
My little hippie-in-training was super stoked to be a part of her first rally/protest/demonstration. She was chanting along with the group…
“I stand with MOCA!”
“I stand with MOCA!”
“I stand with MOCA!”
and she would have totally been pumping a handmade sign up and down had we thought about making one. We were loving all the signs and homemade boobs people brought out. One chick in particular had a shirt on that looked like she was naked. I’m still kicking myself for not taking her photo.
We did a little chanting and standing in solidarity and then we headed over to MOCA to buy a screen-printed-on-the-spot t-shirt. I’m probably a little partial, but I think my artsy, open minded, feminist girl is pretty rad.
(now for a complete 180 in subject matter)
Speaking of rad…if you live in the Jacksonville area and are having an event, you definitely need to rent the Tin Can Photo Lounge! It’s so adorable and awesome! We, of course, had to try it out. We weren’t properly prepared for our 3rd photo, but it worked out anyway. lol.
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