Jacinta Bunnell…a Medal for Honesty
by Jay Blotcher

“It was hard for me to justify making art until I made activist art,” Jacinta Bunnell explains, standing in her Rosendale apartment, surrounded by artwork that covers the bright green walls. While the term “activist art” refers to the political content of her work, it equally refers to the active role that art plays in every aspect of her life. Whether creating a Christmas postcard with neighbors that slaps at the Bush administration and hustling evangelists, conducting art workshops for children or cavorting as a tutu-ed sprite in the Woodstock Film Festival’s promotional short last autumn, Jacinta Shirley Bunnell’s life remains indivisible from her artwork.

A gallery show of Bunnell’s recent artwork, including paintings and collage work, will be displayed throughout May at Bagel Benders in Kingston.

If the notion of activist art summons up images of message-heavy manifestos reeking of self-righteousness, take heart. Bunnell is best known for a series of coloring books for children. “Girls will be boys will be girls” (co-authored with Irit Reinheimer, Soft Skull Press, 2004) and “Girls are not Chicks” (co-authored with Julie Novak, girlsnotchicks.com, 2007) flirt with brilliance by raising powerful issues in a format typically known for touchy-feely irrelevance.

Following the Marshall McLuhan dictum that “the medium is the message,” these coloring books are designed to entice children before everyday prejudices have congealed in their minds. The books proffer messages about respecting diversity and advocate defiance of the gender and sexual roles that strait-jacket our country. At worst, Bunnell’s books are capable of fomenting personal sanity and self-expression. Dangerous concepts these days.

“Most of it already [makes] certain assumptions about gender, sexual orientation,” she said of the history of children’s books. “We wanted to take something and give it a new spin.”

Line drawings (by the authors and friends) are capped by seemingly simple captions. But look again. An image of children standing at attention, hands over heart, slyly reads, “We pledge allegiance... to all-girl bands, pro choice rallies, witchcraft and female MCs.” A gauntlet has been flung down, in the same way that “Free to Be You and Me” attempted a societal sea change three decades ago.

For seven years, Bunnell has toured the country with her books (the first versions were personally photocopied), doggedly setting up card tables at college seminars, concerts (with her life partner and artistic ally, local musician Michael Truckpile), film festivals and innumerable liberal and leftist grassroots gatherings.

For years, Bunnell was reluctant to lay claim to the title of “artist.” It proved too intimidating a distinction for someone who had never attended art school. She had been content to sporadically create collage pieces from a huge cache of “found, delicious paper” collected since childhood. Bunnell could be counted on to create handcrafted pieces for a friend’s birthday, but not for a gallery wall. Her preferred mode of self-expression was reading and writing.

However, a 2005 snow tubing accident in Saugerties changed that. Bunnell suffered a concussion and damage to her eye muscles. For several months, curling up with a book resulted in severe migraines. Bunnell discovered that neither painting nor drawing aggravated her condition.

“Basically, it’s been explained that my eyes got wall-eyed in the accident, and so when I try to read, I have to focus on the words and my eyes get strained.”

The first piece created after the accident was “Medal for Lying” a multimedia work comprising Bunnell’s collage and painting. Laying down the papers was a comfortable exercise, but drawing was not. Bunnell finally painted the outline of a butterfly on the multi-hued field.

“I’ve always been crafty, but I never really decided with intention to make much art at all. And [the injury] pushed me to do it and it opened up a whole new world.”

Her choice of image in this work is telling; confined to her apartment for weeks after the accident, she naturally gravitated to a symbol of flight and freedom. The title of the piece emerged after the work was finished. Reviewing the collage pieces, Bunnell noticed the words “medal for lying” in one of the squares.

Serendipity governs her art-making, Bunnell admitted. One work coaxed into existence by random events is “Abode of the Message.” One week last year, Bunnell snatched up a vintage children’s puzzle of the United States at a yard sale. That same week, Julie Novak brought over her latest find: a 1950s book about motherhood, rife with images of McCarthy-era conformity. Later, Bunnell was listening to a National Public Radio segment on overpopulation when the concept suddenly crystallized. Bunnell shook the wooden pieces from the puzzle tray, affixed one of Novak’s faux-cheery images and painted a row of graphs over the images, producing satire that simultaneously tweaks the oppression of motherhood and its global implications.

“I love when that happens,” Bunnell said. “And I think for a really long time, I’ve tricked myself into thinking that I’m not into spirituality.”

Bagel Benders is hardly a tony gallery, but that is the point for Bunnell, who champions the democracy of art. She places more value on transfusing children with the hunger for self-expression than in gaining plaudits for her own work.

In coloring book workshops, Bunnell repeatedly discovers that the next generation has resisted narrow “pink-is-for-girls” worldviews. Their work is “so smart and so savvy and so inspiring, I cry almost every time.”

Bunnell is currently working on a third coloring book designed to challenge conventional life, but demurs when asked for the title. Occasionally she wonders if her coloring books will attract conservative groups demanding she end her subversive attacks on the American status quo. ”But my passion and my emotions and my intellect say, ‘This is the most important work that you could be doing in the world right now.’”

Jacinta Bunnell art opening at Bagel Benders, 319 Wall Street in Kingston. Reception on Saturday, May 3 from 6-9pm. (845) 331-7350. To see more artwork from Jacinta Bunnell, visit www.parthenialoyal.etsy.com. To order her coloring books, visit: www.girlsnotchicks.com/