Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 28-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Nadine really wanted to know what Catherine’s reaction to Martin’s paintings had been. Considering they were abstract expressionist and that the subject was only vaguely recognizable as associated with the act of mining—nary a slogan in sight. It was first and foremost art. Even the black smoke tilting away from the waxy mass was a lovely thing on its own, introducing a delicate narrow wedge that blocked out the original painting, upward through the sky to run off the top, visually mirroring the luminosity of poisons running off the bottom. Martin couldn’t help it. He was that good. So good, that Nadine imagined Catherine turning on her heel and walking away. Of course Nadine was assuming everything about Catherine, shunting her into the role of a stereotypical anti-corporate, environmental literalist. Certainly there were variations on this theme, but Nadine’s quest to find political art had unearthed some pretty dry work, and she wasn’t willing to compromise her knowledge of art—and its potential to communicate—to validate a painting simply because it heralded one issue and denounced another. In fact, she had been considering putting together a show of bad political art based on the vast majority of submissions she’d received at the Black Dot Museum of Political Art so far.
