SaveArtSpace presents Vote for Abortion Rights, a public art exhibition in 14 cities across 12 US States starting October 17, 2022. Curated by Michele Pred.

The Vote for Abortion Rights selected artists are Bud Snow, Holly Ballard Martz, Laney Baby, Lena Wolf & Hope Meng, Michele Pred, Shireen Liane, Viva Ruiz, Wildcat Ebony Brown, and Yvette Molina.

Right now, American women are facing yet another surge in right-wing, reactionary efforts to control their bodies. We must answer with the voice of the majority!

During the weeks of October 17, 24 & 31, 2022, SaveArtSpace launched public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces in 14 cities across the United States. The public art will be on view for at least one month.

Selected Artists

Location: Gratiot Ave & Adelaide St, Detroit, MI

Dates: October 24 - November 20, 2022

Bud Snow is a contemporary artist whose candy-colored yet politically-subversive work spans two decades and multiple mediums, including public murals, sculpture, and performance. Her work is found in multiple countries including Canada, the United States, Sweden, Mexico, and Brazil.

Connect with Bud Snow on Instagram at @bud_snow.

Location: W Market St & S 25th St, Louisville, KY

Dates: October 17 - November 13, 2022

Holly Ballard Martz is a multidisciplinary artist who uses language and found objects to create iconic works about deeply felt social, political, and personal issues, including mental illness, gun violence, and reproductive rights. Her two-dimensional, sculptural, and installation-based practice includes casting, sewing, metalwork, and textiles. She is the recipient of a McMillen Foundation Fellowship, an Artist Trust Grant for Artist Projects, and is a 2022 Neddy Artist Award Finalist. Her large-scale installation danger of nostalgia in wallpaper form (in utero) is installed in the Bellevue Arts Museum Forum through 2022. Based in Seattle, Martz has exhibited nationally and her work is held in many private and public collections, including the Gates Foundation, the University of Washington, and the City of Seattle. She is represented by ZINC contemporary in Seattle WA.

My work is a means of thinking out loud, a physical push-and-pull of materials as I grapple with the most highly charged subjects of our current sociopolitical landscape. It is a catalyst for changing minds—first and foremost it is a challenge to my own mindset, revealing nuanced thoughts and clarifying my own beliefs through the process. The intensity of the subjects I examine -- gun violence, reproductive rights, racism, sexism -- requires me to make powerful visual statements in order to withstand the buffeting of debate on all sides. For this reason, I create pieces of grand scale and arresting beauty in my efforts to critique systems of power and abuse. It is a kind of subversive seduction, inviting the viewer to linger with the work, during which time the layers of meaning are revealed and a metaphorical gut punch is administered. Upon closer inspection, the ornate wallpaper crystallizes into a symbol associated with the desperate actions of women denied full reproductive rights (danger of nostalgia in wallpaper form, 2017-2020), for example, and the saccharine valentine of gold-toned calligraphic text comes into focus as the remnants of frequently fatal violent acts (Love Hurts--love you to death, 2020).

Connect with Holly on Instagram at @hballardmartz.

Dates: October 17 - November 13, 2022 / Location: Brickell Ave & SE 5th St, Miami, FL

I am a 25 year old artist, born and raised on the westside of Columbus, Ohio. I focus on traditional painting, as well as occasionally creating digital art. My style has evolved over the years to what is now a mix of realism and surrealism. I draw inspiration from my vivid dreams and spirituality.

I believe the best way for us all to understand each other is through education. Focusing on the science of gestation- rather than the often inflammatory political talking points- may help us all to see eye to eye.

Connect with Laney Baby on Instagram at @LaneyBabyArt.

Dates: October 17 - November 13, 2022 / Location: Canyon Dr & Wilbur Dr, Amarillo, TX

Dates October 31 - November 27, 2022 / Locations: N Central Ave & W Glenrosa Ave, Phoenix, AZ / W Desert Inn Rd & Arville St, Las Vegas, NV / Groesbeck Hwy &  E 10 Mile Rd, Warren, MI / Ralph McGill Blvd NE & Boulevard NE, Atlanta, GA / Old Chattahoochee Ave NW & Ellsworth Industrial Blvd NW, Atlanta, GA / W Gate City Blvd & Dick St, Greensboro, NC / 3rd Ave N & Jo Johnston Ave, Nashville, TN / Riverside Dr & Falk Road, Koshkonong, WI / E County Rd S & I-90 (3501 E County Rd S), Beloit, WI  / I-40 Frontage Rd & S Eastern St, Amarillo, TX.

Lena Wolff is an interdisciplinary artist, craftswoman and activist for democracy based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work extends out of American folk-art traditions while at the same time being rooted in minimalism, geometric abstraction, Op art, social practice, feminist and political art. Her broad interconnected artistic output includes drawing, collage, wood sculpture, text-based works, music and public projects. Alongside her studio practice in recent years she generated a widespread anti-hate poster campaign and a public art initiative to boost voter participation that reached over 25 US states. Her work has been exhibited nationally and collected by ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives at USC, the Berkeley Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco History Collection at San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Arts Commission, Alameda County Arts Commission, Cleveland Clinic, University of Iowa Museum and the Zuckerman Museum of Art among others.

Connect with Lena on Instagram at @lenawolffstudio.

Hope Meng is a visual artist whose primary discipline is the letterform. Her work in textiles and digital art explores the outskirts of automatic reading and the boundaries of legibility. Hope's work is currently on display at Scalehouse Gallery and the Oakland Museum of California. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.

Connect with Hope on Instagram at @hopemengdesign.

Location: W Sahara Ave & S Valley View Blvd, Las Vegas, NV

Dates: October 24 - November 20, 2022

Shireen Liane is an American artist living & working in Britain. She has made work in music, film & sound collage, but started working with flags and currency in 2015 in response to the rise of Donald Trump. Since then, she has developed a socially engaged feminist practice. Her work can be performed or engaged out in the wild, but also translates into gallery display; as the real work is in the conversation that comes out of these gestures.

The Altered States series started as a response to MAGA rhetoric, investigating what it means to be American, to be patriotic, and exploring how the feelings of national identity are hijacked and weaponized. Along the way, the flags have taught their own lessons in communication, community building & solidarity, via collaborative performances in art actions, marching in protests or dancing in the streets.

Currently, Liane is interested in exploring the intersection of political discourse & collective joy, via the Wide Awakes’ abolitionist disruptions and the upcoming Women’s March. She has shown in the UK, Europe and America, and appeared in Artnet, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Ms., and The Nation. Shireen Liane received her BA (Hons) from Central St Martins (UAL).

Connect with Shireen on Instagram at @shireenliane.

Location: University Pl & Canal St, New Orleans, LA

Dates: October 17 - November 13, 2022

Our mission is to eliminate the criminalizing stigma around abortion one t-shirt, one installation, one party, one rally, one conversation one garden- one soul at a time. We are occupying a light and apology free space in a conversation that even in the left is fraught with guilt and secrecy. We are committed to a repossessing of our own narratives and pull it back from the dominant extreme right wing "sin" perspective which continues to justify legislating the torture and death of abortion seeking people. We are broadening the spectrum of this conversation by inhabiting a joyful and authentic place in regards to our own experience with abortion, we hope to inspire others to do the same. We know access to reproductive services are a basic and normal human right.

TGFA is a design and strategy conceived in 2015 by artist Viva Ruiz and is now a collective worldwide organism. TGFA was born as a response to the catastrophic closing of abortion clinics throughout the US.

Connect with Viva on Instagram at @thankgodforabortion.

Location: Ted Turner Dr SW & Nelson St SW, Atlanta, GA

Dates: October 24 - November 20, 2022

Wildcat Ebony Brown is a Brooklyn-based artist with an experimental process, her work is vibrant and exhilarating through cross discipline of mixed media, installation and performance art, painting and collage. Originally from Tulsa Oklahoma and raised in southern Maryland, she is self-taught, possesses innate artistic ability, and creates via contemplative response. Through authentically embracing her myriad incarnations, she willfully utilizes a multitude of acquired skill sets to navigate, curate and occupy various cultural spaces A founding member and key collaborator of the Wide Awakes, she conceptualizes and curates site specific activations. Understanding how artist led activism empowers and liberates both communities and individuals enables her to produce safe, unconventional forms of civic engagement rooted in diversity, inclusion and collective joy.

Connect with Wildcat Ebony Brown on Instagram at @wildcatebonybrown.

Location: W Desert Inn Rd & S Decatur Blvd, Las Vegas, NV

Dates: October 17 - November 13, 2022

Do You Feel My Fury? Bans Off! is a self-portrait that confronts the viewer with a threefold question: Do you understand my anger? Does this same rage burn inside you? What are you going to do about it?

Yvette Molina is a Mexican-American artist focused on the relationship between justice and caring. Her work is multidisciplinary and includes public engagement, painting, processional banners, performance, comics, costumes, action figures, and collages. Learning and incorporating traditional techniques is significant to her practice as a means of connecting to history, culture, and embodied forms of ancestral knowledge. Yvette is trained in gilding and egg tempera painting as well as Byzantine iconology with a focus on the Russian Prosopon School techniques. She is currently researching the indigenous craft traditions of the Native American Chippewa from her mother’s line and Mesoamerican Purépecha on her father’s side.

Ongoing projects include New Pantheon, a series of reimagined, hybrid gods born to confront the world’s challenges, and Big Bang Votive, a large-scale installation and communal storytelling project centered on love and delight. Yvette has exhibited across the US and internationally at venues such as the American Embassies in Uruguay and Latvia, the Stockholm Fringe Festival, Brattleboro Museum in Vermont, The Newark Museum of Art, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Arsenal Contemporary, Spring Break Art Show, NADA Art Fair and the Legion of Honor and de Young Museums of California as an AIR awardee. Other residency fellowships include the Vermont Studio Center, Jentel Foundation, UC Berkeley Worth Ryder Gallery, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Born in Kansas City, Yvette currently splits her time between Oakland, CA and Brooklyn, NY.

I am a Mexican-American artist exploring themes of justice and love. I believe the role of the artist is vital in shaping the world. To this end, I use my artwork as a tool for community building, generative conflict, and healing. My approach is multidisciplinary with a growing emphasis on public engagement. My work includes everything from performance, processional banners, costumes, and comics, to painting, installation, and sculpture. Handicraft materials and methods are often present in my work both for their sensual beauty, but also as a means of privileging what has at times been deemed womens’ craft and therefore a “lesser” form of creative expression. Learning and incorporating traditional techniques is another way for me to connect to history, culture, and deeper forms of ancestral knowledge. I have trained in gilding and egg tempera painting as well as Byzantine and Russian Prosopone iconology. Currently I am researching the indigenous craft traditions of the Native Chippewa from my mother’s line and Mesoamerican Purépecha on my father’s side.

Ongoing projects include New Pantheon, a series of reimagined, hybrid gods born to confront the world’s challenges and Big Bang Votive, a communal storytelling project where participants are invited to share a personal story of love or delight.

Connect with Yvette on Instagram at @yvettemolina.studio.

Curator

Location: W 46th St & 12th Ave, New York, NY

Dates: October 17 - November 13, 2022

Michele Pred is a Swedish American conceptual artist and activist whose practice includes sculpture, assemblage, and performance. Her work uncovers the cultural and political meaning behind everyday objects, with a concentration on feminist themes such as equal pay, reproductive rights, and personal security. Pred’s projects also contain social components that drive the conversation into public spaces. Examples include her exploration of the intersection of personal space and security by using airport-confiscated items after 9/11, the cultural background of the fight for reproductive rights, using thousands of expired birth control pills, and the continuing economic and political struggle for women’s rights, represented by her modified vintage handbag editions. 

In December 2017, Pred organized Parade Against Patriarchy in Miami during Art Basel. In November 2018, Pred lead We Vote, an art and social justice parade in New York City, to coincide with the midterm elections. The We Vote parade took place during her solo exhibition VOTE Feminist at Nancy Hoffman Gallery. She has since organized six more Feminist Art Parades in Oakland, San Francisco, Miami, New York, and Stockholm.

Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Berkeley Art Museum, the 21st C Museum, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, and the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York. Pred received a Pro-Choice Leadership Award from Personal PAC, Chicago. She has shown at Jack Shainman Gallery as an original member of the first artist-run organization For Freedoms. Pred has exhibited both nationally and internationally at the V & A Museum in London, Neuberger Museum, White Plains NY; Bild Museet and Kulturhuset in Sweden; University of Westminster, London, Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; Omi International Art Center, Ghent, NY; ASU Museum, Tempe, AZ; the Honolulu Museum of Art, HI; Museum of Design Atlanta, amongst others. 

Her work has been reviewed and featured by The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, The LA Times, The International Herald Tribune, ARTnews Magazine, Art in America, WIRED, Playboy, The Art Newspaper, American Craft Magazine, Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, ReadyMade Magazine, TimeOut New York, Associated Press Television, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NBC, ABC, The San Francisco Chronicle, Corriere della Sera (Italy), Dagens Industri, TV4 and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden). Michele Pred received her BFA from California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA. She was born in San Francisco and lives in Oakland, CA.

Connect with Michele on Instagram @Michelepred or on Twitter @Michelepred.

Participating Organizations

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.

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