FM RADIO #3
CLIMATE ARTIVISTS
AUGUST 2024
Hello out there climate pop art donors, collaborators, and supporters. I’m back in Los Angeles from Downeast Maine. My kids are back to school. I've finally had a chance to blog about our name change. And no joke I’m super fired up to finally announce what we’ve been working on all summer. ⤵️
CLIMATE ARTIVISTS
For our next release we reached out to SoCal based illustrator and designer Kaia Sauter. She’s done gig posters for Primus, Phish, Pink Boa, and Mastodon plus all sorts of cool commercial work for bikes, beers, boards, and more.
Born in Alaska. Raised in Vermont. Kaia worked as a graphic designer in the snowboard industry in New England before moving west. She now lives in Southern California where she works as a freelance illustrator and designer as well as the Art Director at Slush the Magazine. She is very passionate about screen-printing, bikes, boards, and black metal.
We've been collaborating all summer with Kaia on a new illustration. For this one, we decided to honor and be inspired by ALL the activist artists out there. By climate art itself. By the role that art can play in activism.
We love it so so much. Kaia calls it Climate Artivists. A group of anthropomorphized animals with different art making tools. A mural painter, a screen printer, an illustrator. All making activist art reflecting the clean energy, nature-filled future that we hope is coming.
KICKSTARTER
Since we launched, lots of folks have asked for a way to get our work that’s less expensive than our limited-edition prints. And so we’ve decided to put Kaia’s illustration on T-shirts and stickers. And to put our name on it as well. Our very own merch! This will give us a way to promote Functional Magic and use any proceeds from the merch to commission new art.
The shirts and stickers aren’t available yet. We’ll be releasing them on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in the coming weeks to be sure we have enough orders to make the production costs work. So stay tuned. I’ll let you know when the Kickstarter is live, ready for orders, & shareable to help spread the word! And for now, PLEASE don’t post about or share Kaia's illustration - this is a sneak peak for your eyes only!
THE NAME CHANGE
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming hugely influenced me when I started up this non-profit in 2021. It was perhaps the reason I even started this project at all. And so, I named the non-profit the Drawdown Design Project. But after our first run of prints, I received a nice but firm email from a lawyer at Project Drawdown requesting I change the name. And so, it was time to brainstorm…
This quote by the sci-fi author of novels such as Childhood’s End & The Fountains of Paradise is what really led me to think about the name “Functional Magic”. Because, as described on the TV tropes website, functional magic is magic that works. I think of functional magic in movies and comics like a technology. Like a science. The way Dr. Strange creates glyphs with his hands or Hermione Granger has to say just the right words + flick her wand just so.
But functional magic is not only "sufficiently advanced technology". To me ancient technology also seems like magic to us moderns. Ancient climate solutions like wildland protection, sustainable forest management & regenerative agriculture are also a kind of functional magic.
And as pulp horror author Nathan Waard pointed out on our site last month, art itself is a kind of magic. Activist art is a functional magic.
When I mentioned all this to Nathan after receiving his post last month, luckily for us he had more to say. Check out his response over on our site ⬅️ 🔗, which somehow combines Ursula K LeGuin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Huey Lewis.
THANKS FOR READING
A reminder, an easy way to help us make more art is to recommended this here newsletter to anyone you think may be interested. Every subscriber new or old is a vote for us to exist.
Anyone can sign up right here ➡️ https://functionalmagic.eo.page/fmradio
Stay connected. Cultivate. Engage. Empower. Electrify. And keep on imagining the future you want to create.
- Andy
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https://www.levelframes.com/?ref=9f901db86c
SUBMIT: Send your climate art to contact@functionalmagic.org for us to use for a future newsletter cover and we'll send you a free print.
FRAME UPS: Send pics of yourself with your climate art to contact@functionalmagic.org.
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COVER PHOTO: Anthony on Unsplash
MAGIC PHOTO: Aditya Saxena on Unsplash
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FUNCTIONAL MAGIC
3222 Madera Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039, USA