Nixon Exhibition Print - Main Line Philadelphia Republican Welcome - Matching Eisenhower Sundresses And Parasols

Treasures from the Politics & Politicians Collection at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 16, and consciously formatted to work with a 24 x 16 frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Well, I suppose all this had to begin somewhere. Let me carry you back to the beginning of the year 2000. I was running a successful moving company of hard working artists and musicians and tithing from my company to support my work as an historian, my field being the history of living on wheels. You know, trailers, motor homes, mobile homes, auto camping, turn of the 20th century through the 60s.

We had a huge loft space in the historic Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia that cost us practically nothing where we set up an archive and research library to house my collection, put the headquarters for the moving company in the back, and had great exhibition space in the center. Right across the street from Ben Franklin's house and the first post office in America.

I curated a number of exhibits, mostly within my field but we also brought the amazing futurist illustrator Arthur Radebaugh back from the dead there in a pretty damned fabulous show that ended up traveling in the States and Europe and, much to our own surprise, an exhibit about Vice President Richard Nixon and his visual relationship with the newspaper cameras.

As a gallery owner in Old City and a member of the Old City Arts Association, the local papers came and asked what we all planned for the upcoming Republican National Convention. It was going to be big and a mighty, mighty spotlight on Philly, and we wanted to show well. I stuck my thumbs in my imaginary suspenders and boasted that I planned to show 'Republican-y art, and I'll hire comely coeds in very short skirts to hand out fliers about it at the entrance to the Convention Center.' I of course thought that bit of sophomoric repartee was very witty and clever and was thrown a bit when they quoted me in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Hmmmmmmm, I thought, now I have to put up or shut up.

It just so happens that I had salvaged a massive collection of press photos of Richard Nixon's political career from the late 40s through the early 60s and there was one that struck me as so riotously funny that I figured it'd work as the centerpiece for a proper exhibit. We looked through the pile and so many of the photos were a nightmare. To put it politely, Nixon didn't photograph so well. It seemed in his role as public whipping boy during his tenure as VP that newspaper editors went out of their way to run the absolute worst photos to keep that national chuckle working for 8 years. That said, in total the effect was depressing, like kicking a drunk.

To buck that trend, we set aside the absolute worst photos that just made him look ugly, haggard, out of condition, stupid, angry or outright disturbed, and they were legion. What we focused on were the charmingly goofy pictures of a political everyman who willingly put himself into the front seat of the political public relations roller coaster. Regional photo ops with the expected local flavors reduced to a single shot cliche. The opening of this or that building or gathering, the awkward guest of honor at our fundraiser or their dinner, touting some American something to some foreign lesser dignitary or potentates of countries not on our bigger radar.

The comedic tension was knowing who Nixon really was as a personality of that era, and who he would become as President of the United States, made more intense by us feeling empathy for this facet of goofiness left after the obvious was washed away in our choice of photos to display.

We needed a poster and ended up creating three different gems. I worked with my friend Max with me serving as art director and Max tickling the ivories. We found a button on the fledgling eBay, copied the image and removed the text. What was I LIKE IKE or I LIKE IKE & DICK became, awkwardly, WE LIKED DICK. We took an old hand held flag, extended it digitally, grabbed my wife's old sunglasses and scanned those as well and tied all the elements together in what was the first print I ever crafted. There were roar of success when it came out just as imagined, with a real rush of excitement that returns every time we start a fresh restoration.

One of the IKE dresses in the photograph was on display at the Atwater Kent Museum during the Convention, now known as the Philadelphia History Museum. The show was a hit with Republicans in for the Convention as well as folks of all political views from near and far.  

From a creative standpoint, I'd found my calling!

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

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A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.