Hand Print Banners: One Artist's Answer to Global Polarization

Collateral damage. While this world leader won't talk to that one, while politicians fill the airways with rhetoric and bombs, perfectly normal people all over the world retreat into hostile mistrust of other perfectly normal people. On TV we watch demonstrations of angry mobs filling the streets of far distant cities and villages, screaming "death to all Americans" and we think... they don't know us, how can they say that? I never did anything to them, I go to church, pay taxes, I'm a good person. They don't know anything about me, but they hate me. Well, we better nuke 'em all before they nuke us. That attitude, fostered on both sides by headlines and hate mongers, produces a kind of collateral damage that is hazardous to the human race.

How can regular people combat this global polarization? Where do I find common ground with other regular people? If only I could extend a handshake to one of them to show him that we're not monsters and we realize they aren't either. I look at my hands, spread palm upward. Hmmm.

Look at your own palm. Look at someone else's. Anyone else, anywhere else on earth. Four fingers, a thumb, creases, callouses. No language, no religion, no politics, not even much difference in color or size. A human hand is a human hand. Everybody's got one.

Anthony Hume is an artist and "Hand Print Banners" is his artist's response. His plan is for private citizens of two countries to exchange banners they have hand printed. No ulterior or political agenda, no money or profit involved, just a statement of friendship, of humanity. Just as the first thing anyone has ever done when meeting a stranger is some kind of gesture with his hand, so hand prints on cloth provide a greeting between strangers we won't ever meet.

His first exchange proved the concept was sound. High school students in The Woodlands, Texas (near Houston) hand printed a banner. A friend took it in her luggage to Romania along with a blank banner to be hand printed by Romanian students. Both banners bore the title "Living in Hope" in English and Romanian, superimposed one over the other. The Romanian teens were quick to observe and comment that there was no detectable difference between the Texas hand prints and their own. They gleefully adorned the second banner with hand prints to send back to the kids in Texas. She brought it back to The Woodlands, along with photos of the hand printing session in Romania.

Soon the kids in the two countries were emailing back and forth. The Texans were amazed to learn that their counterparts in Romania handled English as well as they did! They wore the same kind of clothes, the same shoes, had the same problems in school, liked the same music...the similarities overwhelmed them all and opened their world up in ways no class work or television ever would. They had "shaken hands" with someone literally on the other side of the globe and discovered that they were not monsters.

The Hand Print Banner Exchange all happens below the radar of official channels, as an informal, grass roots, personal gesture. Exchanges are originated by sponsors in the US, such as schools, churches, civic organizations. An underwriter pays the materials and Hume's studio costs. (Hume donates his personal time and the designs.) The corresponding entity in another country can be chosen by the sponsor or underwriter. Someone who travels to that country on business or pleasure acts as courier and carries a banner kit in their personal luggage. Sometimes another courier is needed to return the second banner to the originating sponsor.

A Banner Exchange Kit consists of two banners painted on ordinary muslin which fold up to about the volume of a sweater. The background is painted on both and areas to be hand printed are stenciled. This pair of banners will be exchanged between an entity in the US and an entity "over there," whether in Europe, Asia, or somewhere else in the Americas. If there is a slogan or title, it appears in both English and the language of the other entity. Each will have their own language behind the other so the translation is immediately apparent.

Procedure:

1. Banner 1 is hand printed by the entity/group in the US.
2. Banner 1 is returned to Mr. Hume to be finished with final details and spattered top coat.
3. Both banners are taken "over there" by a volunteer courier.
4. Banner 1 is presented to the entity/group "over there" as a gift from the US entity.
5. Banner 2 is hand printed there.
6. Banner 2 is returned by courier to Mr. Hume to be finished with final details and spattered top coat.
7. Banner 2 is presented to the entity/group in the US.

Get involved. Contact Anthony Hume at arhume(at)dcworx.com. To find out more about Hand Print Banners, visit www.dcworx.com/xxindex.html.