The past few weeks have come with a mixture of disappointment and cautious
optimism for many in the local art scene. While The Globe quietly cut most of its
local gallery coverage, the city championed a new funding initiative for artists and
small organizations. These opposite forecasts are difficult to digest for sure and that
is before bringing the much more frightening shadow of the upcoming elections into
the mix.
It is in the midst of this impending bleakness and a desire to change our
cultural landscape that an unlikely and timely project has popped up among the
storefronts of Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Typically a wasteland of tourism and
bronzes of past colonizers, it is worth the trip to see what local artist Pat Falco has
cooked up behind a door marked “Boston Campaign Headquarters U.S.A. Land of the
free and 200 million other people”.
Filled with hand painted signs of political slogans similar to what we see
plastered across the news, here we find a campaign aimed for the already
heartbroken public from the hopeless politician. Yet one can’t help but notice the
electric jolt the space causes in the mindless stream that passes in front of its
windows.
-Maggie Jensen