In the Balance

Art Hazelwood

Hazelwood's history as both an artist and activist in the San Francisco Bay Area has lent him a particularly keen ability to distill political and social upheaval into single images. In this dramatic linocut, a figure that combines Lady Liberty and Lady Justice stands in the center of the image. She isn't representative of Eurocentric physical ideals, as we are used to seeing in images of social and political justice; in fact, she appears to be indigenous, and wears a crown of corn husks. Her outstretched arms hold aloft two woven baskets strapped to a wooden pole, representing both the American superpower complex (a politican, the media, and a skeletal soldier signifying war) and the people who the United States have historically oppressed, historically and recently: a Vietnamese farmer and a Mexican day laborer, immigrants, non-white people, Muslims, the poor, women, children, and so on. Though they cling to the basket, their fate is clear.

As the U.S. sits on the verge of presidential election that will feature a convicted felon, and as we watch (and participate) in what has been unfolding in Palestine, Sudan, and at home with skyrocketing housing and food costs and rights being stripped from women, LGBTQAI+ communities, and more, this image from twenty years ago rings true today. It begs the question: "What has changed?"

Art Hazelwood, printmaker, painter, muralist, impresario, educator, independent curator, and political activist, was born in Concord, Massachusetts on May 22, 1961. He studied at the University of California at Santa Cruz and received his B.A. degree in Fine Arts in 1983. After graduation, Hazelwood travelled extensively in Asia, and lived in Vienna and then the American Southwest before settling in San Francisco, California in 1993.

He has been a member of and exhibited with the California Society of Printmakers and the Print Club of Albany. His work has been in numerous exhibitions since his first exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1989. He curated or co-curated the following exhibitions: Three Worlds: Myths Bricks Prints Arias Fuentes Banjo, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, San Francisco (2009); California in Relief: A History in Wood and Linocut, Hearst Art Gallery (2009); Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present, travelling exhibition (2009-2012).

In 2008, Hazelwood teamed with Stephen Fredericks of the New York Society of Etchers to organize Art of Democracy, a national coalition of fifty exhibitions across the country that lead up to the presidential elections. That same year Hazelwood worked with Anne Brodzky and DeWitt Cheng to curate the Art of Democracy: War and Empire.

Hazelwood is a champion of political causes and fellow artists. He represents the estates of Casper Banjo, Patricia C. Bandes, Richard V. Correll, Frank Rowe, Roy Ragle, Daniel Robeski, Charles M. Ware, and William Wolfe.