Work
Templeton began keeping sketchbooks during her youth. These sketchbooks accompanied her on her travels and she used them to draw what she saw. She incorporated stylization and abstraction via simplification into her style early on, eventually perfecting a genre she called "Xerox art". "Xerox art" refers to simple ink drawings that are easily reproducible using a photocopy (or Xerox) machine. This facilitated their use on signs and banners at demonstrations and in low-budget publications. A primary function of her work was didactic. She wrote and illustrated informational pamphlets on many subjects. She also wrote and illustrated two bilingual children's books that emphasized the social and moral value of labor, People Who Work in the Hospital/La Gente que Trabaja en el Hospital and People Who Work in the Supermarket/La Gente que Trabaja en los Supermercados. She also provided illustrations for a publication of the government of the Mexican state of Campeche entitled Los Ninos de Campeche Cantan y Juegan. Templeton produced almost-yearly pamphlets for the annual March 8 celebration of International Women's Day, and her work often features women prominently. Having mastered Spanish early on, she translated articles and prepared graphics for "Revolution and Intervention in Central America," a Special Emergency Issue of Contemporary Marxism. She also organized a travelling "mini-expo" for the Data Center in Oakland called "Your Right to Know" that examined issues of information accessibility in the United States. Her works continues to be used in NACLA publications.
It was during her time in New Mexico that she began sculpting in earnest. Here sculptures, mostly of welded or cast metal, reflected the influence of the natural forms of landforms, plants, and birds. She created dozens of works before quitting sculpting. Also, in New Mexico, she provided illustrations for John Nichols' The Milagro Beanfield War.
While in Mexico, she illustrated pamphlet on occupational safety in nuclear industries. She even produced a pamphlet on how to produce pamphlets. Rather than focussing on leaders, Templeton's visual works tend to emphasize collectivism, a crucial aspect of the labor and Chicano movements. They depict individuals with commitment, dignity, and intelligence, and in some ways visually refute the common stereotype of the "unwashed proletariat". She particularly enjoyed documenting cultural celebrations. Her final graphic work consisted of illustrations for Daniel Molina's Tlatelolco Mi Amor, a collection of writings highlighting Tlatelolco's centrality to the Mexican national identity. She did the cover art for his collection of poems Como Quieras; also highlights her print works in Mexico for record covers and concert ads for Los Folkloristas, Amparo Ochoa, Oscar Chavez and Salario Minimo.
Read more about this topic: Rini Templeton
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children’s play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in “playing” chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)