Artist Statement

Katie Austin
My political campaign poster represents my perspective on abortion, which is pro-choice. In this instance, I
am taking a libertarianism standpoint by saying abortion should ultimately be up to the mother, because
only she can truly tell if a pregnancy will harm her in some way. The final decision I came to is that we
should not put our efforts towards making abortion legal or illegal, because legal or not, abortions will keep
happening. Instead we should put our strength towards the scientific research aspect and finding out when a
fetus can be considered a human. In my art piece, I focused on the danger of illegal abortions and tried to
use the shock factor to get the message across that women will always find a way to do what they feel is
right, even if it puts them in danger. To represent this, I drew the silhouette of a woman on a surgical table
with a needle and thread attached to her. This is supposed to show how as a last case option, she had a
surgical procedure to sew herself shut in attempt to avoid having an unwanted child.
I use pathos through trying to give my poster a very shocking initial message. People are immediately
repulsed as they think about the lengths the woman wen to in order to avoid the birth. Another part of my
art piece is a poem titled A Letter to the Government, or To Whom it May Concern, and in this, I use the
average amount of money an abortion is, thus giving it a small amount of logos. Ethos can be found
through the quote from the famous libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick.
Along with the shock factor, I also made my poster look very dark and threatening. This leads to the danger
of the inevitable illegal abortions, and reflects to my audience the sinister and serious message I am trying
to get across. The text in the background slowly gets smaller and packed in more tightly, not because my
art skills are lacking, but to represent how through these poems and protests, people have less and less
patience. I imagine the poem being read faster and faster as the reader gets to the end because the readers
attention span does not last for enough time. This poster took much refinement through the writing process,
but also through the womans silhouette. This originally was going to be a photoshopped picture pasted on
top, but when that fell through, I decided to draw the woman on. I struggled with making the woman look
realistic, and so chose to make a silhouette out of silver to stand out. As a result of using silver, the woman
stands out from across the room. Looking at the responses I have already received, I may have changed the
writing if I could go back. People end up thinking that was a mistake instead of understanding the deeper
message I was trying to convey. Despite this, I am overall satisfied with the political poster I am exhibiting
here.