DIANE BUSH ‘THEY REAP WHILE WE SEW’ PROJECT PROMOTES FREE SPEECH THROUGH FABRIC ARTS
By Jorge Lara
American activist artist and photographer Diane Bush’ latest project ‘YOU REAP, WHILE WE SEW’ says her latest project is in pursuit of national accountability while promoting free speech through fiber arts. In her later years, Bush has embraced public art through public participation projects using fiber art (Yarn Bombing) and performance. "I think of myself as a problem solver that uses art (and humor) to get the job done,” Bush says.
Currently Diane is designing a piece that addresses the lost Secret Service text messages. Her previous project included creating fiber based works aimed at satirizing president Trump’s self-admitted sexual predatory behavior, called “Make a Merkin Great Again”.
Her current project is set to run up to the November elections on November 4. Diane is trying to get the word out before then and looking for people who are interested in participating.
“I make a new piece every week and I am expecting more submissions from around the country as the word gets out,” Diane adds.
Diane Olson-Bush was born in Buffalo, N.Y. At the age of 18, she emigrated to the U.K. with a draft dodger, in response to the Vietnam War. After living there for ten years and working as a documentary photographer, she returned to the U.S. to attend to her ailing parents. Once back in Buffalo, N.Y. she obtained her Masters Degree in Photography from the State University of New York at Buffalo by documenting local boxing gyms and billiard halls.
After graduating, she spent seven years as staff photographer at the local affiliate of the National Public Broadcasting and ABC-TV stations. At the same time, she pursued self-imposed artistic projects and established a non-profit public arts organization, “URBAN ART”.
Diane returned to academia by spending six years as the Coordinator of the Photography Department at a local two-year college just outside of Buffalo. While her students were winning numerous national awards and prizes, Diane was doing the same with her own professional and artistic work, through the generosity of such entities as Kodak, Polaroid, Women in Photography, Nikon, Ilford, the Royal Photographic Society, Friends of Photography (San Francisco), The Albright –Knox Art Gallery, and the United Nations.
Throughout her professional career, Diane has continued to exhibit her work in approximately 2-5 group shows per year, and has been exhibited and published locally, nationally, and internationally, including shows in Japan, China, Great Britain, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Italy. Since her relocation to Las Vegas in 1997, she has been awarded 15 grants and a Fellowship from the Nevada Arts Council. In 2009 she became a U.S.A. Fellowship nominee. Diane continues to teach occasional photographic workshops and regularly contributes art and donations to Buffalo and Las Vegas based arts organizations.
Diane’s satirical and fine art imagery sampled from T.V. and other sources spans over 30 years, and includes videos, talking pictures, performance work, and stills.
Bush’s published 2005 monograph, WARHEADS contains images that satirize America’s news censorship of the Iraqi War, are more relevant now, than ever. These were created by shooting TV surfaces with a macro lens at obtuse angles and throwing bleach the resulting C-prints.
Diane is a past President and Director of the Contemporary Arts Center of Las Vegas where she lives with her artist husband, Steve Baskin, and Mookie the cat. Both she and her husband collect everything vintage but have very soft spot for anything mid-century, mod and psychedelic.
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