Imagine Nation Brewing Company at 1151 W. Broadway, welcomes artist and filmmaker, Rob Whitehair, on First Friday, October 2, 2015 from 5pm – 8pm, for an artist reception and launch party for his debut art exhibit and line of fashion apparel entitled “Wild Propaganda.”
Many Missoulians may be familiar with Whitehair for directing theatrically released feature documentary films about Montana subjects including “The Little Red Truck” and “True Wolf.”
So why has Whitehair put down the 4K video camera in favor of an iPad for his latest project?
“I have spent the past 20 years working on wildlife and conservation films,” said Whitehair. “I always believed that things would be getting better, because surely they could not get worse. What I did not count on was the catapult of globalization that has taken place within the last 10-plus years. Population growth, infinite economic growth, political change, war and global illegal activity happens at such a rapid pace now. Poaching, habitat loss, desertification, pollution, ocean acidification, deforestation and of course, climate change are all by products of a fast paced world gone mad.”
Wild Propaganda™ © 2015 Rob Whitehair
“It takes me 2 to 4 years to make a wildlife film of any value and then another 2 years to get it out to the public. There is tremendous value in film for certain, but for me this project was born out of a greater sense of urgency,” explained Whitehair.
Enter Wild Propaganda. Whitehair continued, “The idea is to take the crux of what I would make in a film and combine all of that into a single frame with a single defining statement or question, and try to infuse that into our culture via posters, t-shirts, hoodies and other means using our globalized social media system to get that out to the masses.”
Wild Propaganda™ © 2015 Rob Whitehair
Drawing on his background as a wildlife ecologist and filmmaker, Whitehair created striking colorful images that juxtapose animals and graphics to question our relationship to the natural world, its wild creatures and wild spaces. The result is a collection of vintage propaganda posters that manifest multiple meanings and emotions.
“Wild Propaganda is more than art work, said Whitehair, “It is a plea for our wild species that are in extreme peril. I hope that it can create discourse over these defining issues of our time.”
The First Friday event at Imagine Nation Brewing will feature large framed posters from Whitehair’s Wild Propaganda series and will also be a launch party for the online ecommerce site where people will be able to choose the issue they’d most like to wear on their chest and select the style and color of t-shirt that best suits them.