How This Series Is Organized
The Face of the Republican Party: Mark Meadows, © 2022 Jeff Gates
I’ve divided this project into sections, reflecting the evolving nature of our political discourse over the last decade. Each of these pages appears in the right-hand menu to make it easier for you to explore the work.
Earlier posters (2010-2015) focus on the rise of extremism and the pressure it exerted on the GOP. Later posters explore the 2016 and 2020 elections and how outside forces, like the pandemic, influenced our politics and Americans’ well-being. My most recent work deals with the effects and fallout of Donald Trump’s presidency. Several short series appear within some parts of this project. These are reflected as submenus in the side navigation.
During the past twelve years, I have created over 260 posters. This is the most sustained body of work in my forty years as an artist. And as long as our political landscape morphs, I will have something to say.
How This Project Has Changed Over Time
I started the Chamomile Tea Party to comment on the bluster of the Tea Party, which began in 2009 as a protest against Barack Obama’s social and fiscal agendas. Early images implored our legislators to embrace bipartisanship. In the intervening years, the political landscape has morphed. Tranquility and compromise, which seemed merely difficult to obtain, now appear impossible. These posters reflect the conflicts and pressure our political system has been experiencing during this turbulent period. And as political dialogue deteriorated, the nature of these posters shifted. Since compromise seemed impossible, later images often focus on the roots of these conflicts.
Why I Started Making These Images
In July 2010, as the Senate held Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, news reports suggested her confirmation vote would run along party lines. Polarization was becoming the wall dividing America. At first, I believed “the greater good” would rise above party politics. But I misjudged the game of power. This was why I formed the Chamomile Tea Party. Starting with old World War I and World War II propaganda posters, I began remixing these posters with new text and imagery into commentary on the sorry state of contemporary American political discourse.
Why Focus on Politics?
The impetus for the Chamomile Tea Party was political, but its form owes its existence to popular culture (I studied both political science and graphic design in college). Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I was a child of advertising. I was interested in how ad agencies used words and images to sell a product or an idea. Political persuasion is also about selling an idea. So I began exploring propaganda posters which, like advertising, use images and text in economical yet powerful ways.