Poster in Progress!

Visit the New Beehive Gallery

After months of research, travel, conversation, sketching, arguing and head-scratching, our poster telling the Story of Coal is starting to take shape on paper. Layers of vellum are piling up on our eight-foot drawing table as we piece together this complicated visual narrative as a tool for organizers defending coalfield communities and pushing for a sustainable future. Our ambition is audacious: to draw a unified image covering the beginnings of coal 360 million years ago through to a future without it; at a scale that starts with the tiny microorganisms that inhabit healthy streams and zooms out the global threat of climate change.

On the heels of our Campaign Coordinator's visit to Appalachian organizers, our whole group met for a weekend retreat July 12-14 to resolve some of the thorniest thematic questions and brainstorm simple visuals to represent complex issues -- among others: Native folks' continued resistance and survival; a viable future urban/rural relationship; the tricky dynamics between local organizers and the mobile young activists that "parachute in" for short-term actions.

Now the illustrators are bent back over the table trying to bring it all to life. We have been eagerly searching for the means to share the developing graphic with you all as illustration in the studio continues, and now pieces of evolving sketches and final ink work will be available for your viewing in our new Beehive Gallery.

Check out the on-going work for both the Coal Campaign and the long-awaited Mesoamerica Resiste Campaign. >