Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop surveys work—mostly linocuts and woodcuts—done by Sue Coe since the election in 2020. The exhibition’s title comes from a print dating to December of that year: a time when many were buoyed by Joe Biden’s victory, yet wary that it would not be so easy to reunite a nation still suffering from the trauma of the Trump years and the Covid pandemic.
Since the central character in Coe’s print is a centipede, there are multiple shoes to drop: variously labeled “plague,” “fascism,” ‘lies,” “coup,” “war,” “climate” and “crash.” The first shoe in fact dropped on January 6, 2021, with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The present exhibition is divided into five sections exploring different aspects of the last two years. Each section takes its title from one of Coe’s prints. The first section, Dr. Treason, covers the immediate aftermath of the 2021 insurrection. The second, Democracy, details ongoing efforts to curtail voting rights and the rule of law. Перестань!(Stop It!) depicts the impact of Russia’s criminal assault on Ukraine. Coe reminds us, in her fourth group of prints, that while Politicians Argue, Nature Acts. And also, in the fifth section, One Million Dead, that Covid is still very much with us, and that other zoonotic diseases will undoubtedly follow.
Although the subjects addressed in Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop are grim, Coe’s outlook is optimistic. She first began making linocuts as handouts to be given away at demonstrations. “Prints can be both activist tools and an affordable commodity,” she explains. “That’s why I love them so. They aren’t worth much, except for the ideas that can create change and live on, can be rolled up, as light as a feather, can escape fire and floods and bombing.I assume much of what exists online is not live humans any more, but bots manipulating each other for power and control, which makes the real print, held in real hands, so much more powerful…paper which is stronger than it looks, and the smell of fresh ink. Black and white. There is no grey area possible in lino prints, and no grey area morally.”