John Scarffe, Nederland. Erin King, owner and illustrator at Deadwilder, Ink., in Boulder and a Nederland resident since 2016, was recently selected to represent an international art campaign promoting public health awareness in the face of the pandemic. Of more than 10,000 submissions received from 46 different countries, King was selected as one of the award-winning artists.

  In her series of posters titled Everyday Heroes Against Covid-19, Erin “thinks it was her trademark use of linework, bold color and cheeky sense of humor that caught the attention of Amplifier’s team of top art curators and public-health advisors,” according to a news release from Amplifier.org, which originated the promotion.

To date, select campaign images, including those from Erin’s Everyday Heroes series, have been projected onto buildings in Manhattan, San Francisco, and the Flannels flagship store on Oxford Street in downtown London.

Amplifier, the nonprofit design lab best known for the record-breaking “We The People” public-art campaign created in 2017 with the artists Ernesto Yerena, Jessica Sabogal and Shepard Fairey, launched a global open call for art in April 2020 as a direct response to the Covid-19 crisis. The organization has since awarded $60,000 to artists worldwide ($1,000 apiece for 60 artists) who submitted works promoting public health awareness in the face of the pandemic.

Amplifier’s founder and Creative Director, Aaron Huey, a National Geographic photographer and former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, said, “When we first conceived of this campaign, we knew we wanted to address two things: promoting stay-at-home orders to help flatten the curve and save lives, and giving people the strength and positivity they needed to do so. The artists in our network are doing just that. 

“They’re serving as first responders, providing thousands of images to help lift the spirits of a nurse just off a shift, or a weary parent at home.” Amplifier’s Executive Director Cleo Barnett added: “As a solution to that, we are working to widely distribute these images online, and in public spaces, and also to provide them to those who need them the most—healthcare workers and patients, homeschooling families, and others who are directly impacted.”

  Born and raised in Midland, Texas, King lived there for 19 years before attending Texas Tech University in Lubbock for a bachelor’s degree in fine art. Then, she moved to Colorado where she attended CU Boulder for a master’s degree in museum studies and evolutionary zoology. She has been in Boulder County ever since.

Having spent her formative years in the desert landscapes of West Texas, Erin moved to Colorado over 20 years ago for a much-needed change in topography. After obtaining her master’s degree, King wanted to advance into the position of a natural history museum curator but found communicating science through exhibit design and illustration to be a better vehicle for creativity. 

Now she focuses strictly on visual design work for both businesses and nonprofits, having most recently been employed for the Boulder based study abroad outfitter, Where There Be Dragons. 

“Obviously, international travel is, for lack of a better term, slow right now,” she said, “but I’m staying hopeful my job with Dragons will rebound sometime in 2021. Until then, I’m doing what I can to help friends with small businesses try and tread water by offering whatever kind of design services that may be of use.” 

During the first furlough period back in April, King was notified of Amplifer’s Global Open Call for Art via a social media post from a neighbor. At first, she forwarded the call to another designer colleague, but then decided, “This is something I should do, especially now that I have the time. The only problem was that I always try to incorporate humor into my work, but there’s nothing really funny about a pandemic.” 

Reflecting on her Texas upbringing, the idea of “masking up and gittin ‘er done’ gave her a chuckle, and since she identifies as somewhat of a redneck, that’s how the first poster idea came about. 

Then she thought of who else, like her, is often considered to be on the “fringes” of society. People who you don’t necessarily label as “heroes,” but people who make a community interesting because they don’t always adhere to the status quo.

“As I’ve recently observed from living in Nederland, you can be a redneck, loner, deviant type who’s also of the progressive, extroverted, goody-two-shoes mindset, and everyone just kind of tips their hat off to you. It’s funny-weird, but it’s also funny-ha ha, so that’s where I was able to source the humor from. Most importantly however, is that the series is a nod to all the good and decent everyday heroes out there who remind us on a daily basis that not fitting into the norm, can be our greatest kind of superpower.”

For Nederland area residents and business, you can contact Erin directly for a free print created by the good folks at The Business Connection. For those not in Nederland proper, you can still download, print, and share Erin’s artwork for free at www.deadwilder.com or choose from a variety of other artists’ work on Amplifier.org. 

(Originally published in the July 30, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)