Welcome Home Delegate

I was still living in Cambridge, Mass. in 1984 and there was a lot of political action in my neighborhood. This house was down the block from me and it was one of many that I sat outside and drew in the summer of 1984. Many of these houses had been divided up, like mine, into apartments where students and aging hippies lived. This house was home to someone who was a delegate to the 1984 Democratic convention at which Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro were chosen to run. He had just come back from San Francisco where it was held. Ronald Reagan was the Republican incumbent. Someone in his household made a sign for the porch to welcome him home. For a brief moment in American history it seemed like politics made sense and could be practiced by real people who lived in ramshackle houses in the shadow of Harvard University.

Ink and watercolor on sketchbook page, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2", July 20,1984.