Here's something fun for our 20th Birthday (Dec. 12, 2023).

It's an imperfect, LoFi low-production-value peek into Backbone Campaign's normally pretty high-production-value imagery - and one of the team's geniuses behind making the magic. 

Backbone Campaign has always been propelled by great imagery and the people that create it. We call that group of folks the Backbone Builders Guild.

From early days of Backbone, festival artists and "puppetistas" - along with carpenters, painters, sculptors, calligraphers, and generally handy folk  - have made progressive campaigns look beautiful and enrolling.

Our puppets and props have always been AWESOME, from the original 70' spine to Snowflake the polar bear by world renown artist Christopher Lutter-Gardella.

But, there's been an evolution of Backbone inflatables from glorified/giant hacky sacks to these highly complex, anatomically-correct ocean creatures. This is made possible by the addition of some serious computer skills of designer (Rob Briggs), in collaboration with the mad scientist, sailer, builder-inventor-extraordinaire Rod Tharp.

Our first orca was toy-like, then these folks got super serious and started creating 3-D scans, using software to convert a 3-D model to 2-D patterns that we print, and then there's the cutting, tracing, cutting, sewing etc etc.

I freaking LOVE these people. What a joy and honor it is to be part of this team.

We are ending 2023 celebrating 20 YEARS of Artful Activism and Solutionary Organizing. In 2024, we want to expand our capacity to communicate more and escalate the process of passing along the tools and skills we've acquired. We have a goal of $60k  - and a big ass stretch goal of $100k by Dec. 31, 2023!

YOU can help us meet that goal at our website OR on Facebook or in a number of other ways.

• Most info is available at BackboneCampaign.org
• Backbone's Facebook fundraiser is at: https://www.facebook.com/donate/1040483860554195/10161718395710774/
• On Venmo, we are @backbonecampaign
• Or you can email [email protected] for more information.

However you donate, it's tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. Many thanks for your support of this creative work!

 - Bill Moyer, Executive Director, Backbone Campaign

* Chum is a name for a different species of salmon, but I thought the play on words was fun. This is a Chinook - or "King" - salmon and will be properly christened with a name at a future date.