A week after celebrating Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy with a song, Joan Baez is selling limited-edition prints of the Bay Area politician with hopes to get her in the Oval Office.
The famed folk singer and activist, who lives in Woodside, released 500 signed copies of “Kamala Harris: Change Gonna Come.” Each print is priced at $1,000 and can be ordered on Baez’s website. She plans to contribute all proceeds to Harris’ campaign.
“This is a ‘Yes, We Can’ moment for anyone who believes in transformation,” Baez wrote in an Instagram post announcing the sale on Saturday, Aug. 3. “VOTE BLUE!”
The print is based on Baez’s 2021 portrait of the Oakland native, which commemorated Harris’ inauguration as the first woman to be elected as vice president. Baez created the original work as part of her “Mischief Makers” collection. The series, which has been on view twice at Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley between 2017 and 2021, featured Baez’s paintings of her proclaimed heroes, such as poet and onetime San Francisco resident Maya Angelou, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai.
“From one California badass to another, you go girl all the way! And never let the bastards get you down,” Baez said of Harris in the 2020 Instagram video.
Baez, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, is not only known for her six-decade music career but also for her social activism. She began her involvement in civil disobedience when she refused to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom during an air raid drill in 1958. Years later, she sang “We Shall Overcome” at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and participated in the antiwar movement.
Before Baez pursued music, however, visual art was her first passion, as she recounted in her 2023 book “Am I Pretty When I Fly?: An Album of Upside Down Drawings.” She devoted her time to the “Mischief Makers” series after retiring from touring in 2019.
Baez is only one of many Bay Area artists showing support for Harris through their craft. Psychedelic soul collective Moonalice released the song “Kamala (Follow Her!)” on Thursday, Aug. 1, a day before Harris secured enough votes to become the Democratic nominee for president.
“Tell those patriarch bullies to pack up their bags,” vocalist Lester Chambers sings in the chorus. “They’ve led us astray for too long.”
Reach Linda Liu: linda.liu@sfchronicle.com
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