For the second time in roughly 60 years, major American civil rights and feminist milestones are causing Oakland artist/activist Michele Pred, and Oakland-born, Berkeley-raised vice president and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, to operate in close proximity.
“Even though I didn’t know Kamala, I went to school with her years ago in third grade at Thousand Oaks Elementary School [in Berkeley],” Pred says. “The reason Kamala was in my school was that she was bussed there. My mom and dad were extremely politically active and I grew up going to protests. I felt it was a privilege to participate. Berkeley was the first city in the country to use bussing to desegregate public schools. Kamala was in a different classroom so I don’t remember her.”
Although it’s unlikely the two East Bay women’s paths will directly intersect Aug. 19-22 during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, their symbiotic, tandem “partnership” continues. While Harris makes her case inside the convention hall for becoming the United States’ first Black and Asian American woman elected to the country’s highest office, Pred or her artwork will be almost everywhere nearby.
A large-scale show presented by Into Action will include 14 of Pred’s now iconic handbags. Her “Power of the Purse” handmade, limited-edition pieces rejuvenate vintage purses with electroluminescent wire in political, activist phrases—“Vote,” “Pussy Power,” “Equal Pay,” “My Body My Business” and more.
The purses serve as miniature, portable, feminist billboards and gained instant national prominence when Hillary Clinton, Amy Schumer and other celebrated—and vilified—feminists became owners. Pred’s purses have been carried on the red carpet at the Oscars, featured in Vanity Fair, Style Magazine, Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. Frequently exhibited at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York, Pred’s work is also found in collections held by museums or galleries, and displayed in solo or group shows worldwide.
“Into Action does big, extremely political shows and amazing programs,” Pred says. “I have 14 purses in the show, and added a new phrase that Kamala is saying: ‘We’re Not Going Back.’ I always respond in real time to what’s happening. Some of my collectors knew Hillary and brought her over and I met her in front of my artwork. Maybe one of them might get a purse to Kamala this time.”
Protecting the rights for women to control their reproductive health and choices arguably is the nucleus of other causes to which the two women devote considerable energy. At the DNC, Pred’s supersized inflatable birth control pills installation will make a prescient statement. The imposing, six-sided white inflatables boast bright, hot-pink “S” and “G-5008” labels.
“I’m focusing on birth control pills after the Dobbs leak in 2022, although really, I’ve never let go of abortion and reproductive rights,” Pred says. Her 2012 “Miss Conception” piece presents a rhinestone tiara adorned with birth control pills.
“The pill is something still accessible in all states,” she says. “You can actually receive them from out-of-state even where reproductive health is heavily restricted. Just two years ago, people didn’t know what mifepristone and misoprostol are—didn’t understand what that leak might mean. Part of my job is to make art that instigates conversation. What better way is there than to blow them up as sculptures and send them out?”
Pred created two sets of inflatable pills. One set will be transported around the country on a truck, with tour stops in New York City’s Times Square among other locations, including San Francisco on Oct. 15 (location TBA.) A second set will be displayed for extended periods at Brandeis University and other institutions.
“This is really what I’ve dreamed of doing,” Pred says. “Let’s talk about these things. It’s not a given that Kamala’s going to win, so we still have a lot of work to do. We can win on abortion rights, but we have to get the word out.
“We’ll be stopping in swing states, and the truck’s called ‘Body Freedom for Every(body),’” she adds. “At the DNC, I’ll also be speaking at film screenings, participating in events for Planned Parenthood—and then there’s the parade. We’re so excited.”
Since January 2016, Pred has organized 15 feminist art parades and activations. Public art is as important as art shown within four walls, she insists. The parades generate hope, are highly visible, and create unity and community by turning from anger to highlight the positive: pro-choice, pro-equal pay, pro-gun control, pro-vote.
“I’m sharing the work of the parade with a New York and a Chicago artist,” Pred says. “We always have something participatory. Green is the color of abortion rights that was started as the movement’s color by Central America, and I’ve been using it for years. With [British pop singer] Charli XCX’s album Brat and her ‘kamala IS brat’ meme, that bright green has two meanings now. We’ll have green sashes people can make and wear, art flags, music and civic joy.”
Along the march, Pred will hand out cards with four simple actions anyone can take to support civil rights: vote, march, donate, volunteer.
After feeling bleaker-than-bleak following the 2016 presidential election, Pred says one primary catalyst that keeps her “continuing in the fight” is her and her husband’s 15-year-old daughter, Linnea. “I’m a mom and an educator,” she says. “Linnea goes to the parades and protests and is the next generation of activists protecting civil rights.”
Another important sustaining element are activations that extend beyond parades to things like the “Vote for Abortion Rights” project that placed pro-abortion messages on billboards across 14 cities in 12 mostly Republican states prior to the midterm elections. One billboard displayed Pred’s 2018 work, a vintage purse with “1973” emblazoned on it, marking the year the Roe v. Wade ruling took effect in the United States.
In 2023, on Roe’s 50th anniversary, she created a 50-foot snow drawing of mifepristone and misoprostol in a park near the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Combining performance, sculpture and assemblage in highly visible forums, Pred also made riot shields with “My Body My Business” written on them in nail polish for Inauguration Day after Trump’s election in 2016; created Pink Pussy items for the Miami 2017 Parade Against Patriarchy; and arranged a Feminist Flotilla in San Francisco Bay to counter a MAGA protest at Crissy Field.
“There’s a lot to focus on—of course, it’s all of interest to me,” Pred says. “Reproductive freedom is essential, but there’s also equal pay, equal rights amendments, voter protection, gun control, the war in Ukraine and Gaza. After 9-11 work and other work I’ve done, I used to think, ‘Am I going to run out of issues?’ But no, there’s always something. We have a ton of work to do in this country and for people’s rights globally.”
For all that, Pred is willing to consider whether or not artists must be activists. “Art stimulates people, whether they get angry, happy, sad or just take in something beautiful,” she says. “It’s special, spreads joy and there are audiences for all of it. But in one way or another, even in art that’s meadows or flowers, maybe it causes a person to think about environmental issues. It should all exist. It all has purpose.”
