Every once in a while, a young artist hits the scene with such a big splash, you can’t help but become an instant fan. Hudson Rowan, a 14-year-old from Marbletown, New York, is one such artist.
This month, the Board of Elections in Ulster County, New York, will choose the winner of its second annual I Voted Sticker contest, which asks area tweens and teens to submit their original designs.
The contest is just one of the county’s initiatives designed to get kids excited about participating in politics, many of which were launched during the alienating early days of COVID. The winning sticker will be distributed across Ulster County to participating voters in the Nov. 8 general election.
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“Last year I think we got maybe a couple thousand submissions, and this year there’s been 167,000-plus submissions,” Jen Fuentes, deputy commissioner of elections for Ulster County, told The Daily Beast. “There are 180,000 residents of Ulster County, give or take, so clearly it’s reached beyond the boundaries of our humble county, and we’re very excited.”
You can currently vote for one of the six finalists on the Board of Elections website: Shafil Sabbir, an 18-year-old from Rochester, came up with a polished, star-studded, blue and orange sticker that reads “I VOTED TODAY.” (Love the addition of “today;” it’s punchy.)
Wendy Stewart, also 14 years old and from Marbletown, submitted a drawing of the Capitol Building with red and blue windows and “I Voted” unfurling above in looping, romantic script.
In a less stacked group of competitors, Stewart’s creation would be my favorite. But Rowan’s sticker, which at press time has received 93 percent of the votes, is a masterpiece: next to “I VOTED,” scrawled in punk rock crimson, is a lurid, grinning purple head perched atop spider-like, turquoise-hued appendages. The head’s saucer eyes are wide and blood red, and its mouth, frozen in a crazed, rictus grin, reveals a rainbow of uneven teeth.
“When my mom told me about it, I said, ‘What should I draw, I don’t really know what to draw?’” Rowan told WAMC. “And she was like, ‘Do something like patriotic—red, white and blue.’ But, that’s not totally my drawing style to have with the stars, the stripes and the eagles. And so, I didn’t totally want to do what everyone else was going to do with the patriotic stars and stuff. So, I decided to do something completely different.”
The design is hilarious, unhinged, and deftly captures the nation’s current mood. Disillusioned and dismayed by rampant mass shootings, the demolition of women’s reproductive rights, skyrocketing housing costs, anti-LGBTQ policies and virulent racism, over and over again we’re told to get out and vote as if we haven’t been doing so faithfully for years, with no discernible improvements on the horizon.
“I’m twisted and freakish,” Rowan’s sticker creature seems to say, “but I’m here, I voted, are you happy now? Gaze upon my mangled visage and witness what my trust has cost me. I’m giving you, my leaders, another chance: don’t blow it.” Gen Z really, truly gets it.
Rowan’s sticker went viral over the weekend, earning raves on Reddit, TikTok, Twitter and the New York Post.
“I drew this head with kind of like a crazy, crazy hair on a gnarly, energetic, funny head and then I didn’t really know what to do with it,” Rowan explained further to WAMC. “So, I kind of left it for a little bit and then came back and decided to sketch out some like leg-tentacle type things coming out. Then, I wanted to add some color. So, I just took a reel of colors and started adding random colors, to kind of give it a vibrant feel.” Rowan’s parents did not return The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
“We felt it was important to have that design included, and the reception that it received has been great,” Fuentes told The Daily Beast. “I think it might be a reflection of how folks are feeling, which is that politics can be a little crazy and unnerving sometimes. I think it’s important that we give agency to how a 14-year-old feels about the whole thing.”
