Your art is an historical resource.
Whether you created it in response to a specific incident or on a general topic, your voice matters. Scholars pore over artwork created during periods of civil unrest and disagreement. We’re living through that right now.
Art credit: “Spring 2026 in the Twin Cities” by Karen Stuhlfeier.
Watercolor, 18×12”, 2026.
Crop Art
A Minnesota tradition, crop art is taking the State Fair by storm this year. An incredible array of pieces, each representing dozens of hours of painstaking artistry, are calling out injustice and applauding courageous acts of neighboring and mutual aid.
The Rebel Loon Archive will be publishing an anthology of this resistance crop art, anticipated in Fall 2027.
Five dollars from the sale of every book will support the Immigrant Defense Network.
We are currently welcoming submissions.
Deadline: March 1, 2027.
Got questions? Check out our Submission Questions below, or contact us.
Art credit: “The Children are Always Ours” by State Representative Athena Hollins. Crop art, 2026.
Art Submissions
Art Against Operation Metro Surge
Publishing September 2026
Still accepting submissions for exhibitions and the digital archive!
Boundary Waters: Sacred Wilderness
Expected Spring 2027
Submission Deadline: October 1, 2026
Resistance Tattoos
Expected Summer 2027
Submission Deadline: January 1, 2027
Resistance Crop Art
Resistance Quilts & Textiles
Expected Fall 2027
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2027
Depending on the volume of submissions, we may publish resistance tattoos, crop art, and quilts & textiles as three separate books or one larger combined book.
Art credit: Maang Ribbon Skirt by Lenore Curry.
Cotton ground fabric, satin ribbon, machine embroidered loon applique, waterlily applique, cotton thread, 31x35”, 2026.
Design credit to @amanoprinthouse and @cattervo.
Submission Questions
Is it too late to submit my art?
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While certain projects have deadlines, you can absolutely continue to submit your artwork. Even if your piece isn’t submitted in time for in a specific publication or exhibition, there will likely be future opportunities, so we’ll still welcome your submission.
Also, all art in the Rebel Loon Archive will be featured in a freely accessible digital database, intended for use by both scholars and laypeople. This is a major undertaking, and we will be applying for grant to help fund its creation. The various subjects of art the Rebel Loon Archive collects will all be included, with each artwork tagged and sorted so that viewers can easily find artwork relevant to their interests.
What do you do with the money?
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The Rebel Loon Archive is fiscally sponsored as a nonprofit project of Springboard for the Arts, a local nonprofit that specializes in helping Minnesota arts organizations grow, mature, and comply with various state and federal regulations.
We do not take any profit from this project.
All art exhibitions so far have been free, and we hope to keep it that way as much as possible. Five dollars from the sale of each copy of Art Against Operation Metro Surge sold supports the Immigrant Defense Network. Future publications will support organizations related to those topics: for example, the Boundary Waters book will support Friends of the Boundary Waters.
Do I get paid for submitting my art?
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We currently do not offer honoraria for pieces selected for publication. However, changing that is one of our most urgent financial goals, and we will be applying for grants in the future to fund honoraria.
If an artwork is selected for a physical publication, the artist will receive a complimentary physical copy of the book. If an artist is not selected, they will receive a complimentary digital copy of the finished work.
Does it cost me anything to submit art?
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Absolutely not. You can submit as many pieces as you would like, and we’ll never charge you a dollar for it. We are honored that you’d trust us with your work.
What rights am I giving up by submitting?
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You retain copyright of your work: you can still publish & sell that same artwork elsewhere.
All we ask is rights of reproduction. That means that we can publish & exhibit the artwork you’ve shared with us. We commit to crediting the artist wherever the art is used.
You can withdraw your work at any time, and we’ll remove it as much as we can (e.g., taking down social media posts where we’ve shared it).
Do you accept AI-generated art?
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No. Our submission form asks artists to disclose if generative AI was used in the creation process, and also asks artists to certify that they understand that art created with the help of generative AI is not allowed.
There are applications where AI is an appropriate tool. We firmly believe that the creation of art is not one of them. Human intellect, creativity, and collaboration are always worth the extra time and effort.
(And frankly, we’d much rather see “bad” art made by human hands than yet another yellowish, overcrowded AI-generated knockoff.)
What formats do you accept?
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We accept visual art submitted as a high-resolution image. Please note that the your submission will be evaluated on the strength of that image: if you submit a poorly framed, badly-lit photograph of a beautiful painting, we cannot publish it. If you need assistance photographing your work, please contact us and we can help connect you with a photographer. We also accept select donated works for permanent inclusion in the Rebel Loon Archive’s physical collection.
We also accept written work. For publication in anthologies (Art Against Operation Metro Surge, Boundary Waters, etc), we encourage you to keep written submissions to 500 words or less. We certainly accept longer works, but in the interest of sharing work by many artists, shorter works will be prioritized for those publications.
The Rebel Loon Archive is not a politically neutral organization. For the topics we accept art on, we believe there is a right side and a wrong side of history. We’re interested in preserving the voices of people speaking up for justice, for human rights, and for caring for our planet.
If we welcome the voices of the oppressor, we are no longer a safe place for the voices of the marginalized. However, there is room for nuance and difference of opinion. The Archive is not a monolith.
We reserve the right to not include any particular artwork submitted to the Archive.
I have a large collection of work. Will you publish it as its own book?
Rebel Loon Press is a small publishing house operating under The Rebel Loon Archive LLC. We are open to publishing book-length works or collections of works. While our anthologies support charitable causes, individual authors’ or artists’ books support them. Please contact us to discuss your proposal.