I Wish to Say
For 20 years, artist Sheryl Oring has crisscrossed the country dressed as a 1960s secretary with her vintage typewriter documenting the nation’s hopes and fears through her "I Wish to Say" project. Using carbon paper, she creates two copies of each message: one sent to the White House, the other preserved in an archive now containing nearly 5,000 postcards from across the nation.
"I Wish to Say" grew out of Sheryl Oring's concern that not enough voices were being heard about the state-of-affairs in this country and her belief in the value of free expression that is guaranteed under our Constitution. In our fast-paced digital world, the deliberate act of composing a typewritten message offers a rare moment of reflection. It cuts through the noise of social media, encouraging thoughtful expression.
This ongoing project began in 2004 with a commission from The First Amendment Project in Oakland, CA, and has had three national tours thanks to grant support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Franklin Furnace Fund, New York Foundation for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council and the Charles R. Kettering Foundation.
An archive of the project from 2004 through 2016 is hosted by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Library.
In 2025, Oring’s work on this project will be featured in a solo exhibition at The Free Library of Philadelphia: “Secretary to the People: Sheryl Oring Uses a Typewriter to Activate Democracy with Art on the Streets of Philly and Beyond” runs from Jan. 21 to April 30, 2025.
In 2024, Oring hit the road with a fall tour to document that year’s historic presidential election. She started and ended the tour in Philadelphia and typed on the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention as well as at several parks in New York and on half a dozen college campuses from University of Dayton in Ohio to Scripps College in California, Hunter College in New York, and University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. She also presented a solo show documenting 20 years of this project at the Monmouth University Center for the Arts in New Jersey. 2024 tour dates are listed here and the messages typed in 2024 are displayed here.
In addition to keeping an extensive archive of the carbon copies of typed messages and photographs of participants, Oring also engages with her archive as research material and creates new work inspired by the messages people dictate. In December 2024, she created a series of Xerox transfer prints (shown below) that feature quotes based on things that people said in their postcards to the next President during performances in 2024. The prints are being featured in exhibitions in St. Petersburg, FL, and Philadelphia, PA, in early 2025.
In 2022, Oring presented a special version of this work at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, as part of a concert celebrating the anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
In 2020, Oring presented both live and virtual performances at the Brooklyn Public Library after developing a method for using Zoom as a performance platform through work with the Stamps Gallery and the Democracy & Debate Theme Semester at the University of Michigan. A team of student typists from the University of Michigan and Wayne State University typed messages to the next President from students and university communities in Michigan.
The above messages were addressed to the next President during performances across the country in 2020. Each of these messages were individually sent to the White house directly during the first 100 days of the Biden presidency.
The prints below were made in 2018 and feature quotes from messages people sent to President Trump in 2017.
On April 27, 2016, a team of students from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and PEN writers invited the public to dictate postcards to the Presidential candidates during the PEN World Voices Festival. This performance was made possible by grants from Franklin Furnace and Creative Capital. The messages dictated during this daylong performance were on display at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn as part of the "Of the people" exhibit curated by Erin Donnelly and at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, as part of the "Dispatches" exhibition curated by Cora Fisher.
“Now that politics and performance art are one and the same, Sheryl Oring’s facilitation of public engagement through her Franklin Furnace Fund performance art work, ‘I Wish to Say,’ is a fitting and needed action. I expect many folks will wish to say something to our Presidential candidates!”
Oring's book, "Activating Democracy: The I Wish to Say Project," was released by the University of Chicago Press and Intellect Books in Fall 2016.
