I called a bunch of artists this morning and asked to describe how they’re feeling on the eve of the election by choosing a work of art that represents their mood. Here’s what they came up with:

Brad Biancardi (who’s right there in Chicago): Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper

Claude Zervas: Salish basket

Anne Mathern: Canned Heat doing “Going Up the Country”

Margie Livingston: Giacometti, The Artist’s Mother

Whiting Tennis: Nothing. No work of art is real enough, he said while driving on tour with his band (he was heading into Baltimore and has spent the last few weeks listening to the Christian radio stations of the south, which has been upsetting): “This is not about metaphor or aesthetics. I’m almost at the point of not breathing. It feels like a make-or-break thing for me. I don’t know if I could handle it if [Obama] doesn’t win.”

Matt Browning: Dan Attoe’s Lightning storm above timberline (says in tiny letters at the top, “You still have some time”)

Sherry Markovitz: One of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes

Drew Daly: The Butthole Surfers, “Moving to Florida”

Margot Quan Knight had already made her own Obama-related work:

Here’s a photo I took recently. I was watching the Daily Show and they were joking about “small town values” and how “American” values change depending on who you talk to. I made a 3 x 4 foot glass quilt out of pieces of mirror. I hang it up vertically and photograph the reflection on the mirrors. The quilt is a blank, it only gets color from the surroundings. So I’m taking it to different people’s houses. This one was a test, during the first presidential debate.

Jeffry Mitchell: Vija Celmins’s 1964 seether