NEW YORK — If you happened to venture out onto Mulberry and Grand streets the day after Hurricane Sandy, you might have noticed a lone panel with a portrait of president Barack Obama, hoisted up on puppet strings like a marionette on a stage. Right next to him stood a portrait representing his challenger, Mitt Romney, as an empty suit adorned with a red tie and flip flops. The latter portrait was swept away in the storm — a somewhat symbolic turn of events, considering the praise the president received regarding post-Sandy recovery efforts and the criticism Romney garnered for his well-known anti-FEMA remarks.

The provocative Mulberry and Grand piece was the work of Bushwick-based street artist Gilf!, who had set herself up on this corner of Little Italy to paint, stencil, and wheatpaste as a promotion for the New York City Comedy Festival, curated by Vandalog creator RJ Rushmore, and also to advertise her own show at Galerie Swanström. The location gave the politically-charged artist a perfect platform to create works airing critical views of both candidates.

“I’m kind of disgusted by the way things are happening and the way info is getting out there,” Gilf! told ARTINFO recently, explaining her general lack of enthusiasm for electoral politics in general. “People talk so negatively about one candidate or the other, but yet I don’t really see them as being very different. One is wearing a blue tie and one is wearing a red tie.”

Gilf!’s knack for creating dialogue started long before she realized art was her medium. While most of us associate the acronym "GILF" with a certain NSFW phrase, the now 30-year-old artist insists that it's actually a childhood nickname bestowed upon her by friends back home in Minnesota. In other words: Like a lot of her art, her name invites discussion and is open to interpretation.

As a self-proclaimed tomboy, Gilf!'s went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study engineering and learn auto design. After realizing this was a less-than-creative field, she turned to art. She’s since become familiar to readers of street art blogs and websites like Vandalog, Brooklyn Street Art, and Juxtapoz.

Since she found her calling, Gilf! has created an extensive oeuvre of socially engaged work that speaks to both general and specific issues, all in her distinct style. She churns out new pieces on topical subjects, quickly but with a sense of craftsmanship that can be credited to her engineering background.

“If [a topic in the news] strikes me and it gets me upset, it motivates me to make a piece. Normally, if you talk with someone about an issue, the conversation ends and that's the end of the idea. But if you create a visual piece, well, I know visuals stick in my head and stay there for days. Being able to create something that may stick with somebody for 24 hours or two weeks or a year — maybe that will create that slight change in their psyche,” she explained.

A work that viewable both in her current show and on streets all over Brooklyn depicts Lady Liberty lapping up Kool-aid — Gilf!’s general opinion of media consumers who keep their heads in the sand about important issues. Compare that image to another stencil work titled Who’s in Control, depicting a birth control wheel in which the days of the week are replaced with letters that spell out, “Why are crotchety old men deciding what’s right for women’s bodies?” and you can see the wide range of her concerns.

“I think putting my images out there for people who don’t have the means to discuss [art] or even look at or it or have an opinion about it is a driving force in why I do what I do, and the gallery response is kind of secondary,” she said.

As for today's election, Gilf! relates an episode where a woman, observing her anti-Obama piece, expressed delight — only to be dismayed to see that it would be placed right next to an anti-Romney piece. But for her, that’s the point: “Those two pieces right next to each other help facilitate a dialogue,” she says. “If you make political work about one side then you’re really only going to get one side listening to you. But if you talk about both sides, maybe both sides will be open to what you’re saying. You lose half your viewers if you only do one side.”

Gilf! does, however, mention that perhaps the Romney piece blowing away in the storm will “hopefully” represent the outcome of the election, hinting at whom she ultimately favors. Yet after looking at many of her pieces, it becomes apparent that, for her, it’s not about which candidate wins or loses, but the dialogue that is created, and the steps we take to make and express our informed opinions.

“Being able to have that kind of voice on the street and being able to put my opinion out there is a very empowering thing for me to do,” she concludes. “There’s so many places in the world where you can’t do that.”

To see images of work by GILF!, click on the slideshow.