“Beyond the Page” digs into the process and practice of writers and artists who work at the intersection of literary arts and other fields. For this installment, I interviewed Fawzia Mirza — actor, writer, producer, and “artivist” — about the relationship between her writing and performance, her creations’ many forms and media platforms, the role of comedy and collaboration in her work, and how she hopes her work impacts others. Our conversation took place remotely, with Fawzia responding via audio recording to a set of emailed questions.

Find Fawzia on Twitter and Instagram @thefawz. “The Red Line” premieres on Sunday, April 28, on CBS. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Marya Spont-Lemus: I first became aware of your work several years ago, when you emceed TEDx Windy City, at which two of my students were speaking. I thought you were such a charming, energetic, bold, incisive yet kind and generous host, and it was so lovely to officially meet you a few years ago and to discover that you’re just as smart and sincere and present off-stage. Since then, I’ve seen “Signature Move” (your first feature film!) and a number of your short films — many of which you’ve written or co-written as well as starred in — and gotten to know you a bit through other things around Chicago. There are so many facets to your artistry and your thoughtful work in this world.

For these reasons and more, I wanted to talk to you for “Beyond the Page” — especially because it seems like writing is central to your practice, yet I haven’t seen a lot of attention to that part of your process. So, in particular, I’d love to learn more about how writing factors into your creative work, as well as how aspects of your personal and professional experience inform that.

To begin, I’d love to just hear a little about you. How do you think about your practice, what is your work about to you, and what you hope your work does in the world?

Fawzia Mirza: My mission as an artist is to use comedy and art and storytelling to break down stereotypes across different communities, in many of my identities — race, religion, class, gender, orientation. I’m an actor, I’m a writer, I’m a producer. I think of myself as an activist and my art as activism — I’m an “artivist.” My work is about changing the narrative. I also hope that my work helps amplify the voices of my various communities and intersectional spaces that I occupy and, honestly, I hope that it can both empower others to create their own work and tell their own stories. I hope that my work can make people feel seen and represented and a little less lonely in the world.

Image: Still from “Signature Move” showing Sari Sanchez (as Alma) and Fawzia Mirza (as Zaynab) facing each other in front of the Chicago skyline. Directed by Jennifer Reeder. Courtesy of Full Spectrum Features.

MSL: How did your interest in writing develop? And how do your writing and performance practices interact with each other?

FM: I actually was a lawyer and started taking improv and acting classes while I was lawyering — I was a litigator by day, taking these classes at night. Eventually I left the law, and I started doing an educational touring show based out of Chicago called “Sex Signals,” which was a comedic show about sexual violence prevention. Doing that really shaped my ability to see both rape culture and misogyny in play in our culture and also the great impact of comedy as a tool to break down stereotypes and to have really important, compelling conversations on divisive topics and social issues.

But I didn’t start writing until I’d left the law and I was auditioning and doing this other kind of activist performance work. The roles I would go in for just weren’t really telling stories of my communities or didn’t feel authentic. The roles didn’t feel like they represented my actual experiences as a Muslim person or a queer person or a woman or a South Asian person. And I was often being told that I wasn’t “enough” of any of those things that I actually was — like I wasn’t South Asian enough or lesbian enough or Muslim enough. So I thought, “You know, I need to create those roles and tell those stories” — so that I feel represented and so that I can cast myself instead of waiting for someone else to cast me, or instead of waiting for someone else to tell my story, who might not even be from those spaces or have those experiences. That’s kind of how I started writing. The writing and the performance have been deeply intertwined for me from the beginning because I started writing for myself to play the roles.

Video: “The Muslim Trump Documentary: Ayesha Ali Trump”: Directed by Sundae. The video thumbnail shows Fawzia Mirza in medium-close-up as the character Ayesha Ali Trump, with “Ayesha Ali Trump” and “Muslim Illegitimate Daughter” superimposed in white on-screen. The character holds a red patterned umbrella open behind her head and beams past the camera. She wears a detailed blue top, black glasses, silver hoop earrings, large rings, bright pink lipstick, and a shoulder-length blond wig. Blurred in the background are an exposed-brick interior wall, vases of fuchsia flowers, and framed artworks. Video courtesy of the artist.

MSL: In creating your narrative videos, particularly, what’s the interplay between improvisation and predetermined structure? I’m thinking for instance about “The Muslim Trump Documentary: Ayesha Ali Trump” or “Kam Kardashian,” but really in any of your work. How much of your writing takes place on the page versus in the editing room versus live/on the fly?

FM: For me, improv is a huge part of my creation process. Collaboration is also a huge part of it. So, I may write something, I may have an idea, and then I need to play it off of trusted friends or collaborators. I also am a huge proponent of improvising dialogue and moments in order to find the thing I want to put onto the page.

It also happens on set. When I’m able to have that creative and artistic license, I love playing with words and moments and phrases on set, and I love to work with people who are also really comfortable with that. It creates a certain kind of trust and creative energy. With “The Muslim Trump,” I worked with a director named Sundae, who was totally cool with me just riffing in moments. So, there was a lot that was allll created on the fly, based off of the kernels of moments and scenes that we had. With “Kam Kardashian,” director Ryan Logan and I created full scripts but we also improvised in order to make it stronger given what the other actors were giving, or what felt more authentic in the moment — or if we had to change a scene or the light shifted or we had to cut something out. What felt real to that moment.

And then the real magic is in the editing room. Great performances — great acting, great comedy — are created in the editing room. I mean, that’s why editors win awards! That’s why they deserve to win awards, and also why having an editor who understands your specific style of storytelling is so key. For example, with “Kam Kardashian,” Ryan Logan, also the editor, understood both comedy and my sense of comedy. That’s essential.

Video: “Kam Kardashian Ep. 1 – The Gay One”: Directed by Ryan Logan. The video thumbnail shows Fawzia Mirza in close-up as the character Kam Kardashian, with “The Gay One” superimposed on-screen in semi-transparent white and all caps. Inside a phone booth, the character Kam looks up, holding the phone receiver to her face with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other. Mirza wears a black leather jacket, with a white and black bandana around her neck. Behind her, through the phone booth’s windows, daylight is blurrily visible. Video courtesy of the artist.

MSL: How does your creative process differ when you’re writing material for yourself to perform versus for someone else (either someone specific that you know, or a TBD person who will be cast later by someone else)? Do you currently write anything that’s not for performance?

FM: I definitely think the creative process is different when you’re writing for yourself and making and producing it yourself. Versus, writing something that you’re submitting to someone else to read on the page, who may not know you, your work, or your style.

When I write for myself, am starring in it, producing it, working with collaborators I know, I often hear everything in my head and know the rules and the landscape of how that will translate onto the screen. For me, sometimes it’s a matter of getting the bones of the story, the beats of the comedy down — and then I know that, through the collaborative process, we’re going to get it right. But otherwise, you need to always set the scene, the characters, think about “What would someone else need to see on the page to understand everything that is in my head?”

Recently I worked as a writer on the new CBS show “The Red Line,” co-created by two Chicagoans, Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, and executive-produced by Kevin Hooks, Sarah Schechter, Greg Berlanti, and Ava DuVernay. As a writer in the room, I worked in collaboration with other writers to create the world and storylines for the show and I wrote one of the episodes. That process of creation taught me a lot about crafting the work for a lot of different people to read it.

The more I write, the more I see the power of writing. One of my ultimate goals as a creator is to executive-produce not just my own work but to elevate and amplify other artists’ work as well.

Video: “Spunkle (short film)”: Directed by Lisa Donato. The video thumbnail shows an image of Jake Matthews (as Matt) at left and an image of Laura Zak (as Maggie) and Fawzia Mirza (as Saira) at right. Matthews wears a black and white t-shirt and looks surprised. Zak wears an orange tank top and Mirza wears a white patterned shirt and a black suit jacket; both characters smile and look toward the camera expectantly. Plants are slightly visible in the blurry background of both images. In a teal and white banner along the bottom of the frame are the short film’s title (“Spunkle”) and tagline (“Being your sister’s wife’s sperm donor is a heavy load”), the performers’ names, and the Sparkle Motion Films logo. Video courtesy of the artist.

MSL: Who, if anyone, do you share your work with when it is in-progress, and when in the process?

FM: I think it’s essential to share your work with people at every stage — people you feel comfortable with — whether it’s brainstorming, sharing revised drafts, always having someone on set who has your back and whose opinion you trust. I need to work with an editor whose vision I trust. Ryan Logan edited “Kam Kardashian,” “The First Session,” “Spunkle,” and “The Muslim Trump.” Lisa Donato is one of my huge collaborators, who co-wrote “Signature Move” with me. I starred in her first short film, “Sugarhiccup.” We made the short film, “Spunkle,” and now we’re going out with a major studio to sell a half-hour comedy called “Spunkle.” Ryan’s and Lisa’s voices are in my head a lot. Also, [laughs] anyone I’m dating is always a huge part of my collaborative process as well.

MSL: You seem to have many recurring collaborators, including co-writers. How does your process of co-writing differ from collaborator to collaborator, or from when you write alone? How did you find or create this network and what keeps it going?

FM: Honestly, I think everything in life is about relationships — whether it’s someone that you have a romantic interest in, whether it’s someone you like to go to movies with, someone you create with (co-write with, collaborate with as a director or producer or a director of photography). I think it’s about having a really strong relationship with that person, having a shared energy and language that feels safe and strong. For me, it’s very much energy driven and value driven. If your values are similar to mine, if you care about the same things I do, if I feel like you can step inside my brain and feel comfortable knowing its complications — and I can do a little bit of the same to you — then that feels really beautiful! And with all collaboration, as with any great relationship, there’s an ability to see the other person where they are, meet them and not be afraid to embrace their ideas and point of view.

Video: “Signature Move Official Trailer (Final)”: The video thumbnail shows a still from the film “Signature Move,” directed by Jennifer Reeder. In close-up in the foreground, the characters played by Sari Sanchez (Alma) and Fawzia Mirza (Zaynab) are shown in profile, facing toward each other, as Mirza speaks. Mirza wears a shiny green, gold, and black lucha libre mask, and a blue and white striped button-down shirt; Alma wears a shiny pink and sparkly silver lucha libre mask and a dark green t-shirt. People shopping are slightly visible, but blurred, in the aisle behind them. Video courtesy of the artist.

MSL: You’ve worked across so many forms and platforms. Do you always know — when you have an idea or begin a project — if it will be for a web series, the stage, a short film, something else? With “Signature Move,” how (and when in the process) did you know you had a feature film on your hands?

FM: This is a really great question. I have often asked myself, “Is this a web series, a short film, a documentary, a feature film? Is this something else, like a new media project? Is this a play?” I think it’s important to ask yourself those questions, especially coming from the background that I do, where I’ve worked in many formats and feel comfortable finding collaborators to work in those formats with me. You really have to be able to listen to yourself and your instincts and trust your instincts; I think that’s really, really important. As you create, you start to see the thing that you want to keep making. For example, for me, I started making short films and web series first because that was something that I could do with limited resources. Now that I’ve made “Signature Move,” I want to make more features; the landscape has changed. Now that I’m working with a team of people — my managers and my literary agent in Los Angeles — there’s more people we can collectively reach and bring in on a project.

Video: “The Queen of My Dreams – Short Film”: Directed and written by Ryan Logan and Fawzia Mirza. The video thumbnail shows a still from the short film “The Queen of My Dreams,” the title of which is superimposed in lowercase script across the bottom left-hand corner of the frame. Depicted in close-up are Fawzia Mirza (as Sharmila Tagore) and Mouzam Makkar (as Rajesh Khanna). Makkar wears a short black wig and a white button-down, and leans into the neck of Mirza. With closed eyes, Mirza leans her head away, facing toward the camera; she wears makeup, a red bindi, a long black wig, and part of a red garment across one shoulder. In the background are strokes of red, brown, and peach color. The entire image seems painted or shaded through a stylized filter. Along the right-hand side are logos indicating honors from the Chicago International Film Festival, Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, Palm Springs International Shortfest, and Frameline, as well as logos for Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 1 and Full Spectrum Features. Video courtesy of the artist.

With “Signature Move”: You know, I wrote “Signature Move” as a short film. And then I met Eugene Sun Park, who had just started Full Spectrum Features. Eugene had really loved one of my short films — my first short film — “The Queen of My Dreams.” We were talking about other projects and I said, “Look, I’m really looking for a producer who has vision and sees me as a creator and sees my work and wants to make my work.” When I showed him the script for “Signature Move” the short film, he said, “I love this, I want to make this — but I also think it’s a feature, and I want this to be my first feature film that I make.” That felt great!

I also sat with a filmmaker and creator — a queer Muslim person I love — Rolla Selbak, who made a web series I was in called “Kiss Her I’m Famous.” Rolla is someone I definitely turn to as a mentor and for creative inspiration. She read “Signature Move” and she said, “Fawzia,” — she says my name in a very Arabic way, because my name is an Arabic name — “if there was one role that you wanted to star in right now what would it be?” And I said, “It would be Zaynab, from ‘Signature Move’.” And she said, “Well, that’s the project you need to make, and that sounds to me like a feature film.”

Then I thought, “Well, how do I write this? I’ve never done this before. Who is someone I had a great creative connection with?” It was Lisa Donato. There was a film festival screenplay deadline coming up in about two weeks, so I called Lisa and said, “Do you want to turn a short film into a feature with me?” and she was crazy enough to say yes. She flew to LA where I was living for the year and — in seven days — we transformed “Signature Move” the short film into the first draft of “Signature Move” the feature film. That was the beginning of the life of that screenplay. When I shared it with Eugene, he said that Newcity’s Chicago Film Project, through Brian Hieggelke, was interested in making a feature film and Brian was really interested in “Signature Move.” I said yes and moved back to Chicago to work with them to make it.

Thinking of, “Why are we making this project a short versus a feature?” — for me, it’s always been resources. Or sometimes it’s just feeding a certain creative impulse I have in that moment, or reacting to a current event, where I don’t want to wait and I want to have creative control and it feels essential now. But sometimes that story is expansive.

Image: Production shot from “Signature Move.” A camera crew works just outside of a wrestling ring in which five people are standing, talking, and/ or exercising. Fawzia Mirza is at far left. Photo by Rebecca Ciprus. Courtesy of Full Spectrum Features.

MSL: How does your understanding of the eventual “home(s)” for a work impact the way that you shape the work, if it does?

FM: I often am thinking as a producer regardless — whether I’m watching myself in the editing room or thinking about what I want to write. I think about, “What am I going to do with this project? Who am I making this for? When do I want to make it?” So one of the joys of making a short piece — that I can make with fewer resources and on my own, independently — is I can do it quickly and then sort of curate where I’m going to send it or who I’m going to send it to. For me, film festivals have been a huge part of my artistic growth. They saw me in my intersectional identity and wanted to amplify my voice as an artist before it was cool or trendy or sexy for anyone else to do it.

Now that I’ve worked on network television, I also think about, “Is this something I could pitch as a pilot for a much wider global audience? Or is this something I just want to make and put on the internet?” My sense of its platform definitely impacts the work, and also how much time I might spend on it now. I mean, you also gotta get paid! We have to survive as artists. That is definitely something that factors into decisions now.

Video: “The First Session – Trailer”: The video thumbnail shows a still from the trailer for the short film “The First Session,” directed by Ryan Logan. Mouzam Makkar (as Amina) and Fawzia Mirza (as Mona) hold hands and look just past the camera. They sit on a detailed piece of wooden furniture that is covered in textured pillows; there is other detailed wooden furniture behind them. Makkar wears a blue fitted shirt, a patterned scarf, and black pants, and looks expectant. Mirza wears jeans and a dark pink blouse with silver buttons; she looks like she may be trying to smile but is also conflicted. Along the bottom of the frame are logos indicating honors from the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival, Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, Chicago South Asian Film Festival, and Palm Springs International Shortfest. Video courtesy of the artist.

MSL: How do you think about humor and satire functioning in your work, in general and especially when addressing more serious topics? Have the ways you use (or think about the uses of) comedy changed over time — as you’ve developed as an artist, in response to specific cultural moments or political events, or with shifts in other aspects of your life?

FM: Humor is a huge part of my work. Comedy, for me, is a tool to reach people when otherwise they might not be reached. Comedy’s a way of talking about divisive topics. Comedy’s a way to access people, find a connection, and then open up a new ability to potentially reach and impact each other. All of my work, really, uses humor, even if it seems like it’s really serious. And, on the flipside, if it seems like it’s really comedic, it also is always working on changing the narrative, subversively. Like in my short film, “The First Session”: Two characters were lesbian, all three characters were South Asian, all three characters had Muslim-sounding names, but the short film was not about that. It was about a lesbian couple having their first date at a therapist’s office. And so, even though you have this queer, Brown, Muslim world, you have a very absurd situation that’s allowing all audiences to access the film and find connection, humor, relatability, and joy in the characters.

“The Muslim Trump” is another great example. Until I made “The Muslim Trump,” I didn’t really see people speaking out against Donald Trump. Making “The Muslim Trump” was a way of using an absurd character to speak out against an absurd and offensive and hateful human being.

I think that you can tell my mental, emotional, creative, political, personal space based on what I’m working on at the time. Whether it’s something big or something small, it’s really telling of where I’m at.

Image: Still from “Signature Move” showing Molly Callinan and Fawzia Mirza (right) They are dressed as luchadoras and are wrestling in a ring. Courtesy of Full Spectrum Features.

MSL: How did you get involved with “The Red Line” and what made you want to be involved? So far, what’s it like being on the writing team for a network TV show — especially as compared to self-producing so much of your own work — and what has surprised you about the experience?

FM: “The Red Line” was a project that Erica Weiss, one of the co-creators, reached out to me about. We knew each other’s work from the theater world, from the film world, from being hustlers in Chicago — because we know that Chicago artists are hustlers and work the hardest [laughs] in this industry in so many ways. Erica asked if I was interested in writing for television, then reached out to my team to have me interview for the show.

I’m not someone who thrives working in a space that doesn’t connect with my values and my strengths. There were a lot of connections for me to the project. “The Red Line” is a show that is about Chicago, it’s about people of color, about queer people, about people at the intersections, about violence, about the South Side of Chicago, about people finding connection and coming together across different communities. And so, a lot of the work that I’ve done up until this point and also my values as a person made this project exceptionally relevant to me. Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss — and Sunil Nayar, who’s one of the other show-runners — created a really beautiful, diverse, smart, funny, and familial writers’ room where it felt safe to share ideas and be your powerful, beautiful self.

Working for network television was a new world — with a studio, with executive producers — and also being paid your worth as an artist. It is the beginning of everything that I’ve worked towards as an artist, and the beginning of a lot more to come.

Image: Fawzia Mirza and Lisa Donato, co-writers of “Signature Move,” at a premiere for the film. Photo by Rebecca Ciprus. Courtesy of Full Spectrum Features.

MSL: After many years in Chicago, you moved to LA to be part of the writing team for that show — which takes place in Chicago. To what extent does that distance challenge, help, or otherwise impact your writing process?

FM: LA is an exciting place to be because you can feel that this is where the work is happening. It is a place where artists are able to thrive, make a living, connect with other artists at the height of their craft. I’d been coming to LA for several years anyway — for work and meetings and relationship-building and writing and collaborations — so, for me, working in LA telling a story about Chicago was what I was already doing. And I do believe that everything happens for a reason.

MSL: What else are you working on now or next?

FM: Lisa Donato and I have some great partners on board as we will be pitching our half-hour comedy “Spunkle” in 2019. With Terrie Samundra, I am turning my one-woman show, “Me, My Mom & Sharmila,” into a screenplay. I have a sci-fi digital series called “A Date with Khan” that I’m working on with Chicagoans Sean Miller and Naz Khan that Sarita Choudhury just attached to. I’m also working on a short called “Five Times a Day” which shoots in April, to be directed by Tchaiko Omawale, produced by Kate Fisher, with Zamarin Wahdat as the DP. And I’m also just finished with a treatment for a comedy-drama digital series about Muslim spirits, also known as Jinn.

Image: Fawzia Mirza as “Kam Kardashian.” She is crouching in a red phone booth and holding a phone to her ear. Courtesy of the artist and pandavision.

MSL: How do you decide what projects you pursue or opportunities you accept — in general and especially as your career has taken off? What have you learned or clarified about your own values or priorities as you’ve had to make those decisions?

FM: I consult with my literary agent and my managers and the other people really close in my emotional and collaborative sphere. As you get busier and more people ask you to work on projects, it’s easy to say yes without knowing “What is the thing that I need to focus on in this moment — or for the next few weeks or next few months?” I think it’s really important to understand also how you work as an artist. What do you need? Do you need space? Do you need to finish one thing and then start another? Can you write and work on multiple things at the same time? And also, what is the thing that you’re doing that is purely feeding you creatively, or feeding your momentum, or feeding your face — in other words, paying bills?

MSL: Whether when visioning new projects or engaged in the day-to-day work, what keeps you going and inspired? And how do you get it all done?

FM: If you’re like me, you have ups and downs. You have to stay self-motivated. You have to take care of yourself — your body and your mind. I keep going by actually living and being around really inspiring, good, kind people. I also like to be around people I admire, people I have worked with, but also people that I want to work with. I also need to go on walks. I need alone time. I need to work out. I like to go to the desert and hike. I like to stare off into space. I like drinking broth, and being still.

Video: “You Should Know This By Now — Fawzia Mirza #1”: Directed by Reena Dutt. The video thumbnail shows a video still from the “You Should Know This By Now” project. In medium-close-up, Mirza smiles at the camera. She wears a collared black shirt with white detailing and a silver necklace. The background is white, and wooden boxes of different dimensions are visible on the right-hand side of the frame. Video courtesy of the artist.

MSL: What are some of your favorite or most personally meaningful reactions that you’ve gotten to your work?

FM: I performed my play, “Me, My Mom & Sharmila,” in Pakistan in 2016, and afterward I got a Facebook message from a young girl. She said that she had come up to me but had been too nervous to speak, but she wanted to. She said that, being Pakistani and Muslim, she’d never seen someone talk about the things she was feeling inside. And that seeing me, seeing my play, hearing my experiences, changed her life, and made her feel like she was not alone. She said she realized she was queer and that she had to come out and she was coming out to me. It’s that kind of stuff that keeps you going.

MSL: Is there anything that you think people don’t talk (or ask) about enough with your work, that you wish that they did?

FM: I think we need to talk more about the power and complications of being queer and Muslim, and create safe spaces for those conversations. Because there are plenty of people I know who are on the right side of politics who still don’t understand that you can be Muslim and gay at the same time. There’s clearly a lot more work to be done.

MSL: Who or what are some of your most enduring creative influences, whether far past or recent? And what are you really into right now?

FM: Issa Rae was an influence. Bollywood’s an influence. I just watched the coming-of-age films “Eighth Grade,” “Jinn,” and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” and also “The Kominsky Method.” I just watched “Roma,” which is an epic film. I’m watching “I’m Sorry” and the Netflix shows “Sisters” and “Sex Education” and I’m into the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. I am listening to the Spotify Cosmic Playlists curated by Chani Nicholas and reading Randa Jarrar’s book “Him, Me, Muhammad Ali.” One of my favorite people to follow online is Samantha Irby.

MSL: Finally, what are you hopeful about?

FM: I’m thrilled to be working, but also doing the work on myself and creating the life I want. I’m hopeful about love. I’m hopeful about joy. I’m hopeful about what I’m going to do with my collaborators in 2019.

Featured image: Fawzia Mirza. In this medium-close-up shot, Mirza looks directly and confidently at the camera, smiling with pursed lips and pointing at the viewer with both hands. Mirza wears a long-sleeved denim shirt with a blue-on-blue, camouflage-like print and the top few snaps unsnapped. The cuffs of her shirt-sleeves are folded back, and she wears several bracelets and rings made of silver or wood. Photo by Bradley Murray, cropped to fit. Courtesy of the artist. 

Marya Spont-Lemus (she/her/hers/Ms.) is a fiction writer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator focused on teen creative, leadership, and professional development. She lives and works on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Follow her on Twitter and Tumblr.

“Intimate Justice” looks at the intersection of art and sex and how these actions intertwine to serve as a form of resistance, activism, and dialogue in the Chicago community. For this installment, we talked to Vesna Jovanovic via email about medical illustrations and the act of drawing. 

S. Nicole Lane: I think I saw your work a few years ago actually (I think at the Museum of Surgical Science?), and recently stumbled upon it again thanks to the internet. I’ve been interested in your attention to bodily subjects. Can you discuss how your work relates to sex and anatomy and why those topics interest you?

Vesna Jovanovic: My focus on bodily subjects developed slowly over time. Many years ago, at SAIC, I took an experimental drawing class with Barbara Rossi. She asked us to create something along the lines of a Rorschach test and then draw directly on top of the inkblot. I was working a day job in an R&D laboratory at the time, so my mind was saturated with lab equipment and glassware. That’s all I could see in the ink: test tubes and flasks. Years later I tried the same method and the results were similar, but my glassware began to vaguely resemble organs and human tissue. Labs were in my past, and something new was surfacing. This realization sparked a fascination with scientific objectivity, biopolitics, ways in which we differentiate species, how we define the boundaries of the body, ontology in medical practice, and similar themes.

There were other influences on my work along the way. In grad school, I took a class with Ann Hamilton who taught me how to provide an experience rather than illustrate an idea. Ironically, I often use illustration in my work—albeit as a conceptual device rather than a tool for communication. I’m interested in how the language of medical illustration participates in visual culture; how perception leads to categorization and then representation; and how these things reflect cultural biases—especially with respect to marginalized bodies. This is where sex figures into my work. Sex is such a visceral and fluid part of human existence—yet as a cultural phenomenon it is still taboo, carefully controlled and organized into neat categories and groupings. Sex also provides a way of looking at subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and lived experience, and how these things reside in the body.

Image: A detailed photo of Vesna’s sketchbooks where dark hues of black, blue, and purple fill the pages. The artist is flipping through a book of drawings, sketches, writing, and illustrations. Her hands are blurred in motion. Materials like glue, tape, pens, scissors, and a ruler lie on the table. Stacked against the wall are paintings with pinks, reds, and brown which are abstract shapes. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel

SNL: Can you talk about your project for Science (is not) Fair? I interviewed David for an Intimate Justice article and I’m also participating in the book as a visual artist. Anyways, do you want to discuss your interest in science and how it influences your work? Do you stay in touch with science writing/news/illustration? 

VJ: That’s fantastic, and so exciting to be in good company! For the book, David prompted artists to think of alternative medical treatments, to comment on ways in which science can be limited when dealing with human bodies. It was an exceptionally difficult project to tackle. The ideas kept pulling me toward a subject that I didn’t want to pry, as it involved the personal life of a close friend. More specifically, my piece for the book addresses non-directed organ donation. I wrote an extensive journal entry about it here.

I was already pursuing an art career when science first sparked my interest. I was looking for a way to make sense of the world, and science seemed like a good avenue for that. Now I realize how misguided that idea was. The existentialists got it right: the world doesn’t make sense and it never will; it is up to us to create meaning. In retrospect, my studies in science made me more aware of how bias functions. Lately I’ve been reading Donna Haraway’s feminist essays on science, and they resonate with me. All that said, I still love science, but I can’t make it a priority. I sometimes listen to popular podcasts like Science Friday while working in the studio. Also, I am currently enrolled in a weekend Anatomy and Physiology class. I love drawing the cadavers.

Image: Another view of the artist’s table where the pieces leaning against the wall are in focus. They are watercolor pieces and are organically shaped. The colors in the sketchbook are more vibrant—bright pink and light pink illustrations. Leaning against the wall are paintings that are light pink and brown. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel.

SNL: You’ve worked in various mediums. Can you expand on your relationship in working in different areas? How does the process of painting differ from sculpture?

VJ: True, I mostly draw and paint now, even though my background includes other disciplines. I spent many years studying ceramics and then photography. Both disciplines involve relatively specialized crafting techniques, and both have histories fraught with questions and struggles regarding their place in art. Studying these fields has taught me a lot about materiality and transformation, accident, image-making, craft, art, attachment, and so many other things.

As a student, I intentionally looked for classes that focused on particular crafting skills, like mold-making and casting, color darkroom, digital input/output, ceramic glaze lab… This kind of training helps so much with interdisciplinary work. I believe that having one’s hands in a material teaches a kind of tacit knowledge that cannot be communicated through words. It’s also nice to have experience with a variety of disciplines as they guide the creative process with their unique qualities and cultural contexts.

My current practice is mostly based on research and ideas that I compile in a sketchbook; the choice of medium is then dictated by whatever the particular work of art needs. Most of my recent work looks at the history of scientific visual representation, like medical illustration and other technical drawing which was largely developed on paper, so I work on paper a lot. I also love the act of drawing because it records bodily gesture in a very direct way, not unlike clay.

Image: In the artist’s studio, Vesna is leaning her head on one arm, looking off the left side of the frame and smiling. She is wearing a bracelet, glasses, and has a dark colored shirt on. Behind Vesna are images of her work, watercolor paintings that appear out of focus and abstracted. Colors of pink, brown, black, and yellow make up the body of work. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel

SNL: Can you talk about the recent show you were part of at Slow and the project you exhibited there?

VJ: Speaking of many disciplines, my project for Slow happened to involve an installation of artificial grass, but also pottery, performance, and a social/interactive element. The exhibition, titled Saturnalia, opened right around the winter solstice when the original Saturnalia festival would have taken place. It was a group show with a lot of fun work: paintings of magical fairy lands, ceramic penises, ornate colorful wearable items. After some research and play, I told the curator, Paul Hopkin, that I wanted to line the floors with artificial grass and make a bunch of ceramic gnome hats to give to gallery visitors. He was into the idea. The hats resembled the ancient Roman Pileus, normally made of felt and worn by freed slaves. During the ancient festival, everyone wore these hats in order to indicate a temporary break from social hierarchies. Party time. I used terracotta to make these hats and then encouraged people to take them home as gifts at the opening reception, like the sigillaria gag gifts that were exchanged during festivities in ancient Rome.

SNL: Any new exhibitions, residencies, projects, ideas that you want to plug and share?

I currently have work in a group exhibition at Siblings (formerly the Condo Association).  The closing reception will be on Sunday, April 28th from 3PM to 8PM. There are other things in the works, but it’s too early to share. The best way to keep up with my work is to subscribe to my mailing list here. 

Featured Image: Situated in Vesna’s studio is a flat file open with a painting on paper in the drawer. The work has colors of red, blue, brown, and black. Rolls of paper and other illustrations lie on top of the cabinet. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel

S. Nicole Lane is a visual artist and writer based in the South Side. Her work can be found on Playboy, Broadly, Rewire, i-D and other corners of the internet, where she discusses sexual health, wellness, and the arts. She is also the Office Manager for the Chicago Reader. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo by Jordan Levitt. 

The post Intimate Justice: Vesna Jovanovic appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

In Sam Kirk’s shared Pilsen studio at the Chicago Art Department, there are desks and a couple of small colorful portraits on the wall. They serve as a sharp contrast to the white walls accustomed to a flurry of monthly exhibits. One of the walls is a high partition that nearly hides the small but clearly busy space. The heavy table in the center of the work studio holds a work in progress that reverberates with the bright color choices and the distinct, curved lines that are a signature of Kirk’s style. However, each segment is glass cut then soldered into place by the dark lines that Kirk might normally reinforce with a smaller brush dipped in black paint, if she were working solely on canvas. Kirk’s work with glass has not only recently become part of the permanent collection at the National Museum of Mexican Art, but has become an identifiable style that she shares in public murals, exhibits, commissioned work, and even enamel pins and greeting cards. Her upcoming show “The Alchemy of Us” opens at Chicago Art Department on Friday, April 12, spurred to the conversation that follows.  The exchange included talking about LGBT and interracial identities in Kirk’s work and daily existence, the differences between working on the East Coast and being back in Chicago, the tenuous balance between creativity and commerce, and how social justice can be fueled by an artist’s determination to use all the materials at their disposal to consistently make new work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TB: My first question was going to be: what was initially the first event when you knew you wanted to be an artist, but then I was like, nah, maybe let’s start with: what is really exciting to you right now in terms of the creative process?

SK: Right now, the most exciting thing is figuring out how do I simplify the messages that I’m trying to create in my work? Or simplify the narrative that I’m trying to create in my work? And to a point where it is quickly digestible or quickly recognized for exactly what it is. I always want my work to do the talking for itself. I don’t wanna have to explain it. Whether the person gets exactly what I’m trying to say or if the work just stops them in their tracks for a moment and makes them start to ponder or thinks as long as it’s in the direction of where I’m trying to go, I’m happy. So, for me, as an artist in the process of developing work, it’s really trying to take these layers and layers of content and figure out how do I put that in a piece that shares the story. Also, how do I create work that is really impactful about some of the things we’re struggling with and dealing with today and have been for a long time.

TB: For a very long time. I don’t think it’s just about the subject matter in your work, too. Sometimes it’s about the placement, where are you putting the work. And who gets to see it? I think you think about that a lot in terms of what you’re doing.

SK: Yeah, I definitely do and even more so now. You know it’s challenging because as an artist we have these residencies, and we have this path that has been laid out as an artist – this is the direction you’re supposed to go in, you know? I’ve never really followed that path. This is my first residency at Chicago Art Department, and I’ve been doing this now for nine years as a full-time artist. This is what’s sustaining my life. I’ve been painting since I was a teenager, for obviously years and years and years. But even more so now as my career is growing, I’m finding that I’m less interested in that traditional path. And it’s because of what you said: the message, the placement, who the work is reaching, who I’m trying to communicate to, whose minds I’m trying to impact, and how I want the work to spark those conversations. I’m more interested in people who grew up similar to me, or with similar struggles, and struggles that are greater than those that I’ve had that the work might impact more than catering to the elite world of art.

TB: I’ve definitely been feeling for a long time the same way about the writing world. Like there’s this pedigreed set of stops that you’re supposed to make, and if you don’t make those stops, then somehow you’re not a part of the conversation. And that’s a falsehood. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t tell the truth about the situation.

SK: Right. One, it doesn’t tell the truth, and two, most of the people that my work is about and that I think are attracted to the stories I’m sharing aren’t in those realms. If they are, it’s a small percentage. And I just wanna really reach the people that aren’t there. It just so happens to be that it’s set up that way. Until that changes, I’m gonna figure out what works for me. It might continue to be a little bit of this, a little bit of that. You know, I just constantly get the criticism I’ve been getting.

TB: What’s the criticism you’ve been getting?

SK: The thing is that whenever I show in museums or put my work in – I’ve been putting my work the last couple years the curator’s always like, “Your work is priced too low. You need to raise the value. So, do this or do that” – and I find that it’s so easy for them to say that. But they’re not thinking about what matters to me as an artist. And at the end of the day, for me it’s about how can I produce enough work where I can sustain myself, and what do I need to price it at to be able to continue to do work like this because it’s important. But also more than anything I want this work to hang on the walls of people that really see themselves in it, or they relate to it, or it’s relevant to them. I always think about artists like Kehinde Wiley, some of these very large artists of color who have made a huge impact, I think about how do they feel about some of their pieces when they’re used in collections that are with white families, or families that definitely don’t relate to the subject that’s in the piece.

TB: Right, I think about that a lot, too. So much art disappears into these anonymous families that no one knows as opposed to being in a public space. Like we talked about Kerry James Marshall’s piece and the attempted auction to take the piece out of the Legler Library. It was atrocious. To think that someone can try to take art that’s meant to be public and turn it into profit that way…

SK: And then, what are you gonna replace it with for the people that have enjoyed that for the amount of time it’s been there? Why is it ok for you to just come into that space and remove it from the people that are enjoying it there? And that’s a part of the art world that I’m not a big fan of.

TB: And there are some artists, too, that have figured out how to do – it is a challenge because you don’t want it to be kitschy stuff. This one graffiti writer did all these different characters, and he had a store in Lower East Side maybe. It was full of almost pocket-size sketches in frames. You know the guy I’m talking about?

SK: Yes, I met him a couple times. De la Vega.

TB: De la Vega would have all these, really simple pieces, all over the place and they’re priced –

SK: They’re pricey.

TB: At a certain level though, it’s like anybody could get it, or you could save a little money and get one. Right? I think about Charles White. He said, I’m gonna do art for insurance company calendars. Because he knew people would keep the calendars. Did you see them in the Art Institute exhibit?

SK: No, I didn’t.

TB: They had some in the exhibit. They’re so beautiful, and this is for an insurance company? You see a lot of calendars now, they’re hideous. But it was just this spiral bound calendar, this beautiful white paper. It’s like stuff you would cut out of the calendar and frame.

SK: And frame it, yeah.

TB: You’d never know the difference.

SK: Yeah, I was just gonna say that actually. I’ve had so many people who want that. I make merchandise at several price points for that reason so that people can buy it no matter what their income level is. I’ve had people buy greeting cards that are basically just a smaller scale of a painting that I did, and they take it home and frame it. It just looks like this little nice art print. And I love that. They’ve taken it and they’re like, yeah, it’s a greeting card, but I’ve framed it. It’s a piece that I relate to on the wall, and I like that.

TB: I don’t think it’s a horrible idea because it’s another way to dismantle overpriced, exclusionary practices.

SK: You know, that’s one of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately with pricing artwork and considering just creating my own model of how I want to do it. I’m still playing with some ideas and tossing some things around to figure how does that work, and what would be the best way to do it because, yeah, I’m personally tired of people saying it should be this or it should be that…and all the people that support me, up to this point, it takes them out of the ability to own. I’m just not interested in that.

TB: Nobody wants a Five Heartbeats moment. You cross over, and never get the audience back.

SK: Right. Or you find yourself in rooms with this new audience, and you feel like, “I don’t belong here. I don’t wanna have these conversations, what the hell are they talking about?”

TB: Right, if I don’t even relate to this, why am I even here? I thought about [your] piece, “Making Memories of Mentors”? Frida’s in it. Frida Kahlo painted herself her whole life. She’s everywhere. We know her. There’s nothing wrong with revisiting themes in your work. I think you do it unconsciously.

SK: Yeah, I definitely I agree with that. During this residency I’ve started to realize a little bit of that. You know the theme, cause I’ve had some time to look at what I’ve done, what I’m trying to do. I’ve started to notice some of those patterns.

TB: Yeah, I think one of the things I found really appealing when I just started looking at everything, like stuff that’s been here at CAD, pieces online, and in the city. There are a lot of community scenes. A lot of women of color. There’s LGBT themes in the work, even if you just sneaked a little rainbow flag into it. I was thinking, she’s slick with it. But I saw there was a series on Luchadors? Mexican Wrestlers? So, she’s done that, she’s talked about prisons. Even the piece that was in the “Iconic” exhibit, you had the piece where you incorporated the buttons from the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, and Stonewall, or when your piece in The Long Term, addresses prisons. All these little moments come together, and it gives a clear intersectional identity. So, is there a topic you’ve kind of quietly been obsessed with that you would like to do pieces about? That you haven’t done yet?

Image: The artist Sam Kirk standing on a ladder facing away from the camera and painting a canvas in progress: a black background with many white-outlined figures. Image courtesy of artist.

SK: Well, it’s what I’ve been working on throughout my residency, and it’s the topic of identity. And really looking at how society and our environments shape our identity. Or for the LGBT community in specific, what limits us from discovering our identity. In this residency, that’s really been the focus and where I’ve really started to go with the artwork is focusing on all the moments that prohibit people from being who they are meant to be. And how long, how many years they end up in a way suffocating that part of themselves. Or just hiding and putting it away. Because of family, friends, people you thought were your friends, and society as a whole. Our government, you know, politics, everything. That’s something that I didn’t dive into right away, and it was because I think in some way I was hiding. I grew up in Chicago, and it’s been a great city. But the few times I’ve moved away, I’ve found that getting away from this city allowed me to explore a different side of myself because I wasn’t surrounded by all the input that I had here. I never thought that that affected me in the way that it did. The longest time I left was when I was living in New York for three years, and I really started to see that, so when I moved back here a couple years ago, then I literally felt that pressure of who I had to be here, because of all the people that I knew. I felt myself battling how am I supposed to be that awesome, amazing person that I was in New York City that I felt was genuinely me. I was able to express and still be that here. And I never really explored that in my work so I was just writing about it, as I was trying to write the statement for this show. I feel like I’ve always looked at who has been in my surroundings as the content for my work, and subconsciously have been avoiding myself.

TB: Cause it’s easier to look outside. You know you don’t have to critique yourself so horribly.

SK: Yeah, during this residency I started to think, why aren’t you looking at yourself, because I’m looking at all these people that have similar struggles to me or that identify in similar ways that I do. And trying to tell their stories or showcase the concept or the topic through them…for this exhibit, that’s what I’m really trying to do: show what those layers of identity and struggle are in various scenarios.

TB: In a previous interview that we talked about earlier, there were several points where you said, “I wanna talk about what it’s like to be mixed or interracial.” It’s funny cause I’ve always said I’m black, but it’s clear when people see me they’re like “OK, what’s going on?” It’s always a conversation where you’re trying to explain a dynamic to someone that has visual markers to them that they don’t understand. So, do you find that working in the visual arts has helped you find ways to explain it to people? Cause I loved how you talked about the use of line.

SK: Yeah.

TB: And I was really interested in the line because your lines are so thick and defined in a lot of cases. They do vary. But it’s so pronounced that it feels like it lends a certain kind of muscularity to it. It lends a softness, too, because they’re never straight and rigid.

SK: Right, they’re always curved and flowing in some way.

TB: It really makes me think about the body or just looking at anatomical design, but it’s not so fine, and it still captures the body. And then when you started talking about, “but if you look the faces are all broken up” and I looked and said, “Damn, she does do that. It’s not just in the stained glass, it’s always in the paintings.”

SK: It’s always in the paintings, yeah. That’s from growing up mixed and constantly having to explain my mom versus my dad. I definitely look like a combination of both my parents but whenever they showed up for anything people never believed that my mom’s my mom.

TB: Yeah, that automatic confusion.

SK: Yeah, so trying to get people to understand that you can physically look one way, but still have all of this within you that is your ancestors and that is your culture. Things that make up who you are, and I find that that’s another struggle here in Chicago that I’ve had to really figure out how to tackle, that I don’t necessarily feel that I have to do in other places. You know when we were in Africa last year painting a mural, so many people thought I was Moroccan. Just because of my features and what I looked like blended right in. They didn’t even really question it. And here, I find that more than anything, almost like how the neighborhoods are divided.

TB: I definitely think that’s a factor.

SK: The concept of race and culture is divided, too. And it’s like, “what exactly are you?” To be mixed growing up in this city – it just feels so outdated. The lack of cultural knowledge, and progression, really baffles me sometimes.

TB: And it’s not surprising cause when you think about the racial politics of this city, that hasn’t changed very much.

SK: No.

TB: I remember cause I grew up just outside the city in Kankakee. It was the same things. But it was like because it’s a small town, everybody had to interact with each other at some point. But when I came here, it was like nothing I ever had to deal with before. Then I moved to New York, as well, I was there from about 2003–2015. Same experience, like, it wasn’t a big deal. Then I came back, and it was either somebody’s got something to say about people being light skinned, or someone asks “how are you black?” I hadn’t heard it in years so I was like, what?

SK: When people understand it they’re like, “Oh, you’re Afro-Latina. Or you’re Puerto Rican, and you’re mixed so you’re a bunch of other things. You have Afro-Latina” – here they’re like, “How?” The first thing they see is color, and skin tone, and then you have to break down exactly what you are. Do I need to show you a picture of my mother? Do I need to physically pull out a picture of what this woman looks like for you to believe that this is part of my culture? It’s a little frustrating especially to be in such a big city, and to have so many cultural representations here, and for there to be this divide, and just lack of knowledge and recognition.

TB: And just that you have to explain these things, even if people really look at your work. It really illustrates and underscores that you could be in the same family, and everybody looks different. You could be brothers and sisters, everybody’s in the same family, and everybody looks different. But we’re still having that conversation in 2019. It blows my mind.

SK: It’s lonely.

TB: It can be. How do you think you’re addressing that in the new work? How is it coming out for you? What do you see yourself doing differently?

SK: So, the new work for this next show is really mostly on identity. I am possibly playing with a piece that does touch on some of the multiracial part of me and who I am. I’m just still really figuring out how do I get people here to understand that. And maybe I’m thinking too much about it. But that’s still something I’m really trying to figure out. I feel like depending on where you show some of this work, and who the audience is, that will determine what it needs to go into, how much do I need to break it down. For me, at some point I don’t want to have to break it down.

TB: Yeah, you get tired of explaining the same stuff.

SK: I don’t wanna have to break it down. If you don’t get it, I don’t know what to do to help you. My partner always says, “I’m tired of educating these people,” you know? And I hear her, I get her on that. We’re different but in some ways, I feel the same way with my identity. So yeah, for this new show I don’t know that there will be much of the mixed part of my identity, but definitely my identity, and some of what goes into it. But we’ll see. My process is very organic. This whole conversation could change what I do tomorrow, you know? So

TB: Well, hopefully that’s a good thing if it does.

SK: Oh, that’s a great thing. And it’s one of the things I love about my work is the all the content is entirely generated by life experiences. So, it’s conversations, what I read, and experiences I have.

TB: Absolutely.

SK: They all sprinkle their way into the concepts or the content. And I love that.

TB: Do you think about – this is gonna sound corny – do you think about joy?

SK: Oh yeah. Constantly. Especially in my work.

TB: How do you think about it in your work?

SK: Well, I never want my work to be something that people look at, and they’re exhausted from it. For a long time, when I was first starting, my work was that. Over the last several years, I’ve tried to figure out how do I balance the two. How do I have this deep, meaningful narrative that’s also something that people feel pride from when they look at it.

TB: Right.

SK: Joy is constantly something that I’m thinking about. When I’m painting sometimes, I’ll find that the characters might not have a lot of emotional expression or their faces might not be smiling, and I’m like, I gotta change that, there’s gotta be joy in this because even though we’re talking about joy and this struggle and the difficulties, that doesn’t mean that we’re not happy. I think more than anything people need to see work that reflects them that is joyful. We need to see more images of people of color in joy and happiness. Because as you know the media just blasts negative shit constantly.

TB: Right.

SK: But yeah, I think about that constantly; making sure that I’m trying to do that in my work. And you know for my nieces and nephews, my nephew, it’s like perfect for what you’re saying. My niece and nephew have the same parents and they are literally totally opposite skin tones. Like they are literally complete opposites and my nephew is darker. And I notice sometimes the struggle that he is having in seeing positive versions of himself. And he’s ten.

TB: Right.

SK: So I think some of the things that he says and, you know, friends, family just trying to make sure that my work remains to be for them. And not necessarily a piece to educate or help people understand us.

TB: Favianna Rodriguez has this one piece that’s got an Emma Goldman quote that I always think about. She says, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” It makes me think about what is this balance between joy and the struggle, gravity and levity. Cause you have to have a reason to fight.

SK: Right.

TB: You have to have a reason to keep going.

SK: Right, and if you don’t feel good, then it’s easier to give up. Especially with my murals, I try to make sure that my murals are focusing on positive versions of people of color, specifically women of color. I really try to take advantage of using spaces, like the two murals I have downtown. When I proposed those, I was really surprised that I got it. Well, I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised. Now that I know the curator for Columbia College, it makes complete sense. When I got that commission, I didn’t know her, and Neysa Page Lieberman’s all about making sure that that’s out there.

SK: Yeah, Neysa is the curator that’s part of Columbia and she runs the Wabash Arts Corridor. She’s all about making sure that women are getting their space and that we’re creating content that is reflective of, and supporting more women of color. So now that I know her better, it makes perfect sense. She wanted me to do this, and she gave me this giant wall to do it. When I have the opportunity more than ever in those spaces, I really try to make sure that I’m putting work like that there.

TB: Yeah, especially like when I think of the stuff that’s downtown, there’s a lot of figurative work with male characters in it – you see men in a lot of murals, you don’t see women like that.

SK: Yeah.

Image: Sam Kirk, Exactly who I hoped to be, 2019. Mixed media artwork with the image of a woman wearing a purple dress and jewelry and a black background with white-outlined figuration showing different city scenes, including the exterior of the Stonewall Inn. Image courtesy of artist.

TB: I just think about that all the time: what are we creating as counter-narratives to what we get fed all the time? Sometimes even if we get an image that looks like us, it’s not. Well, look at Green Book, it’s clear. We don’t get the accurate story. One of the other things I was thinking about, cause you talked a bit about doing stuff with kids, I saw you did a coloring book.

SK: Yeah, my partner and I did a coloring book together.

TB: Yes!

SK: Called “As Queer As I Wanna Be”.

TB: I thought that was really cool because how do you have a conversation with a young person and not weird them out, and I say that as a straight person.

SK: As far as like identity?

TB: Yeah, because most of the time, I don’t make it a discussion with young people. I’m like you’re who you are, love who you love, I’m gonna love you regardless.

SK: My nephew, he clearly knows that my partner and I have been together. My niece as well. We’ve been together as long as she’s been alive.

TB: And the kids get it before the adults do.

SK: No, the minute I say, “She’s my girlfriend,” or, “she’s my partner,” just like your mom and dad are a couple, we’re a couple. They get like, “What? Oh, I dunno.” And the crazy thing is my sister, their mother is super supportive, so is her husband. So, I know it’s not coming from them. But the way that words and slang and derogatory language is used in school, and are used, and all the things that they’re hearing is still enough for him and her to both look at us like, “Eugh, really?” Despite how much love and care and everything else that’s shown and shared between us. I know he loves me deeply. But the minute that we mention anything about identity and being gay, there’s definitely this uncomfortableness that comes into play. And I know what that comes from, so I don’t blame him. It’s then just my job to help him understand and to try to open his mind from all of that other stuff that’s cluttering it. Nonsense.

TB: So, I haven’t seen the coloring book, but did it kind of touch on stuff, so that maybe kids like him could understand it better?

SK: A little bit, yes. I think the next time we do one – we’re talking about doing another one – we’re gonna add more text to it. This one didn’t follow a particular story. It was really just a combination of different illustrations that she and I had done that were representative of queer kids of color. That just means because you still type in “gay man” in Google you get all white people. Same thing with “lesbian woman,” you get all white people. You have to specifically type Latin, or Black, or Indian gay such and such in order to get people who look like us. So, with the coloring book, we really just wanted to put something out there that showed queer kids of color. There’s a variety of different ways that you can look and be and that’s ok. So, for the next one we’re planning to put in a little bit more text and tell a story for it.

TB: When I think about the past twenty years being around artists and writers, it tends to be that people who are in the LGBT community who are of color don’t look like the gay white people, they just never do. So visually, it’s very powerful when you think about it that there’s not a uniform set of expectations to it. What things get left out that you think could make the pictures more compelling for kids or give them more accurate representation?

SK: Well, I think there’s an obvious struggle, obvious for me, maybe not obvious for you as a straight woman. But there’s definitely a struggle with those who are transgender within our communities. So, we really focused on making sure we were including that in the coloring book and showing that it’s okay to wear a dress if you’re a boy, and it’s okay to explore your identity and figure out what does that mean. A lot of the images in the coloring book definitely reflect on that. Mostly because – you know this – transgender women of color, the rates that they’re being…

TB: – Murdered.

SK: Murdered, abused, and beaten. It’s insane, and unfortunately a lot of times that happens within our own communities, so just trying to make sure that is being seen at a young level. I’m thirty-seven, and with all the research that I’ve done and conversations that I’ve had that whether it’s for my work or just because we’re having these conversations, I’ve found that there’s so many of my peers or people that I know that are near my age and are just starting to transition. When you ask why, or how long you’ve felt this way, there is no way that they felt at eight, or nine, or thirteen they could start to play with those feelings of being a different gender or identifying differently, whether it’s gender fluid or what have you. I think it’s important for young kids of color to see somebody that looks like them, exploring in that way.

TB: And you can’t determine, what you want kids to be, regardless of how they see themselves. You can’t say, “This is what you’re gonna be.”

SK: Yeah, you can’t.

TB: That’d be like somebody saying “you’re gonna go, and be a mortician,” and they’re like
I’ma be an artist, no.” You don’t do that to kids.

SK: The coloring book is such a simple thing, but it’s necessary so that those things are being seen at a young age, and in turn changes the type of work that I’m creating now. Most of the stuff I’m creating right now is about the very long route to get to now that I’m finally comfortable with myself. My thought is, what do we need to do within our own families and communities to make sure that these things are seen in a way that is very usual and normal, and not like “oh, you’re different.” So, even in my work, I think you mentioned one where there’s a little gay flag. I did a portrait of a good friend of mine named Aubrey, and she’s a very proud queer woman, a mother. No one would ever know that she’s a queer woman based on how she looks. I only put that in there because I know she’s very proud of who she is and everything, but I’m also trying to figure out with all the new work. There won’t really be any rainbow references. I don’t feel like we need to do that. I don’t need to walk out and be like, “Hey y’all, I’m gay.”

TB: I wanna turn back a bit cause you were talking about creating alternate models earlier, which kind of connects to the coloring book, too. I’m kind of curious, how did you start formulating the Provoke Culture website and sharing that smaller scale work that people can share with others?

SK: Well, Provoke Culture initially started as something that I wanted to put together for artists who are celebrating culture or just talk about culture in their work. I wanted to do that mostly because at the time when I thought of it, I wasn’t finding a whole lot of spaces in Chicago that did that beyond museums – smaller spaces. Now, there’s a few. Initially it was just meant to be an online place where these artists could sell or show their work. It became mostly a merchandise hub so there were less expensive ways of buying art. Not everybody wants to or can drop hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars on a painting, but a lot of people can wear t-shirts, and they’re wearing them proudly. Fashion is another way of expressing one’s identity. So, to create these little art pieces that are easy for people to have – Provoke Culture will always exist for that reason. Prints and small merchandise will always be something that I do to make sure that the work is always accessible. It’s very important to me. I know what it’s like to not be able to buy things that you want and have things that you want.

TB: I keep thinking about that, too, because you have talked about your mom and all the different jobs she worked.

SK: Yeah, so many jobs. She’d have, like, three jobs at one time at some points.

TB: My parents got divorced when I was thirteen.

SK: Oh, mine too.

TB: I think that’s that number. There’s something about thirteen when something really dramatic happens. It’s like you’re starting to come into adulthood or come into your sexuality, and your creativity jumps off. That cusp of going into puberty and adulthood where things happen at thirteen. But my mom worked in a mental health facility where she was showering people, bathing people, feeding them. Sometimes they fought her and that’s hard, institutional work. She was like “If you don’t go to school…”

SK: My mom did that, too, for a little while; she worked at McDonald’s, Sam’s Club, Walmart, banquets, anything and everything that she needed to do to provide for us to try to give us as much as she could, and I really appreciate everything that she did. It was crazy to me because my mom was the only one working all the jobs. My dad had one job. I remember as a teenager always wondering, why did she have to work three times as hard as he did. When we talk about race, my mom’s the black woman in this dynamic, my dad’s that white man. So why did she have to do that? She’s already working hard, to exist.

TB: And probably working harder for less money, too.

SK: Oh, without a doubt.

TB: It’s like she can be working working working and he works the one job and he makes more money than her already. So, it tells you a lot not just about the economy but Chicago, too – in some ways, the city magnifies what happens to women of color by ten, as compared to how it affects people in other parts of the country. I’m curious since you talked about leaving Chicago and feeling able to express your full self. I left because it felt much the same with other gendered stuff in Chicago. It wasn’t just knowing that I had gay colleagues and friends who left the city because they felt they were stultified, too, but being a woman and a woman of color, and feeling like there was always a man at a door who was like, nope, no entry. Or they wanted to showcase a younger woman, sometimes a woman I had taught, and I’d be like, really? I finally just said, I’m going to New York. I can’t deal with this. It did give me space to write and to think about the work in different ways. When I came back, I was way more confident because I knew I had abilities, and I saw other people who were doing what I was doing. So, I’m kind of wondering did coming back magnify your abilities in different ways? How can you come to this work and do it, even though you felt challenged by being in this place in the past?

SK: Yeah, so I initially left Chicago, mostly because I wanted to know what it felt like to live in a space that felt more multicultural. Even though New York has its segregation, and the neighborhoods have their majorities, no matter what you do you will pass somebody of a different culture every single day.

TB: Absolutely.

SK: You will hear a different language multiple times a day. And there’s no control you have over it. Period.

TB: A lot of it’s economic. You know, it’s like everybody’s hustling.

SK: Everybody’s hustling. Everybody’s struggling. So that was that main reason I was interested in going to New York and coming back after being there. More than anything, my focus shifted in my work to: what are my goals? I feel like, here in Chicago, there’s a lot of artists competing against each other. When I came back, what I learned from being away was, that’s not the world that I want to be in, and that’s not what it’s about for me. Period. That’s not what it’s about for me at all. I definitely found myself in situations where I had to choose if I wanted to continue friendships, things that I needed to let go, and at a rate that I didn’t expect to have to do that at, but I’m glad to be back because, unlike New York, with Chicago I have the time and the space to really flesh out what I want to do and play with the work. It’s just a choice of how I want what’s happening in this city to impact me or not, and I choose to not let most of it impact me.

TB: Yeah, it’s good to be in that space.

SK: It really is.

TB: It really is. I’m glad to be close to family and familiar places. It’s something about the air in Chicago, but I feel like I breathe easier here than I do anyplace else. In spite of, you know?

SK: It’s interesting to be back here. I feel like I’m relearning a lot about the city and building new friendships and new relationships and that’s great. And travel has really helped the process.

TB: Absolutely. It always makes me think you travel all over the place and come home. What made you say I have to come home to do the work?

SK: Oh, you’re asking me right now?

TB: Yeah. Well, I know what I did. I can’t speak for you.

SK: Well, I feel like Chicago has so much potential. And when we travel we learn so much about other people and other cultures. As an artist, I feel I have to come back and share that with people here so that again, people that exist that are part of those cultures are seen more here, and that we try to break up this segregation that we’ve lived within. I think the more we put different things into people’s minds instead of what is the bubble of Chicago, the more likely it will be for us to pop that and actually grow into a greater city. Because now, everything happens in this bubble, all this stuff…As an artist, I feel like it’s part of my job to take what I learn in my travels and bring it back and make people see things, or when they look at my work and have their curiosity be sparked to want to learn more or go out and explore more. Whether it’s here, or elsewhere.

TB: Elsewhere. It’s so funny to me when I think about it, because I was just talking to Lional Freeman, he does electronic music. He performed at Brandon Breaux’s Invisible Store opening.

SK: Oh really?

TB: Lional and I went to college together, and we were talking about just briefly the competition part and I said, “Really I just want everyone to be happy and if you’re from Chicago I want you to win.”

SK: We need more camaraderie here.

TB: Yeah, and I think that’s such a different mindset because I think people are always like, “Why did you stay?” It used to always be, why did you stay, now it’s like people are trying to stay but there’s a scarcity mentality around that.

SK: Well yeah, and just with the number of people of color that are leaving here because of the issues that we have. For those that are here, what are we gonna do to make this a better city for us?

TB: Right. I was thinking about that, too, when I looked at the stuff from Peeling off the Grey. Cause who the hell wants to live in a city where everything looks like it came out of a Charles Dickens novel? To just peel it back with color, not just color like orange, yellow, blue. We’re talking about that wouldn’t happen if you had no people of color to think about that.

SK: Right.

TB: I’m really concerned what the future Chicago will look like. I know artists think we create the future. Creative people are thinking: you create something on a canvas or you write a book, you can make an opportunity. But I’m wondering how the overall philosophy of the city is gonna change over time.

SK: The challenge is Chicago has great art community but if the city doesn’t start to do more to support this creative community, we’re gonna continue to lose our creative community. Without a doubt.

TB: So, I’m thinking on a more hopeful note, what’s some of the stuff that has made it more engaging to be at home? You went and saw something else, you’re more into your own framework, and everything has changed because you grow new frameworks, people change, you drop off, that’s real but have there been aesthetic shifts? Has there been stuff that you saw that has fed you. What feeds you about being in Chicago?

SK: Yeah, a lot of the communities that people don’t pay attention to, I find the most genuine people and the most fascinating people. I could be around that all day long. There’s so much soul in Chicagoans, especially those that have been here for generations and generations.

TB: Absolutely.

SK: My family has been here for several generations so there’s something about that vibe and the way that they talk. There’s something about the way they do things that I love. It gets inside me and I want to try to show that in my work when I have the opportunity. I’ve been asked to do a few commissions that celebrate Chicago by Adidas and for the city for SXSW, and the reaction that people get in something that isn’t figurative, but shows like how the buildings move or they look like they’re moving. That’s what the good part of Chicago feels like to me. It’s the very soulful, old school part, and it’s people that are blue collar, working super hard every day but, man, they have the biggest laughs. The biggest smiles. And I love listening to their stories. So, I intentionally make sure that I live within communities that I can walk outside and that’s what I hear and what I see. Visiting spaces like that feels good. We went to vote the other day, and one of the men asked my partner if she wanted to use the digital machine. I guess we looked young enough where they thought we should use the digital machine. And she was like, no I’m old school. I’ll do it. This guy jumped up and was like, “Alright, old school! Yeah, you keep it old school!” And I was like oh my god, that just made my whole evening. I saw so much character in him and that is Chicago to me – that energy, that vibe. And I hope that we’re able to see more of it and I hope that the communities that haven’t been invested in for a long time are invested in without development and gentrification so that these people can thrive and we see more.

TB: Right. And there’s so much to be said for what you described as soulfulness. I always feel it’s a southern kind of approach.

SK: Oh yeah.

TB: You know, it’s not just if you’re from the South Side of the city, but you probably have relatives in Mississippi, Tennessee, something that you don’t know about.

SK: I probably do have that. I know I have some in Alabama.

SK: I understand what you’re saying and that’s the part that I love, too. Like my partner coming here, and she was born and raised in Brooklyn. She’s always like, “I don’t understand what these people are saying.” And it’s that combination of city accent and southern twang that is the sound from the South Side, and I love hearing that.

TB: I fall into it, too.

SK: I’m falling back into this South Side Chicago way of speaking, so…

TB: Listening to you, you don’t waste words.

SK: That’s a nice way to say it.

TB: Here people can say a few words, stretch them out, and it says so much cause there’s context underneath it, even for old boy to be: “Okay, old school.”

SK: Well yeah, the way he said it, his body language and everything expressed in that little sentence. My partner was like, okay, alright.

TB: But it’s a kind of empathy, and I think that’s what I missed about being here. Although there may be people who are competitive and petty but then there’s also people who have a real sense of empathy and vision and care for other folks, or they understand it’s like you’re gon’ bust your ass, and you’re gon’ work every day but you need levity and humor to do it.

SK: That’s a part of Chicago that I enjoy as well. There is a care for people, whether it’s just customer service or, just this is how you treat others, you know there’s just something about that mentality that I appreciate here. It makes it easier, you know? Going through the day to day, in other places I might have had a tough day and other people would just make it worse and here, I can walk to the store, a local shop and just the energy that people give you and the care and what matters to them in what they’re providing, it’s gonna be a better day, alright.

TB: Sometimes that’s all you need to keep going.

SK: Yeah people speak, they ask you how you’re doing while they’re bagging your groceries.

TB: It took me time to find people like that in New York. That’s a tough one.

SK: Well, when I was there, I would do the same thing. When I see people on the street I say, good morning. How you doing? And when I would go into the bodegas or whatever I’d say, “Hey, how you doing?” And they’d always look at me kind of funny.

TB: Like what’s wrong with you.

SK: And I was like oh well, I hope you have a good day. And my partner does this, too – I think it’s more of a West Indian thing. We lived in East Flatbush when we lived there and a lot of the people there always say good morning or good evening. It’s part of their culture, but they just couldn’t get used to me doing that. And I’m so glad that that stuck. And she would always say, “Hey Midwest, come on. This is New York. You can’t be nice to everybody.” Or I’m glad I didn’t lose that in the time that I was living out there, even when I’ve lived elsewhere, I haven’t lost that Midwestern charm.

TB: Yeah. I’m glad I didn’t lose that sensibility.

SK: I’ve been working in New York for years and years, going back and forth for over ten years now, but I always say New York has given me my armor, and Chicago gave me my charm. So it’s the perfect combination of both things for a business woman.

TB: Exactly. Yeah, I’m so glad you said that. That’s one of the things I keep coming back to with the work. When I looked at your work I knew you’d have women there. They have some type of edge or they’re kind of strong, but there’s still like moments where they’re feminine, too, or there are people who look very upright, and they still have this vulnerability to them. So, it does work in business, but I also think it’s something to do in your art, too, like you can’t have a flat person, even if they’re on a canvas.

SK: Yeah, especially in the content, like, even though it’s very important to show joy and happiness. I don’t wanna take away realities, and the reality is a lot of the time many of us do feel defeated or burnt out, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not beautiful and that we can’t smile, or that the road ahead isn’t gonna get better. I want my work to do a combination of that.

Image: Sam Kirk, Equal, 2018. Stained glass artwork of a woman in profile with a rainbow corona and cobalt blue background. Image courtesy of artist.

TB: So what feeds you? What keeps you sustained in doing your work?

SK: Like, the drive?

TB: Anything. It’s up to you, the gamut. What keeps you motivated?

SK: To see change. That’s the biggest thing. To see change. Every time I see a story about an unnecessary shooting or unnecessary murder or violence, I go back to thinking this is happening because we don’t appreciate each other’s differences. We don’t value each other as different people. The only way to do that is to continue to put different ways of people seeing that out there.

TB: Absolutely.

SK: We can’t rely on media, and we can’t rely on magazines. There is finally some television and some writing and books and stuff that are coming out, but it’s usually from creative individuals, not big organizations or companies. So, for me, that’s really the driving force in really trying to change the way people see each other, so there’s more value. And it’s like, just let go of all this nonsense from the past. Understand it – and I say that when I think about who’s doing the killing, and I say that when I think about police officers that are killing young black boys. They need to let go of everything they’ve been taught as far as all that hate and everything, and understand people, and understand the years of struggle that people have gone through, and try to meet each other somewhere in that understanding so that this shit isn’t happening.

TB: And I keep thinking about that, too, because it’s like there are so many ways to solve problems that people are automatically jumping to the most extreme conclusions. Sometimes, it’s police, sometimes it’s young people and how they interact with each other, sometimes it’s people who haven’t considered all the options that they have. You know, when we talked earlier about Chicago being so segregated, I don’t think it’s just race, and I don’t think it’s just economics. It’s about feeling like you have access to ideas and choices.

SK: Okay, I agree with that.

TB: When we talk about the creative individuals, they’re creating that access in some ways.

SK: Yep.

TB: I just wish it was something that people in other occupations took more advantage of.

SK: Totally.

TB: You talked about that you were doing business and marketing and that kind of thing, and you ended up teaching your bosses, and at a certain point, people gotta be willing to take that on for themselves.

SK: In that space I just got tired. I was the only woman of color that was considered a professional because they didn’t considered the administrative assistant a professional.

TB: Which it is.

SK: I actually ended up bringing her onto my team cause I needed help, and there was nobody else, and now she’s working in the professional realm, which is amazing. I was the only woman of color, and I just got tired of being the person that was put on the African American project, and the Asian project and the Latino project, and I was like, I cannot be the only one. You guys need to hire more people. What’s the deal? Then when it came to teaching things that had nothing to do with culture but was more about technology, I was like, this is fucking ridiculous. I’m doing this, I’m doing that, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, and I ask for more pay, and they’d be like, “You can give yourself whatever title you want.”

TB: Right, even though the number of accounts probably increased as a result of all your work.

SK: Yeah, cause I was working till two in the morning several days a week, and I definitely wasn’t leaving at five or six, definitely leaving closer to somewhere between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. So, when the opportunity came to consider art as a career and those commissions came in, I jumped at it. It’s like, what do I have to lose, I know what it’s like to live with nothing. I’ve never had a backup plan. I just do it. When you are the only thing that you can rely on to make sure you eat and have a roof over your head, you will do what it takes.

TB: It also simplifies some things.

SK: You realize what is a want and what is a need. You find that you can do unbelievable things. And that fear starts to disappear because you have no other choice but to let it go. It’s either you let go of this fear, or you don’t eat or don’t pay your rent.

TB: True. We can talk about the exhibit, I know you’re still working on it so it’s still in development. Is it going to be all glass pieces, or a mixture?

SK: My show in April is a mixture. There will be a couple stained glass pieces, probably about three. I have two pretty much done. There’s gonna be, I believe, four layered glass pieces that will show more of the layers of identity and how people physically change…I think people who relate to those individuals will easily catch it, but for those who have never been in the shoes of the people I am portraying, I’m really trying to figure out how do I help them tell the story they’re trying to tell. So, I’m putting together a lot more narrative illustrations than I’ve ever done in any of my shows.

TB: Which is cool.

SK: Yeah, I’m super excited about it. I keep thinking about traditional artwork from artists in Thailand or Japan. And just how the backgrounds are like super filled with all these characters doing different things. And that’s kind of where the inspiration for the background is coming from right now.

TB: That’s cool. That could be really huge and epic. You make life hard for yourself.

SK: It’s a lot to do, but you know that’s me. Once I’m like that feels good, I’m doing it. I just get down to doing it so….

TB: I think it’s like a different level of concentration when you start changing your scope that’s exciting, too.

SK: My goal as an artist is really to try to get to that point. Right now I find myself juggling so many like a combination of commissions and my own work that I wanna do.

TB: I was wondering about that. Have you been able to pare down more progressively since you’ve been able to grow as independent artist?

SK: Yeah, I’ve been able to pare down commissions. As I continue to grow, my prices have thankfully gone up, especially for murals, but that’s always that challenge of trying to keep my work affordable. So right now, that’s where that new model comes in. What do I need to do for my practice without following or focusing on the rules of the art world to sell and move my work so that I can do more of it and still be able to know that it’s going into the homes and places of the people that I want it to live in. That’s where I’m at right now in the business side of my work. It’s letting go of like all this stuff you’ve heard and all the opinions that people say. No, this is my business. I’m the entrepreneur. How do I wanna do it? Fuck all the rules.

TB: Well, when you think about it, it’s like just steps away from the art world. Think about the business world, think about how many business people just do what they wanna do. That’s really what artists wanna do, but they don’t want to exploit and hurt people to do it necessarily.

SK: Right and then there’s so many opinions and there’s this very specific path that has been in place for years and years about how you’re supposed to do things and how your work’s gradually supposed to increase per square inch and price, and you get caught up in that.

TB: That’s a formula that benefits the people who usually make money off artists.

SK: Yeah, right. Right exactly. And then they turn around and sell it at an auction or something and make more money than I ever made off of it, and it’s like no I want people to buy my work that are gonna keep it, not just try to flip it.

TB: Like Jay-Z saying that in “The Story of O.J.”

SK: He bought a piece for 1 million, and then it was worth 8 million or something. He gave it to the children.

TB: But what’s in the picture? What are your children gonna look at, and how are they gonna feel? We never get that story.

SK: As somebody who can own a Basquiat, is it more valuable to flip it and make the money off it, or for your kids to see one of the most amazing African-American painters of our time? In their home. I’d rather have that.

TB: On top of that, this person struggled to make this art, and if this child wanted to be an artist, they never need to struggle to do it. They may have different struggles, but not necessarily the same, you know?

SK: Totally, yeah.

TB: It’s a deep conversation, the more you think about it. How do we constantly have these conversations about commodification? I always go back to Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.

SK: Yeah.

TB: The art doesn’t come from a place that you put a price tag on it. It really doesn’t, but you do need to figure out ways to live.

SK: It’s true because the minute you put that price tag on it, it starts to change the meaning of the work, even for you as an artist. So the more that I’ve grown into my career, I’ve been thinking more about how I’m gonna adjust and change things, so that I’m doing exactly what I wanna do without needing commissions and without needing other things to continue to sustain myself and insure that my work is going where I want it to go.

TB: Are you doing pieces in the new show where there’s more texture in it? I was wondering because I was like when you think about murals or even just the couple paintings that are up right here, I’m like yeah, it’s not the same. So is that a new direction, and I wasn’t quite sure.

SK: It’s a direction I’ve been playing with since 2013 when I started putting fabric in my work.

TB: So relatively recent.

SK: Yeah, it’s relatively recent, and I enjoy it. I love how it brings the character to life. In a different way than even, you know, the best realistic painting. I think adding actual fabric in my opinion just really brings them to life in a different way.

TB: It seems like they could step out.

SK: Right, right. So, I think, well, I know that I’m definitely going to continue to do that but I think I’m even considering looking at some paintings I’ve done in the past, and maybe bringing them back out and exploring adding to them. I break that rule all the time. People always say, “You gotta leave it alone so people see your progression.” I’m like, whatever. I still own it, I can do whatever the fuck I want with it.

TB: When you really look at it, it’s material and you can change the material to do what you want.

SK: It’s still in my inventory. I can do what I want with it.

TB: Right! You’re gonna have pieces sometimes that you’ll feel like it’s not doing what I want it to do.

SK: Right, right. Or it’s lost something. It needs something. And if that’s what it is, then yeah. I mean I’m not gonna go in like I gotta add fabric to all these things but there’s a couple pieces that I can think of from my past inventory that I still have that I think would be more powerful if I add some texture to it. Make them a little more three-dimensional. So I think I’ll definitely explore that. I’d be curious to see how people react to them when I show them again.

TB: It makes people say, “Oh my goodness, so everything could change.” You know?

SK: Yeah.

TB: Whether it’s philosophically or like they think they’re gonna get one thing, and then they show up and it’s oh! So they have to pay attention and stay abreast, which I think is a really smart thing to do, creative, and it’s kind of like keeping people on their toes.

SK: Yeah, alright. I don’t wanna be predictable.

TB: But you talked about journaling earlier. I used to work for the late Elizabeth Murray’s husband, another poet in New York. She journaled every day and sketched. She’d do these huge pieces as big as the wall, and I’d see this little tiny sketch on a page just days before.

SK: Wow, that’s amazing.

TB: In terms of cutting some of the pieces, people who would cut it to her specifications, then she would paint. But as far as journaling, how does journaling feed what you’re doing right now?

SK: For the most part, it helps me to organize my thoughts. When I’m painting, I’m replaying a lot of the conversations I’ve had that relate to the piece or things that I’ve read about or heard. Sometimes, I just need to stop and write so that my mind is in the space that it needs to be in. It also helps me to stay on point and on direction just because we’re hit with so much every day that when life experience influences your work, it’s easy to be like, oh, now I need to create about this. Then you forget what you’re doing at the moment, so journaling just really helps me to process my thoughts and make sure that I’m staying on track, and recognize how the content or the experience impacted me. I don’t write that often but the few times that I have written, people have really enjoyed it, so I’m trying to do that more often. Because as you said, I don’t really have many words, or I don’t share many words.

TB: Well, when you’re speaking you have good things to say.

SK: Thank you. But with that sometimes I find that maybe I explain the background of what’s going into it more when I write about it. I don’t start off with the intention of sharing it, it’s usually just for me.

TB: Oh really?

SK: Sometimes, I go back to it and think maybe it’s good for people to read this or be moved by it. Several years ago, I did a show where I had taken the notes that I had written about the pieces I was working on, and I put them up on the wall next to it.

TB: Nice.

SK: A woman came up to me at the exhibit and she asked, “These are notes that you wrote while painting?” And I said yeah. She was like, “I love this. I start to imagine you at the studio and I just get a better sense of what the process was and what you were thinking about, and I love it.” I haven’t done that too much since then, but I might do a little bit of that for the show.

TB: I hope so. The text should complement the show, it should say something that’s in relation to what’s actually on the wall.

SK: Right. Right.

TB: For example, this exhibit of Gwendolyn Brooks’ archives two summers ago at the Poetry Foundation. She made journals where she would put different versions of her poems. Sometimes she’d tape the new version over the old one, or she’d put parenthetical comments around it like, “I wrote this poem about a young man I was dating before my husband;” “I wrote this poem in this year, and I met my husband this year” – like she knew, after she was gone, if somebody got these papers she wanted them to explicitly know certain facts or opinions she had about it, and she didn’t agree with all the critics who wrote about her. It’s a very powerful way not just for people to get an insight to your process, but to get an insight into you and why you’re even doing this in the first place.

SK: I agree. Especially once you start exhibiting outside the city you’re from, people aren’t surrounded by all these murals or whatever. Yeah, it’s a great way for them to learn a little bit about you. It’s something that I really want to try to do something more. Also cause my memory’s not that good.

TB: Right, you can’t remember everything.

SK: Then it’s like I know what inspired me to start this, and then a month goes by and I come back to it and I’m like, where was I at? Oh, let me look at my notes…

TB: And Sam Kirk from five years ago is not gonna know Sam Kirk in 2019. Or vice versa, you won’t be who you were in 2014.

SK: Right, yeah, I think it’s fun to read notes that you wrote about yourself or about the work back then. So I’m hoping to do more of it.

Featured Image: Sam Kirk, Kali, 2019. Stained glass portrait of a woman in varying shades of blues, browns, yellows, and creams. Image courtesy of artist.

Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit and Arc & Hue as well as the chapbooks 7 x 7: kwansabas and THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali. Her interviews and features have appeared in publications such as Hello Giggles, Mosaic Magazine, NYLON, The Source, and Poetry magazine. She is part of the MFA faculty at Chicago State University and Stonecoast – University of Southern Maine. When she’s not teaching, Tara works with dedicated teams at Another Chicago Magazine and The Langston Hughes Review as Poetry Editor. She also hosts author chats at the Seminary Co-Op bookstores in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

The post Identity and Struggle: Interview with Sam Kirk appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Creative, connecting, and celebratory—these were the intentions laid out for people at the start of the Disability Art Showcase and Maker-Space on April 16th. The event organizer, Bri Beck, a disability artist/advocate and art therapy graduate student from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, hosted between sixty and seventy participants at Access Living, downtown Chicago’s main Center for Independent Living, for an evening of art-making and community-building.  

Systemically divided groups of disabled people, veterans, scholars, art therapists, artists, activists, and more, were invited to utilize the arts “to share the varied story of disability and to bring together those that are disabled and those that work within this community to further grow and define a collective voice and community”—per Beck’s design.

Image: Two people, one kneeling and one standing, work together on a colorful wall tapestry made of various fabric strips. Photo by Ryan Edmund.

Guests contributed to a group tapestry, created disability pride buttons, wove fibers alongside someone new, participated in a #DisabledIAm photobooth, and engaged with artwork created by disabled artists from SAIC, Access Living, and the Jesse Brown VA. I spent some time at the weaving table, indulging in what some participants noted was a grounding activity that doesn’t take all of your attention, still allowing for conversation—a very art therapy driven framing, and entirely accurate. Friends, colleagues, and total strangers exchanged their experiences. Perhaps the most tender moment was when a one-month-old baby joined the festivities, cradled in her father’s arms.

Image: An infant, wrapped in a blanket, is cradled by her father while he is seated in his wheelchair. Candace Coleman, Access Living advocacy staff member, smiles at the baby. Photo by Ryan Edmund.

Though it may have been new to some in the room, as is typical at many disability arts events, guests were encouraged to take care of their bodies and minds throughout the evening. Sandie Yi, artist-in-residence at Access Living and Disability Studies PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, asked people to recognize what they needed and to do that for themselves. Guests sat on the floor, stood, leaned, and took breaks from the activity, all of which added to a sense of relaxation and comfort in the space. Yi expressed excitement about welcoming new audiences as well as a new program format to Access Living. She explained that their events usually follow more of a set program schedule and tend to be less collaborative. Yi was specifically interested to see the SAIC art therapy community in the space because so often people are “taught to think from the interventionist model, so disability culture might not be something they’ve been exposed to—it’s good to have people recognize disability beyond pathology, patient, or client.”

There is an existing tension between art therapy and disability culture, due to the interventionist or medical model that dominates the therapy perspective. The medical model approaches disability as something to be cured. Beck’s intention in bringing art therapists into a disability-centered space, was to continue to adjust the perspective from curing to a lessening of distress and internalized ableism. “There’s a lot of repair that needs to be done,” Beck explains, but as we know, “art can be tool to repair many things.”

Image: Three people, only visible from chest to waist, create their own disability pride buttons with various art supplies on the table in front of them. Photo by Ryan Edmund.

I found myself asking most people how they heard about the event, to gauge their connection to the space and the work being done there. People came from SAIC, Access Living, Bodies of Work, and the VA, but perhaps most interesting were the few who had no affiliation—deciding to check out the event after seeing it on Facebook.

I learned everyone, no matter their age, delights in seeing that lever pulled to reveal their custom disability pride button, shiny, new, and ready for action. After some time spent reveling in making and conversing, a short but poignant performative portion capped the night. Participants shared the impact art therapy had on them and touted upcoming artistic projects. Jay, aka JC the MC, performed a moving spoken word tribute to a dearest that “preached like Malcolm, loved like Martin.” Lastly, Curtis Harris danced to Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, which, to me, drew a connection to the derogatory term crazy, and the reclaiming of that word through a joyful dance, accompanied by whoos of encouragement from the room.         

Image: JC, wearing a red shirt and dark pants, reads his spoken word piece to the audience, some of whom can be seen looking intently from their seats. Photo by Ryan Edmund.

At its core, the event was an utterly enjoyable night, but it began to accomplish something much more critical. Several art therapy students expressed the immense value in seeing theories and practices from coursework in action and in having the opportunity for these groups to engage each other in a non-therapy setting. But perhaps the most important aspect was creating a moment for people, as Beck simply put, “to be, in our bodies, together.”

The Disability Art Showcase and Maker-Space was sponsored by Bodies of Work and Access Living’s Arts and Culture Project and was presented by Bri Beck. 

Featured Image: Bri Beck, wearing a blue shirt and a floral skirt, speaks into a handheld microphone, motioning to an unseen audience. The handlebar of her motorized scooter is visible at the bottom of the frame. Behind her, a projection screen on the right displays the event title, while a smaller screen on the left features CART open captioning.  Photo by Ryan Edmund.

Courtney Graham is a Chicago-based arts administrator, writer, and event planner. Her writing and research focuses on accessibility for people with disabilities in cultural spaces, exploring access and spotlighting artists with disabilities. Courtney serves as the Assistant Director of the Evening Associates at the Art Institute of Chicago, engaging the museum’s next generation of art-minded philanthropists. She completed her BFA at the University of Michigan and her MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Developing a new play takes work—and not just from the playwright. In a cash-strapped world, one where the arts are under constant threat from budget cuts, it’s difficult to find solid companies investing in plays, especially new ones. And even more rare are the companies specifically focusing on plays by womxn, queer, and trans* artists. The Syndicate is this company, equipped with a mission to foster ethical processes and equity.

Though originally founded in 2014 in New York, they split a producing home with Chicago and have a presence in five cities worldwide. Through grants, fellowships, and awards they’ve been able to sustain work that pays their artists and collaborators.  

This summer, lead producers Ellenor Riley-Condit, Hal Cosentino, and Denise Yvette Serna are hosting First Read 2019, the 2^nd annual new play festival uplifting the work of non-binary and trans* artists. After sifting through dozens of play submissions with a team of volunteer readers, they selected four plays that will receive readings in Chicago this June. Tickets to each play are pay-what-you-can and not to be missed.

Quemado by Lucas Garcia

Ashana (A Native Play) by June Thiele

prefer not to answer, or other by Gavin D. Pak

Dig by Theo Germaine

Quemado by Lucas Garcia premiering Wednesday, June 12 at 7:30pm

Writer and dramaturg Lucas Garcia was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and moved to Chicago in 2015 after pursuing school in Indiana. Still Albuquerque is very much home and populates their plays and poetry while informing their sensibilities as an artist. They also carry home in their body and in the comfort of friends. They developed their play in a space fostering a similar sense of trust and safety, El Semillero, a Chicago-based playwriting circle for Latinx playwrights.

“Quemado is about a queer group of family friends and lovers who are cleaning out the house of a dear loved one who had passed on to their next phase of existence. They’re sort of unraveling and working through and navigating the grief from the loss and the discovery of this person they didn’t know in the artifacts that she leaves behind. Coming to turn with the reality that there was so much of her life that they didn’t know; mourning the person they did know, and mourning the chance they didn’t get to know the person that they’re discovering. And, it’s really hot so they’re pretty upset. [Laughs]. Writing this play has felt like a very soft manifesto to me, almost. There’s a note at the beginning of my play that talks about how so many times the world—the world meaning like US, hetero-patriarchical capitalism and all the nasty oppressive stuff—is like really out to convince queer people of color that our existence is cursed somehow. That we can’t escape some sort of destiny that’s happened because of the world that we live in. All of the structures that keep queer people and queer people of color from being really vividly alive—and so I feel like writing this play has been about counteracting that, fighting against that, speaking truth to that in a way, for me.” – Lucas Garcia

Ashana (A Native Play) by June Thiele premiering Friday, June 14 at 7:30pm

Originally from Alaska, June Thiele is a two-spirited Athabaskan and Yupik. They moved from home to attend Columbia College for acting. But it wasn’t until much later that they pursued writing as a means of increasing representation and pursuing advocacy. They have resided in Chicago ever since, coming up on thirteen or fourteen years. With their play Ashana, they hope to push traditional and modern Native narratives forward, and aren’t shy of pulling from personal experiences. This piece is one they’ve come back to many times, revisiting it in ever changing times as they rediscover themselves and their identity.

“I had written this play using myself and people in my life as bases for the characters, but of course my life has changed a lot since first writing this piece. The character that I based on myself is so different from me now (and the same). As I’m discovering new things about me over these last few years, it’s interesting to see the changes looking back at it now. Like a time capsule. Coming to an understanding about my two-spirit identity has adjusted a lot of my thinking and my life, and it’s exciting. Having these little bursts of realizations.” – June Thiele

Thiele’s play explores family relationships and the complexities that present themselves when living between various worlds and identities.

prefer not to answer, or other by Gavin D. Pak premiering Saturday, June 15 at 7:30pm

Hailing from Los Angeles, Gavin D. Pak moved to Chicago in 2013 to pursue college. After experiencing the city’s dedication to new works and the vastness of the queer community, they decided to stay. Having a steadfast group of friends and collaborators allows Pak the space to explore vulnerability in acting and writing. When it comes to their play for First Read,

“It started out as an irrelevant short play that I wrote for my BA to graduate. That one was just a quick, short play that really centered around food, ritual, a generational gap between first- and second-generation immigrants around a coming out story. From there, I realized that while all those themes were still super important to me and are still prevalent in prefer not to answer, or other as it is right now, I was tapping into a larger problem as I was tapping into my own queerness and learning more about myself. In that, I saw that there was a marked invisibility of queer people of color—at least in the circles that I was in and the communities I was looking in. Since then, I’ve found a larger network. But when I was first coming into myself and coming out, I found it difficult to find people that I could relate this experience to. I felt as if a more privileged or more white-centered perspective on transness and coming out was very different from the one that I was experiencing. And so, I wanted to use this short play that I had already written and expound upon it to try and create a story to create visibility for a group I knew existed, obviously. I was not the first Asian trans person who ever existed, obviously. And, create a story that would resonate a little more strongly and a little bit more true for us.” – Gavin D. Pak

Pak also affirms that it is absolutely paramount that not only are the playwrights given the platform to share their voices and their work but they’re also given the sort of validation and credibility that comes with being part of an organized festival like First Read.

Dig by Theo Germaine premiering Sunday, June 16 at 5:00pm

An Illinois native, Theo Germaine grew up in Southern Illinois in a tiny, conservative town with one stoplight. They’ve been living in Chicago about four years, and it’s now a place of home with a supportive community of their “bestest and deepest inner-personal relationships.” But they still feel like a guest as a non-Native Chicagoan, doing their best to be a respectful citizen of a place that’s been so welcoming. Germaine has primarily been working as an actor, but their curiosity has led them to writing.

“It deals with all these things that I have questions about. I was like, let’s try to throw all of these things into a play at one time and see if we can make it work. Subjects and themes of navigating long-term polyamorous relationships and non-monogamy. Navigating all of these legal systems, marriage—being legally bound to somebody. Legal things like health insurance and logistics of getting access to health insurance, and how easily you can lose health insurance and how nobody has health insurance. Things like mental health. Things like figuring out how to be yourself when you come from a place like I did, which was not very accepting. It’s also kind of an examination of like how we view death and how we view the afterlife. And, there are ghosts. There are always ghosts in the things that I write. I don’t know why. I just really like ghosts. [Laughs.] So, all of those things plus a little bit of magical realism.” – Theo Germaine

Germaine appreciates the opportunity to be messy and be in process, echoing a gratefulness evident amongst the other participating playwrights.

First Read Festival takes place from June 12 – 16 at The Martin. Tickets are pay-what-you-can and are available for reservations here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/first-read-chicago-2019-tickets-61725554796

Featured Image: The four featured playwrights of The Syndicate’s First Read stand together in a half circle. They are hunched over, smiling, looking down towards the camera. The sky and West Loop buildings are above and behind them. June Thiel, wears a buttoned white shirt with a grey vest. Lucas Garcia, wears a dark blue shirt with an unbuttoned, maroon long-sleeved shirt. Theo Germaine wears a red, pink and blue striped shirt with a black leather jacket. Gavin Pak wears a grey trench coat, pink shirt, and black hat. Photo by Joshua Johnson.

Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel is an oral historian, writer, and dramaturg. She received her BFA in Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism from DePaul University. Yasmin is a proud and brown, queer, fat, femme making and taking space for other POCs and folks on the margins. Dramaturgy credits include work with the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Strawdog Theatre, Free Street, and Timeline Theatre. She holds bylines with Chicago Reader, Windy City Times, Rescripted, and Scapi Magazine. Yasmin will be pursuing an MA/PhD in Performance as Public Practice this fall at the University of Texas at Austin. Learn more at www.yasminzacaria.com

The post Beyond Representation: The Syndicate’s First Read Festival Shows up for Trans* and Non-Binary Artists appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Edbrass Brasil:

Ben LaMar Gay

Edbrass Brasil:

Ben LaMar Gay:

Edbrass Brasil:

Ben LaMar Gay:

Edbrass Brasil:

Ben LaMar Gay:

Edbrass Brasil:

Footnotes:

[1] Glauber Rocha is the most prominent director of Brazilian “Cinema Novo”, or “New Cinema” in the 1960s and 1970s.

Featured Image: Interregno Trio (Edbrass Brasil, João Meirelles and Rômulo Alexis) play at Novas Frequências Festival, in Rio de Janeiro, 2016. Image courtesy of Edbrass Brasil. Photo: Francisco Costa / I Hate Flash. // Interregno Trio (Edbrass Brasil, João Meirelles and Rômulo Alexis) tocam no Festival Novas Frequências, no Rio de Janeiro, 2016. Imagem cortesia de Edbrass Brasil. Foto: Francisco Costa / I Hate Flash.

“Perto de Lá <> Close to There” runs from August 9 through August 19, in Chicago, featuring a series of public events with the Brazilian artists in locations throughout the city. 

Related events

Comfort Society: Walter Smetak and his legacy in experimental music of Bahia, with Edbrass Brasil on August 11th from 1-2:30pm at Comfort Station (2579 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago). Get the details on the Website or on Facebook.

Radio Free Bridgeport: Improvisation broadcast featuring Edbrass and Ben Lamar Gay improvise together with Angel Bat Dawid for Radio Free Bridgeport, Lumpen Radio (WLPN 105.5FM) on Tuesday, August 13 at 5pm.

Marina Resende Santos is a guest editor for a series of conversations between participants of “Close to There <> Perto de Lá”, an artist exchange program between Salvador, Brazil and Chicago organized by Comfort Station (Chicago), Projeto Ativa (Salvador) and Harmonipan (Mexico City) between 2019 and 2020. Marina has a degree in comparative literature from the University of Chicago and works with art and cultural programming in different organizations in the city. Her interviews with artists and organizers have been published on THE SEEN, South Side Weekly, Newcity Brazil, and Lumpen magazine.  / Marina Resende Santos é editora convidada de uma série de conversas entre participantes de “Perto de Lá <> Close to There”, um programa de intercâmbio de artistas entre Salvador e Chicago, organizado pelos projetos culturais Comfort Station (Chicago), Projeto Ativa (Salvador) e Harmonipan (Cidade do México e Salvador), entre 2019 e 2020. Marina é graduada em literatura comparada pela University of Chicago e trabalha com programação artística e cultural em diferentes organizações em Chicago. Suas entrevistas com artistas e organizadores foram publicadas nas plataformas THE SEEN, South Side Weekly, Newcity Brazil, e Lumpen Magazine.

The post Perto de Lá < > Close to There: Edbrass Brasil + Ben LaMar Gay in Conversation appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Angelica Flores is a Mexican-American writer and Dominican University graduate. She enjoys working on English-Spanish translations and writes for The Gate Newspaper where she has reviewed books, films, and theater performances. She works for the Poetry Foundation and is the owner of the blog, The Macaron Raccoon. / Angelica Flores es una escritora mexicoamericana y graduada de Dominican University. Le gusta trabajar en traducciones inglés-español y escribe para The Gate Newspaper, donde ha reseñado libros, películas y representaciones teatrales. Ella trabaja en la Poetry Foundation y maneja el blog, The Macaron Raccoon.

The post The Southwest Nest / El Nido Suroeste: An Interview with Rolando Santoyo (English & Español) appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Footnotes:
[1] Quilombos are communities of African descent in rural Brazil, founded throughout the centuries as settlements by people who were often, but not necessarily, escaped slaves and their descendents. According to Candai, the main feature of quilombola communities is their Afro-Brazilian origin, with a majority Black population. The definition of the term is expansive and disputed, as it is tied to understandings of race, territory, self-determination and resistance. Candai speaks of urban quilombos formed in Black majority communities in peripheries of the city, and of the foundation of a quilombola consciousness for individuals and communities to identify as a quilombo and with their African heritage.

[2] The expression “intérprete-criadora”, literally “interpreter-creator” is used in Portuguese to refer to an artist performing a piece directed or written by someone else, as “interpreter” while also bringing their own corporal expression, as “creator.” As opposed to “dancer” and “ballerina,” the expression highlights the creative agency of the performer – as artist – in a directed stage setting.

Featured Image: Candai during the performance “Second Hand”, directed by Paulia Giuria, at the Escuela de Danza Contemporánea Casarrodante, in Montevideo, Uruguay, March 2016. Photo courtesy of Escuela de Danza Contemporánea Casarrodante. // Candai durante a performance “Second Hand”, dirigida por Paulia Giuria, na Escuela de Danza Contemporánea Casarrodante, em Montevideo, Uruguai, março de 2016. Foto cortesia da Escuela de Danza Contemporánea Casarrodante.

“Perto de Lá <> Close to There” runs from August 9 through August 19, in Chicago, featuring a series of public events with the Brazilian artists in locations throughout the city.

Marina Resende Santos is a guest editor for a series of conversations between participants of “Close to There <> Perto de Lá”, an artist exchange program between Salvador, Brazil and Chicago organized by Comfort Station (Chicago), Projeto Ativa (Salvador) and Harmonipan (Mexico City) between 2019 and 2020. Marina has a degree in comparative literature from the University of Chicago and works with art and cultural programming in different organizations in the city. Her interviews with artists and organizers have been published on THE SEEN, South Side Weekly, Newcity Brazil, and Lumpen magazine. // Marina Resende Santos é editora convidada de uma série de conversas entre participantes de “Perto de Lá <> Close to There”, um programa de intercâmbio de artistas entre Salvador e Chicago, organizado pelos projetos culturais Comfort Station (Chicago), Projeto Ativa (Salvador) e Harmonipan (Cidade do México e Salvador), entre 2019 e 2020. Marina é graduada em literatura comparada pela University of Chicago e trabalha com programação artística e cultural em diferentes organizações em Chicago. Suas entrevistas com artistas e organizadores foram publicadas nas plataformas THE SEEN, South Side Weekly, Newcity Brazil, e Lumpen Magazine.

The post Perto de Lá < > Close to There: Candai Calmon and Anna Martine Whitehead in Conversation appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

DJing is a curious art form and rarely discussed as one. It is rarely discussed at all, except by other DJs in industry publications; what is there to say that can’t be expressed more vigorously on the dancefloor? If you’re talking, you’re not dancing, and you’re probably standing in the way of people trying to dance. Is it art? It’s entertainment, it’s a trade, it’s a party. I hear André Leon Talley in the documentary Catwalk, wrinkling his nose at a parallel question about that other commercial art form: “No, no, no. Is fashion art? No! Fashion is hard work, gritty; it’s not glamorous”—the questions is an embarrassment to both art and fashion. Or DJing.

To consider the question at all means that the answer is at least “sometimes.” DJing is work in the realm of aesthetic experience; it is a discipline with a touch of wonder and mystery and creative talent. DJs hear what others don’t, they surprise us with a blend, they tell a story, they improvise, they observe the energy of a room in order to transform it; they work with field recordings, sound archives, and performance. But it’s a moral question, too: does it have an aura, does it do the sacred creative work of imagination, of memory, of liberation?

There’s no point to proving that DJing is an art, unless doing so adds to our understanding in some way. So, we talked. With DJs Ariel Zetina, Miss Twink USA (Del Hale) and Morenxxx (Jesús Hilario Reyes), I asked about what drew them to DJing, the decisions that factor in selecting and sequencing tracks, their research process. Those questions turned into conversations about memory, pop culture, narrative form, sonic dominance, queer life, diaspora, history, and ritual. The three DJs draw on practices of performance, theater, poetry, and sound art. They incorporate field recordings, sound archives, memes, reality TV into the mix. They articulate time and space: a Beyoncé sample over an ‘80s house track, a field recording from Puerto Rico played over a UK club track in Chicago, a Brazilian baile funk song blended into Detroit techno.

Accompanying the written Q&As is a mixtape, “Art of DJing: House of Zetina,” that samples the audio from our interviews––an experiment in the form of the DJ mix, in using the techniques of DJing and music production to collage a conversation.

Miss Twink USA (Del Hale) is a Chicago native, DJ, meme queen, and co-organizer of the queer party series Rumors. They’re dense, high-velocity mixes conjure whirlwinds of global club music and pop culture references.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Miss Twink USA’s pronouns are they/them.

Miss Twink USA: For starters, well, what brought me into DJing was just, knowing music. I’d always been really interested in all the music I was listening to, and I learned how to DJ just by like, honestly, I feel like, in the incorrect way of just like, cutting up tracks on my desktop and like, never really using a controller, and never really using like, anything. So I was like making these weird little mixes, like, cutting and pasting these weird-ass mixes in my room. And slowly but surely I just started, like, picking up and started using controllers, and using the highs and lows [laughs] and figuring out that whole different world of equipment like CDJs and stuff, and learning so much about DJing. I feel like, it’s been really fucking fun, and really amazing to do.

Sasha Tycko: So how much time passed before your first gig, like your first time playing in front of people?

MTU: [Laughs] Well, like, the first couple of gigs, um, I was just kind of like, really like, it was just a couple of months of this happening, so I’m just like, thinking that was the way to DJ or something, making these mixes. But slowly but surely figuring out that that was incorrect, and had to like, actually play these tracks out, which was fine. I don’t know, there was just like one way that I thought, or something, but since then I’ve learned and picked up.

ST: Yeah, because DJing is really something that you can’t, no one teaches– no one is trained to be a DJ, right? I remember that feeling, too, just this sort of, “What are you even doing? What is even happening up there?” You’re playing songs, and one is going into the other, but how does that happen?

MTU: “Is it a playlist?” [Both laugh]

ST: You just have it fade out at the end.

MTU: It’s like, a Spotify playlist playing– No, exactly. It was a very new world for me, so getting to learn different equipment, and even CDJs, which a lot of people like, a lot of new DJs are always like, “Gotta stay away from that,” but like, it’s essentially the same thing as like, the controller, but, yeah, it’s like, honestly, the art of DJing and perfecting is really fucking– intriguing. Starting off from that place and going into something else that is like a little more technical than just cutting up tracks in my room was definitely really fucking amazing, and really interesting, and has like, definitely pushed me to understand music in more ways than I did before.

ST: So what was that process like?

MTU: The process was mostly, like, beat matching, and fucking with all the highs and lows and the filter, moving the track around if it sounds funny, and also kind of being scared to move the track around, because you’re like, “I thought I got it! I thought I had it perfectly on cue!” But just like, moving that around and being comfortable on the CDJs, and learning how to mix, too, like, learning how to mix these tracks perfectly is like, was honestly really great. And to recreate these songs in different ways: making pop songs sound like techno tracks, or techno tracks sound like club tracks or house tracks, and learning how to mix all of these tracks into one big thing, into one big sound, is really fucking, I said this a lot, but it is really great. And I, that is what really, I loved so much about doing this, reimagining music all around you and reinventing, kind of reinventing the wheel almost, with tracks that you know and love, and tracks you’re getting to know, and tracks that inspire you and please your ear, and sharing that vision with so many people, too.

ST: How would you describe your style now as a DJ?

MTU: I feel like my style is, I think it’s always been a club sound, probably always will, but I definitely like a lot. I grew up listening to so much pop music and just like, everything, so I feel like my sets are like, just club music and just a lot of everything, almost. Because I wanna learn how to like mix and play all these songs together and make them sound as clean as possible, and as 100% to the sound I’m going for. Everything that I play is just like, everything that pleases my own ear and sounds that I just want mashed together, and mix a whole new world for that track.

ST: I was listening to some of your mixes and you’re layering so many things at once. There’s a lot of density in your mixes, which I really like. It’s like, you have a lot of really quick cuts, but also, it sometimes sounds like you have three songs all playing at once, which is kinda stressful to make it all be in sync. What’s going through your head when you’re mixing live and have all these sounds going at once?

MTU: What’s usually going through my head is, “What’s next?” What’s the next track that I wanna play, what songs, of all the songs on my USB, which one is gonna be the one that I can play? And which, to make it sound clean, and to make sure that it’s like, perfectly mixed. Those mixes I posted, that are on my SoundCloud, are like, from a couple years back where I was doing that thing on my computer. The most recent one, I feel like, is a representation of what I’ve been going, what I’ve been trying to focus, home in more on. Yeah. Making mixes are crazy, I feel.

ST: Is it the Daisy Chain one?

MTU: Yes, the Daisy Chain one.

ST: What are you trying to home in on with that?

MTU: Mostly a cleaner sound, because like, my first mixes do have a lot of hard cuts and a lot of, a lot of crazy, like, sounds that, I’m still really into, but I want to make it less messy, and kinda clean it up and have that sound, but in a more polished way. And I’m still learning that myself, but I do come back to those projects, and just like, think about the time that I was in at that point, and where I wanna go now, and, yeah. It’s all really rewarding to hear, and really, even embarrassing at times sometimes, when I’m like, “I could’ve did this better,” but just always just try to not be so hard on myself about that.

ST: Yeah. Totally. I like in your earlier, I guess, one of those mixes I was listening to was from two years ago, but you’re sampling a lot. A lot of movies, and YouTube videos–

MTU: Oh my god, yes.

ST: –TV shows, and like, just like a lot of these like, memes of pop culture. How do you select your samples?

MTU: Honestly, I am a meme girl through and through [Laughs]. I’m also, like, a big fan of pop culture. It’s like, one of the things that I can talk about for days, and always reference back to. So those are just like, one of many, like, many fucking funny shit that I thought was hilarious. Like the first– in “Death Drops onto a Glass Table,” I’m sampling Tiffany Pollard’s, like, rant about her other castmate on Celebrity Big Brother, and my Rumors mix, there’s like, there’s a Scary Movie reference, there’s also like, a– there’s so many references that me and my friends have thought was just so funny, and I think I, now I’ve kinda moved from that.

ST: Is there a tension between those samples that are more narrative, and music that is just for dancing, that’s for the dance floor? Is it something to do with that?

MTU: For weeks I would talk to my best friend about that Daisy Chain mix, and I was like, “Should I add an intro? Should I do that?” And I was like, “No, I’ll just keep it like, cut into. Let’s get straight into it.” And I think that’s how I think about it in real life, too, whenever I’m starting, like, “Let’s get into it.” Because especially when you’re mixing out of someone else’s track, and trying to mix into some intro, is always really weird for me. So I was just like, “Let’s just get with it. Let’s just turn it out.” I think it’s also like, a new vision I’m trying to envision for myself or something, or try to be taken seriously.

ST: You think you that you won’t be taken seriously if you’re sampling those pop cultural memes?

MTU: No, I do. There’s definitely its place, there’s definitely its place. I just think, for me, when I was doing it, it was just like, something really, I dunno, something really ironic about it, or something, just really youthful and really dumb and–I just think it’s really, it was just a different point of my, like, career at the time. A lot of my ideas have changed since then. But I love a meme.

[Both laugh]

MTU: I stan a meme. I fucking– speaking of which, Ariel recently just, in her Boiler Room mix, she like, samples a fucking Tati [YouTube makeup vlogger] video, “Bye Sister,” about her where she’s just like, “sucking dick and cock!” [Laughs], and I’m like, that’s genius!

ST: Yeah.

MTU: Like, samples, I don’t know, samples can be used in so many amazing ways, and so I’m like, maybe one day I’ll like, throw back a sample in a mix. I do need to throw a mix back out or something.

ST: Yeah, so to fast-forward to the present, how do you approach picking out your track list for a set, for a live mix?

MTU: Usually, I don’t have a set list, just because, like, I used to, I used to do that, and I feel like, having a set list doesn’t really match up to what mood I’m in tonight. If like, I have a ravey-ass set list and when I get there I feel a little sad, I don’t wanna play ravey music. That helps me navigate the set better, and make it more in touch with whatever I’m feeling in the moment. It could be either really good or really bad. But it’s always been really helpful for me, and it’s been, always been a thing where like, there’s been times where I’ve just pulled some shit out, and been really gagged about, “Why did I mix that into that? And why did it sound–”, or like, if it sounded good, and it’s getting a fucking response from the crowd. There was a show that I did, like around Halloween, and, I don’t know, it was a really random moment—I was playing some techno track, like some hard-ass techno track, and mixed in Charli XCX’s “Boys,” and it just like, moments like that help me so much with sets, like, having a moment where– I don’t know, just not having a set list helps me with that, to be more, like–

ST: Helps you improvise?

MTU: Improvise, and like, take a lot of creative chances. Yeah.

ST: Yeah. So do you have any sort of goals, like in terms of the kind of effect you’re trying to produce for the crowd?

MTU: Mmhm.

ST: Like what?

MTU: I’ve been thinking about this, actually, lately, because I always just think about visuals, like, these movies where it’s a big fucking rave scene, and it’s just like, everyone is just like dancing—think like Blade, where the blood rave happens.

ST: That was the exact scene I had in mind.

MTU: And just like, that’s always what’s been in my head for these sets lately. That’s how I’ve been envisioning everything, I want it to be so, like, kooky and– I want, like, I always envision the room being very, very dark, with a strobe light or a red light, and like—sweaty. And the music is just pounding, and everyone, if you were to, like, film the room, everyone’s just dancing really hard, and that’s how I’ve always, that’s how I’ve been trying to envision my sets now, and the type of environment that I wanna play for.

ST: Like kooky, cathartic–

MTU: [Laughs] Yeah.

ST: –intense–

MTU: Intense and really, just really want to dance, you know. With some pop music thrown into it, or something.

ST: Yeah. I love that. Pop music has, I mean, pop music’s about dancing too.

MTU: Mmhm.

ST: It definitely has its place in catharsis. How do you navigate through this fine balance between reading the room and then just like, playing what you want to play and knowing what you want to give?

MTU: Yeah. That was a big– I think that was a thing that I definitely used to think about a lot when, and I still think about a lot, but I used to be like, “I’m only gonna play what I’m gonna play,” and I still feel that way sometimes, but sometimes I’m like, “You know what, I’ll give the gays what they want.” Reading a room is like– I’m trying to think of a show specifically that I’ve had where, I don’t know, I’ve like, just played club music for a long time, like don’t get me wrong, I really love playing club music, but there’s been moments where I’ve wanted to just experiment more and play, like, some techno for a while, or like, you know, do some really crazy kooky shit, and just not having that, like, sometimes just like reading a room and seeing the room doesn’t really want that really does throw me off. But, I don’t know, then I get out of my head for a second, and I’m like, “No no no no no, play what you have to play. And the room is like, whatever right now, so we’ll see how it goes later.” So I always think about that weird freedom of a DJ set. And I also feel, there was one time when I went to Milwaukee, there was another DJ, Max Holiday, they gave me this advice where they were just like, “Honestly, sets for shows can be anything you want it to be. People don’t have to dance all night to a set. There could be room for them to, like, go smoke a cigarette, or come back and dance, or go get a drink. Play whatever you wanna play, and have as many moods and experiences that you’re gonna have during that set.” That’s how I always try to read the room, just like–

ST: I like that idea of sort of curating the many—like, the club, and the party, is centered around dancing, but I like that idea of curating the other things that are also happening in the space.

MTU: I don’t think everyone’s always gonna be on the dance floor. People are gonna run around, people are gonna go in the bathroom and ki and talk, and, you know, just like, be with their girls, and have fun, and run around the club, or go upstairs, and go outside to smoke a cigarette. It’s just like, creating that sound and space for everything else while still having a great time and playing whatever you wanna play, and raving, you know. It’s all so amazing, so like, I just say, do what you want to.

ST: So what kinds of spaces do you play in, and what kind of environments do you like to play in, and how do you navigate playing in spaces if you don’t like the environment?

MTU: I constantly think about that. I constantly think about space when it comes to nightlife, and making space for myself, and making space for my friends and my family at the club, you know, just like, navigating a lot of spaces where you’re not wanted, or a lot of people aren’t necessarily invited to, is a really important thing to know how to do, especially when you and your friends are out and trying to have fun and like, exist, you know. Like, there’s been some parties I’ve been to where it’s got circuity, and I’ve just been like, “Why am I here?,” or something, but still being there and dancing and being with my friends and being with my family is the most important thing that, knowing how to like, create space for you and your friends is like the most important thing to do in a time like this. Like, the fucking Progress thing [a Boystown bar that recently implemented a ban on playing rap music] that just happened, the ban of rap music, being like, I don’t know, being almost forced out of this space that you thought could make room for you and all of everyone else. And you constantly see this happening, even with the whole Jackhammer incident [when two trans women were arrested on a night when Ariel Zetina was DJing], you know, you see all of this happen in front of you and it’s kind of hard to even understand, or it’s, like, mind-boggling to be in spaces like this, but I just say to my friends and family to just like, take care of your brothers and sisters at the club. Make space for each other. If some fucking assholes are being fucking shitty to you, fucking call them out. I don’t know, just stick together, because in the time and age that we’re in right now, we all really just need each other, and we all need to make space for each other and be together.

ST: How do you do that both as a DJ, but also as someone who organizes an event, a monthly event [at East Room] like, what do you put in place?

MTU: I always just constantly just try to listen to people, and make sure that I’m understanding and listening, like, supporting so many people that I don’t know at the club, and making sure that they are safe, and making sure that everything is fine for them. We put up a—you know how East Room is, East Room is, like, very bro-y, or very rowdy on the weekends—we put up, like, little gender-neutral stickers on every single door, and you know, we have a bunch of queens come in, and just making it safe as possible for everyone that’s there, and make sure they don’t have to go those fucking scrutiny that you would go through anywhere else, you know, and just constantly being on the lookout and constantly listening and understanding and learning. And I do understand that like, there is no such thing as a safe space, but again, taking care of each other and looking out for each other is one way to have some type of safe, safeness, or some type of protection with each other, and that means more even if you’re not in a safe space, you know, just having each other and having a community behind you and with you is something that is so mind-blowing, and not a lot of people have that. It’s really, it feels amazing to have that and to also share that and explore that and help other people find that, and a community space such as, like, Rumors, or other community spaces like Swoon. Swoon, Rumors, A Queer Pride, like, there’s so many great communities in Chicago that really look out for each other and their people, and it means a lot.

ST: Mmhm, yeah, and thinking about the Progress thing, with banning rap, like, that’s such a clear sign that music, the kind of music you play, has the ability to signal to people if they’re safe or not, or who’s welcome or not.

MTU: Yeah. To hold that type of ban on, like, on a bar that is mostly Black and Latin, it really mind-boggles me and kind of fucks me up and is really just, like, really insane to me. And also, why would you want to be another pop bar in Boystown? Everyone has that, you know [both laugh], that’s not gonna bring in more money for you, like, I don’t know, good luck [both laugh]. Have fun.

ST: What’s your process of searching for music?

MTU: Love this. Love this question. Finding new music, I just like, I usually just like, search around SoundCloud for hours. Or through YouTube. If I’m on YouTube I’m trying to look for something older, some old house music or some old techno, but if I’m looking for something newer or club-sounding I find it on SoundCloud. I honestly like, whatever really just pleases my ear, because there’s a lot of club sounds, and there’s a lot of versions of club and techno, and whatever really interests me and intrigues me the most, and I can really just get into, that’s when I’m like, “this is it!” This is what I want to sound like, and this is what type of energy I want to have for a set, so, that’s usually how I try to find new music and just constantly try to be influenced by it.

ST: Are you, like, doing this sort of constantly, just like, as that’s just kind of how you live?

MTU: Yeah.

ST: You’re like, trolling through memes, trolling through SoundCloud? Or do you set out the intention for the evening, like, “Oh, I need to do some research right now.”

MTU: I’m just constantly doing it, I’m constantly just like, looking at content, and constantly on Spotify, they have that really sick fucking playlist Discover Weekly, so that’s always what I’m listening to if I wanna get into some new music. Constantly on SoundCloud listening to people’s mixes, constantly on YouTube looking at some music video or meme, just constantly looking at content, and it’s funny, ’cause I was talking to someone the other day about this, and I was like, “All I do is just look at all of that,” and I just bought like a Hulu account, and I’m like, “I barely watched anything on Hulu.”

ST: What are some of the influences that are swirling around in your head?

MTU: I love all of the Chicago artists that are here, like a lot of Chicago producers, like Thoom, Ariel Zetina, Itsi, Morenxxx, Obe, actually, and a lot of Chicago producers, also MKC, DJJ, Red G, Chicken, and also like, just like random little pop acts, but yeah, those are usually my influences. I also like Miss Kenzo, yeah, those are like, my go-to influences with music and sounds.

ST: Yeah, you play a lot of the Chicago, like, producers in your sets. Or at least I was hearing some of them that I recognized. What I love about DJing and dance music is, like, it can be so regional and tied to an identity and to place, so do you have a strong sense of a Chicago sound?

MTU: I do. I really like a lot of what we’re all doing here in Chicago, and I think the sound here is fucking out of this world. Not to toot our own horn, but it’s just, I don’t know. It’s unreal sometimes. To be, like, best friends with half of all of them is just amazing, and constantly ,supporting each other’s work and being supportive of each other is really fuckin’, really fuckin’ sick and out of this world. Like, Chicago is my family, all the Chicago DJs and producers and queens here are my family, and I couldn’t imagine a world without them, and I’m just very supportive of them and the sounds that they’re creating, and what hopefully Chicago’s gonna be giving out soon.

ST: What do you think Chicago’s giving right now?

MTU: It. [Both laugh]

ST: Chicago is the it of the century.

MTU: I think Chicago is really special, I think there’s just a lane and a gig for everyone. I honestl couldn’t say that anybody here like, sounded alike, you know. Everyone has their own sound and their own vision and their own ideas and influences that are completely different from every other person here, and it’s always really exciting to see just creativity every step of the way, and new creativity in every single way and everyone supporting each other and constantly being influenced by each other. It’s really, it’s really cute. I actually really, like, I love Chicago. I really do.

ST: That’s so cute. This interview is so cute. [Both laugh]

MTU: My little gushing out about Chicago.

ST: Yeah. Yeah, don’t ever hold back on love. So, because DJing is kind of mysterious, do you have advice or insight for anyone who is interested in starting?

MTU: I would say just do it, mostly. Just get into it, and play whatever. Play whatever you want, like, you know, don’t be afraid to experiment. Honestly, I love hearing a DJ’s soul in a set, you know, I love to hear the things they grew up listening to, and the things that they were inspired by, and music that just like, all fits in this way, and that is the most beautiful thing about DJing, and I think that would be my advice to them, is just to honestly do it and throw your heart into it and really get into it.

Featured Image: Miss Twink USA sits on a bed with his head resting in his hands. A figurative artwork, photos, and two black t-shirts––one with an image of Cher, the other with Diana Ross––hang on the walls behind him. Photo by Ryan Edmund.

Starting from the proposition that art-making is world-making, Sasha Tycko combines community organizing and curatorial work with writing, music, and performance. Tycko is a founding editor of The Sick Muse zine and an administrator of the F12 Network, a DIY collective that addresses sexual violence in arts communities. IG: @t_cko. www.sashatycko.net. Photo by ColectivoMultipolar.

The post The Art of DJing: Miss Twink USA appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

“Beyond the Page” digs into the process and practice of writers and artists who work at the intersection of literary arts and other fields. For this installment, I interviewed Regina Martinez, Threewalls’ Artist and Artistic Engagement Manager, about the In-Session program — a critical interdisciplinary salon that incorporates reading, conversation, and performance together, now entering its third season. I spoke with Martinez in late July about the ideas and values behind In-Session, the theme she chose for its coming season, sensitivities of working between artists and institutions, and Martinez’s own path to and through this work.

Check out In-Session’s third season, themed “The Art of Memory.” Find Threewalls @threewalls on Twitter and @three-walls on Instagram. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Marya Spont-Lemus: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about In-Session! I’m so glad I went to Udita Upadhyaya’s In-Session event in March, because I think this program has such a great premise and I’m excited to hear how other artists engage with it. Especially for readers who may not be familiar with the program, can you share a bit about what In-Session is and how it came to be?

Regina Martinez: In-Session is really one of the visionary programs of Dr. Jeffreen Hayes, who came on board as the Executive Director of Threewalls in 2015. It is a pillar of the programming that she envisioned to really, I think, manifest her values for the organization — which is a shift from where the organization originally started. It was always hyper-supportive of experimentation and artists’ work and artists’ process, and I think Jeffreen takes that to a new, really potent and significant level that much more accurately mirrors the artists that are living and working in Chicago. And I think that that process has been about a defining, redefining, and dismantling of a lot of the things that I think artists have faced in the city, particularly artists of color and particularly Black artists.

So In-Session is one of our pillar programs at Threewalls. It is an interdisciplinary discussion activated by other layers — sound, movement, poetry. The most distinct way I’ve heard it described, by Amina Ross who was also a participant, is, “Experimental conversation led by an artist.” The values of Threewalls that I think it truly manifests are collaboration, vulnerability, and the true experience of racial equity. You can read a lot about the definition of the program on our website, and I never have one way that I talk about it, but In-Session is always based on a theme, and the theme and its reading list are usually cultivated by the staff internally. The first theme was “Migration,” the second was “Citizen(ship),” and we’re heading into our third season now, which is “The Art of Memory.” There’s a thread between all of those too, I think. They’re all timely, they’re all sort of nostalgic. In-Session is really an opportunity for an artist to use space to talk about their experience with the theme, and to guide the conversation in a collaborative way — usually with 2-5 collaborators guiding. The artist is also guided by a text that they choose from that theme’s reading list, to have a very participatory discussion with the folks who show up. Jeffreen calls it sort of a remix of the panel discussion. Every In-Session is so extremely different, and there are so many moving parts.

In my role managing In-Session, I have the pleasure of getting to support the artists in their vulnerability. And that’s a word that I think has become a trending word. But just because we say that we want for vulnerability to be part of the experience, it really takes a very particular context of care for that to actually become. I think that’s what we’re learning here, through this program. After the In-Session that Amina led, I remember that Jared Brown, one of the artists Amina worked with, wrote us an email saying, basically, “Nowhere else would we have been allowed to take it that far,” just in terms of what they really wanted to say. They participated in the theme that was about migration and used a short film by Marlon Riggs called “Tongues Untied” as the text. The In-Session events are meant to be standalone performances, but I think it’s beautiful how artists have also viewed In-Session as an extension of things they’re already working on. Amina Ross at the time was wrapping up curation of the first ECLIPSING Festival. Even though it wasn’t really a direct tie, I think they envisioned their In-Session to be an extension of that process.

I’ve learned, Marya, from my position here, honestly so much more about myself and what’s been affirmed in me as an advocate for artists. I didn’t know how deeply I cared, [laughs] until this role. Which is a strange thing to say, because I’ve been working in the arts — working organizing, directing, managing — for almost ten years now. But with the project that I worked on in St. Louis, which we’ll get to, the main focus was young people who were spending time in a space — and me organizing the teaching artist ecology was a huge part of it, which I learned a lot from. But the young people and their families who were showing up and who made that space what it was is what the priority was. In this role, it’s been different. Threewalls’ audience really makes sense to me as artists. And In-Session is a beautiful space where artists are coming to explore an idea and their artist peers are really the ones that are in the room helping them do that.

It’s been really rewarding to be a part of manifesting this program from the very beginning. That was the beautiful rhythm of the timing of my start here. Jeffreen had really set the stage. The nuts and bolts of the programs existed, but the programs really hadn’t happened yet, they were just on the cusp of happening. And so I’m deeply privileged that she has acknowledged me as someone who can come in and be a part of rooting them. Even not until I’m saying this now, do I even feel the heaviness of that, or the magnitude of that, or the gravity of that. And I really care about Jeffreen as a leader and as a person. So there’s an additional layer of just wanting her to feel confident and comfortable about the trajectory of the program, even though, because of the degree of vulnerability, it can kind of start to creep [laughs] faster than you would maybe imagine.

One aspect of that is that, in the beginning, it wasn’t quite as clear to me that it was useful for the artist to have someone else moderating. I think oftentimes when artists are presenting their ideas, they want to wear all the hats — performer, curator, organizer, moderator. I’m personally okay with that, but I’ve learned from Jeffreen that it’s actually really useful to have another dimension to it, to sort of enrich it further. As we get further along, I think the goal is for that person to potentially not even be an artist — for it to become really, really, really transdisciplinary. Because that makes sense! Because the subject matter is mental health, it’s chemistry, it’s physics, it’s all the things that would naturally begin to invite other ways of thinking. And that’s exciting to me.

MSL: You’ve brought up vulnerability a couple of times. I’m wondering if you’re willing to share some of what you mean when you say that vulnerability is a value of the program, or how working with artists in manifesting the events has made you think more about vulnerability, or how vulnerability is a word that more organizations are using now — just sharing your thoughts on that?

RM: Yeah! Yeah. [pause] What I’ve learned is that, sometimes when we think we’re being vulnerable, we’re actually not? Because there are so many invisible expectations in place — whether you put those on yourself, or what you perceive the institution you’re working with to expect, or the goal of the program. So you can’t really just, like, be in the middle of an idea and share it publicly. You know? I think the vibe that we create in this space and internally on our staff is different. I feel like it’s really an unspoken goal to break down all of those walls that seem to say that we need something to look or feel or be experienced in a certain way. I think that artists, creative people in general — anybody — are still always going to put those expectations onto themselves. I think it’s impossible not to; we’re fish in water. But in this particular space, in this particular program, with this particular staff, it’s the first place where I’ve experienced the greatest depth of an artist’s willingness to tip over into that readiness to say, “This is literally the first time I’m….” Like, “I may identify as a visual artist but I’m really moved by this theme and by this text and I just have an idea that I want to share, collaboratively, and it can be half-baked and it’s okay.” You know, often there are so many frameworks in our life where there is pressure to feel really buttoned-up in a way. I feel like this is a place to kind of breathe differently.

But it’s also supported. It’s not just a free-for-all — like sometimes what I think I would allow for it to be. [laughs] One of the things I’ve really learned from Jeffreen is the power of the editing process that happens in the relationship between myself — my role — and the artists who are doing In-Session. Because the ideas really can get like wildfire, but you only have two hours and there are still these things you have to adhere to. So the editing process, I think, becomes a part of the vulnerability, because artists inside of a process aren’t always ready for critical feedback about any one component of a thing. It’s really about establishing that relationship in that conversation in a relatively quick amount of time, so that that conversation can flow to the most powerful concentration of their idea. I think that those things have to do with vulnerability, too. You have to be in a spiritually vulnerable place, I think, to receive feedback. And you have to be in a spiritually vulnerable place to know when it’s time to give feedback and when it’s not. So, for me, vulnerability isn’t just a value, it’s a way of being and communicating that, I think, a lot of times we don’t make time to do in programming and in bigger institutions? And some days, I think Threewalls is a small institution but it’s really a huge institution because of its legacy. It’s existed since 2003 and then the very important work that Jeffreen’s doing to get it to now, for me, makes it huge and hugely significant.

MSL: Yeah. Something I’m hearing in that is vulnerability also in relation to an emotional or social attunedness — like understanding vulnerability in the context of an artist’s relationship with a structure or institution, and acknowledging how that might feel really different for different artists and with different institutions. There’s an aspect of that attunedness even in being on the same page as each other around the expectations for a program or the ways in which you all open up the space and open up yourselves to help facilitate a program while also helping, as you say, with editing. And I feel like it’s almost like pre-editing. I think the call for proposals for this season clearly articulated up-front, “This is generally what an event looks like, this is how much we’ll pay you….” I can’t tell you how many opportunities I see where I’m like, “Okay, but are you paying the artists or not? How much?” So there’s this aspect of vulnerability that can also be about transparency — which is another word that gets thrown around a lot. [laughs] But it means a lot to me to not be put in that position as an artist and for other artists to not be put in that position of having to ask or negotiate all of those things around, “What does ‘support’ look like for our event? You say you’ll ‘support’ it, but what does that mean?” I don’t know if that’s always been a part of the In-Session process or if the application has shifted over time, but I noted it.

RM: It was really transparent in the first call, too, in terms of pay. But it’s gotten more detailed in terms of, you know, example structure of night. Which of course still ends up shifting because the night ends up moving like a cloud. [Marya laughs] Anything with performance, you know. And because the audience is truly so involved. Audience participation is such a huge value of the program that a direction an audience member might take could totally throw the quote-unquote “timeline.” So there’s openness to all of that. Talking about vulnerability, I’m still questioning if I really know what it means.

MSL: And I think it can mean a lot of things.

RM: Yeah, it can. I appreciate you including the aspect of how the call for proposals looks. Lauren [Williams] and I were talking about this the other day — like reasons why it’s difficult for people to ask for help. In the context of working with artists, I’ve learned a lot about what many artists are not willing to ask for just because they don’t know that they can, or should! And it could be a huge thing, it could be just a tiny thing. I think, as creative people, we’ve all gotten kind of used to going with the flow — but the scales are really, really imbalanced. So you get home from a meeting or conversation or performance and something doesn’t feel right but you don’t know what. So I like what you said about that sort of “pre-editing,” almost like setting the stage.

But there’s no measure for, “Okay, success.” [Marya laughs] Like, “The artist feels really supported and everybody felt vulnerable and we did it.” Because I think about every one that’s happened, still. I think about the nuances and the ingredients and the energy of every single In-Session, and each one makes you feel so different. And it’s not always that you feel good! That’s part of it too. It’s that willingness to be really uncomfortable almost all the time and going on that journey with the artists, who are also willing to feel uncomfortable. It seems like a simple thing — and I think “discomfort” and “uncomfortability” are also words that get thrown around — but this is really the first place where I’ve experienced the things that I hear all of us talking about. In a programmatic sense. In the work that I did in St. Louis, I felt it all the time because it was just really intimate work.

MSL: What originally brought you to Threewalls? Or put you on the path towards Threewalls?

RM: The path started, really, with knowing Jeffreen from when she was the Executive Director of Rebuild Foundation. The project that I managed in St. Louis was called the Pink House, and it was catalyzed by Theaster Gates and supported by Rebuild for the first 4-5 years of its existence, beginning in about 2010. Jeffreen was the ED of Rebuild in 2013-2014. So we met and just had always stayed in touch after she left Rebuild.

And just a bit about Pink House: It was a really intimate neighborhood art space. It was a salmon-colored house, situated halfway up a residential block in a north side St. Louis neighborhood called Pagedale, which is in the Normandy school district. It was lovingly called the Pink House because of that salmon color, and that house has been in that neighborhood for 50-plus years. A community development organization called Beyond Housing owned that house and had reached out to Theaster back in 2010, getting on that boat of, you know, community arts engagement, social practice, all of those conversations that were floating around at the time. He was becoming so known for this, doing all of this work on the South Side of Chicago with Dorchester Projects and establishing Rebuild Foundation. I was based in St. Louis at the time — getting my masters at Wash U in social and economic development — and I had an internship at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, which he was also doing a project with, so I met him and Dayna Kriz. And he had had this opportunity, this invitation from Beyond Housing, to do something with this little house. I got a phone call one day in 2011, just, “Hey, would you be interested?” Dayna was already working on another project in St. Louis in the same vein, but a whole different partnership in a whole different part of the city.

And, Marya, I often say I can just drop the mic after Pink House, because it was just the most fulfilling work. It was the most fulfilling work. And it was fulfilling because the way that the partnership was set up — with Rebuild Foundation being based here and the community organization that owned the house, yes, being in St. Louis but being this massive institution that really wasn’t paying attention to the day-to-day of what we were doing — we could really just be and do. It wasn’t about this external gaze all the time or sharing that, you know, children and particularly children of color, Black children, were “safe in art class” somewhere and the photo op. Sometimes, more often than not, we had a presence on Rebuild Foundation’s blog and on Beyond Housing’s website, but ultimately we were just there at Pink House every day after school, in creative exchanges with artists who lived across the street, or across the city. Pink House was a place on the way home and whoever showed up made it what it was. And every day it was just like making a mark that you weren’t even aiming for. Because if you spent time there, it just had such a natural rhythm. You know? And we just kind of managed to dodge all of the hyper-formalities that tend to make these places a little less interesting to spend time in. It felt like you could truly be yourself.

That project lasted for about six years, then it closed on a decision that was really by Beyond Housing. That’s a whole other story that’s honestly a whole different article — one was written in the St. Louis (Missouri) American publication about its closing [link]. That work was just so important to me and made up so much of my St. Louis experience that when that project ended, I really couldn’t see myself in St. Louis anymore.

I was still in touch with Jeffreen and I think that the timing just kind of ended up working out. Because not seven or eight months later, there was this position at Threewalls. So that’s really how I got here.

MSL: Wow.

RM: I appreciate you asking the trajectory question about what brought me here. I also organize an event in St. Louis called “the clothesline,” which has taught me a lot of what I know about collaboration. I do it with two other women, and it’s a one-night-only amalgam of light and sound, or visuals and sound. I think a lot of that — Jeffreen even following the momentum of that — is also how she’s gotten to know me as a facilitator, a connector, a collaborator. But clothesline and Pink House, those were what was keeping me in St. Louis, and I was there for 8-9 years before coming back here. I would have never met Jeffreen without that.

MSL: Were you in Chicago before that?

RM: Mmm hmm. I went to University of Illinois for my undergrad and then moved here and lived here for about five years. I moved back to St. Louis for my masters, did that work at Pink House, and now I’m back here. So it’s been the Midwestern thoroughfare, Mississippi River, for most of my life.

MSL: I can see how there may be resonances between the work you are doing here and the work you were doing in St. Louis — in terms of values, arts-connected, based in relationships, facilitating relationships between other people — but also I imagine that your role here is really different in other ways.

RM: It’s really different. But, like how you just described, I think I’m an intuitive connector. Have you ever been introduced or email-connected to someone and it just didn’t really make any sense that you were being introduced to them? [Marya laughs] Maybe this is a bad example. But I think there is something to be said about seeing all the dots and knowing when it’s time to connect them — whether that has to do with longer-term relationships or shorter-term collaborations. I’ve found a lot of purpose in that, in being sort of this connective tissue in that way. And, yes, that’s certainly a thread between Pink House and this work. A bit less in this work, just in the sense that I’m really here to support the collaborations that are being organized by the artists themselves.

And relationships — that’s another thing that we give lip service to. And collaboration. Because I think collaboration is a critical skill, and just because you’re working together doesn’t mean that you’re collaborating. You know, I think our culture really rewards this illusion of hyper-individualism and all those things, and I think sincere collaboration happens less often than we think.

MSL: What do you think marks it?

RM: Oh, that’s such a great question. [laughs] [pause] Well, the answer is kind of cheesy, really, because it’s things like, you don’t have to give up your ego to be a really good collaborator. It’s almost just like how your ego listens. [Marya laughs] Like, it’s one thing for you to be listening, but for your ego — your goals or aspirations that are transpiring inside of you, in kind of a different layer of yourself — for your ego to be listening also is another thing. If that makes sense.

MSL: Yeah. I know collaboration and partnership aren’t the same thing, but that makes me think about how, to me, an ideal partnership — or maybe a “sincere” partnership, though I hadn’t thought of it in those terms — is something that is genuinely helping both or all partners. It’s supportive in making their lives easier rather than harder in doing the things they’re trying to do.

RM: Definitely.

MSL: Because, to me, partnership is about finding the points of interdependence or mutual support, finding the ways in which people feel good about giving or feel the space of their own need, and that those things are coming together in a way that makes sense for the people involved. Especially in arts administration or education, different positions or roles I’ve had in the past, it’s been so interesting to see people be like, “Oh, we’re doing this partnership….” And it’s like, “But why? This is actually making things more complicated.” I think making things more complicated can be really great if it’s because you’re being critical about something — like you’re wrestling with the complications or engaging with the complexity of something. But if the partnership is actually just making everybody’s life harder and isn’t better serving the missions, whether organizational or personal, it’s like, “So, why are you doing that?” Maybe cynically, “Just for some optics?” Rather than really asking, “Are we working together towards something that is beneficial and shared?”

RM: Exactly. And I had never thought about the ego listening until I’m talking to you. [Marya laughs] But it’s making sense, even listening to you talk, because I think the thing that does complicate it is when collaboration doesn’t allow for all of those things that you mentioned, just in terms of the mutuality of it. There is a lot of ego in creative work! And I think we should still honor that. But there’s a way for those things to be honored if listening happens also at that level, at the level of the ego.

It’s like you know it’s happening when you see it. And there have been teeny examples of it not happening. Like if an artist asked another artist to serve as the moderator, and that person was like, “Hmm. I don’t want to be involved as the moderator but I want to be involved doing what I do.” So then that didn’t work out. That’s an example of listening to each other to figure out how it’s of mutual benefit. And it might not have been of mutual benefit for that person to be in that role, and that’s fine!

MSL: To shift gears a little, or kind of circling back, I’d love to hear a bit about how the themes and texts come about for In-Session? Like where those come from, and how much those come from the process itself or from the ideas that are arising through participants’ work? From the outside, it seems like there might be some responsiveness to or just building over time on the previous themes and lists.

RM: I think that the building over time certainly exists. “Migration” was the first theme, which Jeffreen selected back in 2017 and I helped develop. We had a wonderful administrative intern at the time named Omar Dyette, who was hugely significant in organizing that first season with me. I think migration, as a theme, is truly a visceral response to the things that have been happening politically in our country and everywhere in the world, particularly things that we’re bombarded with. As a team, really with Omar’s lead, we were responding to that theme with the different texts, then of course we all added other ideas. There’s not a super formal way that happened.

“Citizen(ship),” the second theme, was a little more formal because there was a conversation between us and the MCA around the performance “What Remains,” which was happening with Will Rawls and Claudia Rankine and was based on her book “Citizen: An American Lyric.” That ended up adding a different layer to the In-Session program because it helped us as a staff to focus all of the other readings, but also gave us opportunities to convene the In-Session artists with Will Rawls and the MCA staff and, you know, just be invited as kind of a cohort to the performance and again for a debrief with Will. It added another kind of glue to the whole series that also added another kind of glue between the participating artists, which I think we learned a lot from. That more external partnership didn’t happen the first season, and it also isn’t happening with this current season.

Then for this season, the theme I chose was “The Art of Memory” — Jeffreen encouraged me to choose and she developed the reading list with me — and it felt like another breath in the same chord of migration and citizenship. And I’m a deeply nostalgic person, to a fault, so the idea of memory and how memory moves and what influences it is just something that I’m always thinking about. And there are so many artists who are addressing that in their work.

So there’s nothing super formal about how themes and reading lists happen yet. As a staff, we’re not choosing the proposals. We get the proposals and then we have a committee that we select as a staff that reads and selects them. There has been conversation around what would it look like for the committee that we’re working with to have more of a hand in selecting the texts. We are kind of still figuring out all of those parts. But so far it’s been a pretty intimate process in terms of our own invitation to ourselves to have creative input on how this moves. As I’m talking to you, at least with this last one, it feels kind of arbitrary? [laughs] But it’s not, at the same time.

MSL: Yeah, and all three of the themes so far seem, as you say, in some ways to be very relevant to our present moment — but also were never not relevant.

RM: Exactly.

MSL: So there’s sort of both a specificity and a breadth.

RM: Yeah. I’m glad you said that because they all do feel pretty broad to me. I don’t know what would be an example of one that wouldn’t feel broad? That might take us down a strange rabbit hole. [both laugh] Like, “Pine Trees.” I don’t know. But sometimes the breadth, I think, can feel overwhelming, not necessarily even to the artists who are applying but to the committee. We got feedback like, “Is this too many texts?” We’ve had that discussion internally as a staff and we also don’t want it to feel like this really academic thing, like where everyone’s reading the same book. But, at the same time, I think the sort of glue of Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” also assisted in everyone having, potentially, a commonality of shared experience — either knowing or having read this work, or knowing who Claudia is. We’re still figuring out how necessary shared experience is for this. Because with In-Session, say the guiding work is Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust,” there’s no guarantee that even 50% of the audience has seen that. So that was one of my questions with the committee this season, selecting these proposals. Is it more beneficial, in the long run, to work towards that? To ensure, somehow — and you really can’t — but to put things in place to ensure that everyone in the room at an event has experienced the text already.

MSL: Or even just going out of the way a few weeks before an event to send a reminder to the Threewalls listserv like, “If you’re coming, we strongly encourage…! And here’s where you can find the text!”

RM: It might be something as simple as that, where you do just remind people. And I will be using that. [Marya laughs] Because I’ve learned that sometimes the guiding text gets kind of lost. You know, I think people become aware of the theme or they just know they’re coming to support this particular artist — and the rest of it just ends up being an experience, and the details of it kind of don’t matter. All of that is a part of it, too. But for those people who do want to experience it, you know, somewhat closer to how the artist is experiencing it or performing it, I think something as simple as encouraging people is helpful. Highlighting what the guiding text is more feverishly.

MSL: I love how many forms of media were on the “reading list” — films, poems, music, books…and the section that’s just visual artists’ names and then “tell us what work you’re responding to by the artist.” Maybe that’s another way the specificity and breadth thing comes through — like, the theme or invitation is broad, the guiding work or inspiration is specific, and something happens between them.

RM: That’s a beautiful way to frame it. Yes.

MSL: I also love who’s represented across the guiding works, and the fact that these reading lists you’ve created are now out in the world. I wasn’t thinking about it when I asked about the lists, though I do like to ask about influences, and I do think a lot about influences in my own life. Especially, like, who sets “the canon,” and what does it mean to be a “well-read literary fiction reader” or whatever when you aren’t interested in that canon? You know, these expectations within a given institutional structure or among certain sets of people that to be “an informed such-and-such” or to be engaging with “the important works” means x, and what perspectives and even styles and values that typically does and does not include. I’ve personally and professionally had so many moments where I’m pushing back on someone about that like, “No, I have my own influences.” Like, “Cool, I’m glad you think it’s important for me to have read that, but I actually think it’s important for me to have read all these other things. And I am too ‘critically engaged’ because I’m critically engaging with those.” I feel that dissonance or gap and I’m a white person. So my sense even just from looking at this season’s reading list, or hearing how central “Citizen” was to last season’s, is that making and circulating the reading lists also just seems like such a great way to center and promote another, largely different set of texts that are mostly by women, people of color, queer people, from a lot of different places, with distinct sets of concerns.… That may seem like a really obvious thing to say — like it’s maybe an obvious observation from the lists — but I think it’s worth speaking to that value of them.

I think the other thing I’m trying to come back around to is how we as artists and we as people are carrying all kinds of influences with us all of the time but we’re not always speaking what those are. They may be in the DNA of any of our work, but we’re not necessarily taking the moment to say, “Actually, do you know that what was really important to me in developing this set of ideas was work by this person?” I’m sure that the artists who are responding directly to one text for In-Session are also bringing DNA from lots of other texts in with them too. But this framework is just one way of setting or highlighting an influence among many, and doing it in a way that can also act as a recommendation or reference-point for others.

RM: Yeah, and I’m glad you pointed it out. It’s funny because I had the largest hand in creating this current list, and I didn’t even think about it. You know what I’m saying? It’s just who I know, who I think about when I think about this theme. It really didn’t have an identity-based driver — but it always does, just based on who I am and where I choose to work. There’s also a poem, “May This Be a House of Joy” by Lucille Clifton, that either Jeffreen or Lauren will read before every In-Session, setting a tone — not since the very beginning, but for some time now.

But yeah, it is rewarding to share this reading list. Even one of our committee members hadn’t read or seen a lot of the texts, but she was so excited about it and was like, “I’m going to be looking into all of these.” The list is just another way of coming together, another way of being re-inspired. Because we’re such a small staff, and because I end up becoming so engaged in the scheduling and what the artists need that even for me — and not having an intern currently — some of those parts end up falling off in importance. But I’m glad it’s being paid attention to, because it’s a huge part of how the program operates and functions.

This season will be a shorter season, and there are two artists who have selected the same text! It was like, “Ooh, is that okay?” Well, of course it is. [both laugh] You know, even those little funny questions pop up. I’m learning as we go and being as open as possible.

Segueing into influences, Bhanu Kapil is a huge, huge, huge influence on me personally, and she created the video for the performance you came to. She’s a poet and a writer and, formerly, a professor at Naropa University in Colorado. She’s had a huge influence on my work since I was at Pink House. And [laughs] talk about vulnerability. Because of her involvement in Maya [Mackrandilal] and Udita’s performance, Bhanu sent me her W-9. [Marya laughs] I was just nerding out. I played it cool for the first few exchanges, and then two months later, after their performance, I wrote to her — which is not something I do. And Marya, within two hours, she wrote me back one of the warmest email responses I’ll ever receive. Ever.

So this program makes a lot of waves, I think, in the ways that we question ourselves creatively, that we question our own influences. Like even me, coming up with the theme “The Art of Memory.” I had so much internal resistance. “Is this theme going to make sense to anybody? Are these texts going to make sense to anybody? Is this call for proposals this season going to be exciting to anybody?” You know, you question yourself. And that’s all a part of it, just doing it.

And I’m learning things that I don’t even know I’m learning, that will come up in a totally different context. Like there was a moment this last weekend where I viscerally experienced organizers transferring way too much responsibility onto an artist — in a moment, at a program that I was participating in as a member of the public. And I interjected like, “Can this go another way?” Thankfully, it did. It seems like a simple thing, but we have it down to a science in our culture how to exploit creative people. Any medium. We have it down to a science. And I didn’t know how moved I would be to figure out how to release some of that in my small role here at Threewalls, or in my relationships with creatives because of Threewalls and beyond. I didn’t know how rare it seems to be either.

MSL: Yeah. I think sometimes we realize that we’re growing or we actually do grow most in those moments where we’re pushed or called on? You know, maybe you just hadn’t had the opportunity before to be prompted on that, like, “Oh, I actually do totally know this, it’s totally core to the way I operate, but I haven’t had that drawn out of me because I haven’t had to consciously stand up for that.”

RM: Exactly. [pause] So good to know!

MSL: Are there any past In-Sessions you haven’t already mentioned that really stand out to you, maybe because of a personal resonance they had, or the audience conversation, or an unexpected engagement with a text?

RM: Oh, gosh. I remember someone saying — and I’ve felt this before myself — that just being in the circle of one of the In-Sessions was an experience they didn’t even know that they needed. There have certainly been specific examples for me. A.J. McClenon closed out last season. Her In-Session was with Angel Bat Dawid, who’s a musician, and the moderator was Israel Pate. Angel plays many instruments but there was this really incredible moment where she was playing the saxophone in front of footage of former president Bill Clinton playing the saxophone. And it was just [pause] unforgettable. That was in response to Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” There was just something about that moment. But trying to think about things that have come up in conversation — there’s just been so many.

MSL: Or even things artists have shared with you after going through the experience.

RM: Little things will happen even inside of the internal communications between performers that they hadn’t discussed. [laughs] Just those very important nuances that, as a staff member, I become privy to. This process brings out a lot of sensitivities from everyone who’s involved, including the audience. I don’t think there’s a way to really prepare for that, as a performer or not. I’m always really inspired by the artists that are willing to go there! We talk a lot about “process,” you know, and “prioritizing process.” What I’ve learned is that it’s not always that attractive for an artist to share all of that! And so I think there’s a lot of sensitivity around acknowledging process. I think we have to ask what about process. What about process are we so enamored with? Especially in arts administration. Because I feel like it’s becoming so focused on “process over outcome” and all of that, where process is more important. But there’s something to be said about the intersection of vulnerability and mystery. For me, when I think about the artists that I’m inspired by, Bhanu being one of them, that intersection exists. And just because we’re talking about vulnerability doesn’t mean that we’re asking creative people to let go of, you know, the mysterious aspects of their practice that make their process what it is.

MSL: Mmm hmm. And vulnerability doesn’t mean an all-access-pass or an all-access-pass for everyone.

RM: Yeah! Sometimes I think that’s what we mistake it for, when we throw these words around in a way. Somewhere, that’s what someone’s expecting to come and get.

MSL: As if you go to an open studio and you’re allowed to completely go through everyone’s everything, as opposed to just what they have put out for you to see.

RM: That’s the other thing, being part of the support system that kind of houses all of it. I’ve learned, being here, that some people shirk away a bit from this notion of intimacy. Like, “Ehh, that’s not really for me,” or, “If I read the word ‘intimacy’ in the description of a program, I’m not really going to go to that.” So, you know, it’s just being sensitive to all of these factors and experiences. And then the privilege of working in a space that is run, on the staff, by 100% people of color. Which I’ve also never experienced before. And as a white-passing person myself, depending on the context I’m in, I’ve learned a lot about that too. And what it really means to be able to be here, with Jeffreen, right now, as she is defining leadership for herself in a way that is totally different from other things that I’ve experienced. Part of what I think enables us as a staff to figure out how to kind of move inside of these sensitivities is because of how Jeffreen cares for herself and us as a staff. “Self-care” is another trendy thing. She’s somebody who deeply embodies it for herself and for us as her staff. She truly does. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like it — because it’s just not our culture. It’s not our culture to care for yourself in the context of work. Not really. Not systemically. That is something that is very, very real for her. And it’s necessary. I think that the artists we work with can feel that on us, that she’s prioritizing that for all of us. Which changes the expectations, I think, in general.

MSL: Yeah. This conversation makes me think about the idea of boundary-setting. And I think a lot of intimacy can be about boundary-setting. It’s saying this is and is not what is okay in this scenario. Whether that’s boundaries for relationships between staff and artists or an artist and an institution, between a person and their job, or between a person and their artist practice and the rest of their life.

RM: I’m glad you brought that up. Because boundaries is a word that I really struggle with. Jeffreen cares for me a lot in that way because I think she witnesses me struggle with those. I’m someone who sort of feels like true life is lived in between our responsibilities, like between work and whatever my responsibilities are for the day. So if a sincere relationship is possible, then, for me, I don’t always know how boundaries fit into that. Almost like I don’t really have them but I know when you’ve crossed one, or I know when one’s been crossed? And I’m not saying that that’s not a healthy way to have boundaries — because that might just be who I am — but I think this role really requires that I do have them. I think that’s something I’ll continue to learn way after this job.

MSL: Looking back at the In-Session program thus far, what are you most proud of? Or looking forward, what are you most excited about?

RM: I guess I’m proud that I’ve become comfortable being a part of developing it, almost like film in a dark room — because there are so many unknowns. And In-Session already existed before I got here, I’ve just had a major role in manifesting it. I’m proud that I haven’t been hard on myself for any of it. Like I’m really just letting it show me what it is, letting the artists show me what it is, letting Jeffreen support me in showing me what it is. I’m allowing for that. It feels like such an opportunity to aspire to meeting an expectation that is unknown. There’s not an expectation in the sky or that’s written on the wall somewhere. I remember an email that Jeffreen sent to Omar and me at the end of the first season that was just really warm, congratulating us and thanking us for bringing her vision to life. As a creative person, I’ve never been in this position where I’m part of the responsibility of bringing someone else’s vision to life, and it’s maybe more daunting than if I were bringing my own visions to life. [laughs] So I’m proud that I haven’t been hard on myself for any of what could be imagined as a shortcoming or a snag or whatever. I owe a lot of that to her. Because she allows for the solitude and the freedom but also she’s there to help form it. I’m proud of myself that I can be at peace with exactly where things are with it.

I got a text from an artist a couple of days ago, which was literally, “You have my back and a lot of artists feel the same way.” It was such a vague yet intimate text to get. [Marya laughs] I don’t know exactly what they were referring to but it meant a lot to me. I feel like having someone’s back, even in your personal life, can be a very elusive experience — because, again, of how the ego works and just primally how self-preservation is a thing. So even the notion of having someone’s back, there’s a lot of grey area there. There’s a lot at stake in having someone’s back. It becomes very familial in that way. Like the potential to have to have someone’s back when actually the integrity is off. Or, you know, when it is a clear case of potentially someone — anyone — trying to take advantage, maybe too far of a thing or across too far of a boundary, and still having the capacity or wherewithal to understand what “having someone’s back” means, in this context. Where there do have to be boundaries, where the creative process is sensitive, where vulnerability is maybe happening. It’s a very intuitive process. And there’s not any real getting it “right.” It’s just, “How did you feel after?” I’m very thankful that, predominantly, I think artists have felt good. If they don’t feel really, really good about it, maybe they really saw themselves or learned a lot from putting themselves in this position to do this.

And there have been other nice moments. For the first reading list, for “Migration,” Omar chose a poem by a locally-based poet, José Olivarez — who ended up coming to the In-Session and having a role in it because of how that process ended up moving once he learned his work was a part of it! [Marya laughs] That was very cool. That was, in fact, the second In-Session we ever did — Jose Luis Benavides with Nancy Sánchez, Amanda Cervantes, and Daniel Haddad. I think if Omar were sitting here, that would have been their proudest moment. They were proud of that synergy.

MSL: Was it unusual that Bhanu Kapil both wrote one of the guiding texts and then was part of the resulting piece?

RM: That’s never happened before — other than the time it happened accidentally, that I just mentioned. [pause] That’s what was incredible. Duh, that’s going to happen eventually, that someone who’s applying for this knows this person personally, can email this person and ask them to collaborate. And then I’m getting her W-9. [Marya laughs] It’s beautiful that already in our first three seasons that degree of synergy is coalescing. Because that’s, again, the dots connecting themselves, when it’s time to connect them. It feels really, really powerful when that happens.

So this program has a lot of legs and power inside of it. It comes together with the artist-led, experimental conversation and performance aspect, the moderator, the text, the theme. It’s a lot of ingredients that makes this stir. I’m thankful for this conversation because there are still so many ingredients to me, and being so up-close to it working with the artists I don’t have a like [snaps] “In-Session is this.” Yet. And I hate elevator pitches anyway. But conversations like this help me concentrate In-Session down into its most powerful aspects.

MSL: Not the grant speak, but the stuff that actually feels really important.

RM: I will never be the grant speaker. [laughs] I learned that about myself a long time ago. That’s another thing about Jeffreen — she really knows who she has working with her. Even when it becomes challenging how different we all are, she really has a way of honoring what we bring in a way that values the whole person. I don’t think I’ll again– [laughs] I’m always talking like life is over soon: “I’ll never experience this again.”

MSL: [laughs] You did say you were very nostalgic. I don’t know if that’s what you meant, being nostalgic about something happening in the present.

RM: I’m very nostalgic. Being nostalgic can be very dangerous because it’s denial of my future, really. But I’ve worked for a lot of different kinds of people and this is the most wide-open it’s felt in terms of the holistic care of myself. I’m never worried. If I’m ever worried about something, it’s that there’s just more to be done and somehow I’m too scattered to do it. But it’s not the other pressures that I think we tend to feel, in terms of performance. Everything is a conversation — that’s what In-Session is, too. And my role here is kind of like a cloud. It’s got to somehow figure out how to be direct and flexible at the same time, constantly.

Featured image: Regina Martinez (center) at Threewalls in March 2019, participating in an In-Session by Maya Mackrandilal, with collaborators Udita Upadhyaya and Enid Muñoz and original performance for video by Bhanu Kapil, in response to the guiding work “Schizophrene” by Bhanu Kapil. In this wide shot, Martinez and more than a dozen audience members stand in the middle of the wood floor at Threewalls, as Mackrandilal and Muñoz stretch fluorescent pink ribbon around and between them all. The room is low-lit, with some additional fragments of light reflecting onto the audience members from a video projection off-camera. Martinez wears black and white and a long black sweater. Most audience members wear sweaters, scarves, boots, and/or hats. Photo by Milo Bosh. Courtesy of Threewalls.

Marya Spont-Lemus(she/her/hers/Ms.) is a fiction writer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator focused on teen creative, leadership, and professional development. She lives and works on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Find her on Twitter and Tumblr.

The post Beyond the Page: Regina Martinez & Threewalls’ In-Session appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Featured Image: Alina Estrada smiles in front of a colorful mural wearing a black and white striped blouse. Photo by Kristie Kahns. Foto Principal: Alina Estrada sonríe frente a un mural colorido con una blusa de rayas blancas y negras.  Crédito: Kristie Kahns.

Angelica Flores is a Mexican-American writer and Dominican University graduate. She enjoys working on English-Spanish translations and writes for The Gate Newspaper where she has reviewed books, films, and theater performances. She works for the Poetry Foundation and is the owner of the blog, The Macaron Raccoon. / Angelica Flores es una escritora mexicoamericana y graduada de Dominican University. Le gusta trabajar en traducciones Inglés-Español y escribe para The Gate Newspaper, donde ha reseñado libros, películas y representaciones teatrales. Ella trabaja en el Poetry Foundation y maneja el blog, The Macaron Raccoon.

The post The Southwest Nest / El Nido Suroeste: An Interview with Alina Estrada (English & Español) appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

“Beyond the Page” digs into the process and practice of writers and artists who work at the intersection of literary arts and other fields. For this installment, I interviewed fiction writer and high school English teacher Sahar Mustafah about her debut novel, “The Beauty of Your Face.” We spoke in January about her process of drafting, crafting, and publishing the book; how her writing and teaching inform each other; and key experiences — and women — that have shaped her as an author.

“The Beauty of Your Face” (W.W. Norton, 2020) is available for pre-order. Check out the book launch event and reading at the American Writers Museum on April 7. Find Mustafah on Twitter @saharmustafah. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and to limit plot-related spoilers to the contents of the prologue and the book jacket.

Marya Spont-Lemus: I’ve admired your work since we met through StoryStudio’s “Novel in a Year” program in 2015. I loved your short story collection, Code of the West (Willow Books, 2017), and was completely absorbed by The Beauty of Your Face, your debut novel. I read it over three days and had to exercise significant willpower to not flip ahead.

Sahar Mustafah: [laughs] I really appreciate that.

MSL: Could you tell us a bit about the novel?

SM: The Beauty of Your Face is about the journey of a Palestinian Muslim American, framed by a hate shooting. The novel was originally inspired by the three young people who were killed by their neighbor in North Carolina in 2015: Yusor Abu-Salha; her husband, Deah Barakat; and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha.

As I went through “Novel in a Year” with Rebecca Makkai, I realized, even while getting fairly positive feedback, that my first draft wasn’t going in the direction I felt was right. In some places it felt so contrived. I went into summer 2016 thinking, “Maybe it’s just not going to work,” and left it alone. And I swear, Marya, right before my teaching started up again I had this epiphany: I had too many characters and hadn’t really dug into their stories. I had a reimagination. The shooter pretty much stayed the same; I knew that character would sort of frame the novel but not be the main story. I was more interested in whom he would face, and whether that character would be a victim or survive. And I saw the character Afaf Rahman! I realized, “My goodness, I have to start over.”

The prologue of The Beauty of Your Face starts in the present, with Afaf facing the shooter. I realized the story I need to tell is, “Where did she come from? How did she find herself in this Islamic school, in charge of all these girls? And now having to face this horrible ordeal?” I’ve always been interested in stories about where we come from — in part because of my own background, being the daughter of immigrants and not always “fitting in.” And how would it be different if my parents weren’t immigrants, or from Palestine? If I were white? I’m interested in questioning all of those forces that shape us and carry us into the present.

MSL: After the prologue, we jump back to 1976 and see Afaf’s life, from her point of view, through to that opening moment. Alternating with that is interstitial storytelling from the shooter’s perspective. How did you come up with that structure, and what were you hoping to achieve with it?

SM: I didn’t want to create a stock white-male-shooter. Like with Afaf, I’m interested in where he’s come from, in terms of childhood into adulthood, some of his losses and influences. But I definitely wanted to make him secondary. As I re-drafted, the new structure became moving through Afaf’s life by decade, with the present-day mostly through the shooter. I could still pull audiences into his background through his memories — but not too much, because I didn’t want to detract from Afaf’s story. I still spent plenty of time writing him, so I had a sense of who he was, then edited down.

MSL: Something I hope gets at least as much attention from reviewers as the event of the shooting is Afaf’s story. Not only does it occupy more pages, it involves a huge range of tones and emotional shifts, over years. I was so compelled by her story — essentially, a coming-of-age, formation-of-a-woman story. She’s the book’s heart and center. What was the process of developing Afaf as a character and her journey?

SM: I’m glad you feel that. Some agents and editors wanted me to drop the shooter story altogether. I was heartened, because they felt incredibly drawn to Afaf and her strength. But I was also very set on a particular story I wanted to tell.

I didn’t have any major challenges developing Afaf. I felt this natural progression of what she might experience, beginning as a 10-year-old, with each decade offering something formative. The book is completely fictitious, but does reflect the kinds of experiences I’ve observed in circles of friends and family. It felt like a realistic story of a young Arab girl in Chicago — something I relate to and see myself in, that my sisters will be able to see themselves in. Closer to when Afaf begins her religious transformation, some of those moments are inspired by communities of women I’d been exposed to growing up. In the ‘90s, there seemed to be this renaissance of Islam, at least in the south suburbs where I was living, with women really turning to Islam and wearing the hijab. Those moments in the book are plucked from really positive celebrations of women making that formal dedication. Not that they didn’t identify as Muslims to begin with, but to be visibly Muslim is, I think, quite an intentional choice and a journey.

To me, Afaf’s story feels sort of like opening up an album and seeing different snapshots that formulated her sense of identity or lack thereof. By the end, I think she seems fully realized. And, in her case, it’s because of not rebelling — whereas rebelling often feels like a typical narrative, like the child of immigrants saying, “I hate my background! My parents are not cool! Why can’t I be like my white counterparts?” Afaf certainly struggles with not belonging, because white people have also kept her out of their realm. She felt like an outsider and it’s exacerbated by a lack of cultural identity, religious identity — she didn’t belong anywhere, even with her Arab community. Afaf being accepted by the circle of women is just, I think, the best story of Islam. It sort of lights her way to loving and forgiving herself, healing, and managing grief.

MSL: While there are ways in which the book is about hate, to me it more essentially seems to be about love. One way we see that is through Afaf’s relationships with her immediate family and family in a broader sense — those women, her friend’s family, her students.  

SM: The relationship between Afaf and her brother was so enjoyable to write. That is my favorite. And the one she has with her father. As flawed as Baba was, Afaf never doubted his love. The love of other women, to me, is such an extraordinary kind — sisterhood, not by biological means but through friendship. Whatever the elements are that make up a community of women; in this case it is definitely religious and also ethnic. Those relationships were important for me to draw out and spend time on, because I didn’t want the shooter frame to overwhelm Afaf’s greater story, which I felt was universal, ultimately. I’m thinking readers will go away with, “This was about friendship, about broken families….” And it’s not going to be, “This was about a Muslim girl and a hate crime.” I very much appreciate you saying that and I’m glad that comes across. Maybe in some ways that love allows us respite from the violence that frames the book and is threaded throughout. She definitely experiences moments of bigotry before encountering the shooter, but she seems better equipped because of all these positive relationships.

MSL: The novel’s present-day storyline depicts that epic act of anti-Muslim violence, while Afaf’s stories over the decades include various slurs and abuses, almost like part of the texture of her daily life. How do you see those as connected to each other? Why was it important to you to show those moments building alongside the story of the shooting?

SM: I guess it’s the absolute, most horrendous, culmination of all those things. It’s our worst nightmare. People keep calling it “the unthinkable.” But I’m like, “It’s actually not unthinkable,” at least not to people who experience those smaller moments every single day. I don’t think, in the end, it is ever shocking when something like this happens. It doesn’t mean it’s any less rattling or horrifying. But, it’s not so unbelievable.

I wanted to make sure I spent time on how Afaf’s life shifts almost instantly when she puts on the hijab. I didn’t want to blow over that. Because audiences know, we all know, about Islamophobia. But do we? Do we know what it’s like for a visibly Muslim woman on a daily basis? I don’t! This is me imagining, doing research, talking to Muslim women who wear hijab. I hope I did that justice. Because here I am, someone who typically is not identified or immediately recognized as Arab or Muslim by others. People go through a whole list, and I’m like, “We can stop this game of trying to guess where I’m from. I’m from Chicago.” [laughs] Having to step into that — with research, and collecting stories — was moving and humbling, to say the least.

I heard an amazing StoryCorps that Yusor Abu-Salha had done with her teacher, Mussarut Jabeen, before Yusor was killed. Yusor talked about how much she loved America, how this was her country, and how happy she was to have these opportunities to be educated and so on. She was just so optimistic. And I guess I thought, quite cynically, that it felt almost like the narrative that immigrants or Muslims or Arabs are expected to recite, this burden of, you know, “We should be grateful to be here.” But I also thought, “I wonder if I’m kind of steering Afaf into another single narrative. How hopeful that Yusor felt this other way!” Whatever experience Yusor had with bigotry or discrimination, she didn’t feel compelled to address. I like to think, ultimately, what this book will do is challenge what people think or expect. Because it’s not, “Oh, Afaf comes from this really happy, devoted, Muslim family.” That’s not the case at all. A series of things brought her to that. And that’s what I was interested in — things that, unless you ask someone, “How did you begin? Where did you come from?” you won’t know.

MSL: Most of Afaf’s present-day scenes are in past tense, and her past decades are in present tense. I found that shift to be very emotionally impactful.

SM: Oh, good! I think it felt natural. Practically, it was important to differentiate the shooter from Afaf and her story. Her decades being in present tense is, for me, to make those experiences very immediate and alive for readers, because those stories basically created who she was. For me as a reader, that’s what tends to happen with present-tense — I’m seeing and feeling everything with the character. Even any degree of discomfort, I’d want that to be visceral, as visceral as I can depict it.

MSL: To me it also quite literally made the past feel present. Which made sense, because it seems the past is very present for Afaf, and for her parents — like she is negotiating her relationship with the past and its impact on her.

SM: Absolutely! Those stories — our past and experiences — still live in us. Sometimes they’re going to come to the forefront, some can be very triggering. And I didn’t want Afaf to be a Muslim American principal and people not know more than that, or for her to be pigeon-holed or a flat character. I very much wanted her to be a human being, with all of these things having happened to her, and to have the reader experience those through her.

MSL: At what point was it clear to you that the protagonist would be an educator? Or that a central location would be a school?

SM: Once I saw Afaf as a single character, in my second draft, I knew she would be an educator of some kind, and I definitely saw the Islamic school as the setting. In the first draft the shooting was in a public location. But I thought, “No, he needs to enter the school” — a place where, obviously, children are supposed to be educated and protected and safe.

MSL: How familiar were you already with the communities where the novel takes place — Chicago’s South Side in the ‘70s and ‘80s and the south suburbs more recently — or what kinds of research or revisiting did you do?

SM: I was born on the South Side, where I was raised before living in Palestine for some years. I wanted to realistically depict my neighborhood during that period. The suburbs, not just Orland Park where I live presently, became my adult life.

The novel’s suburb is fictitious, as is the school, though I partially modeled that on Islamic private schools I’m familiar with. And I struggled with, “Do I name the suburb?” I didn’t want to have to worry about people saying, “But this wouldn’t happen here, and this doesn’t accurately depict us,” or “Well, I’m from that suburb, and we love that Islamic school!” I didn’t want that to distract an audience. Other aspects, like most street names, are real. Authors have told me people get very sensitive about these things. And, quite frankly, I think this particular book is going to be in front of a larger audience than my short story collection and, inevitably, people are going to be critical. So I thought, “What do I want them to be focused on?”

Rita Dove said something in an interview that has stayed with me — this is a paraphrase — about how being a “hyphenated” writer carries double burdens, like of representation while still having to be a good writer. And other authors have talked to me about fighting any suggestion that you’re published “because” you’re from a certain background and fulfilling a particular “need” in the publishing industry — the white publishing industry, really. That has been troubling to me. I’ve carried that and had to negotiate that. Because I’m hearing those white critics; I’ve had to sort of silence them to get the work done. But I don’t pretend that I won’t be under the microscope with this book and what I’ve accomplished here. So even something as minor as not naming a real town was very deliberate. I don’t know, maybe every writer feels that kind of hypersensitivity and fear.

MSL: What brought you to writing, and particularly to writing fiction? Was it always as much a part of your life as it is now?

SM: I was always a big reader, and in the high reading groups. The scene with Afaf and her class is inspired by my experience — except unfortunately she didn’t have my experience, which was teachers elevating me. I’m grateful my teachers were able to see that ability. My mom and dad could functionally read English, but they didn’t read to us at home. So where this love came from — innate! I don’t know. [laughs]

I started writing when I was 8 or 9, and I begged my parents to buy me this Corona electric typewriter from Sears. I saved as much as I could and they put in the rest. They really nurtured that enthusiasm. I was writing funny stories about animals and things, not anything that directly reflected who I was — I think because those stories just weren’t available. For me, white characters were the default, and white writing was the default of what was “good” writing — that was the way I saw it. So, in that sense, I would write for fun, and it came easily. But I never ever had the notion that I would be a writer. In fact, I had so much pressure to be a doctor — you know, from my immigrant parents — as soon as they saw my straight As. [laughs]

I was writing personal essays in high school — and actually winning school contests — and I had this really wonderful journalism teacher. For one assignment, I wrote about how my sister cut my and my younger sister’s hair on the same day my mom hired a professional photographer. My mom had already dressed my sister and me the same, in boys’ clothes. My mom didn’t really differentiate — whatever she liked is what she bought, which I guess is cool, looking back. And the photographer was like, “Okay, boys, get closer.” It was a humorous story. That teacher wanted me to send it to Reader’s Digest! And I didn’t think it was good enough! I just couldn’t imagine being published. A different teacher accused me of plagiarism, not believing I could write something. Luckily she went to a previous teacher who said, “That’s the way Sahar writes!” I’ve told my own students about that, when we talk about moments adults have disillusioned us or let us down.

When I started writing “seriously,” I was well into teaching. I had come across a book of essays by Naomi Shihab Nye and thought,“Wait. There’s this self-identifying Palestinian American–?” It blew me away. That’s not to say I wasn’t aware of Arab writers in translation. But here in America, she gave me my first inkling that there’s space for Arab American writers. And I discovered that Arab American writing didn’t have to be “exotic,” although what I’d been exposed to felt exoticized and maybe I was even pandering to that. I’d been strictly writing stories set overseas, worried that any story I’d tell here — that may have derived from my own experiences, my immediate communities — wouldn’t be valued. That took some years to get over. For example, I had written a collection set overseas — which I know was also coming from my time there; I love Palestine. But, look how naïve I was, I sent the collection to this major publishing contest. And I was a semi-finalist! But the judge compared me to Naguib Mahfouz. I was like, “The Nobel Prize winner in Egyptian literature?” Of course, at the time, I was over the moon. Not until years later did I realize that might have been her only reference! I’ll never know that; this is me projecting, maybe my sensitivity about where I fit in the publishing industry. And the comparison was to a male writer, who didn’t write in English.

I happened to meet Naomi Shihab Nye at an English teacher convention. And, Marya, I was like a friggin groupie. I gripped my friend Nina’s arm like, “That’s Naomi Shihab Nye!” I ran up to her, and she was a lovely human being. The next year, I brought a big pile of stories and, [laughs] though Naomi graciously declined to take them, she recommended places to send to. One was Mizna Magazine, which later published a story. She also connected me to Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI). I had felt very much alone and — of course! — there’s a whole community of Arab American writers! Who, before the internet really exploded, I just didn’t know. Many knew each other, through the college network, but I was a high school teacher. Naomi really opened the door for me to find that community.

MSL: Were those experiences before you went back to school for your MFA?

SM: Yes. I didn’t get my MFA until relatively recently. After I started sending out stories and getting, you know, a lot of rejections but also pretty good feedback, I realized I needed a more immediate community and someone to read me regularly. I felt like I hadn’t quite found my voice or the possibility of myself as a writer. I had gone back for an MA in English, as part of my professional development for secondary ed, then decided I needed to do something meaningful for my creative writing if I was going to really pursue it.

For my MFA, I was going to Columbia College three nights a week, not getting home until 11pm. It wasn’t a physically healthy time but I loved it. I started exploring stories that I’d maybe been suppressing telling because I didn’t think anyone would be interested. I had wonderful instructors, including Patricia Ann McNair and Megan Stielstra. My publishing credits started to build, just being in the program. Beyond those staple journals, I realized there’s the online and smaller fish — like “I can be read.” That opened my eyes to possibilities in terms of different audiences, smaller audiences, and audiences of color, for women. That’s probably why I was so happy to start Bird’s Thumb, with Nina Dellaria — an online literary journal for emerging writers that we co-edited from 2014 to 2019. I wish we could have kept it up, but my writing now is much more involved, and I still teach full-time, so I had to make that decision.

MSL: I know you’ve written short stories extensively. What was the transition into writing a novel like?

SM: I like to experiment with my big ideas as long short stories first. That allows me to finish a particular arc and not be intimidated by the scope of a novel. I think what made this novel manageable was the way I framed Afaf’s story by decade. Those very much felt like short stories! They had open endings, so you still wanted to know, “Where’s this going to push her?” I wasn’t intimidated about pages as much as, “Will I have developed hefty smaller plotlines to carry me through?” Have I “raised the stakes” in every chapter? Because that wasn’t a conscious concern in my short stories. I think I was doing that naturally.

During my MFA, I wrote what I considered a failed young adult novel – basically hearing that the publishing industry wants someone like me to produce a certain story and me falling into that trap. An instructor had said to me, “Why are you wasting your time here writing a short story collection? You should write a YA novel.” That almost derailed me. And my wonderful mentor there, Patricia Ann McNair, was so mad at that professor, like, “How dare you tell Sahar this is more marketable.” I really have always respected that integrity. I’ve got to stay true! They may not sell a whole lot, but short stories remain my heart and soul.

MSL: What’s the relationship for you between writing literature and teaching it and the writing of it — particularly to high school students?

SM: Before I started really devoting myself to writing, I was not on a conscious level appreciating the author’s craft. For me — and I think a lot of English teachers can speak to this — it was about plot, theme, symbolism…all these necessary yet traditional things. But not, “How does the author build towards that theme? How does she use language to make us feel a particular mood, or to make us laugh?”

Now I focus more on “the author’s craft,” as I call it. That can be very challenging for students, who have always been quizzed on, “What was the theme? What happened? Who did it?” I have drastically moved beyond that. I’ll compare a piece of text to my own writing experiences. I’ll say, “I’ve tried to do this technique…” — I’m constantly bridging. I want students to know that the author has put a lot of work into writing and made very deliberate choices. As much as I’ve said, “this was fun to write, this went smoothly,” it was still work. I want reading to be enjoyable, and to stress that it’s enjoyable probably because of all these things the writer is doing. I don’t know that students are generally encouraged to look at writing that way, unless they’re in AP English classes, but to me it feels like we’re giving authors their due respect. I appreciate everything I read, even things I don’t like. I want students to be able to say, “I did or didn’t like this because.”

And the teacher as writer, as artist — it’s such a privilege. My students are so wonderful. I want them to see they can have more than one life. Seriously. I tell them, “I have been teaching all of my adult life — and look at this! I’m also writing very seriously. I want you to know you can do as many things as you want.” That, to me, is how I define success. Am I following and fulfilling these creative impulses? I am! It might not have come when I was young, like some writers, but I feel like everything has really put me on or supported this path. I’ve been living, and teaching, and that has shaped what I’m putting out there now.

MSL: Am I remembering that you’ve encouraged students to share and submit their work, too?

SM: It’s so powerful for students to discover, “Oh…other people want to read my stuff? People are interested?” That begins immediately with their classmates, when we have open mic or small-group critiques. Some get a wonderful sense of a larger audience — maybe national, like Teen Ink, or school-wide, through the lit club magazine I sponsor. But, no matter what, I hope I convey that publishing doesn’t have to be the end-all. I want them to appreciate that writing is good for the soul. It’s a very mindful act, which is why I’m so interested in writing as healing — a new direction I’d like to take.

MSL: As you look back on your development as a writer, are there particular people who have been key along your journey? They might be people you know, or whose work has been an anchor or guide.

SM: This is such a wonderful question because, of course, the way you phrased it is people first — and then “or maybe books….” I love that.

MSL: And I recognize that books are written by people. [laughs]

SM: But you didn’t say “authors,” and I think that’s remarkable. Because the very first person I thought of is my good friend, Nina Dellaria. What can I say? Nina was my first fan. I showed her my folder of stories right before I approached Naomi at that conference, and I’ll never forget the look on Nina’s face, like “How have you not shared these?” To this day, she’s read everything first. She’s been an extraordinary rock. I’ve had some horrible experiences and she’s always been there to raise me up. I wouldn’t be here without her. Because it takes that one person — if not for her, I might have tucked my stories away. Nina is unequivocally the force that brings me here to share this with you.

I’ve had major female writers as instructors or mentors, who have impacted me maybe even more than books. Megan Stielstra has revealed to me that you don’t need to be defined by a particular genre, you just need to tell your stories, whatever they look like, and you need to take risks. When I thanked her for one of so many opportunities, Megan said something like, “You need to keep the door open after you, so that others can also come through” — which another woman writer had told her. That has stayed with me. How can we continue to elevate each other? And especially those who need elevation, who are “on the fringe,” because of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, whatever the case might be. Patricia Ann McNair, my Columbia College mentor, continues to support my work. There’s Chris Rice, editor of Hypertext Magazine out of Chicago. I think of all these women who say instantly, “Sahar, how can we help you?” I think of organizations, like StoryStudio and Guild Literary Complex, and independent bookstores like Women & Children First, who don’t just feature me but will ask me to be in conversation with somebody. My sister found them before I did. She’s like, “There’s this great bookstore…and they have books by Arab women.”

The list of wonderful literary voices is boundless. I love Laila Lalami, a Moroccan American writer. I love Jhumpa Lahiri. She gave me a sense that I can write short stories representative of my community and people would actually buy the book. Susan Muaddi Darraj, a Palestinian American writer, is someone who lifts up other Arab writers, particularly Arab American female writers. She’s done so much to promote the work of our community.

I find that I am endlessly surprised by good books and good writing. I don’t feel I need to read everything by a single writer, but it’s important to keep opening myself up to different writers. I’ve never personally understood this idea of writers not reading while they’re writing. How could I not read?

Featured image: Sahar Mustafah sits outdoors, smiling and looking off-camera. She wears a black winter coat, light grey scarf, and large hoop earrings. A bush with tan leaves fills most of the space behind her, with greenery and parts of a building behind that. Photo by Mark Blanchard.

Marya Spont-Lemus (she/her/hers/Ms.) is a fiction writer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator focused on teen creative, leadership, and professional development. She lives and works on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Find her on Twitter and Tumblr. Photo by Lucas Anti.

The post Beyond the Page: Sahar Mustafah appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

All of us at Sixty can’t help but to think about the strain that is being put on our arts community in Chicago and across the Midwest. Exhibitions, performances, and fundraisers are being canceled or postponed indefinitely, contract opportunities are halting, schools and cultural institutions are being shut down, side-gigs at and income from bars, restaurants, and retail stores are dwindling.

We are also seeing incredible examples of community organizing in and beyond the arts that are providing quick support locally, regionally, and nationally. And if you’re like us, you’re looking for ways to support those efforts or even start your own initiatives to help others who are in need.

Knowledge is power, so in an effort to share information, we’ve compiled a growing list of suggestions, resources, and things you can do, models you can adapt, and small actions you can take now to do your part. And though we are sharing these resources with the best of intentions, we encourage you to also do your own research into the organizations, initiatives, and efforts linked and listed below as an extra due diligence.

As time goes on and we get more information, this list will grow and change. Share this information, tune in for updates, and we will continue to share out what we have and what we know to our beloved communities. And if you have things to add, email Tempestt Hazel at tempestt.hazel@sixtyinchesfromcenter.org or chime in on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

–The Sixty Fam

*****

Take care, be kind, and do what you can, but know you don’t have to do EVERYTHING. Take a breath. So much is happening right now. People are making moves, making calls, pulling information together, and incredibly connected. While everyone has a role to play, give yourself permission to let the scope of that role ebb and flow as needed. We can all do something (even if it’s just taking care of ourselves), but we don’t have to do everything, and we don’t have to do it all at once. Also, you can’t show up for community if you’re not showing up for yourself, your family, and your chosen family–so take care of yourselves, be kind to yourselves.

Reach out to your people, tap into your team–ask if they need of support. Do they have ideas or resources for how your organization can help support one another internally, and provide resources to your audiences and supporters? At Sixty we are discussing ways that we can provide supplemental income opportunities for our team and for freelancers through our online platform and publishing as more wages are being halted.

Turn your ticket purchases into donations. If an organization or artist cancels a ticketed event or gives you a refund on your already-purchased ticket, consider taking that refund and donating it directly to the organization or artist through their website, CashApp, Venmo, PayPal, etc. Don’t be afraid to email them or @ them on social media if you can’t find a clear avenue for donations online. A massive disruption of expected income is hard for artists and organizations to recover from. So show your commitment to their existence by still sending money their way.

Donate to individual artists, local media, and arts organizations–and not just the giants, but the smaller ones. They need your help, too! And donate and reach out to organizations that provide a wide range of support to the arts community, especially organizations that prioritize some of the communities that are hit exceptionally hard in times of crisis. Hold space and share resources with efforts that center LGBTQIA+, disability, contract/temp worker, community media, and artist communities. There are so many out there, but if you want some suggestions, email us. And many artists are now doing live virtual events with ways that you can donate to them directly through CashApp, Venmo, PayPal, etc. As you’re scrolling, keep an eye out for these things from the artists you follow.

Take a moment to make a short list of local organizations whose work you know, have experienced, and want to support–and even ones you don’t. All hands are on deck and all options are on the table.

Also in 2017 Sixty compiled an Action Session Guide that includes a list of local and national arts, advocacy, and activist organizations who are uniquely prepared and hold a lot of experience around organizing during crisis. Check in on their websites and social media for ways you can help.

Create, donate, or tap into an artist or nonprofit relief fund, a mutual aid fund, and other collective fundraising and resource-sharing efforts. While many of the funds that have been created within the past few weeks are being inundated with requests, they could still use your funds. We’re also including a few that you can tap into, and models that people can use to start ones on their own. And there are also a few other kinds of resources in the mix.

– Collections Emergency Relief Fund by the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation
– Propeller Impact Fund by Gallery 400 & Threewalls
– Arts for Illinois Relief Fund for artists + arts orgs across Illinois
– Artist Relief by United States Artists and others
– Chicago COVID-19 Hardship and Help Page by Transformative Spaces
– Chicago Artists Relief Fund on gofundme
– Collective Care is Our Best Weapon against COVID-19 / Coronavirus Mutual Aid
– Anonymous Was A Woman Emergency Relief Grant for Women Artists 40+
– Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grants
– Opportunities for Artists in Hyperallergic
– For the People Artists Collective Artists of Color Emergency Grants
– Chicago COVID-19 Financial Solidarity Form
– Milwaukee Avenue Alliance Emergency Relief Fund
– City of Chicago Rental Assistance
Personal Emergency Relief Fund by Springboard for the Arts
– Equal Sound Coronavirus Relief Fund for Musicians
– Joan Mitchell Foundation
– Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+)
– Women Arts Emergency Funds for All Art Forms
– The Creator’s Fund
– Creative Capital List of Resources
– COVID-19 Freelance Artists Resources
– Artists at Risk Connection
– Kinkade Family Foundation Emergency Grant For Curators

Find remote-friendly freelance opportunities. If you’re an artist, curator, or arts-interested writer in Chicago and the Midwest, you can pitch to Sixty Inches From Center. We welcome artist interviews, essays, reflective pieces, short stories, poetry, and bilingual writings–especially ones about projects and events that are being cancelled or are having shorter exhibition runs. Also, you can follow the Writers of Color on Twitter for daily repostings of writing opportunities. There have also been several Twitter threads where people are emphasizing opportunities to write for online publications. Here are a few places to turn to as a way to get your words, ideas, stories, and projects out into the world for a larger audience:

Are you an editor at a magazine/publication looking for articles/essays *not* related to COVID-19? Drop your @ in the replies so freelancers can find opportunities beyond pandemic coverage.

It’s important to stay on top of corona info, but we can care about many things at once!

— Matt Ortile (@ortile) March 15, 2020

Focus on the local. First, if you’re wondering where to turn for questions about housing, employment, food and other services, there’s the City of Chicago COVID-19 Resource Center. And as you start to think of supplies, materials, and other things you will need as we become more and more isolated, turn your attention local when you can. Volunteer, use neighborhood businesses, purchase books from local bookstores (shout out to Women and Children First, Candor Arts, and Haymarket), order take-out from restaurants or supplies from local stores that are key anchors and assets in and to your communities. Send money to the people and small businesses you might otherwise be giving money to right now–like your barber, or your local coffee shop (buy a gift card/certificate). Some of these businesses are still offering services and meals to be picked up or delivered, contact-free. Many artists work in restaurants and retail, so you’ll likely be helping an artist in the process. You can also tap into emerging resources like the Chicago Hospitality Employee Relief Guide. And if you’re feeling some kind of way about the monetizing of this pandemic, we recommend giving a listen to How to Beat Coronavirus Capitalism, an online teach-in hosted by Anthony Arnove of Haymarket Books with Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and a performance by Lia Rose.

Share your story. We hate to be a broken record, but we encourage you to pitch to Sixty. We welcome all types of arts-related stories, first-person narratives, photo essays, or other styles and formats that are used to share the message that artists want people to hear. Quick efforts like the Social Distance Gallery Instagram page have popped up to give a platform to cancelled or postponed exhibitions. Artists have been turning to social media to share performances, readings, talks, and other events that have been stalled. Circles & Ciphers has created the #SocialDistanceChallenge through their Instagram so that you can submit yourself performing a freestyle, poem, or artwork for the chance to win a cash prize.

And we know it’s hard to get excited when you hear the word ‘survey,’ but organizations are also making surveys to understand the impact that this is having on artists and arts organizations so they can create a more informed response. The information you share will help arts advocacy organizations show the incredible impact this is having on the arts, which will help them fight for keeping the arts as a priority as local, state, and federal relief efforts are established. Try submitting responses to surveys by Arts Alliance Illinois, Americans for the Arts, or Forefront.

And finally, be patient. As we said at the start of this list, there’s a lot happening right now, and it all takes time. There’s a lot happening behind the scenes and in the coming weeks we are going to continue seeing an outpour of initiatives and information as a result of that hidden work. If someone is taking a little longer to respond to your email, or you’re not getting quick responses via social media, phone, or other channels, stay calm. A sudden, unexpected pivot in all aspects of our daily lives requires understanding, compassion, grace, and patience. Give that to others and give it to yourselves.

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Featured Image: A person stands in a bookstore, leaning over a table with books spread over its surface. Along the wall behind them is a bookshelf holding various publications and artist books on display photo by Michael Sullivan for the article “Inga: Spacemaking Through and Beyond Books” written by Tamara Becerra Valdez.

The post In Case of Emergency: Artist Resources For You, For Us appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Last month I learned that I hoard love notes.

Shortly after the shelter-in-place mandate I had a particularly tough day, which concluded with a bout of uncharacteristically convulsive crying and me deciding I could do nothing else that evening but clean. As I organized papers on my desk, I unearthed a handwritten letter my friend Udita gave me at her wedding earlier this year. Its contents were precise but not precious, making me feel known not only for my “positive” qualities but also my flawed and idiosyncratic humanness. Though technically a thank-you card, I don’t know what else to call it but a love note. How lucky for it to turn up right then! I texted Udita to say her note was just what I needed that night. She responded that my message was just what she needed, too.

These days “love notes” have been appearing to me in diverse forms, by various paths. Another week, I texted my friend Myrna to check in, writing the words sending an e-hug. When she sent back an adorable cartoon figure with its arms outstretched in a “virtual hug,” I scanned my phone’s downloads for a cute image in return, like one from my spouse of our guinea pigs. But waiting for me in that folder was something more resonant, long forgotten — a warm-washed photo of Myrna and me hugging IRL. It’s a real hug, too. We are leaning into each other, fully in embrace, and my eyes are squeezed shut, as if they must follow my arms’ lead. Myrna’s husband captured the moment last summer — perfectly, circularly, at a time when they had come out to support me. I attached the photographic hug with a caption: It’s like Alfredo knew we would need that someday….

Following these incidents and others, I wondered how I came to be amidst this abundance of affection, especially since I have not always felt myself in such a position.

Though I declared my atheism at age eight, I periodically recall the tale of Joseph (of the coat of many colors), children’s picture-bible version. As I remember it, the enslaved Joseph interprets the pharaoh’s dream, advising that seven years of famine will follow seven years of plenty, but if they start amassing grain now the kingdom will survive — thus Joseph saves Egypt and is promoted far out of his chains. (One would be right to question who labored in the creation of that surplus and for whom, and such inquiry’s insistent relevance in the present.) The story’s aspect of planning for scarcity has also persisted in memory for me, influencing my life in unforeseen ways, including my general frugality and, as I’ve realized recently, my own stockpiling: books, grain sometimes, and, apparently, love notes.

It strikes me that when we work to foster and maintain community regardless of the weather, we have it when we need each other the most. While I have also met lovely humans online these past few weeks, I am chiefly re/engaging relationships built before this physical isolation period began, finding nourishment in longer-term bonds. (Other ties are being tested; not everyone I thought would support or advocate for me has, and perhaps others feel that way about me.) I’m also drawing on a tool borne of my mental health management. For years, afflicted with anxiety stemming in part from doubts about self-worth, I’ve had a “label” through which I archive emails that contain distinct affirmations — external validations and insights — from individuals I admire and trust. Uncountable instances, anxiety peaking, I’ve revisited this trove of treasured fragments. In complement, I’ve long practiced making time to offer such appreciations, not least because I never know for whom kind words can serve as lifelines — the same way, I imagine, people don’t know what their thoughtfulness has meant to me. I also think there is great power in articulating another person’s particularities, and in expressing gratitude for their unique complexities from one’s own point of view. When genuine and specific, such acknowledgments — much like gratitude or love — both cycle and emanate outward, enhancing shared humanity as they bear witness to it. The mere fact of paying attention is fundamental to love notes’ gift, the time taken to focus on or come to know another person. Fresh notes deepen, not displace, previous gestures from the same sender, as well as recognize that we are dynamic beings who change, as passing hours and shifting worlds show new shadows. Whether encountering or composing them, such notes give me renewed momentum, reminding me to continue to love.   

I generally hesitate to give advice, especially to broad audiences, so I won’t. But I will share that hoarding love notes — however intentionally or serendipitously it’s occurred — along with offering them to others, has been helping me through my particular challenges in this extended moment. As do many, I find stockpiling in a time of heightened crisis contentious, often unethical, due largely to concerns about equity. Yet, I would hope that most people already possess and can access their own versions of love notes — whether via a desk, downloads folder, or email tag, or embedded in memory. Love notes are perhaps the least shameful, least unjust, items one might hoard. Even when discrete entities, they are not necessarily limited in quantity — like love itself, they are a potentially inexhaustible resource, a generative gift. Even in this further straining season, I believe there can be more than enough to go around.

Featured image: The photo described in the essay. The author and her friend Myrna, both visible from hips upward, embrace each other in Davis Square Park in August 2019. Marya is smiling and her eyes are closed; Myrna’s face is not visible. It is nighttime but the foreground is bright. In the background are a playground, a walkway, trees, and what appears to be a paleta cart (William Estrada’s Mobile Street Art Cart). Photo by Alfredo Romo; cropped version of original used with permission.

Marya Spont-Lemus (she/her/hers/Ms.) is a fiction writer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator focused on teen creative, leadership, and professional development. She lives and works on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Find her on Twitter and Tumblr. Photo by Lucas Anti.

The post On Hoarding Love Notes, and Other Gifts of Community and Anxiety appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

Iceberg Projects is a non- commercial art gallery in a converted coach house at the northernmost tip of Chicago. Over the past ten years, Iceberg Projects has hosted a number of historically important shows, especially of queer and other underrepresented artists, including group shows like the Art+Positive archive, Feel Me?, and Broken Flag to solo shows of David Wojnarowicz, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Kevin Killian, Barbara DeGenevieve, and Steffani Jemison. 

Inseparable from the history of Iceberg is the man behind it, whose backyard anchors Iceberg Projects. Dr. Dan Berger is an HIV specialist who helped develop the drug cocktail widely used for treatment. Recently, he released a video offering expert medical insight into how COVID 19 as it particularly affects HIV and queer communities. But his commitment to queer community extends beyond his medical practice and into his art collection, which focuses on queer and black artists. 

I visited Dr. Berger in his Rogers Park home to talk about the history of the space. We also talked at length about institutional risk-taking and archiving queer legacies. 

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Noah Fields: So tell me, why did you start Iceberg Projects in the first place? 

Dr. Dan Berger: There is a lot of space on this property. This is a house that was built in 1928, with carriage houses built around the property, originally constructed to house horses. At first I rented out most of those spaces for cars when I moved into the house in 1993. But then I was reading this article in The New York Times, Welcome to the Museum of My Stuff, and it talked about these art collectors that wanted to show the work that they’d collected. One of them rented a ground floor storefront to show off the work in their collection, other collectors built spaces or bought spaces to house their collections. Maybe that’s interesting, but I don’t find it as interesting as if I were to use the space to invite other artists to show work. And not being thrilled by some of the exhibitions at our museums at that time, I wanted to fill a void, to show work that the Chicago community would not have otherwise had the opportunity to be engaged with. 

NF: You became less interested in showing your collection, so much as opening up your space for other people’s work.

DB: Yeah, I don’t use the space to show work that I have in my collection. Our committee, which I am a member of, works together to choose our exhibitions. For example, the show right now, Rotimi Fani Kayode, was a gay artist of African descent who died prematurely due to AIDS. I don’t own any of this work. Have I had work in a show here during the course of almost ten years of showing work here? Maybe twice, maybe three times. But we generally show work by artists who have not been shown at any of Chicago’s museums or institutions. 

I enlisted the help of my friend Robby [Robert MacNeill], who was a young architect living in Philly, to help renovate and construct a state-of-the-art gallery space, inspired by the designs of Carlo Scarpa. And I later called Doug Ischar and John Neff to help begin to construct a board and program. Our first exhibition was a sculpture show called “Robert MacNeill: Frozen Music.” That was in May of 2010.

Most of my friends and most of my community are artists. That’s who I prefer to hang out with. My family includes many art and artist friends, assorted queers, my brother and his family, my partner Scott and our dog. I think about something you and I have talked about, “queer lineage.” We’ve needed to construct our own families, our own lineage. Iceberg is an extension of my beliefs and queer confidence; all these ideas became part of the forumula of components that resulted in Iceberg Projects becomming a Chicago institution.

NF: Given Iceberg Projects’ queer focus, I think it would be helpful to hear what you think the word “queer” means and what you think queer art embodies? 

DB: What does “queer” mean to me? It’s a loaded question. Well, I mean, I can talk about the academic definitions and heteronormativity … but maybe I can just talk a little bit more personally. When I came into the practice of medicine, access to healthcare was insufficient for people that were queer and other communities struck by a life-threatening disease [AIDS]. It felt very personal to me that the medical community and the government were not interested in helping nor educating our community nor conducting proper research though it was in great need. 

I think “queer” is anybody that finds themself being censored because of their identity, because they don’t fit into the mold because certain governing officials want to manipulate and force their bible thumper dictates upon everyone. Anyone that’s being censored. Anyone that’s the victim of homophobia, AIDS-phobia, racism, misogyny, all of that. I suppose it’s a very wide definition. 

NF: Well, I can see how this broader definition resonates with the breadth of Iceberg’s programming. The shows Iceberg puts on challenge the masculinist or whitewashed biases of “queer art” that I’ve seen a lot of other places reify, as if AIDS only affected white men. It seems to me like Iceberg Projects goes beyond that narrative, explodes it in a lot of ways. 

DB: Yeah, absolutely. The patients I was seeing in the clinic were from many different cultural histories. I would see African Americans that are victimized by racism, but then factor in the fact that they happen to be queer. And factor, on top of that, that they’re HIV positive. It’s even more than a white gay man might have to deal with at times, but not to say that any gay man in general didn’t have to deal with a lot of prejudice and censorship in their own right. All of those communities deal with prejudice and stigmatization and at their various levels. It definitely affected me and definitely affects the way I see the world and to the point where I want Iceberg Projects to contribute to this discourse and of seeing a world where we all get as much of a chance to survive as anyone else. 

Artists that portray that message, that are angry, resonate deeply with me. It’s guttural. It’s unfortunate that museums had the ability to be thinking outside the box and have the ability to be able to portray work that can send a powerful and particular message to help change society and change the world, but they are often governed by a board of directors, and some of those people are from wealthy families that have other interests. I think museums are getting better now, but queer is still left behind. It’s unfortunate, but we have to pedal uphill. Constantly fight for our right to exist and for our right to be represented. 

Iceberg’s a very small space, but I and our board want to make sure that every show that we do has a high or particular quality, showing artists that are mature, and work that is anything but meaningless. I don’t enjoy seeing work that has no message; that means nothing. I’m not into seeing pretty things on a wall. 

NF: And for a “backyard gallery,” Iceberg Projects has done an incredible amount of significant shows over the years. I mean, the David Wojnarowicz show when the Whitney show almost didn’t happen … and so many other major artists and group shows. 

DB: The David Wojnarowicz show [“David Wojnarowicz: Flesh of My Flesh”] is a perfect example. Here’s an artist that was being censored in 2017, long after he’s dead. We were concerned that an important show that was supposedly planned, was not going to ever happen. And why isn’t it traveling to other institutions? Censorship is still here.

We mounted a show of work by an esteemed teacher at the Art Institute [of Chicago], the late Barbara Genevieve, curated by Doug [Ischar] and myself. Barbara passed a few years ago and she taught a Sex 101 class, very important and ahead of its time, but at that time, certain members of the board at the School tried to shut her down. They suspended the class. Fortunately she was tenured, so she wasn’t gonna lose her job. But she was a victim of censorship and she was being challenged as an artist in her own right. She rarely had exhibitions of her own work before she passed, despite the fact that she was a true artist. She was a terrible loss for the queer and art communities. She was a great teacher who had this amazing quality that affected and inspired many future generations of artists. Even today, I meet new artists around the country who recount stories about her and what she meant to them and their work; I felt that the school ought to honor her; she deserved this. 

Because I’m on the board of governors of the School of the Art Institute, I could call on my colleagues and ask them for help. And they were very supportive, of course. But again, she was faculty at one of the most prestigious schools in the country; nevertheless, she had to deal with a lot of those similar [censorship] issues while she was alive. Some of the more controversial aspects of her practice were her films which were at times graphic. We showed these films here at Iceberg; they are rarely seen now, but I’m very proud that we did so. 

NF: Iceberg is a space that’s not afraid to take risks. And I imagine part of that is because it’s a noncommercial space?

DB: It’s not a commercial space. We have no status whatsoever, we’re not governed by any institution. I use the word “we” and I mean that literally. I’m not the person that does all these shows—we have a very great board which functions as an exhibitions and curatorial committee and we talk about what we think will be interesting, what the Chicago public wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to see. No one gets paid. We all do this because we’re dedicated, very passionate about our vision and our mission. We’re not bound by anyone. That is how we can take chances and do things that you won’t see at other institutions. 

The Wojnarowicz show is an example of how we function. It was all very spontaneous. I was out with some friends who also collect David’s work, with Wendy Olsoff, who is the co-owner of P.P.O.W. gallery and who represents and helps manage the Wojnarowicz estate. We’re having dinner, and we were just talking about how frustrated we were that the original date for the [the Whitney Museum’s] Wojnarowicz show was no longer listed on the website, and there was nothing further listed, nor any explanation. We wondered whether there was even gonna be a show—I was very upset about it. We were so looking forward to it. And I said to Wendy, “Why can’t we just do a show here in Chicago?” And she said simply and without any hesitation, “I’ll help.” 

I took it to the board. We had a quick discussion about it. Nobody raised any objections. Actually the board recommended we move on this quickly. The Wojnarowicz show at Iceberg Projects ended up opening several weeks prior to the Whitney’s.

NF: David Wojnarowicz’s first show was in Illinois, right? His first solo show was in Normal? 

DB: In Normal, Illinois, in 1990, yeah. But he never had a solo show in Chicago during his lifetime. So this exhibition at Iceberg Projects was actually the very first solo show of the artist in Chicago. Barry Blinderman, the curator of Wojnarowicz’s first institutional show, came up for the opening and I seized the opportunity to ask him if he’d do a discussion with me about Wojnarowicz during our upcoming film program on Northwestern University’s campus at the Block Museum. And it’s all beautifully reproduced in a book that is distributed by SPD [Small Press Distribution] of Berkeley California.

When the archives of ART+Positive first arrived here one early morning, I called our board members together the same day and I explained that they had to come over to experience it, and that we must do this show. John [Neff] was among the first who looked at the archives with me and soon everyone on the board was in awe of the archives and their significance. The work in the archive was buried for many, many years. In a matter of a few months John and I mounted a show. How can that happen at another institution? It would take years. They’d be looking at it, writing about it, poring over it, going through various committees, discussing it, masturbating over it…

NF: That makes me think about your work as a physician, like the way you went ahead with experimental treatments that the government was holding up. But you knew we didn’t have time to wait. People are dying and we need to act. 

DB: Yeah. So I put these concepts and strange and crazy habits of mine into practice at Iceberg Projects. 

NF: I’m thinking about this connection between your practice as a physician and your art collection, working as a curator. I love how the etymology of “curation” comes from “cura,” like a cure: it’s caretaking. There’s a parallel. I’d love to hear more — I know we talked about how the people in the art world and the medical world are very different, but I also wonder about the parallels, because you’ve made it work and I’m just very curious how you’ve had your hand in both. Do your practices feed each other? 

DB: I came of age as a young medical doctor in a situation that was grave, where you had to think outside the box, you had to learn how to do things in a way that would help save lives. You had to work within the system at times, but sometimes you had to work outside the system and knowing that the possibilities are there: you can work outside of the system, you can do things, you just have to figure it out. 

And having learned how to do that in medical practice, then seeing the censorship and homophobia in the art world — maybe not as grotesque and maybe not as severe and as intense, but nevertheless, seeing that it’s still possible to break through that, working maybe within the system, but also outside the system. That those possibilities are there for anybody that wants to make the effort and wants to figure it out. 

I approach every problem as a puzzle. You know, they’re pieces of the puzzle that just need to be put together. And you just have to sit down and look at all the pieces and figure out how they fit. 

NF: I also want to hear more about the publication side of Iceberg Projects. You’ve produced catalogues and documentation of some of the shows. What are you hoping to capture with these catalogues? Are you envisioning these being more for people who saw the exhibit or for people who didn’t get to see the exhibits? How do you think printed press can ensure the surviving legacy of queer artists? 

DB: I have been wrestling with it quite a bit. Obviously publications are difficult to do and they require commitment and time. Everyone’s busy with their lives and we’re not a big institution. So there’s a little bit of an obstacle in terms of doing as many publications as we’d like. So we choose what is feasible and important. Shows featuring deserving artists who didn’t get their due and have an important message that needs to be seen and heard. If you don’t have a catalogue, once the show closes, memory is short-lived. And I think we need to be able to leave some document later for historic reference. It’s important for people to be able to revisit or study the art and perform proper research. 

So one way that we try to accomplish that is we try to have all the shows on our website. If you click on any show, you’ll be able to see installation photos and their details, no matter how far back you go. That’s been very important to me. But also it’s important to have catalogues where people can write some essays and invoke conversation about the work. Both have the potential of reaching a much wider audience, so people that don’t get a chance to see a show in Chicago are able to see the catalogue or view the complete exhibition online. The ART+ Positive book [“Militant Eroticism: The ART+Positive Archives”] is carried in most of the major museums around the world. 

NF: That brings to mind Iceberg’s mission of global dialogue: “Iceberg brings artists producing work with depth and substance to the attention of local and regional communities. The gallery is also invested in bringing Chicago-based artists into dialogue with global developments in contemporary art.” I’m curious how you think about the relationship between the local and global?

DB: I think we live in a global society, and we have to approach many world issues day-to-day. The current government and administration in Washington affects us, not just here in the United States, but everybody globally. So our show “Broken Flag,” which you just quoted the statement in the back of that catalogue, was a response to what we feared most about that election. That show was planned prior to knowing the results of the election. 

We opened that show the weekend before the election. We couldn’t imagine that Trump was going to win. We couldn’t see how that was possible. But we were scared of the mere possibility. And that was the subject of the show and essays in the catalogue and exhibition that Omar Kholeif and I curated. We saw what happened before the election; let’s talk about how those fears became reality and their ramifications globally. They weren’t just hypothetical. And that’s something that, you know, I’m still thinking about and wondering about what we need to do. What we can do. 

I do think about activism, and I don’t know what defines activism these days. Unfortunately, we have very little of the type of the depth and intensity of activists that were around during the AIDS epidemic. We don’t really have the level of activism that we had before, you know. Which I find very sad and frustrating. 

But as artists, I think it’s a responsibility of artists to promote change. I think that artists can send those important messages and influence the public. I see Iceberg as playing a small role. Sometimes it takes a village, so to speak. You know, not one single person in one single institution can do things on their own. 

NF: I’m wondering about the name for Iceberg Projects, how did you come up with that? It feels like it’s political or globally minded. 

DB: [laughs] Well, my last name is Berger … But that wasn’t the main reason. We’re at the tip of the iceberg here on the north side of Chicago. From the very last block of Chicago, you walk a few feet up north and that’s Evanston. Then I was thinking about how cold it gets to be in Chicago through the winter. [laughs]

It wasn’t chiefly political, but there is a political reference to it. With global warming, of course, and it also makes me think about a painting by David Wojnarowicz [“North/South: The New Legionnaires”] where he portrays the Titanic about to collide into an iceberg. How the world in our present situation feels like it’s on a path towards destruction. It’s a name that evokes and resonates on multiple levels. 

NF: Iceberg is in its 10th season. Are there any plans for a celebration or retrospective? 

DB: We’re going to talk about that. I don’t know. I’m pretty surprised that we’ve gone this far, that it’s already 10 years. We did have an intern last year, and he created a sort of compilation of all the shows that we’ve done up till like last year. Maybe we can create some kind of publication … nothing’s been formulated yet. 

NF: What are the visions for the next decade? 

DB:  To survive. I think to continue with telling a narrative in a way that we feel is important. I think our shows have themes that sort of fit in with themes of other shows. We think about how things sort of fit together, but we also want to be inclusive and make sure that we’re showing work by artists that have different messages, the work should be varied. So we would like to exhibit varied and meaningful work, although I think of the space as being “queer,” not every show is. Shows don’t have to be queer that come to be an Iceberg exhibition. We’ve shown work by African American artists that are not queer, we’ve showed artists that talk about the environment. We have different programming, and we want to continue raising the bar with the quality of our exhibitions. We are open to input and collaborating with other curators. We’ve been doing that more and more and it’s been a bonus. And what else? We’ll find out… we don’t plan that far ahead. 

NF: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to walk me through Iceberg’s history and telling me more about where it’s heading.

Noa/h Fields is a genderqueer poet and teaching artist. They have written for Filthy Dreams, Telekom Electronic Beats, Anomalous Press, and Scapi Magazine, among other publications. Their first poetry book WITH is out from Ghost City Press. They are fond of techno and avocados.

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This photo essay is presented by TRACE (Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community, & Environment) and Alt_ as part of In the Cut, a virtual exhibition that explores daily life during quarantine through the lenses of Catherine Arroyo, Preleah Campbell, Danelise Comas, Paris Dority, and Darius Hazen. Catch the full virtual exhibition here.

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Artist Statement by Catherine Arroyo:
My main focus was to capture the lonely feeling of COVID-19 through Senka Park and to show how the new normal has become a routine.

Before the pandemic, my family and I would have exciting competitions running up the park hills. The days were nice and the weather was sunny and in the 60s. Those days were vibrant and filled with people, but now the park is empty and we have to stay home. So now when I look at the park, it is just a void.

Almost everyday after class, the park would be full with kids running and laughing in the playground. The open field and the soccer court would always be busy with the soccer kids–some would be training while others would be playing. Baseball fields were used in the evening. But now, because of the virus, it’s empty. Now, it’s lonely when it used to be busy.

With these photographs I emphasize loneliness by showing the places that were once always used and are now empty. There’s either no people in the picture or barely any people at all. And also, the shadows that were created by the sunlight represent the idea that even through dark times, there’s still a light that shines. Then, through diptychs and triptychs, I illustrated the similarities and patterns of space and time.

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Catherine Arroyo is a remarkable photographer that will be attending Columbia College in the Fall of 2020. Her artistic practice is influenced by her environment and culture which compels her to tell stories through her work.

The post In the Cut with Catherine Arroyo appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

This photo essay is presented by TRACE (Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community, & Environment) and Alt_ as part of In the Cut, a virtual exhibition that explores daily life during quarantine through the lenses of Catherine Arroyo, Preleah Campbell, Danelise Comas, Paris Dority, and Darius Hazen. Catch the full virtual exhibition here.

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Artist Statement by Danelise Comas:
Currently, there’s the need for social distancing and avoiding face-to-face interaction. This, for me, has resulted in a full house, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, which has never happened before.

My mother is working from home. My sister and I are doing school online. My dad lounges around, not really knowing what to do. And my dog–she is not able to decide if she wants to be inside or out.

I am using this photo series to show our experiences. And I am using this series to document myself and the other members of my family who are going through the motions and to reveal how repetitive they are becoming.

The use of multiple exposures is meant to symbolize solitude and everyone going through the motions, while alone and separated from the rest of the world and from each other. Diptychs and triptychs are used to illustrate how time during the stay-at-home-order has become repetitive to the point where every day feels like the previous day. I cannot wait for it to all be over, though the events from the last couple of months will not be forgotten and will be told for many years to come.

Through photography my perspective will be told.

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Danelise Comas is on a journey of self-discovery and one of the most important parts of that journey is creating. To Danelise, one of the most essential parts of human existence is to create because it allows us to contribute. Her mediums of focus are drawing, painting, and photography but she’s always exploring and expanding. Stay tuned for more to come.

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This photo essay is presented by TRACE (Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community, & Environment) and Alt_ as part of In the Cut, a virtual exhibition that explores daily life during quarantine through the lenses of Catherine Arroyo, Preleah Campbell, Danelise Comas, Paris Dority, and Darius Hazen. Catch the full virtual exhibition here.

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Artist Statement by Preleah Campbell:
It’s often said that a picture can tell a thousand words.

It’s not everyday that we go through a worldwide pandemic while people are able to tell the stories of how they’re feeling as a result of it. When I first started taking photos, my work focused on things around me. While in quarantine, I’ve taken pictures of things in my space since I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything.

As time has passed, my work has become more vivid and it begins to tell a story—my story. As I went outdoors more, I began to document things outside my home and the community around me. This gave me the chance to see how drastically things have changed, not only within myself, but with the people and things around me.

I’ve seen people wearing personal protective equipment. The neighborhood seems inhabited even though we can’t go anywhere in any ways we please. This shows me how going outside can change your point of view; going outside is tranquil and freeing.

Taking pictures in black-and-white gives the person who’s looking at the image a chance to imagine what the picture looks like, in color; the experience is abstract and imaginative.

Since working with TRACE, I’ve learned new things about photography and what it means to take a good photo. Images can be interpreted as many things and that can be powerful.

I believe there is a timeline to my work, and that’s how I chose to portray the times we’re going through now.

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Preleah Campbell is a native of Chicago and loves to write and read. She currently attends Holy Trinity High School where she is entering her junior year. Outside of school she is a part of Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community & Environment (TRACE), an arts program through the Chicago Park District, where she took part in a photography program led by teaching artist and Alt Space Chicago. Preleah wishes to one day become a doctor, and maybe use photography to document within her field.

The post In the Cut with Preleah Campbell appeared first on Sixty Inches From Center.

This photo essay is presented by TRACE (Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community, & Environment) and Alt_ as part of In the Cut, a virtual exhibition that explores daily life during quarantine through the lenses of Catherine Arroyo, Preleah Campbell, Danelise Comas, Paris Dority, and Darius Hazen. Catch the full virtual exhibition here.

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Artist Statement by Paris Dority:
This body of work shows how much of an impact this quarantine is having on everyone. I wanted to show the drastic changes that have occurred, how people feel about this pandemic, what looks different, and what people can do while being in quarantine.

To create the work, I used different lighting such as the flash on my phone or natural light. I implemented eye level, high level, and low level angels. Most of the photos are straight-on because I want people to understand the picture and find the subject of the image easily.

Since this whole pandemic feels sudden and new to me, I was inspired to look into it more and create some type of art to show how I feel about it and my perception of how the whole world to feels.

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Paris Dority is a sophomore student at Holy Trinity High School and part of the Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community & Environment program with the Chicago Park District. In her free time she loves to listen to music and take photos. In the Cut is Paris’ first curatorial project and she hopes to continue using photography in the future as she pursues a career as a real estate agent or model.

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