As part of an assignment, my classmate Rebecca Copper mailed me a letter last winter. I gasped when I pulled it from my mailbox because on the back of the plain business envelope were outlines of her hands traced in blue ballpoint pen ink. The gesture seemed so obvious and yet I’d never encountered it nor thought of it on my own. Its intent was potent and stayed on my mind. Seeing those interlaced fingers made me feel as if her hands were passing me the note directly from her desk in Ohio to my own in Oregon.
While designing the cover for this issue, Rebecca’s envelope popped into my head. I thought of the intertwined fingers representing the exchange of ideas and wisdom that happens during a dialogue. These “conversations on everything” are not dependent on face to face interactions. Rather, they happen across media⸺email, video, phone⸺and hold the promise of connection with each other and now, the readers of SoFA Journal.
Cover design by Laura Glazer
Artwork by Rebecca Copper
The Social Forms of Art (SoFA) Journal is a publication dedicated to supporting, documenting and contextualising social forms of art and its related fields and disciplines. Each issue of the Journal takes an eclectic look at the ways in which artists are engaging with communities, institutions and the public. The Journal supports and discusses projects that offer critique, commentary and context for a field that is active and expanding.
Created within the Portland State University Art & Social Practice Masters In Fine Arts. Program, SoFA Journal is now fully online.
Conversations on Everything is an expanding collection of interviews produced as part of SoFA Journal. Through the potent format of casual interviews as artistic research, insight is harvested from artists, curators, people of other fields and everyday humans. These conversations study social forms of art as a field that lives between and within both art and life.
SoFA Journal
c/o PSU Art & Social Practice
PO Box 751
Portland, OR 97207
Email
Links
Program
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
Sponsored by the Portland State University Art and Social Practice MFA Program