Sofa Issues

Life of Art and Artists

“It’s art. I’ve come to realize it’s not just the creations of artists, but also the remnants left by those around them. That is when I realized the importance of archives.“

(これがアートなんだぁ…と。作品とは、アーティストだけでなく、周囲の人が残したものでもあるのだ、と。その時、本当の意味でアーカイブの大切さがわかったんです。－柴田尚）

– Hisashi Shibata

NPO S-AIRは、1999年より札幌でアーティストインレジデンスを行っています。私がアートアンドソーシャルプラクティスの道を歩むきっかけのひとつが、このS-AIRでした。

Since 1999, S-AIR has been running artist-in-residence programs in Sapporo, Japan. S-AIR was one of the reasons I decided to pursue the path of art and social practice.

私は以前、S-AIRが主催するイベント「AIR CAMP」で、ベトナム、カンボジア、そしてフィリピンからの招聘アーティストのプレゼンテーションとアーティストトークの通訳を担当させてもらいました。そこは国際交流の場であり、発見と学びの場でした。私のとっては、さまざまなアーティストのあり方が存在することを知った場所でもあります。

At an event called “AIR CAMP,” hosted by S-AIR, I was in charge of interpreting presentations and artist talks by invited artists from Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. It was a place of international cultural exchange, discovery and learning. For me, it was also the place where I learned that there are many different ways of being an artist.

今回は、S-AIRの創設者で代表の柴田尚氏に、アートを職業にすること、そしてアーティストインレジデンスについて伺いました。

For this article, I interviewed Nao Shibata, the founder and representative of S-AIR, about being a professional in art and artist residencies.

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Midori Yamanaka: アーティストを職業と考えると、他のフィールドよりもさまざまな挑戦が多いように思います。柴田さんご自身はどのようにアートを仕事にされて来たんですか。

When you consider being an artist as a profession, I think there are more challenges than in other fields. Mr. Shibata, how did you get into art as a career?

Hisashi Shibata: 僕自身、仕事って何なのかというのを、ずっと考えています。

I’ve been thinking about what work is all about.

中1の時に、父親が癌になりました。父は、中学校しか出てないペンキ塗装工のペンキ屋でした。母親は、文字を見るのも嫌い。両親とも学のない家庭に生まれ育ちました。で、大黒柱の親父が癌になったんで、もう高校進学も諦めて、すぐ就職してくれという感じでした。ブルーカラーの土地柄だったので、それも普通でした。

My father got cancer when I was in 6th grade. My father was a painter who only attended junior high school. My mother doesn’t even like looking at letters. I was born and raised in a family where both my parents were not highly educated. Then, my father got cancer, so my family told me to give up on going to high school and get a job right away. I came from a blue-collar area, so that was normal.

そこから、芸術の大学の先生になるってのは、もうものすごいウルトラCなんですよ。

Coming from such a situation, becoming a professor at an art university is already a huge career advancement.

Midori: 本当ですね…

I can see that.

Hisashi: そんな状況だったので、美術大学を志すところから、もう大げんかでした。「お前は何をしようとしてるのか」と。親の貯金通帳を叩きつけられて、「これだよ？どうやって生きていくの？」と言われました。

Because of that situation, I had a big fight about wanting to go to art school. My parents said, “I don’t understand what you are trying to do,” while their bank statement was slapped on me. They asked “This is what we have. How are we going to survive?”

それで僕は、二浪までしたんですよ。　

So I spent a good two years before going on to higher education.

Midori: すごいガッツ！

How determined you were! 

Hisashi: 何度も諦めそうになったけれど、何故か学校の先生が説得しに来たり、親戚が親を説得しに来たり助けが入った。

I almost gave up many times, but for some reason my school teacher came to persuade me, and my relatives came to persuade my parents, and I got help.

浪人した時は、自衛隊入隊の手続きもしたし、職業訓練校の手続きもしました。でも、そんな境遇からたまたま逆転してこうなってる。

Before getting into university , I also went through the procedures to join the Self-Defense Forces and to attend a vocational training school. However, this situation happened to turn around and turn out like this.

Midori: すごい！

Wow.

Hisashi: そんなわけで、僕自身はもう大学の時まで50種類ぐらい仕事をしていたんです。（浪人中の）予備校代とかも自分で稼いで行っていたし。

That’s why I had already worked about 50 different jobs until I was in college. I also paid for my own prep school fees.

そして、いつもお金のことがついて回っていた。お金って何なんだろうってのをずっと考えながら今に至るんです。

And I always had to worry about money. I’ve been thinking about what money really is until now.

そう考えて見ていると、学生も同じです。

If you think about it that way, students are the same way.

みんな好きなものがあるけれど、どうやって生きていくんだっていうところを探している。だから僕もよく話すんです、仕事って何なんだろうねって。

Everyone has something they like, but they’re all looking for ways to make a living. That’s why I often talk about what work is all about.

お金を稼ぐものってそれも大事なんだけど、環境が違うと状況が全然違いますよね。例えば、アートで食う人なんて、欧米に行くといくらでもいるわけですね。

Making money is important, but the situation is completely different depending on the environment. For example, if you go to Europe or America, there are many people who make a living through art.

アートを仕事にしてると言っても、色々ある。アートを仕事にしているというだけでは、ぜんぜんうかばれない社会もある。そこに悩んでる人たちもいっぱい見た。国によっては生活保護みたいな感じで、アートやってるってだけで助成金が出るとか…

However, even if you say that you do art as a job, there are many different things. In some societies, just because you do art as a job, you are not respected at all. I saw a lot of people suffering from this problem. In some countries, artists can receive grants or subsidies just for doing art, similar to social welfare benefits…

Midori: そうですね。

Yes.

Hisashi: だからもちろん、食わなきゃいけないんだけど、食うっていうことが仕事じゃないんじゃないかなって思っています。

So, of course, I have to make a living, but I don’t think work is about paying the bills.

一生のうちにやらなければいけないこと。何かそういうミッションみたいなことがあったら、バランス取ってやってほしいなって。

It’s something you must do in your lifetime. If there’s a mission like that, I want them to find a way to do it.

Midori: いわゆるライフワークってやつですね。生活のためにではなく、人生をかけて取り組む仕事…

It’s what you might call a life’s work. Work that you do not just for a living, but for your life…

Hisashi: ミッションみたいなものが感じられるとしたら、それが仕事だと僕は思っています。

逆にいえば、それができなければ仕事したっていうことにならない、と。

If something feels like a mission, I think that’s work.

On the other hand, if I can’t do that, I don’t think I’ve done any work.

Midori: なるほど。

I see.

Hisashi: それをする為に新聞配達しようが、バイトしようが、掛け持ちで色んなことしようが構わないと思います。例えば、社会や環境が違えばアートでお金の得やすいところも、逆に難しいところもある。場所や状況によって大きく異なります。

アート自体を許さない国だってあるわけです。

In order to do that, I don’t care if I deliver newspapers, work part-time, or do a variety of other things. For example, in different societies and environments, there are some places where it is easy to earn money through art, and some places where it is difficult. It varies greatly depending on location and situation.

There are even countries that do not tolerate art itself.

Midori: ありますね。

Yes, there are.

レジデンス自体のそのインパクトについてもせっかくなのでお伺いしたいのです。柴田さんが今まで運営してきた、レジデンスでの一番の効果というか、面白さはどういうところでしたか。

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you about the impact of the artist residencies. What is the most impactful or interesting aspect of the residencies that you have run so far? 

Hisashi: うちは、完全なインディペンデントで長くやっています。そういうところは、日本ではとても珍しい。それで、いつもお金がないから、みんな副業を持ってやってくれっていう感じでやってたんです。

それで僕はたまたまその流れで大学の先生にまでなってしまった。それも副業みたいな感じです。

I have been completely independent for a long time. Places like that are very rare in Japan. So, since we didn’t have any money, we all asked people to get side jobs.

By chance, I ended up becoming a university teacher through that process. It also feels like a side job.

Midori: どっちが副業なんですか。大学が副業になったんですか。

Which is your side job? Has university become a side job for you?

Hisashi: 大学も、アートインレジデンスを続けるためにやったんです。ここ（AIR）をやってていいという条件だったので、受けた。国立大学だと、副業禁止みたいに言われることも無きにしもあらずですが、NPO（を運営している実践者として）の立場で大学に迎えたいということで。

I also did this at university to continue my art-in-residence program. The condition was that I could work here at S-AIR, so I accepted. At national universities, it is natural for people to say that they are not allowed to do side jobs, but they would like to welcome me to the university from the perspective of a non-profit organization (as someone who runs one).

Midori: なるほど。

I see.

Hisashi: 面白いですよね。本当にスペシャルだと思います。

It’s interesting, isn’t it? I think it’s really special.

Midori: 大学側としても、いわゆる典型的なルートで来た大学の教授ばかりよりも、民間とかNPOとか、そういう実績を持っている先生に入ってほしかったっていうことですね。

On the university side, it would have been better to have professors with a track record in the private sector or NPOs, rather than just university professors who came through the typical route.

Hisashi: そう。実学者が欲しかったってことです。現場の人間が欲しかった。学者だけじゃなくて。

その流れで、たまたま（大学に）入ったんです。ものすごく珍しいと思います。僕は有名大学出身でもないし、留学もしてないし。

Yes. They wanted a practical scholar. They wanted someone from the field. Not just academics.

I happened to start working at university that way. It’s extremely unusual for someone like me who didn’t go to a famous university, who has never been to study abroad, to get the position.

Midori: 長年アートインレジデンスを運営してきて、やりがいや印象深い出来事はどんなことですか。

Over the years of running the art-in-residence, what has been rewarding or memorable?

Hisashi: 2000年に招聘した、ドミトリー・プリゴフというロシアの作家がいます。当時、彼はもう60歳でした。彼は、ペレストロイカまで弾圧されていました。

There is a Russian writer named Dmitry Prigov, whom we invited in 2000. At that time, he was already 60 years old. He was repressed to the point of Perestroika.

彼の札幌滞在中、彼は日本の大学５〜6校の文学部から招待を受けました。

During his stay in Sapporo, he received invitations from the literature departments of five or six Japanese universities.

Midori: 大忙しですね…！
Oh..wow. So busy!

Hisashi: 札幌でアートインレジデンスに招聘したのに、東京でNHKのロシア語講座にまで出てた。

We invited him to Art in Residence in Sapporo, but he even appeared in aRussian language program  on NHK (Japanese Public BroadCaster) from Tokyo.

Midori: 何だか、出稼ぎに来たみたい…

It seems like he came here to work…

Hisashi: うん。だけどね。本当にお金に困ってたみたい。

Yeah. But, it seemed like he and his family in Russia were really in need of financial support.

（生活費として）6万円しかあげてなかったのに、ほとんど食うや食わずやで、残りのお金を持って帰ろうとしてました。

Even though we had only given him 60,000 yen (about $405 USD) for meals, he was barely able to eat and was trying to take the rest of the money home with him.

でも、その作家、実は（ロシアに）帰ってから、毎日テレビに出るくらい有名になった。（私たちが招聘してから）10年後くらいに亡くなった時には、エルミタージュ美術館で大回顧展も行われました。

However, since the writer returned (to Russia), he has become so famous that he appears on TV every day. He passed away about 10 years later (after we invited him), and a major retrospective exhibition was held at the Hermitage Museum.

それで、日本でも展覧会ができないかって、いろんな人がうちに調査に来ました。それまでは誰一人、何も言ってこなかったのに。

So, many people came to us to investigate whether it would be possible to hold an exhibition in Japan as well. Until then, no one had said anything.

驚きました。死んだ後に、プロフィール伸びるんだぁって。ゴッホの時代じゃないのに、って。

I was surprised. His profile was growing after he died, even though it’s not Van Gogh’s time.

Midori: たしかに。

I see.

Hisashi: さらにそこから10年経って、ドキュメンタにも彼の作品がでました。

Ten years later, his work also appeared in Documenta, Germany.

Midori: 今の時代でもそんなこと本当にあるんですね。

Wow..it  happens even nowadays…

Hisashi: これがアートなんだぁ…と。作品とは、アーティストだけでなく、周囲の人が残したものでもあるのだ、と。

It’s art. I’ve come to realize it’s not just the creations of artists, but also the remnants left by those around them.

作家の寿命よりも、作品の寿命の方が長いんですよ。これは、衝撃的でした。

The lifespan of a work is longer than the one of an artist. This was shocking.

うち（S-AIR）はどこまで見ていくんだろうって。どこまで責任…責任はないけれど、死んだ後もいろいろなことがあります。続きます。

I wonder how far we, as S-AIR, an organizer of art-in-residence will go with artists. How much responsibility we have…I mean we don’t really have much responsibility, but there are many things that come after artists die. 

その時、本当の意味でアーカイブの大切さがわかったんですよ。

That is when I realized the importance of archives.

Midori: 今、まさに私たちが学んでいるアートアンドソーシャルプラクティスは、アーカイブが大切な要素のひとつです。特に私たちが今やってるものっていうのは、最終的な作品が目的ではなくて、そのプロセスであったり、そこでの関わりであったり、インパクトっていうことを狙いにしているので、やっぱりどこで切り取るかによって全然違うんですよね。

今のは、私たちのアーカイブへのモチベーションを上げてくれるお話でした。ありがとうございました。

Archives are one of the important elements of the art and social practice field that we are learning. In particular, art and social practice is not aimed at the final product, but rather at the process, the involvement, and the impact. Archives are also completely different depending on  how they are conducted and where you see the project from.

So your story was one that motivated us to archive. Thank you so much.

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山中 緑（やまなか みどり）日本生まれ、日本育ちのソーシャルプラクティスアーティストで教育者。現在は、オレゴン州ポートランドをベースに活動中。アートとしての国際交流やコミュニティでの協働における創造性の拡大を模索。多様な社会における学び合い、育ち合いを探求している。代表作には、日本の書道をベースに相互のインタラクションを生む“What is your name?”、コーチングメソッドを活用し、会話を記録した”Art of Conversation”などがある。アート センター カレッジ オブ デザインでグラフィック デザインの学士号を取得。現在はポートランド州立大学大学院にて、アートアンドソーシャルプラクティスを実践・研究。
https://www.midoriyamanaka.com/

Midori Yamanaka (she/her) is a social practice artist and educator born and raised in Japan, currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. Her practice explores expanding creativity in international exchange and community based collaboration. She explores mutual learning and mutual growth in a diverse society. Her representative works include “What is your name?,” which creates mutual interaction based on Japanese calligraphy, and “Art of conversation,” which records conversations using coaching methods. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Art Center College of Design, and currently is studying and practicing Art and Social Practice at Portland State University. https://www.midoriyamanaka.com

柴田 尚（しばた ひさし） 特定非営利活動法人S-AIR代表、北海道教育大学岩見沢校教授。1999年、札幌アーティスト・イン・レジデンスを立ち上げ、2005年7月、特定非営利活動法人S-AIRとして法人化。初代代表となる。同団体は、2008年の国際交流基金地球市民賞を受賞。海外からの招聘アーティストは１００名を超え、日本から海外へも２０組以上のアーティストを派遣している。また、「SNOWSCAPE MOERE」など、様々な文化事業を企画している。2009年より北海道教育大学において「廃校アートセンター調査」を開始。専門分野はアートマネジメント、廃校の芸術文化活用、そして アーティスト・イン・レジデンス。2017年、北海道文化奨励賞受賞。
https://s-air.org/

Hisashi Shibata (he/him) is a founder and representative of S-AIR, a non-profit organization, and professor at Hokkaido University of Education, Iwamizawa. In 1999, he launched Sapporo Artist in Residence, and in July 2005, it was incorporated as a non-profit organization, S-AIR. Becomes the first representative. The organization received the Japan Foundation Global Citizen Award in 2008. Over 100 artists have been invited from overseas, and over 20 groups of artists have been dispatched from Japan to overseas countries. They also plan various cultural projects such as “SNOWSCAPE MOERE”. In 2009, he began the “Research on Abandoned School Building for Artistic use” at Hokkaido University of Education. His areas of expertise include art management, artistic and cultural utilization of closed schools, and artist-in-residence.

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A Million Ways To Color A Tree

“Art is the one connecting factor. That’s what brought us all together and made us friends. You think it’s just a small drawing in a notebook, but it has a giant power.”

-Ross Carvill 

The first time I met Ross, he was wearing a monochromatic green outfit he had sourced from various stoop sales around his neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn that very day. From that moment I knew we would be friends. 

Ross is an illustrator from Ireland who uses drawing as a means to connect with people and places around him. Some days this looks like drawing on the windows of a fish market, sketching every dog he pets in a given day, or sheepishly attending a wooden spoon carving club with a whittled leopard bird he made.

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Clara Harlow: I’m curious what play looks like to you? 

Ross Carvill: Not taking the world for the easiest perception of it. Like, you can easily look at the world and accept it for what it looks like – a tree has branches, leaves are green, dogs only have four legs. That’s easy to do, but if you widen your perception of things a tree doesn’t have to be brown, and it isn’t necessarily brown. 

Clara Harlow: I love that too because it speaks to actually looking, rather than just drawing the image of a tree that you have in your head and reproducing that over and over again. You actually have to look at what’s in front of you and ask questions. 

Ross Carvill: There are a million ways you can color a tree. But I feel like it’s also about breaking rules, too. People keep telling me “I can’t draw hands,” or “I can’t do perspective.” I want to make a tee shirt that says “Fuck Perspective,” because I feel like people are always getting so caught up in that. Why are we following these rules that someone made like 1000 years ago? People have drawn buildings with perfect perspective hundreds of times. But if you draw a building how you see it, that’s more beautiful in my books than just trying to recreate something that someone else has written for you. Those rules aren’t your rules. Your view of the world is unique to you, so why would you try and censor that by following rules that were written by somebody else? So playing to me means being honest with yourself and your perceptions, I suppose. 

Clara Harlow: I feel like the way that you approach drawing is like conversation. It’s your way of speaking and connecting with folks. 

Ross Carvill: Definitely, and I struggle sometimes to speak, about emotions for example. But I feel like I digest a lot of stuff through drawing. It’s always like a safe place that I can go to no matter how I’m feeling. If I’m ever trying to explain something, it’s always easier just to draw it and show the person. But it also comes up when I’m asked about what sort of drawings I make. I’ve never been able to answer that question, I always just have to open my notebook and show them. It’s funny. 

Clara Harlow: I think that keeps your work really accessible, though. Your style and point of view allows for all sorts of folks to be able to connect with you – about your day, about New York, about funny or hard life experiences. To me, your drawings really function as an invitation.

Ross Carvill: Totally. Last week, I was doing Halloween windows for businesses and people were looking at me drawing through the glass and were really interested in what I was doing. I really like that environment where I’m in my own world of drawing, but at the same time, I’m interacting with people. Over 3 days I gave out 93 flyers for Halloween window drawing in Brooklyn and got 8 jobs from it. I ended up doing 2 coffee shops, 2 smoke shops, 2 pizza restaurants, a liquor shop, and a 40 year old fish shop! It’s a really cool opportunity to have my drawings where people can see them too because I have so many drawings in my notebooks that no one ever sees except me. I draw them and then I turn the page and then that’s usually the end of the life of the drawing. So bringing folks in is a very integral part of my practice. 

Clara Harlow: Speaking of that, can you tell me about your Mystical Magical Maths drawing events?

Ross Carvill: Mystical Magical Maths is a live interactive show where the audience gives me one animal and one object, and then I magically combine them together on a giant piece of paper. And while I’m drawing, I also tell a story and a joke. It was never meant to be like,  stand up comedy, but people find it funny. It started as just a way of selling drawings, to be honest. In the beginning, I was doing art markets in Dublin, and had a spinning wheel that I made out of cardboard, a fidget spinner, and a hot glue gun. It had all these animals and objects written on it, and people spun it twice and whatever it landed on I drew on a piece of paper and then they purchased the original drawing. So it was just kind of a way of interacting with people, but then COVID happened immediately after I made the wheel, and then I was in my bedroom drawing on my own. And I was like, I wonder if I can still connect to people in a safe way while we’re all in lockdown, so I started going live on Instagram and recording my hand drawing while people commented with animals and objects for me to draw. I did 20 episodes of that during COVID times and I also took over two whiskey distilleries’ Instagrams and a screen printing studios’ Instagram. 

Clara Harlow: Can you talk a little bit about the Irish children’s television show you’re featured on? 

Ross Carvill: Yes, it’s a show called This is Art and we just filmed our third season this year. Each episode is a different theme and I have a segment where I come up with a piece of art to make with kids. The idea is that viewers are then inspired to make it at home. It’s been interesting, I had just come from COVID times when making during lockdown looked like making YouTube videos of my art process, sort of making my own TV show you could say, but it was a lot of work and editing. I was feeling negative about it because I was just putting so much time into them and there wasn’t much payback from it. And then the final video I did I was like, this is going to be the one! I spent a month going to multiple rivers around Dublin sourcing pieces of pottery and, unfortunately, plastic from the waterways and making this big fish mosaic out of it.  I spent so long making the video and then I put it up and it barely got any traction. So I was like, frick this, and I didn’t make another one for ages, but that ended up being the video that the director of the TV show saw. I went from being very negative about it to being given this opportunity, which is interesting. I never planned on being on TV, it’s funny, it’s one of those things that just happened.

Clara Harlow: So your segment is Ross’ Art Corner?

Ross Carvill: That’s what we were calling it initially because I had a corner on the set, although on the new season there’s a different set, so I’m not sure if we can call it that anymore. Last season was cool though because we put a lot more emphasis on my segment, so we were actually out and about in the world drawing in Dublin Castle and drawing at the circus and drawing at the zoo being surrounded by lemurs. So I was able to bring a sense of place into the work with the kids which is cool. 

Clara Harlow: What do you like about collaborating with kids?
Ross Carvill: It’s amazing to see their creativity and it reminds me of drawing when I was a kid. There are so many people that I meet that tell me they used to draw when they were kids. I always like the opportunity to be that person that provides encouragement that keeps them drawing. Even if one of the kids that I’ve taught over the years keeps drawing then it’s been worthwhile.

Clara Harlow: Yeah, that’s amazing. Did you know that I actually kind of have a complicated relationship to drawing?

Ross Carvill: Why?

Clara Harlow: I think it has something to do with how people expect you to be skilled at drawing and enjoy it if you’re an artist. I think growing up I felt a lot of pressure to do it in a certain way. But also the process and product of executing something formally impressive has always been boring for me.

Ross Carvill: Yeah, I feel like maybe a reason why a lot of people stop is because they’re comparing themselves to other people. But the other thing about when kids draw is that they are 100% drawing the way that they see the world. I mean, they’re drawing people and the person might not be a proportionate person, and they might have big blue arms, or they might have like a gigantic eyeball, and then a tiny eyeball, or like a giant pointy nose. You might think that’s not how you draw a person! But that is their view. And they’re not worrying about what other people are thinking about it. That’s a big part of it. 

Clara Harlow: Yeah, totally. There’s a lack of self consciousness and they’re just leaning into intuition. I think the other piece of my wonky relationship to drawing is that I’m an artist who struggles working in solitude. There’s such an association with writing and drawing in solitude, but I’m so drawn to your practice because I think you really challenge these historical hang ups that I have with drawing as a medium. 

Ross Carvill: The only thing it has to look like is whatever you want it to look like! You should come with me tonight to the Art Club group. It’s this evening at 7pm in Williamsburg. 

Clara Harlow: Yeah, I remember I went to the Artists of the Met group with you once and I was surprised by how hard it was for me to sit down and draw for an extended period of time. I keep a notebook and I observe and make a lot of lists in it, but I hadn’t intentionally sat down and drawn something in so long. And I think it made me have to confront some blocks I have around drawing. It doesn’t come as naturally to me as a form of play, it feels obligatory. It really requires you to slow down and listen to a space, which I think I typically resist.

Ross Carvill: It’s the only time in the day I slow down, to be honest with you. I’m constantly like, go, go go and my brain is constantly like, go, go, go. It’s such a busy world that we live in, and especially in the city. But it’s really the only opportunity I have every day to just 100% slow down. It’s sort of time for me and it’s not always easy to give yourself that space for sure.

Clara Harlow: Yeah, I feel inspired by the way you push what drawing can be and do. It really feels like a form of conversation with your community. You’re using this medium that could be so solitary and insular and instead using it as a means to connect and collaborate. It reminds me of your Eddy Goldfarb drawing. Can you tell me a bit about that exchange?

Ross Carvill:  A few years ago I watched a short documentary from the New Yorker about Eddy Goldfarb, this toy designer whose biggest hit was the chattering teeth toy. I appreciated him and his attitude towards creativity and I felt inspired to draw him. So I did, and then I found his Instagram page and messaged him the drawing out of the blue. I didn’t think he was gonna reply, but then his daughter did reply. I told them I’d love it if you could have this drawing, so I sent it to them and they sent back a photo of Eddy holding the teeth drawing.

That was like two or three years ago and I didn’t really think about it for a while. But then I was at the Brooklyn Flea Market under the bridge in Dumbo a few months ago and I found the teeth toy. I was so excited because this was the first time I’d actually seen it in person. And then I told the whole story to the guy working at the flea market and he thought it was cool so he gave me a discount for the story. 

Clara Harlow: Can you tell me about all the meetup groups you’ve attended? 

Ross Carvill: Well, there have been many, but the two I regularly go to are a drawing group in Williamsburg that meets every Monday night at a bar and Artists of the Met where we go to museums to draw, but we also go to parks and other places. Yesterday we went to Sleepy Hollow, where the Headless Horseman myth originated, to draw stuff. It was funny, it was actually like an unofficial collaboration between the two big drawing groups. 

Clara Harlow: How is drawing with other people different from drawing on your own?

Ross Carvill: It’s interesting because my mission is always a very solo mission. I call my art days my hermit days, and I don’t really speak to many people. I’m very much a people’s person, but I always struggle letting someone do a part of my piece of art because it’s such a personal thing. Like, recently I needed help with a budgeting aspect of a project and it was hard to let somebody in, but when it’s somebody doing their own piece of art beside me, it’s different. 

Clara Harlow: Like parallel play. 

Ross Carvill: Yeah, it’s nice to have company and experience places together. It’s also interesting when we go somewhere, and we’ll all be drawing the same scenery–it’s just always amazing to see, like, 15 or 20 versions of how different people have digested and seen the exact same location. 

Clara Harlow: Are you nervous when you go to meet up with a group of all strangers?

Ross Carvill: I’m a weird person that sort of feeds off those situations. I’ve always been intrigued by job interviews and starting new things. There are definitely anxieties, but I feel like curiosity overpowers the anxieties. But I also like being in a space where the connection is art. Having that boundary broken already takes away a lot of the anxieties of meeting a new person. You already know that you’re meeting somebody that shares a passion of yours, so you’re not starting from zero, you’re already starting with a deep connection. 

Clara Harlow: Yeah, absolutely. 

Ross Carvill: Yeah, that is a beautiful thing about it as well. Art is the connector between people from India, people from Ireland, people from Texas in these groups. Everyone’s from different cultural backgrounds, religions, upbringings, different everything. It doesn’t matter about any of that stuff. You can throw all that stuff out the fucking window because the only thing that really matters in that space is that we all are artists, we all draw, and we all appreciate and love drawing. 

Clara Harlow: That’s your shared language.

Ross Carvill:  Art is the one connecting factor. That’s what brought us all together and made us friends. You think it’s just a small drawing in a notebook, but it has a giant power. 

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Ross Carvill (he/him) is a freelance illustrator from Dublin, Ireland currently living in Brooklyn. Ross has been drawing every single day since he could hold a pen. He loves to draw everything from lobsters mixed with roosters to documenting a conversation with a stranger on the street. He has worked with brands such as Hopfully breweries, Dead Rabbit Irish Whiskey, Ilk clothing, Anti Social bar, SOMY, The Dubliner Irish Whiskey, 48 Ireland, Clay Plants, Tesco Ireland, RTÉ and Innocent Smoothies. Visit his website to see his projects and follow him on Instagram for updates.

Clara Harlow (she/her) is an artist, designer, and preschool teacher from Omaha, Nebraska. Her work weaves together community, intimacy, and play through experiential events and objects. She has collaborated with Four-D, Fire Escape, The Tom Collective, Lolo NYC, Sounds, and the Fabric Workshop Museum Shop. Clara currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  www.claraharlow.com 

The Eyes Don’t Deny It: An Interview with my Dead Grandmother

“Death would have had to drag me kicking and screaming because who the hell knows what’s waiting for you on the other end. But since I couldn’t tell my ass from my elbow, I didn’t even know it was coming for me.”

– Something I think my grandmother would say

How can we blur the lines between life and death? How can we keep the memory of those we’ve loved and lost alive? How can we move past regrets and let go of the things we never got the chance to say? In an attempt to explore these questions, I decided to have a hypothetical conversation with my dead grandmother. It’s one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t ask her more about her life or have the chance to say goodbye to her.

I wanted this interview to be as close to accurate as possible so I sat down with my father, who knew my grandmother in many different contexts, to come up with her answers. I wrote down everything I wanted to ask her and, together, we talked about what we thought she might say. Once I had the interview written up, I called and read it back to him. Again, we discussed the answers and changed and tweaked until it was like we could hear her voice. Although this interview is a hypothetical, totally made up conversation I had with a dead person, it feels intensely real and I’ll treasure it as the last conversation I got to have with my grandmother and the one where I actually got the chance to tell her how much she meant to me. 

Note: My grandmother, Nona, had a strong and wacky personality and I tried to capture that as best as I could but it’s hard to do someone like that justice. 

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Olivia DelGandio: Hi, Nonna.

MariAna Zachary (Nona): Hi, Livvie Pips. 

[My grandmother used to call me Livvie Pips or Livvie Pipellina. When I asked my dad where she got that from, he said she referred to me as her little pip or pal and added -ellina, a common Italian suffix added as a form of endearment.]

Olivia: Can you tell me about your experience becoming an artist?

Nona: I always wanted to be an artist but my mother told me I had to be a secretary. It was the 50s so that was expected and I had no choice. I didn’t have the fire in me to reject it yet. 

Olivia: What was your mother like?

Nona: She wasn’t a very nice lady. She used to dress me up to show me off but other than that, she didn’t care for me much. She always favored my brother and I never seemed very important to her. So, it made sense that when I wanted to be an artist, she couldn’t care less. I think I was really impacted from that lack of love even though I’d never say it.

Olivia: How’d you end up getting through that and becoming an artist?

Nona: It wasn’t until I was older and met Poppy [second husband] that I could really do what I wanted. Before that, I was a single mother to two boys with barely enough money to take care of them. I married Poppy in my 40s and he encouraged me to really start thinking about art again. So I enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology and I got a degree in interior design.

Olivia: I never knew you did interior design.

Nona: That’s because I did one job and realized it wasn’t my thing. I went back to FIT and got another degree in Fine Arts. 

Olivia: I had no idea you had two art degrees. What did you focus on then?

Nona: I painted a lot and I really devoted myself to textiles. I made a lot of scarves and sarongs with silk screening, dying, and batik processes. Your dad would take them to work and sell them to all the girls in his office for me.  

Olivia: That’s so cool. What’d you do once you graduated? 

Nona: I got a job as a teaching assistant at FIT and I did that up until we moved to Florida to be closer to you guys. I loved being near you and your brothers but that move really fucked with me. I’m a New Yorker, Florida wasn’t the right place for me. I missed the city and FIT and having my own practice. My work was never the same. 

Olivia: I never would’ve known you felt that way. I loved working in the studio you made in your Florida house, it seemed like everything was so great but I guess I was too young to know otherwise. Did you ever make work about those feelings or other emotions?

Nona: No, I could never go there. I’ve been too traumatized; there’s a lot you don’t know about my life and that’s how I wanted it. If I went there, I don’t think I’d ever come back. Even though I never talked or made work about it, I feel a lot. It’s the darkness in me. And the Scorpio energy. You get that from me.  

Olivia: I seem to have gotten a lot from you.

Nona: Those eyes don’t deny it, you look just like me. 

Olivia: You know, the only time I’ve ever seen you make anything emotional was when you were living with us when I was in high school. You were already pretty deep into Alzheimer’s and I got you to come and draw with me. You did a self portrait with something written on it about feeling lost. I felt so emotional watching you do that. There was so much I wanted to talk to you about but we had already been losing you for years at that point. 

Nona: I guess my memory was so gone, I forgot about my rule of not being emotional in my work. 

Olivia: I wish we could make something together. What do you think we would make if we could?

Nona: I wish we could, too. I think we would do some sort of self portrait project together. It’d be really dramatic and beautiful. 

Olivia: I agree. You are the one who got me into photography. I still use the camera you got me over 10 years ago and I think of you every time I do. 

Nona: I’m glad. The second you picked up mine I knew I had to get you your own. 

Olivia: Nonna, what was it like to lose your memory?

Nona: Honestly, I was scared shitless. I’d come downstairs and stand in the kitchen for ages, having no idea what I was doing there until your father would come in and offer me something to eat or drink. I knew something was wrong for a long time but those last two or so years were the worst. I didn’t even recognize your father the last time I saw him. 

Olivia: Were you afraid to die?

Nona: I think if I had my wits about me I would have been. Death would have had to drag me kicking and screaming because who the hell knows what’s waiting for you on the other end. But since I couldn’t tell my ass from my elbow, I didn’t even know it was coming for me. 

Olivia: What do you think of what I’ve done with my life in the past few years?

Nona: Oh, I’m beyond proud. I’m your biggest fan. You know, it sucks for everyone that I’m gone but I think it especially sucks for you. We always had a deeper connection; I saw so much of myself in you. I regret that I really started losing myself when you really started to find yourself. 

Olivia: But you helped me find myself long before that. Some of my favorite memories are of you taking me to get coffee (that I wasn’t allowed to drink) and we’d wander around the art supply store for hours together. You’d buy me whatever I wanted and then let me make a mess with it in your studio. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without you. I regret being gone for the last year of your life but I am glad to have these memories with you. And especially glad that the last time I saw you, you still had enough left in you to know who I was. 

Nona: I never could have forgotten you, my Livvie Pipellina.

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Olivia DelGandio asks intimate questions and normalizes answers in the form of ongoing conversations. They explore grief, memory, and human connection and look for ways of memorializing moments and relationships. Through their work, they hope to make the world a more tender place and aim to do so by creating books, videos, and textiles that capture personal narratives. She is MariAna’s granddaughter and is the artist she is because of it. 

MariAna Zachary (1944-2021) was a painter, photographer, and textile artist from Brooklyn, New York. She liked her grandchildren more than anyone else, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and had two degrees from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was Olivia’s grandmother and is missed every day. 

A Pause Anywhere is a Gift

“Everyone is a teacher, everyone is a learner. Even as therapists and analysts, we’re having an encounter with someone. It’s not that I’m this smart analyst and I know everything about mental health and I’m going to make you better. We’re trying to have a relationship and an encounter.”

-Judy Blumenfeld

My mom and I both recently had our Saturn Returns, (my first and her second). Your Saturn Return is when Saturn returns to the place in the sky that it was in when you were born. It happens about every 29 years and is known as a time for big life changes and growth. I was born during my mom’s first Saturn Return, when she was 31. I’m 31 now, and my first Saturn Return has just concluded, during which time I left Oakland and moved to Portland and started graduate school. 

My mom went back to school when I was in middle school and got her Masters in counseling psychology and Drama Therapy. I think that her work in psychoanalysis has actually transformed our relationship in a big way. It feels easier to talk through complicated things now. It feels like there’s more room for trying to understand each other. 

I’m really proud of my mom right now, and I’m excited for both of us because we are both doing the work we love and really want to be doing now. For me, that work is getting my MFA and teaching and deepening my understanding of my art practice. She just finished psychoanalytic training at the ​​Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC). This conversation took place just before her graduation where she read a paper she wrote to a big group of people over Zoom. In it, we talk about intergenerational trauma, Palestinian liberation, and the overlaps in our practices.

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Luz Blumenfeld: What are you doing in your practice right now?

Judy Blumenfeld: I’m finishing this extensive psychoanalytic training that I’ve been doing for six years now. My graduation paper is a lot about my emergence, or becoming how I was thinking about myself as a psychoanalyst. And it’s a lot about my history, the history in the family, the history of trauma, how that lives in me.

One thing that a mentor told me once is that you’re a psychoanalyst everywhere, and I feel that a lot, it’s the way that I think in the world. Now, I think it helps my politics, it helps me interpersonally, and it helps me in my work. But I think what I’m excited about in my work, what’s been a kind of generative area for me, is groups and place, and that’s a lot of what my paper is about. What does it mean to be in community as a psychoanalyst versus what does it mean to be a psychoanalyst in a private setting? 

And when I say institutional, I mean that I’ve seen that some people– we take training, and then we just live in this little world of private practice. And I’m very interested in not just staying in that little private practice world, even though I love my work with my patients. 

But, I feel like it’s about the intersection of the social and psychoanalysis. And that’s where I was thinking about your work, Luz, and how just the little I know about art and social practice, is that there’s something very similar there, like about the intersection of something with something. So how do we understand these spaces that we’re all in? And I think yours is from, like, an artistic aesthetic, but also a historical perspective. I see a lot about that in your work. So with psychoanalysis, too, you take a place, and you try to deeply understand a place, but I’m interested in the places where most people are receiving help. 

Right now, I’m involved with a community psychoanalysis project that I’ve been part of since the beginning of the training. And it’s an emergent project of psychoanalysis. It’s about community and psychoanalysis and the intersection of the two. I first did a project that was at an agency that did work with refugees and asylum seekers. And what’s different about this is that instead of a person being my training case, because we talk about cases in my field, the whole place is my case, and also I’m their case. I meet with a group of people who are in community mental health, people who are very analytic but have not had formal psychoanalytic training. We dissect and talk about the intersection of what’s happening in that place. And the social, what’s happening socially about immigration and refugees. My colleague and I did what’s called a “case conference,” where the therapists at the agency present their cases to my colleague and I, and then we present that to a group of people. So it’s like groups thinking about groups.

Luz: Yeah, that’s really cool. I can already see a lot of places of overlap in our work. I’m also really interested in place; in site-specific, place based work, and work that is durational. I think what you’re doing is really specific to that place in that time, to being in that time together. Yeah, and that’s not something you can recreate– that’s really interesting to me.

Judy: It’s a moment, yeah.

Luz: What you’re trying to do with that moment is really interesting.

Judy: It’s also the fact that it’s a historical moment that enters into it for me. And now I’m doing a project that’s fascinating– So we’re not in a mental health setting. I’m co-facilitating a group at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. These are the people who try to represent people who have no money and who are imprisoned, and try to get them out.

Luz: So what is your role there as someone who is from the mental health side of things?

Judy: Right? Excellent question. Really, just to try and help these people with their trauma and to create some kind of space for them. And it’s emergent. With the community psychoanalysis we never come in with a prescribed idea, like dropping psychoanalysis into a place. Instead, we co-create something. It’s early in the project now, but we’re trying to see what these folks need to help them do their work, to help them with whatever their themes are. So we don’t have anything prescribed that we do except that we hold a space. 

I’m excited about the intersection of psychoanalysis and the world. I’m also involved with radicals in psychoanalysis and many of us have been talking about Palestine. I’m going to be starting a study group with other people who are in mental health about Palestine.

Luz: That’s good. I’ve been thinking lately that we need to be creating in-person spaces to meet and talk about everything instead of like, pushing it down and trying to just do our life. Because that’s dangerous. We need to talk to each other. In terms of organizing, too, it seems like no one knows where to start, and everything is so connected. And the way that movements have started historically is people being in the same place talking to each other. 

Judy: Yes, yes. I’m thinking about how my colleague and I are starting this group. We trained together, and some of these issues came up, you know, and we were realizing– after October 7, and with the bombing in Gaza, like everybody we were talking to was saying, I don’t know how to have these conversations. There’s also something about positionality in this, like, I’m having it as a Jew, she’s having it as not a Jewish person. And, you know, we’re talking about politics now, but I think it’s connected to psychoanalysis, as I think it has to do with thoughtful and deep conversations, and how do we– it’s hard to not want to just shut out or even get so angry at what other people say and try to have a dialogue.

Luz: Well, it sounds like what you’re saying is that you’re trying to hold a container for people, right? And that is also an area of overlap in our work. I think we use a lot of the same words in our work and I’m interested in what they mean for both of us. We use the word container a lot in my MFA program– we talk about it as a structure or framework to share your work with the world. I’ve been thinking about research that I’ve done as part of my practice, and research can be, like, the way that I see and feel and do the world, like my note taking practice for example. So, it’s about creating or finding a container that already exists in the world to plug that stuff into so that I’m actually sharing it with others instead of like, putting it back into the internal loop of my own practice.

Judy: Oh, wow, that is really powerful when I hear you say that. That’s a powerful overlap to have a container. 

Luz: Another thing our practices have in common is working in an emergent way. Adrienne Maree Brown writes about the work of emergent strategy… For social practice and socially engaged artists who do projects in communities they don’t belong to, I think it’s the only method that makes sense and feels ethical. To be able to come in without your own expectations or a problem that you perceived that maybe isn’t actually there, it’s really important in the work, I think.

Judy: Exactly. There’s so much overlap here from what you’re saying. You’re not coming in with anything. A lot of these projects are happening because someone who works there wants a deep thinking space to happen there. One thing that we have been discussing as we try to write theory about this work is that everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner. Even as therapists and analysts, we’re having an encounter with someone or some place. It’s not that I’m this smart analyst and I know everything about mental health and I’m going to make you better. We’re trying to have a relationship and an encounter, a reflective space.

Luz: That’s interesting because I think that is different from what I thought psychoanalysis was for. When I think about that work, I do think that I’m going to a person who has trained in this, in something that I don’t know and that they are going to show me some unknown or hidden part of myself, right?

Judy: Well, those are the origins, and I think we do– I do, still believe in the unconscious, and I do believe that we don’t know about some things for a reason. I think that we have lots of good reasons to not know a lot of things. And that doesn’t mean we have to bring every single thing we ever felt to consciousness, but I think psychoanalysis is based on the unconscious, but there’s also a legacy of really negative things in psychoanalysis. We’re in a period of trying to liberate and change it, that’s what I’m interested in. For all of his problems, Freud did have a really powerful idea that we have an unconscious, and that sometimes when we don’t understand how we behave in the world, there may be some information there that we don’t know about. That basic thing that can be helpful, but–

Luz: But it sounds like you’re saying that it’s more about creating a relationship and maintaining that relationship, and then seeing what comes from that. That’s really interesting, because I don’t know that I previously understood that this is what your work is about.

Judy: Yeah, that’s where the container comes in. It’s a very protected kind of specific relationship, and it has what we call a frame, which means that we always meet at a certain time, and that someone pays me whatever we decide on. That’s a frame, that’s a container, that’s a space that I reserve for my patients, that time that our minds are together. And we have an encounter. 

One really basic thing is that what I’ve learned, and it’s in my paper, is that a pause, anywhere, is a gift. That’s the title of my paper, “the overfull object: history, place and the gift of a pause.” 

Luz: What does an object mean in your work? 

Judy: Some of the terminology we use is that we take things in and they become our internal objects. So, for me, I have an internal object of mother and father inside me from my parents, so something with that. It’s something we internalize and we call it an object, but I think I also play with it in my paper title. 

Luz: When you say that an object is “full,” or “overfull,” what does that mean?

Judy: It’s something that is saturated. So these places I talked about, they’re saturated, there’s so much going on in them. If a person is overfull, it’s very difficult to think and feel and pause because you’re trying to sort out what’s yours. What are my own feelings and what has been kind of put into me? With trauma, what do we hold inside that comes from others, that is in a way put into us, from a mother, father, caregiver, the culture.

Luz: I remember the last time you visited Portland, we were talking about the overfull object a little bit. You were saying for you that a lot of it is with your parents, and specifically your mother, and that there was something for her that was already overfull and then that spilled over and became overfilled for you. I think that’s a really interesting framework, of thinking about not just intergenerational trauma, (although a lot of it is for our family with the Holocaust and stuff,) but like the stuff that fills us. I’m picturing it like you have a box for this and a box for that inside of you, and that because of what happened to your parents and their parents and so far back, that those boxes can get filled up, overfilled.

Judy: Yeah, it’s a beautiful image to work with there. It’s helpful to have an image like that, and a metaphor. But I think everyone has trauma on some level, like there’s big trauma and there’s little trauma, but every human has some trauma. Traumatized parents have a hard time metabolizing things. There isn’t a digestion, it just gets passed around, and then people respond from that place. That’s a lot of what my paper is about.

Luz: I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

Judy: I could talk about this for, like, five hours with you. 

Luz: Well, I was just gonna say I’ve actually been thinking about what you were just talking about in regards to how American Jews, and Zionist Jews in particular, have been responding to the crisis in Palestine–

Judy: Total trauma response.

Luz: Yeah, there’s so much there that is not being said when someone posts a comment. When I read a comment, I’m just like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And then I’m like, Oh, I know what’s wrong with you, you have like, three generations of unprocessed trauma.

But the thing is, that is literally happening to Palestinians right now. We’re talking about stuff that, generations later, is still going to be present for their descendants. When I think about my grandparents and great grandparents on your side of the family– how your dad and his brother got out, but his parents didn’t. And then I think about how your childhood was and how you talk with your cousins and your sister about how your parents didn’t talk about anything, because they were so traumatized. So that got passed down to you as some kind of unprocessed baggage that you have to hold. And then, you know, you break that cycle, you and your sister and cousins, I think, by naming it and talking about it. And we break that cycle by continuing to talk about it today, but it’s still there three generations later, in your body and in your life. So I’m thinking about that connection, and how some people haven’t examined that for themselves and are having, well, what you’re saying, trauma reactions to this.

Judy: I think the Holocaust has been weaponized, but it’s also an internal response that people are terrified, and for many Jewish people, like our family, we have the Holocaust as part of our origins. The trauma is in us. The state of Israel was founded with the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians 75 years ago. Children in Gaza now have lived through 4 wars. Israel is an apartheid state, which in part means that there are different laws for Palestinians and Israelis. 

Luz: Right, so it’s almost like taking that analogy that I had back at least three more generations. 

Judy: The Nakba, 1948, the catastrophe. 

Luz: I’ve seen films where Palestinian youth are talking to their grandparents about that. They ask, “will you ever get to go back to your home?” 

Judy: And one interesting thing that I think I’ve learned in psychoanalysis that I’m seeing now is that people can’t think when there’s trauma, and actually, being able to think is very important. The thinking function leaves, and this is where you have these people just reacting in these crazy ways. And you can’t really have a conversation, right? That’s where the pause comes in. First, you need to pause. How do you feel about this? People can’t think, thinking is shut down. And it’s dangerous when thinking is shut down.

Luz: What I think is so dangerous right now is that you don’t know what someone is acting out of, or reacting out of, when you are engaging online with them, because you don’t know them and you can’t see them. And so, you know, you do get like these reactionary comments. Every interaction is so charged with all of that. And there’s no place for it in the container of social media, of a corporation.

Judy: That’s so interesting. Also, just like social media as a container– is it a container? It doesn’t feel like a container right now.

Luz:  But we’ve been socialized to think of it as that, yeah.

Judy: And Palestinians are also asking us to keep posting, keep posting, keep posting. You know It’s how we’re bearing witness right now, which is crazy. 

Luz: It’s the first, I mean, as far as I know, the first time that we are witnessing genocide in real time on social media. That’s insane. I don’t even know what to do with that as a fact. 

Judy: Yeah, I’m thinking about my patients– some people are talking about this, and some people are not talking about this. And it’s fascinating to me, where it enters the space. Whether we are talking about it or not, it is there.

Luz: I’m thinking about how deep into this late stage capitalism dystopia we’re in. How we’ve all been just barely getting by for like, a decade, at least. We’re already in the pandemic, we’re already so entrenched in things not being okay and and still continuing because we just have to, apparently. Because the world won’t stop for a pandemic, so the world won’t stop for us needing a pause. If you take a pause, there’s a very real threat of falling behind and suffering because you need to work to survive. 

I think about growing up as a child of a family of Holocaust survivors and nonsurvivors, and the thing that was always in my mind was like, Okay, well, what, what would you have done if it was happening in your life? What would you have done if you were not a Jew? And it was not happening to you or your family? And that was always the question, and I always thought I would have fought back, and it actually takes so much courage to do that right now. And obviously, we’re also in a really different time.

Judy: Well, it takes courage, and there’s the silencing. There’s a lot of very intense silencing of the standing up, but millions are in the streets. I mean, we haven’t seen protests this big in decades, since the Iraq War. There’s millions of people in the streets all over the world. So, this is positive. 

When you say there’s no pause because we have to keep going, that’s external, right? There’s external factors, but I’m also talking about a pause inside that we can find. I think that to me, a gift of psychoanalysis was finding that. And I don’t do it all the time, you know, I have to still keep reminding myself all the time to do it, but that I can find a pause inside me. 

Luz: I think the external stuff has to give way for there to be time and actual space to do that internal work though. 

Judy: I know, right, and that’s psychoanalysis, which isn’t accessible to everyone. Even just therapy isn’t accessible to everyone. With these projects I’ve been talking about, it’s exactly that– you work in an agency, you have this incredibly intense caseload, there’s trauma all around you, there’s pressures of work, there’s a demand on your time for more and more and more work, because this is how late stage capitalism is in every workplace. They call it the nonprofit industrial complex. Even in a nonprofit, even in a place that serves people, even in schools, with teachers, it’s present. So, what if people can have a group that meets even once every two weeks for an hour, where they get to sit and reflect and have a reflective space? That’s a pause. And that’s kind of my passion is to find a way to bring that, if people want that. But first, do people want it? It comes back to emergent work.

Luz: I think we know that collectively, we do need a pause right now.

Judy: And a reflective space, yeah, time to think and feel. And that’s not built in, in this culture, in this system. It’s not something that’s honored. But on your dad’s side of the family, your grandmother is really dedicated to this. Like, wait, let’s take a moment and acknowledge that this is someone’s life, their birthday, whatever it is, you know. I think ritual also gives pause, which is a beautiful thing, I love ritual. I wish I did more of it. 

Luz: Part of my work that I really have been really appreciative of the last few years is how conceptual it can be, and how, like, deep theory it can get. That you can change the way that you frame something intellectually, and that can have kind of a ripple effect in other parts of your life. You can look back at something you did in the past that may not have felt meaningful enough then and reclaim it as your work now, and that’s really helpful. I often think of Sister Corita Kent’s 10 Rules, and one of them is, and I’m paraphrasing, “You cannot create and analyze at the same time. They are different processes.” I think about that one a lot.

Judy: I’m writing that down, it just feels like it applies to my work, “you cannot create and analyze at the same time, they are different processes.”

Luz: Yeah, and so I think, you can create a framework for a pause or create the space that it is your work to create, and later, when you’re writing about it, you can hold the way that that can be framed as a ritual, actually, because it is something that you’re coming back to over and over again. I think part of the thing that makes it a ritual is doing the same thing in the same place at a certain time. The thing itself, the meaning and the time together itself is a ritual. It’s not ritualistic and loaded with lore and specific aesthetics necessarily, but it is a ritual. And I think of it that way, in a conceptual framework, the work of repeating an event or even a one time thing in one place and time, like we were talking about in the beginning. I think that a moment in time can be a ritual. An encounter can be a ritual.

Judy: Because the container makes it a ritual. Yeah, that’s so beautiful. I always learn when I talk with you. I was thinking of the pandemic recently because the container changed. It was this big regroup, you know, and some people are back in their offices. I’m there less, but, you know, I’m still doing this ritual. I’m still finding a space inside myself to do this work with my patients, you know, whether it’s on Zoom or on the phone. The container is still there. It’s me, I’m the container. But there’s something about the space between us; you know,  our voices.

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Judy Blumenfeld (she/her) is a licensed marriage and family therapist and psychoanalyst. She locates herself as an activist in movements for social justice in all parts of her life and work. She is a native New Yorker and lives and works in Oakland, California. Judy is Luz’s mom.

Luz Blumenfeld (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. Third generation from Oakland, California, they currently live and work in Portland, OR where they are in their final year of the MFA in Art + Social Practice program at Portland State University. This summer, they published their first book, More and More Often, a collection of notes and pictures. You can see more of their work here. Luz is also Judy’s daughter (there’s no good gender neutral term for being someone’s adult child).

Keeping the Keepsakes Alive

“So I take it upon myself as a responsibility, as my duty, as an Indian person of origin, that I as an artist need to speak up. I need to raise my voice against the ongoing oppression because my fellow artists, my brothers and sisters back home do not have the privilege and the freedom to do so currently.”

Simi Malhotra

On October 13th, an emotionally charged and energetic protest resonated through the streets of Portland, summoning individuals to stand together and raise their voices against the relentless atrocities and violence inflicted upon the people of Palestine. In my mere month-long stay in Portland, I found myself navigating the intricacies of the city’s public life and culture. As a newcomer to this land, I reveled in the liberating embrace of freedom of speech.

I stood here at my first protest gathering in Portland, a rare occasion in a time when the space for dissent was rapidly diminishing. Shyly clutching a placard, I hesitated to join the impassioned chants, acutely aware of my unfamiliarity with the city and its people. 

A voice cut through the energy, calling my name—or so I thought. I turned, and my gaze met another woman, her countenance mirroring my own features. She stood boldly, fearlessly, raising a hand painted banner. It was then that I realized the call was intended for her. She noticed my confusion and introduced herself, saying, “Hi, I am Simi,”. I replied, “We have the same name!” This unfolded my first encounter with Simi Malhotra, a performance artist in Portland, whose roots trace back to New Delhi, much like my own. However, her artistic journey in Portland had started two decades prior to mine, holding a more intimate connection with the city’s public life and culture.

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Simeen Anjum: Good Evening Simmi! Long time no see.

Simi Malhotra: Good evening Simmi! Yes. :) (We literally have the same names if pronounced by someone from Delhi)

Simeen: So would you like to begin by introducing yourself for my readers?

Simi: Sure. Hi readers! My name is Simi Malhotra. I was born and raised in Delhi, India, same as Simeen who is here with me, and I moved to Portland 20 years ago when I married my husband who is a native Portlander. Growing up the first art that I learned was Kathak (A classical Indian dance). I practiced Kathak from the age of six to eleven,  and then I switched to Odissi and I learned Odissi (a dance-drama genre of performance art, where the artist(s) and musicians play out a story, a spiritual message or devotional poem) . I got trained with the Mahapatra family lineage. My guru’s name was Shri Dilip Shankar Mahapatra. And I learned that and I represented my school, my college, and my university, and my state in many state and national level championships, and I won a few also. In addition to that, I write poetry. I also sing— Sufi, Classical, harmoniums, and vocals. I also do Madhubani paintings.

Simeen: Wow! I am very curious about your poetry. Do you write in English?

Simi: I write in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, a mix of the three languages. I am interested in delving deeper into understanding the complexity of human emotions. 

Simeen: Can you share an emotion that you’ve been engaged with in your work recently?

Simi: Yes, you see we’ve grown accustomed to encountering news about deaths through cold numbers and statistics, yet each number represents a unique world, an entire universe of individual experiences. Lately, I’ve been experiencing this realization more often. When we look at stuff happening in the world, it’s easy to say something like “so many people died,” or “so many got hurt.” But for those folks, and their families and friends, those are their whole worlds. It just makes you think about how life is both temporary and permanent at the same time. And how something we might see as no big deal can be the most important thing in the world to someone else.

Simeen: Absolutely, I completely get what you’re saying. It’s like we’re bombarded with news about death and violence all the time, and it can make us a bit desensitized. We see these numbers and figures, and it’s hard to really grieve or truly empathize with the people behind them. It’s kind of sad when you think about it.

It reminds me of something Susan Sontag wrote in her work Regarding the Pain of Others, “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” It’s a powerful reminder that just being aware of the pain and suffering around us isn’t enough; we need to take meaningful action to make a difference and truly feel empathy.

Simi: Right.

Simeen: I am also interested  in the fact that you have been doing all these various traditional forms of Indian art. Can you describe the transition you went through when you relocated to Portland and started practicing these art forms in a completely different environment? How did this experience contribute to your connection with the local community here?

Simi: I have mixed feelings about all of this, you know. When I started doing this here, I experienced two different kinds of reactions. On one hand, there were folks who were incredibly appreciative and welcoming. They embraced me with open arms, and there was so much warmth, love, and friendship in their approach. That was one side of it. On the other hand, there were also some folks who were pretty ignorant about it all. They either took it humorously and ironically or made fun of it, even going as far as appropriating it.

As an artist, though, this mix of reactions really pushed me to grow. You can’t evolve as an artist without both the positive and negative feedback from your audience. So, it turned into a kind of a constructive challenge for me. The people who were warm and welcoming helped me expand my circle of friends and acquaintances. But with those who didn’t get it, I saw it as a personal mission to educate them in a gentle way, without belittling or demeaning them. It was all about sharing my culture, my roots, my traditions. I knew that if I lost patience or reacted the same way they did, then there wouldn’t be any difference between us. So, it became an opportunity to grow as an artist, whether by gracefully accepting praise or by gently educating others about our culture in a constructive and informative manner.

Simeen: I can see that you’ve really created a wonderful place for yourself here with the work you’ve been doing. Do you think it would be any easier for someone like me, who’s recently moved to Portland, to draw inspiration from your journey? Or do you think I would likely face similar challenges to what you encountered many years ago when you first arrived? I’m curious about what you think has changed over the years in terms of inclusivity and how people of color like us are carving out their space in Portland.

Simi: Well, since I moved here, there have been some changes, but there are still areas that require significant work, and I’ve been actively involved in that ongoing effort. It’s not just me; it’s all people of color, especially those from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Within our cultures, there are various subcultures. For instance, I’m from India, so within the broader Indian subcontinent, there are further subcultures, and I’m a Punjabi. 

For you, it might mean you’re part of all those larger identities, and then, instead of Punjabi, you identify as Muslim, right? These subcultures affect how people interact with us and what they think of us. Almost two decades ago, the challenges were different because people weren’t as aware. Thanks to social media, a lot of things have become more common for people to see, and there’s greater understanding.

Furthermore, with movements like Black Lives Matter and the increased emphasis on inclusivity and open dialogues, conversations have opened up between white individuals and people of color, as well as with other minorities. This dialogue has resulted in many improvements in various ways. Of course, there’s still much work to be done, but you’re going to face your own unique set of challenges, depending on the specific art form you want to pursue and build a career in.

The good news is that you’ll have more open dialogues. People will be eager to listen to you, and you’ll be provided with space to share your experiences. When I first arrived, I often had to create that space for myself, and it didn’t always work out. But I couldn’t take it too much to heart because the fight had to continue. So, you’re a bit more fortunate in that people are listening, educating themselves, and making an effort to understand and give space to those from minority backgrounds, allowing them to share their stories with the world.

Simeen: That’s great to hear, and I’m excited about creating my own space as well. Could you share your insights on how practicing these diverse traditional Indian art forms has influenced your path in terms of forming your identity and finding your space in this journey?

Simi: Definitely, these art forms serve as my anchor, keeping me grounded and deeply connected not just to the broader world, but especially to my community, culture, and roots. When you have a job, a family, and the demands of daily life, it’s all too easy to either forget or use the excuse of not having enough time for things that are inherently and culturally very, very important to you.

These art forms help me stay in touch with and preserve our traditions and cultures, whether it’s participating in festivals or establishing community partnerships that celebrate rising above differences in origin, beliefs, and backgrounds. For instance, they enable me to celebrate Eid with my Pakistani friends, and they, in turn, celebrate Diwali with me. Art forms are what initially connected us, and they continue to strengthen these bonds. And, it’s worth noting that Bollywood also plays a significant role in this connection.

Simeen: How do you feel when you read the news about your homeland and see how things are rapidly changing? And that you might not have the same kind of freedom for intercultural/interreligious dialogue there among different communities?

Simi: I feel that no matter which art form I dive into here, whether it’s performing or fine arts, I always make it a point to share it with the world that they cannot stop everybody from speaking up or prevent artists from speaking up or expressing themselves through their art, despite all the censorship and surveillance that might be going on there. I know things are difficult back home with increasing attacks on minorities and press freedom and activists. However, the fact that we’re living abroad and not directly in the midst of it grants us a unique kind of privilege. We’re beyond the reach of those who might want to silence us. This, in turn, places a significant responsibility on our shoulders. It means we can take action without worrying about what the consequences are going to be. So I take it upon myself as a responsibility, as my duty, as an Indian person of origin, that I as an artist need to speak up. I need to raise my voice against the ongoing oppression because my fellow artists, my brothers and sisters back home do not have the privilege and the freedom to do so currently.

Simeen: I am so glad I met you here, you know. I feel really comfortable just knowing that you are around.

Simi: You know, I used to celebrate all the Indian festivals outside, but now I see them as a unique opportunity for community building, especially for those who are away from home. I love to host gatherings where we can come together, feel a sense of security, and revel in our culture. I’m actually in the process of organizing a Diwali party, and I’d love to have you there. The aim is to foster camaraderie and strengthen our community bonds. However, it’s quite a challenge because we’re all leading busy lives, often dealing with our own share of ups and downs.

I was wondering if there might be someone who shares a similar mindset and perhaps has a bit of flexibility in their schedule. Teaming up with such a person could allow us to plan something special together.

Simeen: Definitely! I am excited. Can you share with us what you have been up to these days?

Simi: Right now, I’m in the process of writing. Mostly I’m journaling, which is kind of free flow narrative because of what’s happening, because I just don’t want whatever feelings that I’m having to just go in a vacuum, get lost in space. So that is why I’m trying to write those down in whatever form they come. I’m not trying to be too hard on myself for it to take the form of a story or an essay or a poem, but I’m just trying to let the words flow out of it. And when all of this is over,  I can look back, relate and work on making a form out of them. Right now, I need to just feel.

In addition to that, I am in the process of designing a tote bag collection. I am working with canvas tote bags with hand painted Madhubani motifs. I also just finished a documentary with my friends called The World of Henna, which I helped them shoot in India. I have just finished doing the voiceover for that. Those are the three current things that I’m working on.

Simeen: All right, that sounds great. So I spotted you the other day at a protest demanding a ceasefire on the ongoing violence in Palestinians. Where else can I find you in Portland?

Simi: You can see me at most of the protests for human rights that will be taking place anywhere!  I perform at various places in Portland, I do poetry and dance.

But other than that you can spot me at any of the diaspora congregations, whether that’s the Diwali Bazaar or if there’s an Eid or Diwali Bazaar,I would be there. And you can spot me at Bollywood nights at places around the city because I am Punjabi and I love dancing. I work at the Portland Center for the Arts. So all of the five big theaters in downtown Portland; The Keller, Schnitz, Winnix, Newmark, and Brunish. I work as a house manager at those five theaters. So you can see me at one of the performances that are happening over there. One of them coming up is Chelsea Handler and then Zakir Hussain is playing later this month. And other than that, I work at the community convention center.

I also run my radio show in Portland, serving the Indian diaspora and the broader South Asian community. I curate different playlists that resonate with our cultural experiences. I mostly play folk music of the southeast region of Asia and try to create a sense of unity, building a community where individuals from diverse backgrounds can connect through the soulful melodies of South Asian music.

Simeen: Thank you Simi, for giving me your time for this interview. Here’s my last question, If you could have anything from anywhere in the world for dinner tonight, what would it be?

Simi: Oh my God! Here’s two things. Khatta Meetha Pethe ki Sabzi with Bedmi, the Bharmapuri with the Khatta Meetha Petha, with the big achar from Mathura or Vrindavan.

Simeen: I haven’t had it, but I love how it sounds.

Simi: And the second one is the Amritsari Kulcha bread with nothing but just, like, a big dollop of white butter on it. The one with potato stuffing. And a big big big glass of lassi.

Simeen: Perhaps we can attempt cooking it ourselves sometime if we get together.

Simi: For sure.

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Simeen Anjum (she/her) is a social practice artist and cultural activist from New Delhi, India. Locating herself in the disquiet of state suppression, surveillance, personal and collective trauma, she attempts to document,cherish and archive the smallest fragments of ordinary life. Through her work, she hopes to provide alternatives to established socio-political narratives. She works in direct interaction with her community and surroundings.

Simi Malhotra (she/her), a native of Delhi, India, has been a dynamic presence in Portland for the past two decades. Rooted in classical Indian dance, Simi transitioned from Kathak to Odissi, representing her school, college, and state in numerous championships. Alongside her dance prowess, Simi is a poet, singer of Sufi and classical genres, and a skilled performer.She also practices Madhubani, a style of Indian folk painting. Currently serving as the House Manager at the Portland Center for the Arts, she’s a multidisciplinary artist with a deep commitment to her art and social activism.

A Community is a Rocking Chair

“For me, art is not an item that just decorates. It’s experience, it’s more about time. You are offering time to share with the community, and you’re gaining the time and experience of being with others.”

-Limei Lai

I met Limei Lai at the exhibition of her latest piece on mixed identities. In her installation, she mixes traditional Chinese embroidery, modern embroidery, fabric collage, photographs, and woven containers to bring forth a conversation about her gender expectations, growing up, and creating community through art. 

In my practice, I too have used textiles and crafting to facilitate spaces for people to share and connect with their intuition through embroidery workshops while also exploring the meaning we can find in objects in our everyday lives. I, too, believe in the power of storytelling as a community-building experience. 

Because of this, I was drawn to the fact that Lai invites her audience to share their own experiences with internal and external expectations by making art objects themselves. 

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Adela Cardona: Can you tell me about the expectations you grew up with in China and how those show up in the piece, Mixed Identity, in Portland Textile Month?

Limei Lai: When I think about mixed identity, I think about my personal experience. When I grew up, I eventually realized I wasn’t what was expected by my parents. They wanted me to be a boy, because I was born in China. 

Throughout my childhood, I remember my dad said things like, you’re so dumb, don’t go to that school, you’re not smart, just take this job. Then I got married and moved to the US and I feel like I’m not meeting the expectations put on me again.

This old Chinese mentality shows up in the piece in the mix of traditional versus modern embroidery. Traditional embroidery has symbolic objects, like my name, which is Winter Blossom; whereas modern embroidery is the most abstract. 

Adela: Why use embroidery?

Limei: It’s based on my childhood memory. My grandma did embroidery until she was 80 years old. I grew up in a village where most of the women do embroidery. It was rather commercial, but then what they were making was very traditional. So they were using thicker threads and sewing on linen. 

They had a lot of traditional methods that were very time-consuming. They did it in this place called Women’s House, it was a place for the community to go and do embroidery together. A bunch of ladies spending time together, that’s how I grew up. That’s how I connect. 

Adela: Is that why the idea of a community is so important in your work? 

Limei: Yeah. I think it’s sort of symbolic in a way that our objects are containers for this togetherness. I thought, “What am I going to create for myself?” But then, the thought becomes what do I want? I feel like I want a community. So you go inside and look at yourself and eventually say, okay, I’m fine with loneliness. I’m fine with this kind of quietness and I’m fine with not having a lot of normal things like a husband, a bunch of good friends, a large community.

But I do want to have this community that makes me feel like a rocking chair. I can sit here, it’s a really comfortable environment. It’s a loving, caring environment. If I want that, if I want to be included, then the first move is to include others. So my personal practice is an act of including other people; an act of putting myself into the community. 

For me, art is not an item that just decorates. It’s experience, it’s more about time. You are offering time to share with the community, and you’re gaining the time and experience of being with others. The end result is having everyone together, including each other, sharing some of our most tender moments, and opening up to our vulnerabilities.

Adela: So this is why, in your latest piece, you created egg-shaped containers out of fabric where people could also put their own expectations?

Limei: Yes. There were two ways to interact with it; self-guided or with me. We create some artwork and then they include it in the eggs. Really, what I want is to encourage people to express themselves, to have a conversation with others, it is more important than the final object. 

The object they choose has a value in itself, yet the value changes because we seal some of our time together into this object; we put in our understanding and memory. To me, all this energy already exists. You preserved a beautiful moment and you created that community right at that beautiful time. You finished the circle, it’s all in you, it’s all done. I created something for people to experience and to feel.

Adela: I noticed you have worked with containers before, like pockets, why are they so important in your work?

Limei:  You see, textiles can be a container for memories, just as motherhood is a reminder that our bodies can be a container for civilization. Your body creates the next generation. You create the best artwork of your life and they’re very imperfect, but they’re perfect because they are the future. It is also connected to how I was brought up in a community-focused kind of lifestyle in China. It’s the idea that a community is a container and a shelter for people. When I came here, art became a container for history and storytelling. Then an object becomes the container for artists. It’s a relational thing that exists between the world and the person, and the idea and the person. I find myself making a lot of containers. Partly because people want to be private, and keep something hidden, and partly because it needs to be safe.

Adela: And this play of showing and hiding, it shows up again in this piece. 

Limei: Yes. In terms of the material choice in this one, I was focusing on creating layers, the sheer cheesecloth over objects, contrasted with the wire. This idea of complexity in people, in humans. There is a Chinese writer called Ai Ling Zhang. She died in the United States, but she got super famous at age 30. She was writing novels. In the end, she says, “life is a luxury fur coat, but with all those fleas and bedbugs and all sorts of yucky things inside. So if you open it up, it’s very real.” So that’s why I did that fabric collage, with the idea of seeing through the surface. 

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Adela Cardona (She/ Her) is a Colombian storyteller, writer, content maker & event producer, dealing with the topics of sustainable fashion, mental health, and gender issues. She majored in Communications and Literature. She is the founder of “Mujeres No Graciosas,” an open mic and the podcast of Colombian creators, “La Bombillera.”

Limei Lai (She/Her) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator who enjoys working with paint, fabric, and clay. Her themes depict her fear and love of Pacific Northwest life and Asian women’s immigrant intergenerational stories. Togetherness and inclusion are her messages. Community engagement performance installation is her passion. She believes that art not only critiques, questions, and reflects, but also celebrates, thus bridging good changes.

Much Love to You Dearest Gilian

“I looked closely into the bushes in front of me, locating the patterns of the leaves, and into the racing rivers with repeating patterns in motion. I was losing myself in this chaos and a new world opened up.”

-Violet Baxter

One of the greatest gifts of my childhood was spending a few times each year in my Great Aunt Violet’s studio. Part of it was spending time with her paintings, and a lot of it was also listening to her music, eating her snacks, watching her dance, and hearing stories from her life in downtown New York City. We looked at her work and I listened to her musings on color, nature, light, memory, and family. After my mother died in January of 2021, I was touched by a deep and ever-present longing for the soft feeling of maternal hands. Visiting Violet, who isn’t related to my mother by blood, I still see gentle glimmers of my mother in the shape of her eyes, the texture of her skin, her loving warmth, and her familiar stories. I had to, in some way, mark the space we share, a holy present bolstered by a lifetime of visits and lineage. The title of this conversation is how Violet has often concluded our visits, so I felt a benevolent sweetness when I heard the words come out at the end of this interview, which took place after a recent overnight stay at her Manhattan apartment. 

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Gilian Rappaport: How did you become an artist?

Violet Baxter: It’s like asking what it’s like to be me. From my earliest memory, I made pictures. It was how I communicated. I lived through my drawings. In the years that I was not painting, I was a fish out of water. 

My fourth grade teacher, Evelyn Licht, was an artist who connected with me and became my lifelong friend. When I was 13, she arranged for my first job on Saturdays designing cake boxes and later helped on my first exhibitions.

I was the oldest of five in a lower middle class family in the Bronx (NY). I attended night classes at Hunter College. Two years later my high school classmate at HS Industrial Art, Eva Hesse, invited me to the Green Camp, the campus of Cooper Union (NJ). She was already a student and invited me to spend a weekend with her there. That’s when I found out that Cooper Union was a scholarship school. A major day in my life was when I got the envelope that said I was accepted. Needing a job, I applied to night school and happily attended there for five years, gaining a certificate with honors in 1960.

Gilian: I wish I could have visited your first studio. Will you tell me about it?

Violet: In the 60s, I had a studio on the roof of a factory building at 47 E.12th Street in Manhattan. It was an unheated, 30 square foot shack with four windows and a skylight. The halls were mostly unlit, and very, very dark. It was a high walk-up so not many people would make it up there. Once, at about two in the morning after working at the studio, I stepped on someone who was sleeping on the steps. In 1962, preparing for a solo show at Brata, a Tenth Street Gallery, I schlepped many large paintings up and down the stairs, a demonstration of my energy. The studio faced a courtyard and looked into Willam de Kooning’s studio. One darkened day I stood on the fire escape and there he was. We stared at each other until the sky brightened.

Gilian: Will you describe the evolution of your work leading up to when you started painting the New York City Greenmarket Farmers Market?

Violet: From Cooper U, my paintings were large and abstract, often referring to childhood memories of walking through the woods at Baxter’s Corners, in Monticello, New York. My father was born there and it was where my family spent summers until I was 14. 

Later, in my studio at Union Square, I turned to realism, mostly using pastel to try to describe what was in front of me, the wall and my window. The challenge, since it was just a wall, was how to make it look vertical on the flat surface without perspectival devices. I wanted to convey the visceral feeling of looking at the wall, and what it felt like. For the next few years, I was obsessed with walls, windows and the view across the street into other windows.

Violet: Eventually I began what I thought was impossible: depicting the Greenmarket and daily events as seen from the other windows facing east. It turned out to be a major part of my work continuing until I moved my studio to Long Island City. The architect, Barry Benepe, the originator of New York City’s farmers markets, saw my work and brought me to The Council on the Environment of New York and their activities. I exhibited my work at a few of their celebrations, where I met some of our past mayors and other dignitaries. Mayor Koch was the most fun. Once they seated me at Abe Beam’s table. He said ‘Who are you?’ very disdainfully, and I said, ‘I’m an artist, that’s my work’. He was disinterested and annoyed. These funny things happened over the years working with the Greenmarket.

Gilian: Your work has changed several times throughout your life. Where do those changes come from? 

Violet: Serious demands have limited my work over the years. Always, when returning to my work, I was changed, thus a change in my vision, like when I became a mother, my energies were redirected. For example, while my daughter Mara was growing up, I did complete a series of mother and child paintings that had a lot of angst. Each time away there was a change of focus. 

Gilian: How do you see nature in your work? 

Violet: Being in nature is where I feel my smallness. It overwhelms me. I’ve mostly lived in the city. In 1996 at the Vermont Studio Center, it took me two weeks to comprehend what I was even looking at. I made paintings that were banal, something was badly missing. After two weeks I gave up trying. I looked closely into the bushes in front of me, locating the patterns of the leaves, and into the racing rivers with repeating patterns in motion. I was losing myself in this chaos and a new world opened up. I made more work in the remaining two weeks there than I did in the preceding year. It was a profound experience, and it changed the direction of my work.

Gilian: How do you feel about social forms of art? Socially conscious art or participatory art?

Collaborative work can be really exciting. You get that mostly in theater. When I was a teenager I did a stage backdrop for my cousin who was an opera singer. I’m currently a member of a gallery in Chelsea, NYC, an artists collective, and the Federation of Modern Painters & Sculptors. But mostly I look for authentic, personal expression. I see interesting outcomes from collaborations. More minds working on the same kind of thing.

In terms of impact, painters, through the centuries have worked with social commentary. I think of how Goya’s “The Disasters Of War” (1810–1820) can really make you cry.

Gilian: What music do you listen to? 

Violet: I did calligraphy listening to Gregorian chants. I love classical music. Of course, Bach, Chopin, Baroque music; pop songs from the 60s, The Beatles, Joan Baez, and all those wonderful socially-conscious singers. Contemporary musicians that echo nature with electronics. I like the liturgical, mystical music of Arvo Part, the Estonian composer. And then again, I love African rhythms. As a kid living in the Bronx, there was a radio station that played Chinese music that fascinated me.

Gilian: What artists do you admire?

Violet: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, Goya, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Bonnard, Paul Klee, Balthus, Mauricio Lasansky; De Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Max Beckmann, Maurice Prendergast, Rezika, Phillip Guston, Wayne Thiebaud, Graham Nickson, Stanley Lewis, Trevor Winkfield, and many more; Hokusai, Utamaro, Benin etc. Too many to list.

Children’s drawings are interesting. I had a book on children’s drawings from around age seven, around the world in different countries. How similar they were in the way they perceived things, that development was really, really interesting.  

Gilian: Do you like to dance?  

Violet:  I love to dance. If I can’t get outside and walk, I dance. Many of my models have been dancers, and my drawings pick up from their movements.

Gilian: Have you taken any memorable movement classes?  

Violet: My dance teacher, Elaine Summers, recommended me to her teacher, Carols Speads, who taught breathing with very slow motion. She kept the classes small, since this breathing would actually release toxins. The slowness appeared to allow for clear thinking.

Gilian: What are you interested in now? 

Violet: My recent work is spontaneous play, a stream of consciousness, surreal, just letting it happen. It’s all on paper, all small.

Gilian: How are you spending your time these days?

Violet Baxter: My sister is very ill, so my time is divided with assisting her. I’m going now to be with her. I’m starting to learn about gardening. Every other weekend I spend with Richard, whose house is close to Manhasset Bay on Long Island. I planted a tiny pot of daisies there and it quickly became a bush. It is very thrilling.

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Violet Baxter was born in New York City in 1934. She attended night schools at Hunter College, Cooper Union, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and the New York Studio School. She worked as a cartographer and calligrapher, taught calligraphy in a special program for Pratt Institute (1970’s), and subbed as drawing instructor at The National Academy of Design. In 1960, she was part of the 10th Street Gallery scene. She was elected to the board of NY Artists Equity Inc (1991–2015), The Fine Arts Federation of NY (2004–2009) and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors (1994–present), was an honorary member of The National Arts Club (1999-2012). She received medals from the Audubon Artists Annuals, and the Jane Peterson Memorial Award; The Richard Florsheim Art Fund Grant (2002); and the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award (2021). Her work has been reproduced and reviewed in publications including The New Criterion, Art and Antiques, The Pastel Journal, Contemporary American Oil Painting (Jilin Fine Arts Publishing, Changchun, China, 2000); Hyperallergic, etc. Her works are in the collections of The Crisp Museum (SE Missouri State University), Savannah College of Art & Design, Museum of the City of NY, Council of the Environment (NYC), and Consolidated Edison Co NY.

Gili Rappaport was born in New York City in 1988. Gili is a naturalist, educator, curator, and designer working in social and visual forms. Their interdisciplinary practice is place-based and often in natural contexts. They co-authored Field Guide To The Northeast (The Outside Institute, 2017–2021) and co-organized Ralph’s Neon Oasis Beach Party (Jacob Riis Park, 2022). They founded their design and research studio, The Workspace of Gilian Rappaport, in 2016. Their work has been shown at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Parallax Gallery, and Dream Clinic Project Space, and is in the permanent collection of KSMoCA and Special Collections and University Archives at Portland State University. In 2024, they will publish their book They Call Me The Mayor at Riis Beach, and their book of interviews through KSMoCA. Gili is nonbinary and of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. They live in Portland, Oregon. | art projects: www.gilian.space | design projects: www.gilianrappaport.space | @gilnotjill    

We Can’t Extricate Culture From Liberation

“Art offers us another way, another possible reality. Art opens up the beauty inside of us and the ugliness inside of us, so that we can confront our conditions and our situation.”

-Jasmine Araujo

The beginning of the pandemic was a tough time for everyone, but in a specific way in New Orleans. A town built on outdoor interaction and intersections, creative levity, and joy became silenced and dull. I walked around my neighborhood, Bayou St John, got a dog, and drank too much. But a bright spot appeared in the form of Southern Solidarity, a mutual aid collective of artists and organizers that delivered meals to houseless people in New Orleans. The project inspired many people with secure housing to act by cooking meals, doing drop offs, signing people up for government services, and advocating for equitable resources for folks living in precarity. In sleek black and white photos, t-shirts, and promos, the group seemed to strip away any complexes one might have about getting involved in a mutual aid project and urged you to just jump in. In this interview, I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Jasmine Araujo, the founder of Southern Solidarity, about how organizing is an art form, how to get many people on the same page, and what revolution looks like in the everyday. 

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Lou Blumberg: Thank you so much for agreeing to do an interview with me. I just started an MFA program out of Portland State in Art and Social Practice. In thinking about what those things mean to me, I immediately thought of your project, Southern Solidarity. Living in New Orleans during the pandemic was super intense, for, as you know, so many reasons, and I feel like what y’all were doing was so inspiring to so many people. It was really such a principled political project, as well as one with aesthetic components. So I was curious to hear you describe it, how it came about, any takeaways or lessons, and where it’s at now.

Jasmine Araujo: We started in New Orleans at the height of the pandemic. I was going for a lot of walks and noticing that a lot of houseless people were coming up to me because they had no idea what was going on, and it seemed cruel. So we started Southern Solidarity with the intention of keeping houseless people informed and keeping them fed. A lot of the shelters were not feeding as regularly, or they were feeding within one site, which is dangerous during the pandemic. So we were, and are, delivering food directly to houseless people. We were delivering food every single day. Once the 2020 rebellions began we were participating in those–closing down bridges, opening abandoned buildings for houseless folks, and making sure that they had a shelter. We also protested, and were able to relocate a hundred people into housing by pressuring the government. We continue to meet with government officials to demand that they open up affordable housing in New Orleans.

Lou: Awesome. Do you see it as an art project? Do you see it as a mutual aid project? What sort of categorization would you give it?

Jasmine: That’s a great question. It’s definitely a liberation project that includes mutual aid and survival programs as part of the way we function day to day. But really, we talk about ourselves as a liberation project in conjunction with houseless people. So it’s a mutual liberation project together. And I think that one thing that’s different about Southern Solidarity, that ties into this intersectionality in our politics, is that a lot of artists are part of Southern Solidarity. A lot of musicians and visual artists are part of the project, and we find ways to make those connections even stronger through art auctions and through fundraisers that incorporate the artists so they are inspired by the work that they do with us. I think that’s where the alignment is. 

Lou: Yeah, totally. I’d love to hear more about that. What does it mean for artists to be the ones who are part of that liberatory project?

Jasmine:  It plays a really important role in liberation projects. In the mainstream, we’re trained to see the world from the eyes of the oppressor, and art offers us another way, another possible reality. Art opens up the beauty inside of us and the ugliness inside of us, so that we can confront our conditions and our situation. And I think that a lot of artists who are members in Southern Solidarity see that and have been inspired to kind of activate their work through Southern Solidarity. Other organizations are doing amazing work but maybe they’re not targeted towards getting artists on board because there’s such a focus on researching Marxism and reading. And that’s important! But we’re coming to our research from the lens of art. For instance, one of the first consciousness raising events that we had was reading a book called We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85. It was solely about the interconnections and intersections between art and politics for these women who were organizing. Their liberation work was completely tied to art, and there were artists and collectives that would work together to create a vision for the liberation movement.

Lou: I really appreciate naming that because we just did a unit in my History of Art and Social Practice class about the Black Arts movement. I had, of course, learned about the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, and the revolutionary side of that, but I had never heard about the art structure behind that. And I’m craving to find that in today’s world as well. Who are some visionary artists or movements that you feel are painting that sort of, like, beautiful liberatory potential that we as activists, as artists can be working towards? Which is a totally long winded way of asking, do you see that sort of art movement informing justice work today? 

Jasmine: I think there’s not as many artist collectives as in the past, like with Leroy Jones, with Max Roach, with Quincy Church. I think that those pockets of artists that we had, that were all engaged in liberatory work, have shifted recently. But I do think that there are individual artists that are doing great work. There’s Noname, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, she’s doing great work. There’s Aja Monet, who’s a poet who does a lot of revolutionary work. I think that the function of artistic technique and of the Black aesthetic is to make the goal of communication and liberation more possible. What these artists are doing is that they’re communicating the kinds of visions that they have for the world on a mass level in an artistic way.

Lou: I love Noname’s book club as an artistic and political practice. That’s so inspiring. If there isn’t a collective of people, what do you think is gained by just having people who are working in their own ways towards the same goal?

Jasmine: You know what? I don’t wanna say that these artists are working individually, cause they’re not actually–Noname has her book club and Aja Monet works with a lot of other activists and artists. She does a lot of work with Robin D. G. Kelly. But I think that there is something so powerful about forming a large collective so that we can begin to kind of peel away at the celebrity cult that America is ingrained in. I think we need to tear down as much as possible these celebrity cults that we establish. I think having a lot of voices in an artist collective can help us be more of a non hierarchical group that is embodying the kind of socialist practices and abolitionist, anarchist practices that we want to see in the world. 

Lou: I’m curious to know more of what you’re up to now. I saw that you’re at NYU in an MFA program, right?

Jasmine: Yes, I’m in my last semester of my MFA Program. I’m teaching and I’m still doing Southern Solidarity. We started a branch here and we go out every week. We go to protests together and we’re still organizing as strongly as we were during the pandemic.

Lou: I wanna get into the nitty gritty of how you do that. I’d love to hear more about how you navigate the decision making part of organizing and how you’re putting your politics into practice.

Jasmine: I think at the very crux of our organization, what sets us apart from other organizations, is that everyone on our team has access to the funds. We do grant writing as a team, and then we are able to get funds from various sources, either private donors or from the government, or from other nonprofits. We are on Open Collective, and I really hope that other organizations start getting on Open. It’s such a great site. All our funds are moved in there. There’s a pool for anyone on there in the organization to use as long as they show receipts; it holds everyone accountable. Everyone knows the budget. Everyone knows how much money we have left. Everyone can say, hey, I have this idea, can we get a bulk order of pants for houseless people this week? And then that person orders it and shows the receipt, and there you go. Also houseless people can say, hey, we need Narcans this week, and we’ll go from our pool of money, and we’ll get Narcans. And so everyone, the community members and non-members, houseless people and non houseless people are engaged in a shared vision with resources that we have.

Lou: I love that. That’s like a mini participatory budget project. 

Jasmine: Exactly. It’s really, really helpful and then, beyond that, when we are making decisions, we usually have a group chat or we’ll have a Zoom meeting to get our heads together around something, and to get to a common ground. The biggest challenges are kind of ideological differences, even amongst the left. One of the ways we mitigate that is by having a lot of consciousness raising events that help us get on the same page around some important things that align us more closely to our vision of liberation. So we’ll have a Black anarchist come and speak to us. We’ll have someone who’s trained in Black socialism come and speak to us. And in that way we can come together. 

Lou: Having a shared political understanding can be so important. I’m curious to know about how you navigate your days as an artist and as an organizer. How do you find balance for yourself and your own practice? 

Jasmine: I think last semester I was teaching 2 days a week. I was going to Southern Solidarity every Saturday, doing grant writing every Sunday, and doing fiction writing any other time that I wasn’t doing that, which was about 4 hours a day. It was definitely overwhelming but it was totally doable. I really enjoyed having those different pockets of my day.

Lou: How did you come to find your creative practice? Was it always something that you feel like you had? How did that evolve?

Jasmine:  I think that any time I have been at a really low point in life, the only thing that has gotten me out of bed has been the urge to write. If we think of ourselves as units of power, I think that I’m really activated when I think about the power that I have with writing, whether fiction or nonfiction. That is just something that I’ve observed that motivates me. I hope that can help someone. 

Lou: What are you writing now? If I can ask.

Jasmine: I’m working on a book that is loosely inspired by Kalief Browder‘s life. He was the 16 year old who was placed at Rikers for about 4 years without being charged with anything, And then, when he finally got out without ever having a trial, he committed suicide. I think that’s such an important story that’s not often told nationally. And so I wanted to kind of add some creative fiction to it.

Lou: That sounds super powerful. In the program, I’m learning so much about a push in some areas of the art world for art to have this socially engaged component. And I’m coming from a socially engaged place, being involved in anti surveillance work in New Orleans, and anti Zionist work, and I’m clarifying how that fits with my own art practice. I’m curious how other people see this: is activism work inherently an art practice?

Jasmine: I think that ties into the first question you asked. I think, yeah, you can’t really have organizing without thinking creatively, without breaking away from norms. And I think the only thing that helps us do that is art. I think with organizing we are engaging in a narrative of a community. That’s storytelling. So yeah, absolutely, I think organizing is definitely artistic. There are so many ways to kind of think through inspiring people to want to activate and self-actualize. So how do we do that?  At Southern Solidarity we had so many amazing artists. And I’m just thinking about how they thought about organizing and all the fresh ideas that they brought to the space. I’m thinking specifically about Spirit McIntyre. They are an amazing musician. And they engage in a lot of narrative work and helped us kind of figure out the culture of Southern Solidarity. And I think that artists do so much with culture, and we can’t extricate culture from liberation. 

Lou: I love that narrative change work that they’re doing of, “we have all this money, why don’t people have what they need?” It’s getting outside of the “deficit” way of thinking, right? Meaning, thinking that our societal issues are because we don’t have enough resources, which is totally false. Because America is actually a very abundant land. Resources are being taken away from people, even though they exist. So juicy. So, so juicy. Is there anything you’re curious to ask me?

Jasmine: Yeah, tell me about your artistic practice. 

Lou: It’s definitely new and evolving. I feel similarly to you, like in moments where I felt super low or hopeless, the only thing that feels like it can inspire me is making little sculptures of things, or doing little water colors, and that’s sort of how I got to an artistic practice during the pandemic. I definitely didn’t think of myself as an artist before that. I had been involved with Eye on Surveillance here in New Orleans and with the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, and I was feeling challenged– how are we getting more people into this wider movement for justice? And, how are we selling our vision of the future that we’re really trying to build here? And I think what both of those movements have in common is this idea of safety; what does it mean to really feel safe? 

Jasmine: You know, I was just having that conversation of safety. And again, here’s where artists can come in and show us alternate visions of safety that don’t include police, that maybe even rest on indigenous ways of keeping each other safe.

Lou: Yes, I love that. I’m curious if you have specific examples of indigenous thinking on safety.

Jasmine: I think a lot about longhouses in indigenous tribes where you had 40 people in the same home. And I think about what kind of safety that must have created, what kind of levels of accountability that must have created without having this police invention, which began, I believe, in the 1800s in Britain, and then was brought over to the Americas, but always as a vestige of slavery. The fact that people even think of something like police as safety when it comes out of such a violent place is wild to me. 

Lou: Yes, absolutely. This is so at the top of my mind right now, of course, seeing how many Jewish folks believe that a violent nation state is the epitome of their safety, even though it’s making everyone less safe, especially Palestinian people who are under military rule. So thinking of that, how are we selling that vision of a sense of community that’s so much bigger than an identity, or a religion, you know? That’s really top of mind for me right now.

Jasmine: And how can we tease away at the ideas of nation state, which itself can be a violent idea, right? That is so deeply ingrained in our ability to navigate the world. It feels impossible to imagine something different. But there are some great writers exploring this idea. My good friend William C. Anderson is doing a lot of writing on kind of unpacking the nation state. He wrote a book called No Nation on No Map that’s totally great and investigates the legacy of Black anarchy. 

Lou: That’s sort of what drove me to apply to this program, wanting to really think of art as a way to see different futures and bring people into movements. And the classic Toni Cade Bambara, “make the revolution irresistible.” It’s a journey to figure out how to do that; I think it’s a balance between meeting the material conditions of folks, like what Southern Solidarity does, and then getting people who are privileged in this current setup, you know, like white people, my people, to get them to be like, this isn’t actually working for you, and to sort of unearth that and say, you have a stake in this completely, and your soul has a stake in this work.

Jasmine: That’s such a great way of putting it. It is definitely a balancing act. And I think this ties into what you were asking about social practice. What Southern Solidarity is doing on a daily basis is trying to show the vision in concrete terms. This is what socialism looks like. It looks like a reframing of what motivates us. What motivates us should be care, not profit. And this is what that looks like– taking care of people who are deemed to have no value in society. And whereas art gives us that and can give us that in an abstract way, what is it to reorient. 

Lou: I love putting care at the forefront of what is possible, as we have the resources, especially here in the US. What could it look like if care was actually the first and foremost value that we were foregrounding?

Jasmine:  Exactly. I think I talk to so many people who haven’t quite gotten to the left yet, and I think what I hear the most from them is that they’re saying they don’t believe it’s possible. They’re resigned to the present reality, where we’re fighting, where there’s wars, where there isn’t enough for everyone, and they believe that that is the way things actually are, that that’s realistic. And that we are just being too idealistic. And then I think art has such a big role in bridging that gap of helping us see it as more realistic.

Lou: Hmm, yeah, I love that. And I think that I’ve felt that from art, too. Yeah, to think that that’s what art can do and to know that that’s what art can do because it did that for me. That is powerful to hold on to. How do you think we get from here to there?

Jasmine: I think there’s always going to be a ‘getting there.’ I don’t think there’s ever going to be a moment where we’ve raised consciousness to the point where we’re happy with it. We’re going to constantly be emerging and growing. And that ties into my idea of revolution. It’s constant. It’s daily.

Lou: I love that. Are there ways for people to plug into Southern Solidarity? Now, if they’re interested, or any advice you’d have for someone who wants to make the world into this place where care is foregrounded?

Jasmine: This country is so good at making us depressed, and then it makes money off of our depression in so many ways. So I think that joining an organization, whether it be Southern Solidarity or any other organization, that kind of speaks to the ways in which you wanna change the world, right? If it’s environmental, then join an organization that focuses on environmental work. And I think that that’s where we get the sense of community that helps us get out of bed. The people that I’ve met through Southern Solidarity have been some of the best people I’ve ever met. Because they share similar values around viewing houseless people as actual people, and we don’t see that a lot around the world, or nationally. So I think joining an organization is first and foremost. To plug into Southern Solidarity, you can hit us up on Instagram and send us a message. If you want to help with grant writing, if you want to cook for us, if you want to distribute food; there are lots of options. If you want to help us with social media, just DM our Instagram.

Lou: Well, thanks! Yeah, I mean, it’s inspiring to talk to you. And hear about your vision for the world, it’s so needed.

Jasmine: Thank you so much. I just love doing interviews that kind of get us more into the abstract space. This was really fun. 

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Jasmine Araujo (she/her) is currently a writer acquiring her MFA in fiction at New York University. She founded Southern Solidarity, a grassroots network that distributes 500 meals daily across two cities. She has written on liberatory mutual aid for Roar Magazine and is currently working on a novel that fictionalizes social death. You can follow her at @jas_araujo

Lou Blumberg (they/them) is an artist, educator, and facilitator living in New Orleans. Their work deals with questions of personal and community safety, vulnerability and intimacy, and how to live a good life. Hire them to mediate your next conflict by emailing them at loub@pdx.edu

Cover

Image from Laura Glazer’s interview with Nina Katchadourian: Gallery attendant looking at Nina’s exhibit at The Morgan Library. Photo by Laura Glazer.

Our cover this spring comes to us from Laura Glazer, who took this picture herself while viewing Nina Katchadourian’s work at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City this year. You can find their interview in this issue under the title, “Listen to the Subject.” We loved this image because it felt so quintessentially “social practice” to us. The focus is the person viewing the work rather than the work alone. It is often those relationships that we are interested in exploring with our work. 

-Luz Blumenfeld

Letter from the Editors

What makes the field of social practice dynamic and compelling is the vastly different themes people bring to the work. Within our cohort of 15, no two practices look the same. Because our medium is the constantly shifting public, the ways our work manifests are always changing. We respond to relationships and social contexts and we all respond differently. This is what makes the field exciting; the ability to engage with and learn from so many different ways of making. In this issue of SoFA Journal, our interviews reach across a variety of subjects. Olivia DelGandio gives us an inside view of the Art and Social Practice Archive at PSU, Marissa Perez talks to Ruth Eddy about what it really means to interview someone, and Morgan Hornsby interviews photographer, Wendy Ewald, about rural life and art. Each interview shows us just how fluid social practice can be. 

As Becca Kauffman says of their interviewee, “Jeremy Deller knows the essential ingredient for making the kind of work you can see yourself in: he looks to what people care about.” We, as social practice artists, are often looking outward to the social sphere instead of inward for inspiration. Because we work in this way, each project turns into something new and different. As Wendy Ewald says, “I’ve learned to look and listen, and to understand that I have preconceptions always, and to learn to let them go or be transformed by the situation.” From looking and listening, we move towards making. 

Just like we garner information from artists we’re influenced by, we also look towards the people we’re to closest for inspiration. You can see this reflected in Caryn Aasness’s interview with their mom and in Gilian Rappaport’s inclusion of their collaborator’s response to their initial interview. As social practice artists, we see the world and our art through the lens of these relationships. 

In exploring these relationships and influences, we’ve put together an exciting batch of interviews for this issue. If you want to know more about Vietnamese memes, making molasses in Kentucky, or why Nina Katchadourian is interested in writing her own wall labels, you’re just like us, and lucky for you, we asked the right questions so you can read all about it here.

Your editors,

Olivia DelGandio, Caryn Aasness, and Luz Blumenfeld 

(with Becca Kauffman and Morgan Hornsby)