“Lifting Up From the River”

 

Preston Singletary honors his father Shaa-Héen-Kaa, who died in November at the age of 80, in “Lifting Up from the River” (at the Traver Gallery until the end of April).

 

Death has been affecting all of us this year. We are experiencing so much loss in our lives, whether from COVID or other causes. In my own family we have lost 4 close relatives. One of my oldest and dearest friends is heading for his sunset, as his daughter so beautifully expressed it.

 

So viewing this exhibition has special meaning for me. I wish I could think of such deeply thoughtful and spiritual expressions to honor those whom I have lost.

 

Morning River is an homage to his father’s love of starting early in the morning to go fishing. There are various works referring to fishing in the exhibition. There are also glass room dividers created in collaboration with Dick Weiss that suggest flowing water.

 

 

But for me the heart of the exhibition was the expression of transition from life to death. His father is called to this transition by spirits that raise him up in Levitation

 

 

The installation includes several stages  of transition

Preston: “As we float down the river, Shaa-Héen-Kaa’s health shifts and becomes vulnerable with age. “Ashes From The Fire”,[Ash Moon] “Lightness Of Being”, and “Shaman Wakes” are all part of this transition.

 

 

“Shaman Wakes” symbolizes the shaman calling on his spirit helpers, the Land Otters, to help Shaa-Héen-Kaa with understanding this transformation that he will undertake, of transitioning to the other side.

 

 

“Lightness Of Being” attempts to animate the idea of contemplating life and preparing for the transition of passing into the next realm. The mobile symbolizes the universe and the arc holding the wire and branches represents a fishing rod.”

 

 

 

Here is another image of transition “floating backward up the river” It suggests his father is “experiencing visions” as he floats.

What a beautiful way of expressing the passing of someone we love.

 

 

“Levitation” refers to my sister Rachel who had a dream shortly before our father’s death. In the dream a tall slender man came to the front door of our father’s apartment looking for him
and went to retrieve him from his bedroom. Our father emerged from his bedroom fully dressed to go fishing and silently followed the man out the door. In this piece two spirit figures are ascending into the heavens to go fishing together.”

 

It is appropriate that the ghost like spirit figures in the vertical white shape that resembles a sail on a boat, is not really visible here.

 

All of these works are made from blown and sand carved glass. We think of glass as transparent, but in Preston’s works it is a magical material that transforms, creates mirror images, ghost images, and opacity all at the same time. It is the perfect material to convey transition from life to death.

And  “Safe Journey” lighted from within with the universe

Preston again “this box is a metaphor for the treasures that our father gave us in the form of inspiration, knowledge and intelligence. These boxes are sometimes referred to as treasure boxes or boxes of knowledge. They can be used to store precious objects or Att Owoo, our cultural heirlooms. In some cases they can be used as burial
containers. In this case, I decided to animate the box with light from within representing the universe.”

 

This is only a selection of the works in the show, there is a wonderful otter, many fish, and totems in glass that also suggest transformations, myths,  and magical events.

One of the more familiar is “Raven and the Box of Daylight” here presented in a brilliant orange glass totem. Last year Preston held a complete exhibition around this story at the Museum of Glass. 

In the same room are several other totems and many baskets, grouped around the blue box that glows with treasures and secrets. These feel like totems and containers that are guarding the treasure at the center.

 

I took this last photo at the far end of the gallery from the entrance.  The  glass totems are seen in reverse, but appear to be three dimensional. It is a special quality of the glass that as the artist worked the image on one side in low relief, the negative image appeared on the other as though from inside the sculpture. I like this idea of both the illusion of presence, and the mutability of reality. Is that not what life and death are all about?

Breathe! at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art and several provocative new shows at the Henry Art Gallery

 

Art urging us to think about our disrupted world is everywhere this spring.

 

“Breathe” the current group show (until May 30) at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (free, open daily!) addresses civil rights issues in every work by twenty-one artists.

 

Humaira Abid created a hand carved wooden chain for the title ”Breathe.” It suggests both entrapment and escape here, but how many other references are contained in that one word!

 

In Linda Wolf’s black and white photographs, Caravan Asylum we see people surviving the huge challenges and risks of travel to the US in hopes of a better life (a belief that has surged since Biden came into office).

Nearby “Field Notes,” mixed media fiber collages by Carletta Carrington Wilson, quote from formerly enslaved persons in the subtitles, such as “I was plowin long and a thinkin.” Embedded in the textiles is an “x”, honoring the fact that ninety percent of slaves were illiterate.

Throughout the exhibition selections from the extraordinary book art collection of Cynthia Sears address potent issues:  Native American displacement (Fred Hagstrom);

 

 

writing and art by prisoners (Beth Thielen); anti-semitism (Diane Jacobs); white supremacism in a Klan car rally in 1965 that led to the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzza (Tyler Starr);

 

 

gay marriage (Cheri Gaulke and Sue Maberry).  Each artist brilliantly concentrates a huge topic in an experimental book format.

 

Roger Shimomura and Michelle Kumata address Japanese Internment.

Kumata’s Song for Generations, 2019 hangs in the multistoried window of the museum. At the top are two farmers, one holds strawberries, the other a house in flames, below are two adults with painful barbed wire in their mouths, and children in the lower left born in internment (as was Kumata’s mother).

 

Shimomura’s poignant portrait of an American Alien and the anxiety of waiting in Nightwatch continues his life-long exploration of the theme of internment. Given the upsurge in hate crimes against Asians, these works remind us the long history of Asian abuse in the US.

 

Also on display is Paul Rucker’s “Forever” homage to Civil Rights martyrs in the form of “forever” stamps for the post office with biographies of people such as Medgar Evers and Edwin Pratt. In large scale are the four young girls killed in the church bombing in Birmingham Alabama in 1963.

 

More artists books appear in a separate show “Water” and upstairs are Kimberly Trowbridge’s landscapes based on her residency at the Bloedel Reserve. In short, you can see an astonishing breadth of issues and styles at the Bainbridge Museum of Art, many from the museum’s collection.

 

 

 

 

The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington also challenges us with difficult topics.

 

In the lobby “Hostile Terrain, HT94),” from the Undocumented Migration Project, outlines a border in Arizona with hundreds of tags hanging on it – volunteers documented each person who died crossing the inhospitable desert with the condition of the body and location. That act means that participants feel these deaths directly as do we.

 

Nearby, a project by La Resistencia gives us access through QR codes to appalling stories of the detainees in the Northwest Detention Center. Here is their call to action “Free Them All,” with template letters to Patty Murray, Adam Smith, Jay Inslee, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, ICE field office director Nathalie Asher.

 

 

“Illustrating Injustice: The Power of Print” curated by Nina Bozicnik and Ann Poulson provocatively pairs Danny Lyons’ prison photographs (Conversations with the Dead (1971) with prints by Honoré Daumier lambasting the legal system of 19^th century France.

 

The show also includes moving prison newsletters from the Washington Prison History Project.

 

 

Commissioned by the Henry “We Own Our Words” is a contemporary zine project with deeply expressive essays and poems by women in the Washington Corrections Center for Women. You can download a digital copy here.

 

By the same dynamic curators “Plural Possibilities and the Female Body” explores the female body beyond the reductive binaries of gender and fixed ideas of beauty. The breathtaking selection of artists ranges from Ana Mendieta and Kiki Smith to Zanele Muholi and Mickelene Thomas.  Presiding over the gallery is a lush painting by Dominican Republic artist Firelei Báez The Right to Opacity that fuses Saartjie Baartman (the so-called “Hottentot Venus”) with ciguapas, a mythical fearless woman of the forest.

One of the most fascinating works was this work by Ria Brodell from the Butch Heroes series. It also connects to an upcoming exhibition at the Washington State History Museum, “Crossing Boundaries, Portraits of a Transgender West, May 29 – December 12, 2021 as well as Donald Byrd’s recent amazing piece choragraphed for the Pacific Northwest Ballet, “And the skies are not cloudy all day”

 

 

For those who like the bizarre, don’t miss “Bambitchell: Bugs and Beasts Before the Law.” A video highlights animal trials in medieval and early modern Europe based on a 1906 book Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. I watched the trial of a cock who laid an egg and was tried for sodomy. Perhaps the larger context could be that because of climate change we are putting animals to death all the time without any trial.

 

 

And finally, “Viewpoints: A Dialogue Between Jean-François Millet and Jeanne Dunning” a single gallery exhibition juxtaposes Jean Francois Millet’s images of women working (at home) in the 19^th century to a video of a woman’s head being covered with cake frosting by Jeanne Dunning! Go see it to understand it.

 

So something for everyone! The Henry exhibitions end on May 9. It is FREE until the end of June although limited hours Saturday and Sunday 10 – 5 with a reservation.

 

And since I went there they have already opened two more exhibitions Gary Simmons: the Engine Room  and Elaine Cameron Weir, Star Club Redemption Booth. Be sure to get there as soon as possible!!

Port Townsend marks its history with Indigenous groups

And what a horrifying history it is ! The  čičməhán (Chetzemoka) Trail. named after čičməhán(Cheech-ma-han) the great leader of the Klallam  tells that story in all its vivid detail.  Here is an overview of part of the trail. It includes most of the sites that we found ( we were driving and walking). But aside from the natural beauty of Port Townsend, it was quite a revelation to read this history.

The first site we went to was at the North end of downtown Port Townsend

It told the story of “Chetzemoka’s Big Heart, a story by Mary Ann Lambert of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s Lambert/ Reyes family (1879-1966, also the author of The 7 Brothers of the House of Ste-Tee-Thlum).  It illustrates Chetzemoka’s heart, and the power and respect he commanded.”

 

An army garrison was built on this site in 1856 ( see next sign, this was one year after the Treaty of Point No Point) to “quell Indian rioting” As it turned out it was the soldiers who created the problem:

“However, the soldiers were known to frequent the saloons of Port Townsend and overindulge. One day two drunken soldiers, realizing they had overstayed their leave, stole an Indian canoe from the S’Klallam village at Point Hudson, and subsequently drowned when a southeast squall arose across the bay.

 

Townspeople assumed that the soldiers had been killed by Indians, and when a youth named Tommy Shapkin found one of the soldier’s bodies on the shoreline and donned his cap and jacket, he was accused of murder. He was jailed and a hanging scaffold was built. When the youth was brought to the platform, another S’Klallam youth ran to find Chetzemoka.

 

Forcing his way through the dumbfounded crowd, Chetzemoka approached the scaffold. Without a word he mounted the steps and reaching into his belt the Duke of York [as he was nicknamed] withdrew a knife, reached up and cut the knotted noose and threw it upon the ground below. Then removing the blindfold from the boy’s eyes, he said “Go, my kinsman. You are free!” Turning and facing the astonished crowd, Chetzemoka said (in Chinook), “Friends, this is Indian Country, our country. There never was a time when it was not our country. We are Klallams. Once we were strong, proud people. Because of sickness and death, we have diminished in numbers until now we are no longer a strong people.

 

But we are a proud people. We will not be the first to spill Boston blood upon our beloved land. You Bostons are a strong people. Do you wish to be the first to spill Klallam blood upon this soil which once belonged to us? Have you no pride?” “Bostons,” he continued, “We have been friends. Let us remain friends. If this unwise act which you were about to commit is what you call civilization, then give us back our way of life. Oh, White People, our brothers under the skin, do not let this happen again.”

 

The site where he stood was an Indian village until white men arrived. This sign at the point reads

“Before the shoreline was altered to create the marina, Point Hudson was a popular clamming beach for S’Klallams and a landing point for tribes from locations across the Olympic Peninsula.

 

Change began as soon as settlers arrived, but grew harsher after čičməhán (Cheech-ma-han) and many other S’Klallam sub-chiefs signed the Treaty of Point No Point in 1855. It was not ratified by Congress until 1859, and through the 1860s, the Natives waited for financial compensation from the government, but they were not paid. In 1867, the City of Port Townsend passed an ordinance prohibiting any Indian housing, tents, mats or fires in the downtown area, and in 1871, their village was destroyed by fire, by order of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

 

In the 1890s, Makah and other Tribes used Point Hudson as a camping site on their way to and from the hops fields near Puyallup, where they were seasonally employed as hops harvesters.” On the link to the text are old photographs of tribal groups camping on the point in the late nineteenth century, after the original village was destroyed by fire.

 

 

As we headed downtown, we saw a new totem created in honor of the creation of the trail outside the Northwest Maritime Center. It gave a lift to our spirits from the sad story of the destruction of the villages on Hudson Point

 

Here the sign reads

 

“The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, like the Northwest Maritime Center, is a contemporary organization with a tremendous appreciation of our seafaring history and respect for those who have preserved and shared their knowledge throughout the centuries.

 

The sea is all around us on the Olympic Peninsula: the sound of the tides and seabirds; the salty aroma in the air; the edible abundance that has sustained us for millennia; the navigable waterways that allowed us to move freely among and between our villages and our neighbors. For the S’Klallam people, the sea is a major character; the backdrop of our lives. And we know that we share that deep sentiment with those who have devoted themselves to creating and sustaining the Northwest Maritime Center

 

It is with that sentiment of shared vision that the Tribe and the Center agreed that a totem pole and a canoe carved of Western Red Cedar, and an interpretive sign about Coast Salish Canoe Culture were appropriate symbols of our shared interests and ongoing partnership in the 21st century.”

 

From the website

“Outside the Northwest Maritime Center you will see the 26’ totem pole carved by Dale Faulstich, Andy Pitts, Tyler Faulstich, and Tribal citizen Timothy O’Connell. You will also see the Coast Salish Canoe Culture sign, and a traditional canoe hanging in The Chandlery.

The totem pole pays homage to millennia of finely crafted wooden boats and the artisans who built them. It features, starting at the top, the Supernatural Carpenter, the Spirit of the Cedar Tree, čičməhán with his arms in the welcoming posture, standing on Sentinel Rock.”

 

The next site was called “The Village at Memorial Field.” Today it is near a playing field. It is the site of the original village

 

“The village of qatáy once sat near the bluff at what is now the corner of Monroe and Water Streets. It was the principal village of S’Klallam people at the time of the treaty signing, and home to their Chief, čičməhán (Cheech-ma-han).

 

James Swan’s 1859 census showed “300 whites and 200 Klallams” living in Port Townsend. qatáy village was burned on August 23, 1871 by order of the federal government, prompted by complaints from the settlers. Destruction of the village of qatáy forced many of the S’Klallam to move to the Skokomish Reservation, Port Gamble, Port Discovery, or to join family in Dungeness (stətíɬəm), who would purchase land at Jamestown in 1874. Others, including cicm?hán and his family, moved across Port Townsend Bay to Indian Island, where villages had been located for hundreds of years.

 

Many S’Klallam adjusted to non-Indian communities, working at local mills, on farms, fishing and providing water transportation to settlers on land and waters that had always been Native homeland.”

For more details on the destruction and removal of the Indians in the village in 1871 see the website. text for this site. It is full of horrifying details as well as photographs of the era.

Nearby is the “Fowler Building.”

 

“Port Townsend’s first stone building was completed in 1874 for Enoch S. Fowler.

 

Fowler was a ship captain who transported Governor Stevens and his treaty negotiators from place to place, including Point No Point in 1855, where Stevens, Fowler and čičməhán (Cheech-ma-han) convinced the Natives to trust the whites and affix their “X” mark to the Treaty. Under considerable pressure, the tribes ceded their rights to nearly 440,000 acres of land, receiving in return a 3,480-acre reservation on Hood Canal, the “right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations,” and $60,000 payable over 20 years.

 

When čičməhán died on Indian Island in June 1888, his sons brought his body into town by cedar canoe. Townspeople honored their old friend, who had prevented conflict to save his people, by laying his body in state in the Fowler Building’s main parlor for two days, where settlers paid their respects prior to his burial at Laurel Grove Cemetery.”

 

But it gets worse. After removing the Indians to Indian Island, they were then removed from Indian Island at the beginning of World War II.

The next stop was called Union wharf/Indian Island

 

“Looking south, view Kilisut Harbor and Indian Island (now Naval Magazine Indian Island). Archeological evidence shows that Indian Island was an important location to the ancestors of the S’Klallam and Chimacum people for over 1,500 years. For many centuries, sea level was as much as 7 meters lower than today, making the harbor a fertile wetland.

 

In 1870,čičməhán (Cheech-ma-han) met with a Territorial delegate, asking that the Tribe be given Indian Island as the S’Klallam reservation, but that request was denied.

 

čičməhán and his family, including his two sons Charlie Swan York and Prince of Wales, moved to the village at the northeast corner of Indian Island called šéʔnək^w, after being forcibly removed to the S’Klallam Indian Agency (the Skokomish Reservation in Hood Canal) from Port Townsend in 1871.

 

Real estate records show that in 1887, a parcel of land was sold by Catherine McCurdy to pačwíɬəs (Prince of Wales) and Charlie York, the sons of čičməhán, and to James Webster (Chimacum Jim) and his wife Louise, whose descendants are citizens of today’s Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. In 1888, pačwíɬəs purchased additional land at šéʔnək^w from Ms. McCurdy and maintained ownership and residency there until 1941.

 

Indian-owned lands on Indian Island were lost when the federal government took it through the Eminent Domain process in 1939-41, to convert the island into a Naval base.”

 

It is still a military zone today.

 

We missed a site downtown here near the ferry dock, but we went to the Post Office where the chief and his family are incised in the capitals of a Richardsonian Romanesque style post office. Here they are from website:   

 

I find this a little grotesque, that after destroying their culture they put them into stone capitals, another form of colonization.

“čičməhán (Cheech-ma-han) inherited his role as chief when his brother Klow-ston left the area, and he was officially recognized as “Chief of the Klallams” by the federal government in 1854.

 

When settlers Hastings and Pettygrove first arrived in 1851 and met čičməhán, they sent him to San Francisco to reinforce his understanding of coming changes (in population and technology). His tour guide was James G. Swan, with whom he became a lifelong friend. In 1859 Swan wrote that čičməhán returned from San Francisco “with very enlarged views of the number and power of the white man.” The trip provided by the new settlers seemed to sober the Chief, who tried to mediate between the whites and Natives from that point on.”

 

The post office was built five years after his death. I wonder how much he lived with regrets for trying to “mediate” with whites who betrayed his people over and over.

 

From downtown we went to Fort Worden, Point Wilson, where  Admiralty Inlet and the Straits of Juan de Fuca collide. A dramatic tale of a whirlpool awaited us there.

 

From the sign you see Henry standing near.

“There is a whirlpool on the side of this lighthouse point. Some people from Hadlock were over at K’l’w’l’’m, and a girl there met a monster (he was a shark and she did not know it). She fell so madly in love with him that she used to go down through that whirlpool to visit him. She used to come back at times to visit her folks at Hadlock. When she would come to visit her folks, she would bring home all varieties of food from the bottom of the bay; big swells would come ashore with her, and it wasn’t until kelp was growing on her forehead that her father told her not to come back any more. Before that, her folks had permitted her to come, for she had brought them food at times.”

Next we went to North Beach where we had lunch and learned that the Indians carried their canoes around this dangerous point.

The last place we went to was qatáy (kah-tai) Valley,

 

 

“This site is the last remaining vestige of the natural prairie that spanned the qatáy (kah-tai) Valley, between wetland areas. Relatively dry, upland areas of the valley provided camas bulbs (qwɬúʔi in Klallam and Camassia quamash in Latin) for S’Klallam people to eat. The 1.4-acre camas prairie was officially preserved by the Olympic Peninsula Chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society in 1987.

 

Camas harvesting was done by women, who broke ground with digging sticks (generally made of fire-hardened Ironwood, or Ocean Spray). They had to be well aware of the difference between blue and white (death) camas, in order to harvest only the edible variety. They turned over a section of ground, pulled out the largest camas bulbs, and returned the earth to its original spot to continue growing.

 

The bulb of blue camas, a main carbohydrate of the S’Klallam diet, was roasted and ground into a starch that could be stored for winter. Radiocarbon dates from camas ovens at Ebey’s Prairie, on Whidbey Island directly across Admiralty Inlet from Port Townsend, suggests these traditional cooking methods are at least 2,000 years old.”

 

There were six other sites that we missed for various reasons. You can read about them all on the website. 

 

Over all it is a story of terrible betrayal. I can no longer look at the Victorian architecture of Port Townsend. All I see is the death and destruction of a culture that laid the foundation for the death and destruction of our planet that we are dealing with today. Apparently though Chetzemoka has dozens of descendents today, so the Natives survived through incredible odds. Here is what was placed on his gravestone:

Chetzemoka (Duke of York)
June 21, 1888
The white man’s friend;
we honor his name.

 

 

 

 

Selma Waldman More Important Than Ever in 2021

“Lust for power and territory is the same lust that kills man, women, children and the land itself” Selma Waldman 2002

 

What would Seattle’s deeply political artist Selma Waldman think of our current catastrophes?

 

On a bitter winter day in January 2008, I accompanied Selma Waldman to the last demonstration that she attended before her death in April. “Shut Down Guantanamo” began with a demonstration of waterboarding. A young man, tied face down on a board, had a wet towel over his face and water poured over his head into a bucket. Even in the simulation, the volunteer felt as though he was about to drown.

During the speeches that followed by politicians and political activists, we held up enlarged images of one of Selma’s explicit drawings of waterboarding from her long series Black Book of Aggressors. They scrupulously depict in her expressionist drawing technique, several means of waterboarding, with detailed text taken from newspapers. Selma urgently said in my ear, “But it shouldn’t be only Guantanamo, what about the black sites, the other places of torture.” She always understood that one place is connected to so many other places; one manifestation of torture connects to the will to power everywhere, the will to oppress, the desire to destroy the human spirit.

 

 

“A Conversation in Time and Space” presents thirteen of Selma Waldman’s  monumental drawings at the Center on Contemporary Art partnered with nine brave COCA members responding to her forceful work and statements with their own art and commentaries (all of which can be seen and read on the COCA website https://cocaseattle.org/time-and-space until February 20).

 

Waldman’s art embraces the classical tradition of Käthe Kollwitz in her expressionist line. The materials of chalk and charcoal were part of her politics as well, a metaphor for the fragility of life.

 

How ironic that this timely exhibition cannot be visited in person. The current disasters we face, COVID-19, climate change, homelessness and hunger, intersect with the abuses Waldman addresses: torture, detentions, endless wars, starvation.

 

So we can answer the question: she would immediately call attention to these intersections all seated in an obsession with power, what she called “Naked/Aggression.”

 

Rainer Waldman Adkins carefully selected the works to touch on large themes in his mother’s work: the Holocaust series called Falling Man Suite from 1966, The Man and Bread series, featuring extreme desperation in famine, police brutality in The Thin Naked Line, drawn after the 1999 World Trade protests in Seattle and the aggressions of war, in nine images from the over 80 works in the “Black Book of Aggressors,” in the long cycle called Naked/Aggression-Profile of the Armed Perpetrators first begun in the late 1990s.

 

Waldman grew up in Kingsville, Texas, deep in South Texas, where everyone was employed by the mighty King Ranch. The giant cattle ranch employed hundreds of Chicano workers. She belonged to the only Jewish family in the town. Although her own family was middle class, she learned about oppression as a way of life in her early years from Chicano/a friends.

 

When Waldman was on a Fulbright Fellowship in Berlin, she was profoundly affected by the 1960 documentary Mein Kampf. She began a series of drawings of dehumanized and distorted figures based on images and accounts of the Warsaw ghetto. These are the first works on the Nazi holocaust by a Jewish American artist to be acquired by a German museum.

 

Collectively titled Falling Man, the ninety drawings are near life-size representations that were dramatically hung from the ceiling and stairwell of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.   This is the source of the Falling Man Series, represented with one huge drawing at COCA called “The Doll.” The helplessness of the naked figure brings us directly to our current crisis as so many people lose their homes and live in the streets in desperation.

The “Man and Bread” drawings of the late 1960s take the Falling Man series to brother against brother, a fragment of the wretchedness inflicted on so many masses of people. The two Bread drawings in the exhibition come from a group of more than 300 works (of which 25 are in the Collection of the Memorial Terezin Ghetto Museum). Waldman based the imagery on Elie Wiesel’s descriptions in Night (Bantam Books, 1960) of the struggle for food to the death in concentration camps.

 

 

On March 21, 1960, Selma Waldman saw the front page photographs of the Sharpeville Massacre, in South Africa. She was so shocked that she decided to more deeply commit her art to a “struggle to end genocide and racism.” We can draw a direct line to our current atrocities in the United States and elsewhere, by the military, the police and most recently armed militias, many of whom are psychologically damaged war veterans.

1. 

Police brutality in the large drawing Thin Naked Line, 1999-2002, based on press photographs, gives us the faceless mass of the Seattle riot police who attacked the anti-World Trade Organization demonstrators in 1999. But the drawing refers to mass police assault anywhere.  They are dehumanized warriors who advance toward us as a group.

 

 

 

Finally, her last series Naked /Aggression: Wall of Perpetrators IV-V, The Black Book of Aggressors (I-IV) (2005-2006) bears witness to the degradation of human beings and the systematic abuse of power in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Left unfinished at the time of the artist’s death in April 2008, the Black Book of Aggressors would have included two hundred drawings and eight walls. For the final wall, she planned to reconfigure Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (1820 – 23), The Colossus (1808-1812), and other black paintings, to address atrocities world-wide.

 

As she wrote

“the cycle ‘corrects’ the mythic profile of the invulnerable warrior-hero, born to fight and trained to win – and reveals it as a reckless existential lie and an obscene fraud without which battles could never be engaged- confirms it as the fool’s proof of manhood, the lifeblood for fascist, the main meat dished out to defense profiteers, and the first refuge for scoundrel fanatics.”

 

What could be a more timely statement given what we have just witnessed in the US capital!

 

Every detail of Selma Waldman’s life carried her strong spirit of resistance and her belief that creative voices could win over forces of oppression. In her small home in Rainier Valley every wall was covered with art, texts, poems, posters, prints, photographs.  There were photographs of singers, dancers, gymnasts, poets, and writers, as well as quotations, and her own writings. Every wall and most of the floor space was filled with books.

 

But two facts emerged clearly for me as I spent more time in her house in her last weeks. First, her witness to depravity and the abuse of power was paired with a celebration of the human spirit in all of its glorious powers of creativity and resistance.  Second, Selma herself, lucid to the end, was immersed in a continuous remembrance of the holocaust itself, the initial horror that she experienced not first-hand, but deeply, at a critical time in her life.

 

She spent her life searching for archetypes that could represent the underlying loss of humanity that leads to such abuse.

 

Selma Waldman would answer the question with which I began by speaking of  the intersections of past and present, all seated in an obsession with power manifested as racism, fanaticism, and inhumanity.

 

But she always paired her witness to depravity and the abuse of power with a celebration of the human spirit in all of its glorious powers of creativity and resistance.

Iran US Collaboration: Emotional Numbness: The Impact of War on the Human Psyche and Ecosystems

 

 

“Emotional Numbness, the Impact of War on the Human Psyche and Ecosystems”

 

This exhibition is in Tehran, Iran, but available to see anywhere!

It is a collaboration between US based group WEAD, Women Eco Artists Dialog and artists in Tehran, Iran.

You can see two excellent online tours of the exhibition  here is a direct link to one from the WEAD website : a simulation of the gallery that enables you to stop at each work and learn about it, the second is a physical tour of PLATFORM 3 Gallery in Tehran.

 

Two curators one in Oakland, Minoosh Zomorodinia and one in Tehran, Atefeh Khas, collaborated on the complex logistics required to put the exhibition together. The physical exhibition is in Tehran, the WEAD artists sent their work there, and surprisingly, almost all of them made it through to the show.

 

“Emotional Numbness” includes over forty artists. Their work is intense, given the theme of the exhibition. They include many two dimensional prints (given the limitations of shipping to Tehran), videos, sculpture and installations.

 

To name just a few: there is an interview with a 95 year old holocaust survivor (Kolya Grokhovsky The Future is Bright). ( the woman on the right in this video screen shot, she tells a story of how she survived barely, when many in her family did not.

 

an homage to the artist’s grandmother and a young man who died in the Iran/Iraq war. (Sara Madander  In Memory of Aziz). The installation shot here gives the flavor of the Tehran gallery as well as the several parts of this installation which included the carpet and a video as well as an image of a window with a lacey curtain. The video of the full installation is on the artist’s website. Aziz is the artist’s grandmother and the artist’s mother kept her mother’s home just as it had been when she died. The portrait is of the artist’s uncle Ahmed, who disappeared into the war at the age of 17, leaving without saying good-bye after being brainwashed, as the artist suggests, in school.

What we see here is a  haunting segment of a recreation of her grandmother’s home.

 

Artists Beyond Borders collaborates with other artist in projects world wide that address the impact of war.

Here they present people of Myanmar displaced by war  carrying gigantic bullets as they flee. This artist partnership ( Pamela Blotner and Mie Preckler) believe that art must bring more than “Awareness to the table, that if humankind is to take a part in averting war. …we need to have a collective effort”

 

Seattle-based artist Alice Dubiel addreses sexual violence on military bases Alice Dubiel  Domestic Violence/The War on Terror: Military Archeology 2 (JBLM);”The US Military maintains over 800 bases world-wide . . . the text consists of geography. social context, history and description of Join Base Lewis McChord.  . .   reports of detailed domestic violence are particularly graphic. ”

 

 

Nazli Abbaspour honors soldiers who die in wars.

In the installation video you can see a brief haunting close up of some of the photographs of soldiers taken before they go off to die.

 

 

Gazelle Samizay and Labkhand Olfatmanesh in Bepar call attention to the impact of war on children’s play, in this case hopscotch. As a young person tries to play hopscotch, the sounds of war, the impact of war, and the destruction of war surround and overwhelm her. The artists use various metaphors to suggest the violence.

 

Farzaneh Najafi creates this compelling installation of oil drums focusing on  “Oil, this black gold is the motive for seizure and plunder of many lands all over the world.” She includes emphasis on the devestation of the environment of Iran, and the related economic impacts of sanctions .

Verona Fonte’s dramatic image with its hands grasping a wire fence in the foreground conveys to us the desperation of refugees. The lives of these people is hard  for us to grasp in its deprivations.  “the images reflect the tribulations and tragic circumstances faced by the multitudes of people displaced by war, poverty and global warming” You can see the rest of her series here. https://veronafonte.jimdofree.com/portfolio/fine-art-digital-prints/

 

 

Wilkinson speaks forcefully to many of the issues in the show:

I depict a world filled with blood, lit by a sun that has become a source of darkness rather than light . . . a benumbed child stands on rocks that have become cold and sterile under his feet, his world no longer one of sustenance and color, but depleted and drained. This is how I see the earth and our place in it as wars, weapons, pollution and the greed that drives all these forces to grow and proliferate. It’s as if we are filling the earth with our blood while draining our own existence of life and light.”

 

There are many more incredible works in the show. The range of aesthetic approaches united by this powerful theme tells us the universality of the theme and the nightmare we are in today as Congress passes another 740 billion dollar defense bill that is beyond our understanding in its colossal size. The 908 billion stimulus bill for the current COVID catastrophe is a little larger, but in limbo. Wouldn’t it be  exciting of the defense bill monies went to correcting the environmental catastrophes caused by war and specifically the US military.

 

And as I write the escalation of rhetoric about Iran and military “preparedness” in the Gulf, is also horrifying.

 

As our public media demonizes Iran, the dialog between these Iranian and American artists on the healing power of art is inspiring. I cannot recall another exhibition that brings together war, the military and violence against both women and the planet.

 

Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline at the Burke ( not yet open) and the River of Life

 

Not yet open at the Burke is Ray Troll’s Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline exhibition. More about the show in a minute, but meanwhile, I want to give a big hooray to the Paleo Nerd podcast that Ray and his friend David  Strassman, a ventriloquest, host. Here is Ray’s own website also.

The podcast is a ton of fun, but also full of a huge amount of information. In fact, I haven’t thought about fossils for awhile – my sister in law lives on the Jurassic Coast in England and works at the local fossil museum, so I have a few ammonites including a stunning necklace.

 

Here is their local celebrity:  “Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis ”

 

So it is a pleasure to think again about fossils.

From the first minutes of this podcast you start to expand your mind, even as you laugh along with them. It is done in a creative way with insertions of weird voices and sounds that interrupt any long windedness that might make our attention wander.

 

They got my attention when I started listening accidentally at Episode 14, The Flight of the Cephalopods with Danna Staaf

I had no idea that the chambered nautilus was in the same “class” as octopus and squid. Listen to it for more great information!

 

Then I went back to the first one, which gave some background on how these two became paleo nerds in the first place. What I really like is that they are both incredibly knowledgeable and humble and funny at the same time.

So here is a tidbit to get you started thinking from the first episode. If you want to remember the order of things in the animal kingdom here is a trick from Ray

 

“King Phillip Can Only Fake Good Sex or

Dumb King Phillip Clearly Only Fears Green Snakes

for

Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

 

Paleo Nerds, the podcast talks a lot about geologic time, infinite amounts of time, they stretch our brains and make us realize what a short time we humans have been here in the full scale of time.

 

As I thought about that, I started re-reading my father’s wonderful 1956 book River of Life. He was a self taught naturalist who wanted to share his wonder at the magic of life, a lot like Ray Troll and his friends want to share the wonder of fossils.  The famous artist Bernarda Bryson Shahn illustrated  The River of Life. My father focused on how the world has come to look the way it does today ( or as it looked in 1956 when he wrote the book, as much has gone extinct since then)

He wrote

“life began on earth when a few elements ( principally carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen), cooked by sunlight in warm water gelled to form a peculiar chemical we call protoplasm. ”

 

“All the teeming world we know is concentrated in a veneer of air, earth, and sea only as thin in proportion to the earth as the coating of wax on the skin of an apple. ”

 

Then he celebrates the diversity of life:

 

“there is perhaps nothing else exactly like earth’s bizarre living cargo in all the universe.. It is unique because it has been shaped, sized, and equipped to fit into the depths of the sea, the heights of the mountains, beaches and jungles, caves and treetops, and all the varieties and soils that exist on earth. These living places have been hammered out in the anvils of endless violence, of winds, and rains, volcanic explosions, fire, glaciers, baking drought, bending rocks, floods of lava and the pushing up and pressing down of land and seas.

 

We find ourselves in the midst of bees and dytiscuses, earthworms, ants, hummingbirds, kangaroos, cats, dogs, lamelli-corns (scarab beetles), eagles, sea arrows and porpoises, spiders that spin miles of silk out of tiny bodies, rabbits that scare off pursuers by bobbing white cotton balls, blue-behinded apes, elephants- and giraffes that are obviously absurd.

 

These fellow inhabitants of our earth, living in the same age that we live in and try so hard to own, are our traveling companions on an incredible journey. we all cling to the same ball as we go spinning and rushing through space. … there are so many of us that we are unable even to arrive at final limits for the groups of bacteria, insects, fishes, starfishes, shellfish, reptiles and mammals that suckle their young.

 

For example no place as ever been found for the animated little powerhouses called viruses.”

 

I don’t know if this is current science. But we are certainly all thinking about viruses right now! So calling them “animated little powerhouses” certainly works. Take a look at a recent New Yorker article that starts with the single cell amoebus and goes quickly on to how viruses operate

 

So fossils, in this context, become a record of the mind boggling changes on our planet that predate the planet my father celebrates by millions and millions of years. According to this chart the earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Once you start thinking in geologic time, your day to day life changes to a tiny, irrelevant blip. I find that idea particularly helpful right now. I think we are all living in a moment of existential change on the planet, so looking at geologic time can remind us that everything changes all the time, (but it is certainly changing faster and faster)

 

So back to the show at the Burke 

Fossils are a record

of extinct species that have survived in buried layers of sediment and rock.

 

What the paleo nerds often talk about, is where they went to find fossils, in a formation of particular geologic eras.

 

 

 

 

What Ray does is imagine what they looked like.

 

 

 

Ray Troll has been drawing fossils since he was four years old, based on a plastic dinosaur set his parents gave him. We know that most children go through a “dinosaur phase,” but Ray never came out of it! He says “My mantra in this whole thing — in fact we’ve even written songs about it — is that paleonerds should be proud of the fact that they are grown men who still love dinosaurs.” So by the way he is also a musician.

Troll’s detailed paintings and drawings are both scientific and fanciful, they have been called scientific surrealism. They have titles like  Suciasaurus-Bloat-and-Float  Deep Fried Rhino and Down at the Sockeye Hole One Million Years Ago, ( I believe each refers to how the fossils were deposited,  sediment, water, volcano)

 

Troll has worked for years with paleontologist Kirk Johnson, now director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. They drove thousands of miles searching for fossils along the coast of North America. They previously documented the adjacent fourteen states in Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway.

 

 

The exhibition ( these photos are from a previous venue)  includes many of Ray’s detailed paintings, as well as life size models of dinosaurs, and a light and audio installation. There are mammouth teeth found near Seattle. and a cast of the lower jaw of the Blue Lake Rhino, an Ice Age rhino found in Coulee City Washington. Fossils of flowers, plants, and whales come from the Burke’s own collection and finally we will see “Suciasaurus rex”—Washington’s first and only dinosaur fossil.

Troll never seems to take himself too seriously, but he in partnership with Kirk Johnson in this exhibition, achieves something impressive: interesting everyone in science and art at the same time.

 

 

One more note on the theme of getting people to believe in science, a huge problem at this moment.

 

At the end of no 2 with Kirk Johnson that covers a lot of ground about all sorts of topics including the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, Kirk is asked why people don’t believe in facts and science. He answers that it is not just science’s failure to communicate in a way people can understand, it is also tribalism, people belonging to a group that doesn’t believe and that is much harder to penetrate.  He made a movie called Polar Extremes to  move the conversation forward.

 

On the other hand, he himself has his roots in a fundamentalist religion, Seventh Day Adventism! How could he become a world famous paleontologist Ray asked him. The answer was fascinating:

his church didn’t believe in evolution but they talked about it all the time! So as a child the word and concept became more familiar to him than his friends, none of whom had any contact with the idea since it wasn’t taught in schools.

 

Paleo Nerds is  perfect for listening in the early morning if you wake up to early. I am learning huge amounts and all the visitors are brilliant and entertaining.

 

 

 

 

 

Marela Zacarias at Mad Art brings us the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Xochicalco

 

 

In case  you are yearning for a trip to get away from our crazy election or now to celebrate it, go to Mad Art (325 Westlake Avenue N, open Thurs, Fri, Sat noon to 5 and by appointment necessary)

Marela Zacarías  brings us the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Xochicalco, a Mesoamerican site near where the artist grew up in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Made out of screening, it is an accurate but scaled down version of the pyramid.

We see the building blocks of Mexican pyramids in the unusual shapes to the right of the stairs. Inside Out is the title of the exhibition, suggesting both the idea that she usually builds her sculpture from wire mesh and, to me, the feeling of the transparency of the pyramid as well as our current world which is being turned inside out.

 

Marela Zacarías was in Seattle working on a public art work for the new airport terminal. She then spent 8 weeks in a residency at Mad Art,  ” a catalyst for new and unexpected artworks in Seattle”

 

Marela grew up going to archeological sites with her mother, an anthropologist, so the Mesoamerican sites are deeply embedded in her cultural identity.

 

According to Cross Cut author Agueda Pacheco Flores,  Xochicalco is

“one of the only places where Aztec and Mayan shamans and leaders came together, perhaps to study the stars and determine the calendar. Aesthetic elements found on the site reflect art from both cultures, suggesting the two empires built the temple together before their eventual collapse.”

 

The artist sees a parallel between the collapsing of the Maya and Aztec empires and our current world.

 

Before we look at what the artist has put at the center of the interior, let us make a tour of the murals on the walls around it. These are guaranteed to lift your spirits as you immerse yourselves in their stunning subtle purples, reds, pinks, aquas, reds, oranges and yellows.

 

This burst of energy suggests a dramatic event, perhaps a volcano exploding. Look at the wedge shapes, which according to my friend Carolyn Tate, who knows all about Mesoamerican art, suggest the splintering of society. Underneath we recognize the familiar fret like decorations we see on Mexican pyramids.

 

The next section suggests portals and entrances, especially the diamond shaped brilliant red shape in the corner. Then there are more portals. Above this is a light shaft going directly to the sky, which is part of the Mad Art gallery design, but Carolyn suggested we could be looking up from the underworld.

Next is the famous feathered serpent with its long tongue

Here is the serpent on the original pyramid. It is easy to see how much Marela has integrated her deep understanding of the serpent with her own aesthetics of color and abstraction.

Around the corner is a glowing tree with roots reaching into the ground and labyrinthine spaces enclosed by its grasp.

 

Finally we have a circular form collecting energies, perhaps a shield, a disc, a planet, a metaphor of unity.

 

 

 

But then we turn back to explore the pyramid again and we see a strange shape hanging there, it is a plaster serpent wrapped around a tire. It represents Cihuacoatl, dedicated to the mythological Aztec goddess known for providing women with strength during childbirth.

 

 

 

 

The artist said about the central image “I wanted to dedicate my temple to the resilience inherent in being a woman, the creative power, but also how we’re warriors with this energy that helps us. Not only childbirth, but I think of the women who are separated from their children at the border, of women who are going through a war, women who are single moms and finding food for their kids. I mean there’s just so much resilience that is called from us.”

 

 

 

Na Chainkua Reindorf

 

 

Ghanian artist Na Chainkua Reindorf is showing at the Specialist Gallery  (until November 21, by appointment) a series of seven stunning works, with the title “Come, Let Me Spoil Your Things”   The artist is inviting us to meet members of an imaginary secret society. This is the first phase of a long term project.

 

” this series of works introduces the seven original members of the Mawu Nyonu, a mythological women’s masquerade secret society believed to exist in parts of West Africa today.”

The seven masquerade characters  “serve as mediums through which actions can be performed and in some cases transformations can take place”

 

Masquerading can ” explore ways of being that could be considered radical or unacceptable  . . . they inhabit a world where women can explore their deepest, darkest and often radical desires through the art of masquerade, without fear of repercussion or judgment.

 

According to the artist

“The Mawu Nyonu (roughly translated as ‘god-woman’) are believed to have formed as a direct result of the 19th century disbandment of the Dahomey Amazons, an all-female military regiment active in what is now present day Benin.

 

Each painting in “Come, Let Me Spoil Your Things” takes the form of a flag, introducing each of the Mawu Nyonu characters, who forge the basis of their own unique masquerade. Reindorf’s carefully rendered gouache works are inspired by  appliqué flags and banners from both the Asafo militarized states in Ghana and the former kingdom of Dahomey, Benin.

 

By coincidence I visited a masquerade installation at the Seattle Art Museum today as well.

“Ridiculous mistakes don’t hide in Okumpka plays. Instead an open pot is carried into view by a masked spirit who announces his name and offers a speech or song that explains why he is the most foolish man of all. Often his boast isn’t immediately accepted and he is urged to defend his claim, thereby revealing more of his blunders. Others continue to vie for this title and confess to their own stupid actions. Leaders ultimately decide who deserves to be known as the most foolish, an honor that conveys pride in facing one’s own folly. ”

 

As we approach Hallowe’en, as well as universally participate in masking to stay well, these are provocative exhibitions to think about. What does a masquerade mean, in these two cases they imply moral lessons, and deep feelings. What do we mean by it here in the US in November 2020 when we can no longer recognize even people we know, are we all transformed in this strange present into disguise, giving us the opportunity to explore our inner selves? To think about our relationship to nature, to other human beings, to the future and to the past?

 

 

 

 

Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Suffering

The Center on Contemporary Art (COCA) WHAT STORY WOULD THE UNINTENDED BENEFICIARIES TELL (WSWUBT), which closes in two days, is a wonderful small selection of artists addressing the suffrage amendment and who was left out. The artists include Carletta Carrington Wilson with a selection from her incredible Letter to a Laundress series that I have written about before.

Carletta was stunned to discover that one of the archival photographs from the 1930s WPA photographers project  had a caption directly referring to black women being left out of suffrage. Carletta added this image three times to her original series.

And note the background of the photograph with the upside down pants. Each verb in this series has a step in the laundry process, which we don’t even know about any more with our washing machines. Each step, as the artist hangs it on the washing line across the gallery suggests another meaning. In her installation Carletta had ten steps “Wash Soak Starch Wring Boil Pin Rub Scrub Hang Press.”

 

The other artists at COCA are less familiar to me, but  together make a compelling statement.

This is Charlie Carlos Palmer directly referring to slavery in his powerful paintings that imitate the language of run away slaves and auctions. Look closely at the details!

We have Bonnie Parker

 

with her compelling portraits of black women.

 

And then there is the fascinating Monyee Chau addressing the Chinese American experience.

Finally there is Lisette Morales with her wonderful series of Latina portraits. Here is one.

the artist has described her series as “Compathy: Latinas on both sides of the lens” is a collection of 22 Black & White portraits of Latinas. See the rest of the series on her website. 

They include a wide range of Latinas of different ages and professions

Ivette Gomez describes them in her eloquent statement

“They are embodied compassion and empathy in action. Sometimes heroines, like the nurse that risks her life in a pandemic, other times women that are considered arrogant or prideful because they dare express what they consider to be unfair, for being advocates of the rights of those that have not yet found their own voice.”

 

 

Another important show is at Greg Kucera until November 7 “Humaira Abid, Sacred Games” This amazing exhibition, her first at Greg Kucera’s, reveals her secret sorrow. At first it looks like ordinary objects brilliantly fashioned from wood, a purse, a shirt, but as we go deeper into the exhibition we learn that she was molested repeatedly as a child by a family member, and everything acquires a new layer of intense meaning. There are also explicit references to her traumatic experiences. Here are a few of her works

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is appropriate that as we celebrate Women’s Suffrage and remember all those who were not included, we also think about domestic violence and the trauma of family violations. As we dread the appointment of Amy Barrett, who will remove the right to abortion practically immediately, we grieve for the women who will suffer as a result.

Not to mention that suffrage itself is under attack on all fronts by the desperate right wing.

I hope we have a landslide, but that won’t undo the damage already done to the environment, to women, to our social fabric which is being ravaged by the virus.

As we head into the dark winter, it is crucial that we find a way forward to be actively resisting darkness on all sides.

Take a Stand: Art Against Hate: The New Raven Anthology

 

 

 

 

Raven Chronicles Press, for those not familiar with this important Seattle-based literary project, began in 1991. The amazing Phoebe Bosché has been the editor of Raven Chronicles Press and published a regular magazine for many years, but she now focuses on anthologies. These provocative collections of visual art, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction bring together writers with many voices. I treasure and constantly re-read these books. They are not books that you read cover to cover, but books for when you have a few minutes, or half an hour, and you feel like expanding your focus, certainly crucial at the moment.

Take A Stand, Art Against Hate first stuns us with its cover: a detail from a mural, a collaboration between AICHO (American Indian Community Housing Organization), Honor the Earth, a nonprofit environmental organization, and Mayan artist Votan, with the assistance of Derek Brown of the Dine’ or Navajo tribe, and members of the community. Ganawenjiige Onigam (Caring for Duluth in the Ojibwe language): A New Symbol of Resilience in Duluth, Minnesota, is a declaration of the issues facing Native American women such as violence, sex trafficking, and environmental racism. Primarily, however, the enormous portrait of an Ojibwe woman is a symbol of resilience, the bandana covering the woman’s face is a reference to women who participated in the Zapatista uprising in the Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994, as well as the water protectors at Standing Rock. The jingle dress worn by the woman in the mural has special significance to Ojibwe people. A woman dancing in her jingle dress is thought to possess great powers to heal.

 

But on to the anthology itself divided into five sections, “Legacies,” “We Are Here,” “Why?,” “Evidence,” and “Resistance.” As one of the editors points out, some works could be in more than one section, and in each section the anthology sets up a type of call and response between the different voices.

 

Before each section are often five separate quotes from major thinkers like James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Arundhati Roy, Joy Harjo, and Sandra Cisneros, to name a few.

 

The poems ( I can only give one example here of many) address subjects such as historical colonialism (“Love Letters in a Time of Settler Colonialism” by Tanaya Winder), slavery (“slaveships” by Lucille Clifton), current police violence, (“The Day John Coltrane Died, July 17, 1967” by Frank Rossini, a poem about Eric Garner), homelessness, (“Lower Queen Anne” by Thomas Hubbard), immigration (“Journeys” by Anna Bálint), climate crises (“The Continent of Plastic” by Judith Roche).

 

 

Interspersed throughout the book are artworks, some by familiar artists, Alfredo Arreguín, Deborah Faye Lawrence, Tatiana Garmendia, Matika Wilbur, and an artist from Haida Gwaii, Michaela McGuire.

 

 

As I read these poems and short essays, I had a feeling of connection, of community, of hope, in this time of such separation and difficulty. Knowing that this many creative people (53 artists and 117 writers) address the challenges we currently face is comforting and uplifting.

 

The anthology was completed before COVID and the huge BLM protests this summer. But we see the same conditions already in place. Eric Garner said “I can’t breathe” 11 times. Protests against racism have been going on for decades, with their roots in slavery, where this anthology begins. The planet has been deteriorating, but Rajiv Mohabir offers hope: “Why Whales Are Back in New York City”: “Our songs will pierce the dark / fathoms. Behold the miracle: / what was once lost / now leaps before you.

 

The final poem by Ellery Akers also suggests a way forward: “At Any Moment, There Could be a Swerve in a Different Direction”: “it sounds like the click of knitting needles  as hundreds of thousands of women knit pink hats; / it looks like a coyote, crossing the freeway to go home. “

You can buy the anthology on their website

This anthology will have a virtual reading Thursday, October 8, 2020 at 7:30 PM – 9 PM. You can access it from this link.