Sleight of Hand
Exhibition Review: Journal of Modern Craft
Before I can stop myself, I am dancing to the hypnotic beat flooding the gallery, and a nearly forgotten (Thanks, 2020) feeling fills my body: joy. The music is by Joshua Sigman, made to accompany Natalia Arbelaez and Chris Stone’s video El Dorado Ritual (Figure 1). The video features Arbelaez covered in gold body paint, donning a gold lamé bikini and a gold, moon-like ceramic mask complete with toothy scowl and swollen little eyes, dancing while floating through a star-filled night sky. The figure pulses and multiplies, changing color as various psychedelic drawings float through space. The effect is funny, strange, and captivating. And, like most of the work in Sleight of Hand, the seduction of the video is a means to an end.
How to Craft A Revolution (With Help from Karen Karnes)
I had a perfectly respectable essay written for you all a few days ago. A lovely little reflection on Karen Karnes and her pots. But who wants to be respectable at a time like this?
Different Strokes!
Recently the plane of Earth’s equator passed through the center of the sun. The vernal equinox marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, a time of renewal and fresh starts. Tiny flowers start to appear announcing their readiness to be pollinated, the days get longer, and the weight of winter starts to lift.
Not all beginnings are so gentle, some fucking suck. Like starting chemotherapy, or starting a second job because your first one doesn’t pay the bills. And some are unperceivable from the outside, they take place entirely in the mind; a shift in perspective, a dislodging of an old belief, a new provocation.
Meta Commerse
Meta Commerse is a force; a meteor created by the powerful explosion that was the black arts movement in Chicago during the 1960s. Her official bio reads: founder of Story Medicine, certified wellness practitioner, author, seasoned teacher, and healer focused deeply on issues of oppression since the early 1990s. She has worked with groups and individuals using story medicine in numerous formats. She's a proud graduate of Goddard College in Vermont where she earned her MFA in fiction writing.
Cabbage School
“Don’t be scared, just put it in first gear and gun it!” Lydia See (one of The Cabbage School founders) instructs me as I arrive at the intimidatingly steep driveway of the Cabbage School, located about 30 minutes from Asheville, down a few windy roads in Little Sandy Mush, North Carolina.
Maybe it’s the sun pouring in through my rolled down window or the bucolic field of sheep in the periphery, but I am tempted to take this as life advice as well, to set aside fear and move bravely forward.
Alternate Roots
The morning after Trump was elected I woke in a cold sweat, with puffy eyes and a life-changing decision: I will quit all creative pursuits and become a lawyer. The United States is fucked and more than art we need litigation. As the day wore on, I slowly remembered all the reasons I would not become a lawyer–no money for law school, a disdain for logic and legalese, my disinterest in looking professional, etc. As that idea quickly faded, it was replaced with just a question: Does art really matter?