You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
As a form, it is both specific, that is, recognizable, and infinitely transmutable; it transforms itself easily to thrive in different times and places.
Always situated in a particular place, a territory, a neighborhood, a forest, a specific milieu, the commune form is about “producing” spaces
– Kristin Ross
I chart the psyche,
observing how I
force myself to speak
to you, imagining that
together we might
transform a life.
Why this need
to document change,
to reverse a mood,
to carry forward the time
when magnolias bloom?
Let’s follow the itinerant we
up and over the jonquil’s back,
treading on its spilled bullion.
April, Sally Van Doren
“Let me start again. Paradox is not new. In this unsteady
moment, being okay with uncertainty is what I
need to do to have a calm sense of anything. “
Abecedarian at the Threshold, Laura Van Prooyen (SWWIM)
Winter Worm, Summer Grass, Mimosa Echard. Longlati Foundation.
Arizona, John Edgar Wideman (NewYorker). Always!!
The community programs obviously addressed real needs. Objectively, however, they were more important to the existence of the party as an organization than they were to the survival of the black community. Survival programs were originally instituted not only to serve the people but also to improve the party’s image in the black community by providing positive, disciplined activities for the membership.
The Panther Party also envisioned the community programs as introducing socialism in practical and concrete terms. Donations solicited from businesses were a means of redistributing wealth from the haves to the have-nots.
Survival pending revolution : the history of the Black Panther Party, Paul Alkebulan. 2007.
this conflict of times …
What grounds the permanence of domination …
time is … a line that can be infused with promises … It is also a hierarchical distribution of forms of life
… located the rational matrix of human activity in the obscure everyday world of the production of material existence
Jacques Ranciere, Modern Times, Temporality in Art and Politics (2018). Translated by Gregory Elliott (2022).
and lose himself in the mechanics of the ordinary
was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
the small things […] when added up, amounted to a life.
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Oprah’s Book Club)
Solvent transfer, graphite, colored pencil, ink, gouache, acrylic, and enamel paint on paper. 18 x 12 inches. 2026. Donated to Locust Projects’ Art Auction.
Melvin Edwards’s obituary. (Frieze)
“His travels to Ghana, Nigeria, Togo and Benin informed his understanding of sculpture as a form of cultural continuity, leading him to create public works that fused African traditions with contemporary abstraction?. “
Gently, let us steep our love
In the silence deep, as thus,
Branches arching high above
Twine their shadows over us.
Let us blend our souls as one,
Hearts’ and senses’ ecstasies,
Evergreen, in unison
With the pines’ vague lethargies.
Dim your eyes and, heart at rest,
Freed from all futile endeavor,
Arms crossed on your slumbering breast,
Banish vain desire forever.
Let us yield then, you and I,
To the waftings, calm and sweet,
As their breeze-blown lullaby
Sways the gold grass at your feet.
And, when night begins to fall
From the black oaks, darkening,
In the nightingale’s soft call
Our despair will, solemn, sing.
In Muted Tone, Paul Verlaine, translated by Norman R. Shapiro.
Understanding Resolution in Fine Art Printing: Image DPI (PPI) vs. Print DPI (artmedia.studio)