PROCESS NOTES // Today I’m alone in my studio sifting through memories and sensations—mine and others’. The veil feels very thin these days and grief is here but today it’s calm, layered, and patient. Grieving a friend who died at the start of the year is distinct from but also inextricably connected to other losses. I woke up feeling like it was the right day to start working on a big piece I’ve been dreaming up since my maternal grandfather Paul died in May 2017. He took tens of thousands of photographs in his life, primarily of flowering plants, trees, leaves, and landscapes, with a love for nature we both share. He learned photography from his older brother, and passed his skill along to my mom. My amazing aunt Marilyn has sorted through his thousands of color slides and boxed up some of the duplicates for me, after saving and scanning the originals, and they’ve been sitting in my closet for two years until I was ready to approach them. I’m not able to talk yet about what these botanical stained glass windows are transforming into—it still feels tenuous and tender—but I will say it’s hard to know, yet, what bigger work this is a part of. It involves visual material, the tactile and the textural, movement, memory, and writing. Is it an essay or a textile or an installation. Maybe that’s the wrong question—maybe the answer is, simply, yes. // Image is of two color slides perched on a bedroom window ledge with a snowy yard and neighboring house in the background. The slide on the left says “Azaleas 1972” written in blue pen on the frame, and shows a big azalea bush with red and pink flowers. The slide on the right has “Paul Bates 08/17/94” machine typed along one side of the frame, and shows a glorious orange mushroom rising up out of the forest floor. // #Sifting #MultidisciplinaryArtist #MultidisciplinaryPoet #NaturePhotography #WorkingWithWhatsOnHand #SlideFilm #SlowSlowSlow #FindingSpringInWinter
What are you reading right now? A book I’ve loved being with this week is Alice Walker’s The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult—a collection of memoir, essays, film script, letters, and reflections on the often harrowing process of turning The Color Purple into a film. She writes beautifully and powerfully about being a black woman artist, dealing with vicious criticism, her mother’s illness and death, parenting, her own years of debilitating illness with undiagnosed Lyme’s disease, creative process, solitude, bisexuality, staying in and choosing to leave partnerships, nature as religion, friendship, family, grief, collaboration, and so much more. I have many pages to go, but here is a passage I especially loved (slide 2, transcript in comments). I read slowly these days but it feels good to savor deliberate time with a writer I love, to linger with their words and listen. // Images are of the cover of the book mentioned above, resting on the open pages of a notebook covered with handwritten notes, and a close-up of a paragraph from the book. // #NowReading #AliceWalker #TakingTime #WritingOnChronicIllness #TheBodyConnectedReads
PROCESS NOTES // Something I learned while making NET/WORK, a multidisciplinary performance project about queer disabled embodiment, is that as a chronically ill full time artist I can only afford to make big physical work that is also useful, somehow, to myself and my community. It can’t conflict with my appointments. It has to help me get through my PT and OT home exercises. It has to be a conduit for intimacy, connection, and conversation. It has to flex to physically and emotionally hold me & my dear people, keep us warm and loved. It has to be able to happen in different settings, with a range of tools and materials, and any process available to me. Because if I’m making work that doesn’t do those things, I’m left at the end of every work day without the spoons to attend to basic needs, relationships, community care and mutual aid, spontaneity, or other forms of pleasure. // This brings me to my old cotton futon (bear with me!). I bought it new a decade ago, in Vermont right after college. It’s traveled with me to NC, WI, and MN, seen me through coming out and partnerships and breakups and the discovery that, with rare exceptions, I prefer to sleep alone. It also became pretty painful for my joints, so I gave in and got my first real mattress this summer. I couldn’t throw away this object-companion, but I knew it couldn’t live in a corner of my studio forever. I realized recently that the thing I DO need, that I can’t afford, is a variety of bolsters for therapeutic exercises, floor work, and to keep me from bruising/injuring while performing. And guess what’s in a decade-old futon? Fluffy raw cotton, polyester batting, and sheets of synthetic foam, wrapped in unbleached canvas, secured with a 6’ zipper and waxed cotton ties. So I spent a couple weeks dismantling it and organizing the raw materials, designing and sewing the bolsters with fabric from my stash, and watching this beloved bed become new again. Stay tuned for more about the bolsters and the work I’m doing with them in another post. In the meantime, friends: in what ways do your work spaces/creative processes hold you? What could you reuse/repurpose/adapt to meet your (solo or community) needs?
Some details from my Body Oracle drawings—a series of 15 small works on paper with pen, ink, gouache, sewing thread, dry sewing machine stitches, beeswax, and rice paper. These little spells for embodiment went out to the folks who ordered my Birthday Book Special, but a related series of larger pieces is slowly emerging this winter. I love the small, surprising moments that appear when working with layers and fluid, improvisatory media. // Image is a grid of nine details from mixed-media drawings. There are lots of pinks-oranges-grays-ochres-reds, and looping sewing machine stitches intersect with inky dashed lines and gouache-dyed rice paper scraps sewn onto the paper. Little organ-like pen drawings nestle among the other elements of each drawing. // #MultidisciplinaryArtist #MixedMedia #WorksOnPaper #BodyOracleDrawings
We’re getting a lot of snow in the next couple days, and I’m thinking about how, in these gorgeous film photos by @if.phxtxgraphy of a performance I did in early December, my handknit scrim looks like a screen of light snowflakes or a curtain of rain over my body. I always feel so loved when I move with this textile. Even though technically my hands made it and my body-mind dreamt it up, the scrim has become this other living entity with special powers I couldn’t have imagined. If a made thing is just accumulated time + energy made tangible, it feels so precious to experience the ways in which those forces can love us back. // Documentary photograph by Isabel Fajardo of my performance on flight with original movement, sound, handknit textile, and lighting at Patterns Interdisciplinary Showcase, Suirrel Haus Arts. In this photo D. is backlit behind the 8x8’ off-white mesh textile, sitting on the seat of their rollator walker with their legs in the air, head leaned back and arms out, casting big shadows on the fabric. // #AccessIntimacy #QueerDisabledAndPowerful #Improvisation #EmbodimentExperiment #MultidisciplinaryPoet #DisabilityPoetics #MinneapolisArtists #NonbinaryArtist #Genderqueer
BOOKSHELF DIVINATION // When I’m diving deep into new work, no matter the medium or form I expect it to take, I gather a stack of books from my shelves that connect to the project’s central questions and ideas or seem otherwise vital to the process. I thrifted this little tabletop book stand a few years back and it’s the perfect hold shelf for these curated collections. Some of these books I’ve read, some I’ll only read parts of, others I’ll finish eagerly. And regularly I use this little selection (always with at least one dictionary) to do bookshelf divinations. Do you have a practice like this? Here’s the gist of mine: With eyes closed, I summon up an open-ended question for the text. Sometimes I simply make a statement of my own willingness: “Please reveal to me whatever you wish to communicate at this moment, and I will receive it with openness and curiosity.” Then, I scan my hand lightly over the shelf, touching or not touching the spines, pulling out whichever book pulls me in (eyes still closed). Then I smell the book, run my hands over its covers, feel its weight, and flip through the pages until I stop. I open my eyes and start wherever my eyes fall first. Usually I read a page or two before and after, to get a fuller picture and see if anything else wants my attention. I always take notes, copy down the phrases/images/ideas that resonate with me most strongly, and spend some time reflecting on how this can move my work forward in a small or large way. Regardless of what comes up, touching books is great, and it feels good to connect with them in a spontaneous, magical, low-pressure way. I’ll share some examples of recent divination pages/notes in my stories later. I’m curious to hear about how other folks commune with books spontaneously, especially in adaptive ways that don’t rely on vision/physically picking up books. // Image is of D.’s writing desk with lamp, tablecloth, small natural objects, an open notebook, and a little shelf of 10-15 books. Over the desk hangs a photo of a man wearing mechanical wings. // #ArtistStudio #MultidisciplinaryPoet #WorkInProgress #CreativeProcess #PoeticResearch #BookshelfDivination
Today, my time in the studio is quiet, porous, barely orchestrated. I’m working on two long-term projects—a collection of lyric essays and a performance / constellation of pieces in various media that I’ve been calling NET/WORK—and the retreat is more a re-orienting and a re-rooting in my creative practice than a work intensive. I’m trying to be with my own queer disabled body in all of its genderqueerness and illness and desire, reading about geologic time scales and the growth habits of lichen, learning from the radical teachings of The Nap Ministry, Mia Mingus, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and so many others. Today’s work is to move in the directions where movement feels possible, however slowly, in whatever order. I’ve taken two naps. Asked questions of a book chosen from my desk shelf with eyes closed. Wandered around Google Street View in a place I’ve never been to, forming new slow thoughts about access. Last night when I got home from generous, generative time spent with artist friends, I got into the complete-but-unfinished handknit tube I’ve been creating since August, in front of the scrim I finished back in May, on a bolster I made last week from the stuffing in my old cotton futon, and let myself play. Before I dive back in, here’s a moment of that movement experiment for the archives. // Video is a short clip of D. wrapped in a mesh knit textile that covers their whole body and is open at both ends. They sit on a floral patterned cushion, and behind them is an 8x8’ handknit mesh scrim, but only part of it is visible. D. draws their arms into the tube and leans back. // #WorksInProgress #ArtistStudio #EmbodimentExperiment #CreativePractice #MultidisciplinaryPoet #RocksAndPlantsAndTextures #NapsNapsNaps #ChronicIllness #QueerArtists #ArtistsWithEDS #Nonbinary #Genderqueer #FriendlyReminderThatGenderIsMadeUp
Now that they’re all in their new homes, I can share these Body Oracle drawings I made back in November for the folks who ordered my birthday book special. I loved making these—gouache, pen, ink, sewing thread, dry sewing machine stitches, rice paper, and beeswax on paper. Each one is a little spell for bodily resilience, pleasure, adaptation, and somatic ways of knowing. Stay tuned for a bigger (in terms of paper size) series in this vein coming soon (in geologic time). // Image is of 15 mixed-media drawings laid out on a paint-spattered drawing board in a 3x5 grid. // #WorksOnPaper #MixedMedia #ABonyFeameworkForTheTangibleUniverse #MultidisciplinaryPoet #QueerArtist #EmbodimentPractice #ArtistsWithEDS
“The Rust Collection” (2017), District Lit // Poems, dictionary erasure, & gouache drawings
“On Material,” (2016), Black Warrior Review // Craft essay with text & images
“Autobodiography” (2016), Connotation Press // Lyric essay with dictionary erasures
“O Sister” (2017), Voices of Hope Choir & University of Minnesota Women’s Chorus // Poem written for choral arrangement