One full year

A year ago I was deep in revisions of paintings and a digital book chapter for a feminist publication celebrating the 50th anniversary of the field of Women’s and Gender Studies. In a fit of desperation in a period of major life and world transitions, I found myself pushing against my academic writing training after a difficult editor back and forth where the meaning of my essay (which was clear to me and the other women of color I passed it along to confirm) was being forced into a state I did not enjoy for others’ clarity. I also, was writing a lot of responses, reviews perhaps, of other artists’ works in my last semester of my AFA program when it shifted to online delivery. Instead of learning how to screen print and etching from a visiting printmaker, I was looking at various prints online and writing essays about them. Instead of increasing my clay throwing skills on the wheel, I was watching videos about potters of the past and present and writing reflections about what I was learning through the screen. Ever the attention seeker, I thought "these essays should be shared with more than just my professors reading them!" As to be expected, I’ve shared none of that writing over the last year. Instead, as is my style, I’ve written almost all new material for each of the previous 23 issues. Allowing me the anxiety opportunity to agonize over the content pretty much every week of the month because as soon as I send one off I’m prepping at least the next one if not the next few. Let's be real though, I wouldn't really have it any other way. Today I'm taking a breath and taking stock of what we’ve been through together through this newsletter experience. Please accept this correspondence as a bit of on the fly assessment, and a recommitment to another year of my musings as long as this process continues to bring me joy. 

As the readership of this newsletter continues to grow, I often feel myself grappling with the original goal of my experiment which loosely translates to: a) writing what I want, b) sending ideas into the world though my queer/feminist/Xicanx perspective, and c) continuing to hone my autoteoría writing style. Navigating my goals while growing/maintaining an audience has pushed me in ways that I did not truly anticipate before launching the newsletter. I find myself frequently checking my ego, trying to figure out ways to value this work that is not just about about the number of subscribers I have, about the number of clicks I receive. Tressie McMillian Cottom and Ezra Klein had this fascinating interplay recently about scale and thick ideas that I’ve been mulling over since I heard them discussing. TLDR version is that scaling up is often the only value we are driven to recognize because it is the easiest to monetize and upholds the US framework of valuing individual success. As you might suspect, that doesn’t vibe with my values, and yet, I have to fight the socialized part of me that has been taught and expects scale as a measure of value (of my worth) with all the ways I am aligning my digital presence. I am constantly reminding myself that if I send messages out and if they’re received, that’s enough. If I simply do it, that’s enough. Like my nearly two decades teaching feminist theory, I cannot know the impact those classroom experiences birthed once the students left it. I do fundamentally believe in Octavia Butler's sage wisdom as it emerges from Parable of the Sower, "All that you touch you change. All that you change, changes you." It is up to me, to us really, to find different ways of valuing this work. Of creating the conditions for connection. Of finding space for more complex conversations to unfold. Of making space for reflection for transformation. I must also confess that sometimes after sending out my newsletter I am so raw, I feel so vulnerable and exposed by what I sent out to friends and strangers alike, sometimes this feeling overwhelms me and I cannot do anything else for the rest of the day. I am learning to value that too. I’ve started to account for it; to give myself the room to rest after putting myself out there. Some of you know how much time I spend agonizing over this thing. This amalgamation of me in written form. A newsletter unlike other newsletters I receive from other visual artists who tend to share about their visual work and what is currently for sale. And yet, I am deeply committed to this thing. A space for me to bridge my writerly self with the other parts of me, an actualization of sorts. It is where I practice aligning my feminist scholar self, with the painter, with the writer. It is where I work to make sense of my humanity. Of this time and place. Of what it means to be an artist.

I am drawn to chronicling in the sense of accounting for events as they unfold. But those who chronicle often do so without analysis or interpretation. Chronicling demands that separation. I can’t help but try to make sense of the events I chronicle. I’m obsessed with seeing patterns, a synthesizer by nature and nurture. I desire so firmly to have something to hold onto, something that gives structure, helps me make sense of our current moment. The miniscule and the largest of forms are not that far apart. It is in that synthesizer pleasure that I’ve been writing this last set of issues loosely connected to my house troubles. And sometimes that has meant the physical structure of the home I make with Vaimo, or the home we're making in rural Minnesota. Sometimes, I've explored the House of KCF; this home in myself I continue to map. And those essays emerged out of the first twelve issues where I deeply explored ritual as a framework. Ritual became an important coping mechanism for me as I, as we, navigated this global pandemic that continues to endure and manifest in new horrors. Now in the U.S. for those of us not on the front lines of essential work in its many forms, “we” are “languishing,” after zoom fatigue, after lockdowns, after, after, after. We still remain too close to the experience to do anything besides chronicling. We chronicle in order to prevent future forgetting. Even as I’ve chronicled, I am starting to forget last April’s embodied dread of lockdown and toilet paper shortages. I’m also starting to forget the April before the last, forgetting the exact cocktail of fear, sadness, and relief when I gave my notice to my employer that I was leaving my tenured professor post. Instead, I'm focusing on remembering how April in Minnesota is such a transitionary month. The springs outside make fertile ground for the spring within.

My Art of KCF newsletter spawned many projects and new connections for me. It’s been my digital archive. A non-exhaustive list of highlights I’m valuing instead of scale includes: the launching of an IG by the same name, my Ko-Fi site, connecting via social media with the authors/creators of the texts and media I review, learning that some readers use my discussion questions as icebreakers for work meetings, receiving news from IRL friends that they have been inspired to keep writing based on these bi-monthly dispatches… Additionally, this newsletter has served as an accountability tracker for me, something that kept me moving in some direction. A structure I had to create for myself when I was thrust into the most unstructured time of my life; this space has served as a nourishing space of remembering. And what a privilege it is to be able to claim that space. Remembering is a sacred act of care and love for oneself, for one’s community. Especially when we make room for the political possibilities of remembering, that is, in remembering we honor the past and from where we have come, while also carrying on the lessons we learned in our present for our future. Queer time practices that blend the present with the past and our past/present with our future selves. Remembering can become such a powerful practice, a site for healing, a retribution, its own ritual.

The next season of Art of KCF newsletters is going to focus on art analogies. I was so excited by this concept that I almost started writing the first iteration to share today. I’m glad I took a breath to acknowledge just how far we’ve journeyed together instead. It’s always pays to check in and make sure you’re getting something out of the experience. Before I set up my Tinyletter I was wracked with the anxious feeling of who is going to even want to read this? And, by the lovely email responses I receive back from readers (which I love receiving btw), we are all hungry for deep, authentic, human connections. It has truly been one full year, and I'm grateful to you for opting in to this corner of the internet I'm trying to make home. This one full year has taught me time and again that it's worth taking a leap. Sometimes it’s best to just dive in and shift in progress. Fly while building the plane as they say. Make what is calling you to make. Do it for you, find your unique value. I give you the go ahead, just go do the thing. Do it for one full year, and see where it goes.

What I’m Watching

How do you Paint with Cate White

A couple of newsletters back I linked to an interview with the artist Cate White in my artist offerings, and ever since then, my obsession with her work and her performance persona through this webseries (and IG series) she’s creating has only deepened. Here are just a few of the things I appreciate about the show as a painter. Her running commentary sounds like she’s talking directly to me! She nods back to Bob Ross in the concept of her show and while there is often more agonizing than painting she hones in on the major questions of what does it mean to paint. “How do you paint?” is a deliciously complex question, how do you paint? How do you paint? How do you paint? There is something so satisfying about having this question to ponder, and to think about as you take on the process of painting itself. I’m also someone who likes to know how things work, every painter approaches their painting process in their own way, so Cate's generosity of allowing us into her studio space is a gift. When I look at a painting I want to know how the artist made it, what brush/utensil did they use to the apply the paint and in what order? How did they apply the paint? How do different effects of paint work for narrative purposes? How is the painter thinking about color? This show gives the aspiring painter an inside look into the complexity of painting - a prospect both magnificent and terrifying.

What I’m Hearing

Stolen: The Search for Jermain (Streaming free on Spotify)

I have long been a fan of the journalist Connie Walker who hosted two seasons of the investigative series Missing and Murdered for the CBC. In that show she and a crew of folks explore not only the broader social conditions that facilitate men’s physical and sexual crimes against Indigenous women, but in each of those seasons she focuses on one specific woman’s story and her family’s reactions/experiences to the indefinite questions that remain when these men’s crimes against their family members go unsolved, with little to no accountability. In Stolen, Connie Walker is at it again, for a different outlet, exploring the 2018 disappearance of Jermain Charlo from Montana. The power in listening to both shows comes with the recognition of Indigenous women’s experiences sharing similarities across Indigenous homelands of North America. I am not a fan of true crime podcasts in the ways that it feels like the hosts are often too glib related to the violence they chronicle. In Stolen and Connie Walker’s other work, she brings an Indigenous worldview to the process of journalistic chronicling that as difficult as it is to witness, also feels like it brings some healing in the ways she honors and remembers these women. Ultimately she lends her efforts in these powerful storytelling methods to the goal of No More Stolen Sisters.

Artist Offerings

• This write up of María Berrío’s exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art piqued my interest about this artist and her work on women and displacement.
• I recently subscribed to this beautiful digital zine Lesbians are Miracles and am living for it.
• I haven’t gasped from seeing an image of a painting in a long time, stumbling across this video about a large scale painting by Nicolas V Sanchez delivered.
• I had the chance to virtually attend the artist talk of three of the forty artists included in the La Trienal show at El Museo del Barrio whose work is engaging craft. Seeing Yvette Mayorga (who pipes acrylic onto canvas as if she’s decorating a cake) and Justin Favela (who uses tissue paper after piñatas for large scale installations) talk about their work was particularly inspiring for me this week.

Creative Ritual

I have been deep in the thralls of website redesign. When I originally launched my artist website about a year ago, it was for my AFA graduation. I was required to have my bio and an artist statement and some of my completed work on a site which was a needed first start. In the one full year since launching this website I've had several consults on how to better align my website for me to be more fully reflected there. So, this is all to say, I’ve been doing a lot of redesign work on my site! I submitted a few of my Interior Intimacy paintings to a show on Women’s Work in another state so please send the good vibes. I finished painting my 13 Kitchen Saints (yay! And submitted a grant report for some partial funding I received for material support). I submitted another grant application for studio support. I’ve been making steady process on this storytelling project I’m working on in my communities. And, I had the chance to join the One Voice Mixed Chorus - MN’s LGBTQ Chorus this week for a live Q&A session in light of my podcast episode that will drop on Tuesday. Sound Mind is a six part series exploring queer artists' experiences in rural MN and the intersections of mental health. I’m really grateful to be a part of the series and I hope you will give all the episodes a listen, subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.

Questions to Ponder

What are you chronicling?
How are you making space for remembering as a political practice?
What new structures are you building for yourself so that you can thrive?
How far have you journeyed since last April? How are you chronicling and/or synthesizing it?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. I'm really grateful you are here.

-KCF

PS: I recently upgraded my Ko-Fi site so that I can host monthly contributors there, consider signing up, when you support my newsletter, you help keep it free and accessible to any online reader. Monetary resources not an option? How about social capital instead? Please forward this newsletter to a friend you think will enjoy it!