The longer I go without doing this, the harder it is to start again. Not for the usual reasons of procrastination or guilt, but because there is simply too much I wish to share.

Even on quiet days I have to choose wisely what I write. And this trip has been so full of art and friends and learning and emotion. It is all tangled in my head like the webs of ground dwelling spiders.

Here are two ancestors who are with me as I pick this back up.

Sol Le Witt

On Monday I got the opportunity to see some of Sol Le Witt’s work at the SF Moma. Le Witt has been a huge inspiration for me for 3 or so years now, almost since the moment I learned of him.

In 2023, I finished work on a recreation of one of his wall drawings in my bedroom in Virginia. For me it was a way of experimentally understanding his work. Placing my self not just in the body of his shop assistants, but in his mind as well.

Monday was the first time I got to see his mural work at full scale. Or, I think I have seen it with out context, before understanding these drawing’s designer was someone from whom I would learn to draw great power.

I sat alone in the gallery, dwarfed by the scale of his work and wondered what it would mean to take his way of working and go farther—whether I might walk, as they say, in the footsteps of giants.

In the next gallery I found a video of him, shot in front of people installing wall drawings in the early 2000s. I sat and took notes.

While I have recreated his visual works it is his approach to the idea its self that most motivates me. His procedural art is to me what Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit is to many in the tabletop space.

I am a moment of transformation with games work. I love games. I love procedure. I will not leave my work in that space behind, but also I know I must find some new conception of the way I work which can contain all I wish to do.

LeWitt, recorded, said “You can’t keep doing what you have always done,” and I knew he was right. He said “A new space can set you off in a new direction.” And I asked “Which space?”. He said “It was my way to separate art from craft.” And I replied, “It is my way to practice both but know the difference, but which are games? Sometimes I think they are neither.” He said “When the idea is transmitted the art is complete.” And I sighed and said, “How do you know when it is done?”

LeWitt, recorded, said “I love crayon.” And I laughed and said “me too.”

Marjane Satrapi

I found out Marjane Satrapi died this morning, age 56. She wrote Persepolis a comic in four volumes which is both memoir and history. My mother taught her book for many years. Even now both of us have copies in our homes, just waiting to be picked up.

I remember reading it in snatches whenever I had to stay late in my mother’s classroom. Looking back I find it surprising but true to say she helped me discover I was trans, her depictions of girlhood were powerful but did not resonate in a way that was clearly not because I was not Iranian.

My graphic novel has been on my mind. I am wrestling with questions about how to share my work on it here, how to even begin. She was one of my biggest inspirations for it—her and Art Spiegleman who wrote Maus and Joe Sacco who has used comics to report on Palestine.

I too want to create something which is both fairytale, memoir, and history. I want to create something which motivates and teaches, which conveys my own memories of girlhood and of boyhood. I want to document the dissent which has already begun to arrive.

I wept for her this morning, and for her husband and other half who she followed into death. They say she died of sadness, but I hope she rets in power.

I hope when I write with images, as she said the “first language” of humans, I can write with as much courage as she did.

If you wish to honor her today I ask you say, “I love the people of Iran. I stand with them. They are my people too. They will not be alone as long as I am alive.” Say it until it is true. Say it even if it is just to the sky and the birds.