Hello from the digital armchair! I am resting comfortably at home in Appalachia with new things to share. I have to say, I crushed my Directangle Residency. It also crushed me. The week after I got home, I didn’t want to even pick up a sewing needle.
The stats:
100 editions of Goya Lepidopterist
25 quilt prints + artist proofs
?# butterfly posters
somehow the perfect amount of paper that my mom gave me
Cost of residency— $450
Cost of materials ~$100
Duration—1 week
Goya Lepidopterist
This little work of mine began in 2019 with a photocopy of lone figures from a now unremembered book: European butterflies, distributed throughout Spain. My job as an intern in the Toledo Museum of Art publication office was whimsical and often had me paging through object files and trying to identify insects and plants in paintings where the specific species were included as moral symbols. From that research, I wrote didactic guides and little pamphlets to make the museum into a themed scavenger hunt. I no longer remember which painting this figure belonged to but it struck me. I made a copy (of the copy of the copy).
Finally, a use for my art history degree!
For years, I have carried around this little book, moving it into different homes 6 times. I wrote and rewrote the poem fragments but hadn’t yet stepped into a style that fit me. Manifesto, published by Black Flower in 2022 was the start of that style. Working a collection of poetry called Hopeful Remnants for the past year has finally prepared me with the method to write Goya.
The book’s inner cover in glued in by hand on each one and I spent an entire day running them through my sewing machine for a bicolor binding. The book is for sale on my website for $25, or $20 for paying subscribers. There is also a poster with all of the images from the book for $10. My next post will be a digital version of the poem for paying subscribers only. If you want a $5 preview of the book, consider:
As a financial note, I always feel a need to make my offerings small and to under promote myself. I am not into doing business or to market anything. However, I am here, I live in this collapsing system too, and on very little capital. I am putting my poem into the world not only because it should be there to conjure dreams of ecological awareness, but also because being an artist is my job and this is my work. That said, I hope you, dear reader, are supportive rather than annoyed that I am putting things behind a paywall.
A quilt race at the very end
I was able to make a trade with Josh Dannin (who runs Directangle) in lieu of a $75 risograph workshop. This was incredibly fortunate as the entire duration of the residency I had $60 in my bank account. On the last day, Gene and I marathoned a quilt for 8 hours. It will be hung above the bed of the room I was staying in, “The Blue Room.” A lobster angle blows a trumpet softly over a sleepy quilted countryside.
I feel incredibly grateful for this trade. Any interaction in which we give what we can in lieu of money is a sublime little refusal of this financial system of inflated or deflated value. In the Art World, a Picasso sells for $130 million. Meanwhile, I talk with most artists I meet about the gargantuan challenge of pricing our art. I love doing trades with artists because trade solidifies a bond deeper than simply buying work. My artist ecosystem in Athens is reinforced through care and maintenance, the sharing of our gifts.
Blessings for you in this smoke filled world,