6/4/24: A Very Baby Newsletter
Today is my 39th birthday, kicking off my 40th trip around the sun. I’m celebrating by making my very last student loan payment, going to clay class, and soft launching my newsletter (this newsletter) into the ether.
I have been dreaming this newsletter into being for a while now. It was initially sparked by my ongoing refusal to believe that working artists need Instagram to survive, and has been more recently fueled by evolving values and emergent experiments.
Over the past four years my creative practice has gotten more expansive and interdisciplinary, more relational, less object based, and much less definable. In that time I have gained confidence and clarity, invested so much time and money into physical recovery and learning how to create work in a way that doesn’t harm my body, deepened into lifelong commitment with collaborators, underwent phoenix-level trauma healing, and planted seeds for projects that will continue to grow for who knows how long. In that time I have also spent ~hundreds~ of hours on application materials and received ‘no’ after ‘no’ after ‘no’ for every residency, grant, and fellowship I have applied to. It’s super common rhetoric to call it “a numbers game” with applications and just keep plugging along. But like… I don’t wanna play anymore.
So, you heard it here first, folks: I am declaring a year free from applications! I am welcoming in connections and collaborations that spring from curiosity and mutual interest! I no longer consent to spending dozens of unpaid hours of creative labor trying to convince panels of goal-oriented strangers that what I’m up to is worth investing in. I no longer consent to individual artists needing to have comparable skill sets of a salaried and institutionally-supported development director (a system that’s also bogus) in order to fight for scraps in a world with plenty of resources. I no longer consent to the funding that’s available being time-bound and one-off and designed to “support” well-packaged projects in adhering to capitalist standards of success. Are all application-based processes and institutions extractive and horrible? Of course not. Have I had really amazing experiences by receiving the rare and delightful, “yes”? Absolutely. But that’s not my current pathway, and I’m stoked to see what possibilities will emerge from putting my attention elsewhere.
(Huge and forever thanks to Jennie for her loving thought partnership on this, and helping me identify that the rage I’ve been feeling is an alchemical ingredient of transformation into new ways of being.)
I recently spent a week teaching at The Great Mother Conference, a beautiful and generative and complicated mythopoetic journey, and some things that became so so present were:
The work that I do matters and is worth doing (gasp)
If I'm not participating in the ways that people generally get opportunities and find out about stuff, I need to find other ways to connect and story-tell.
It’s okay if I get this mailing started before I have come up with a clever name, final design, or exact format.
So, here we are! Welcome to the first iteration of something I envision as quarterly but who actually knows. It will evolve, without question. Future mailings will only come to those who sign up, which you can do above!
Some possible future newsletter content:
art sales
event invitations, both time/local-specific and for you to activate in your own orbits
a voice-memo version of the newsletter? A printable version?
tzedekah (rebalancing of resources) opportunities
sparkly ponderings
opportunities to support the work
questions for the hive mind
lists
If you have thoughts/feedback/inspirations to share I would welcome them heartily.
let's pretend this newsletter is full of beautiful photos
〰️
let's pretend this newsletter is full of beautiful photos 〰️
Current & Upcoming Projects
Sorry, Not Sorry: An Apology Lab
This project is an opportunity to practice the skill (and art!) of apologizing. It offers participants the experience of being less alone, more skilled, more creative, and more loving within relational conflict. How does improving our capacity to give a genuine apology benefit our relationships and community? What support do we need to turn towards each other after conflict and rupture? Born from a (felt and observed) need for collective skill-building, the project is committed to exploring creative ways to tend to complex ecosystems of relationships within small, rural community. Apology Lab exists as a co-created and co-held space with Moriah Helms and Mia Bertelli, and also exists for me as ongoing personal creative exploration (see the “Calling In…” section below.)
This month marks five glorious years basking in the unknown with the In Kinship Collective. I have a hard time articulating the importance of this collaboration and these relationships in my life and work, and tbh I’m not going to start trying today! But I will share with you that we are creating a walk in Hallowell, ME on September 21th as part of the Walk for Historical and Ecological (WHERE) and you are so invited.
In addition to my participation with In Kinship as one of the partners involved in the Walk for Historical and Ecological Recovery (WHERE), I am also contracting with Atlantic Black Box (the organizational instigator of the project) to help produce the walk series as a whole. The series includes seven walks over seven months, and I will be assisting with creative cohesion and many other cultural-organizey tasks. Check out the programming here and register for as many walks as you feel called! And please tell your friends. I think something really special is happening with this incredible group of partners.
Past Year Recap
Okay, false alarm. I was going to create this section but I ran out of time and patience this round. I did, however, make Part 1 and Part 2 Instagram posts a couple months ago showing some recent work, so we’ll all just have to concede to that medium for now.
Calling in Projects, Collaboration, and Support!
I am now booking Fall 2024-Winter 2026
Projects I am seeking include:
Installation commissions (storefronts, festoonery, transform an abandoned building, etc.)
Collabs w performing artists (interactive sculpture, set design, projection, art direction)
Teaching gigs (especially for queer) kids & adults
On-site residencies (farms, land trusts, non-“arts” spaces, etc)
Visiting artist and/or lecture-type gigs
Creative production for events, retreats, and gatherings
Experience working w audio
Getting paid to brainstorm w you (ideas guy)
The whisper of a project that we can’t yet see
I am also currently seeking support specifically for Apology Lab, with particular interest in deeping research on generative conflict and expanding the visual/tactile elements of the project. Support could look like:
Residency/retreat time and space
Cold hard cash (aka funding to be able to focus time and energy on the project)
Folks interested in collaborating to develop a series for their community, organization, friend group, etc. Preferably paid and/or sliding-scale fee.
That is all for now! I did it! If you’re still here: we did it! I do hope you’ll stay tuned — I think it’s gonna get better.
With a spirit of experimentation and delight,
Devon
(they/them/theirs)