Untitled Vessel (Beige), 2021, stretch polyester fabric on steel armature, 60” x 24”

1. We are ALL vessels capable of compassion.

2. We are all equal. We share our humanity.

- Maren Hassinger

“…Their otherworldly presence is underscored by the gentle sway set in motion with each passing breeze. With a nod to Hassinger’s career in dance and performance, the fabric vessels’ graceful rotations make us conscious of our collective experience as we move through space, navigating between the fragile and ethereal and the prickly and earthbound.” from Susan Inglett Gallery website

“Born Maren Louise Jenkins, Hassinger grew up in Los Angeles. She enrolled at Bennington College, Vermont, in 1965 for dance, which she had studied since the age of five. She graduated four years later, however, with a bachelor’s degree in sculpture, though her interest in dance would remain strong and she often integrates it into her sculptural forms. After a brief stay in New York, she returned to Los Angeles to pursue an MFA in fiber from the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1973. Hassinger’s study of fibers proved beneficial to her work in sculpture, and she learned techniques that would inform her later work. Since 1997 she has been director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, bringing her spirit of experimentation to teaching as well.

Hassinger also creates performance and video pieces that explore the relationship between the body and its surroundings. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s she sought out alternative spaces in which to show her works, such as abandoned buildings, construction sites, and vacant lots. Her experimentation extends beyond materials and venues to encompass collaboration with other artists, notably Senga Nengudi. Much like her sculptures and installations, Hassinger’s performances and videos generate a desire for discovery. Usually focused on movement, these works, though seemingly about the mundane, bring life to simple gestures and actions.

Whether through sculpture or performance, Hassinger does not offer an obvious encounter for the viewer. She allows the tensions inherent in her work to remain unresolved precisely because she trusts the viewer to form his or her own opinion. What results is not a didactic experience of art but rather a sensory discovery of what it means to be an individual. With works that are sometimes participatory and always experiential, Hassinger uses the sensual and the contemplative, understatement and evocation, to offer her viewers an opportunity to discover, reflect, and connect.” from Hammer Museum website

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Esther Marie Hall, another world is possible (installation view), 2022

Institutional Critique is an art practice and critical theory that focuses on examining and questioning the structures, practices, and ideologies of cultural institutions, such as museums, galleries, universities, and other art-related organizations. The primary goal of institutional critique is to interrogate the power dynamics, biases, hierarchies, and exclusions embedded within institutional frameworks. Artists and theorists engaged in institutional critique often challenge the ways in which institutions shape the production, presentation, interpretation, and distribution of art and culture.

...and as you probably know, I’ve actively engaged in critiquing numerous Sacramento art institutions, leveraging my dual perspectives both as an insider, having served as a staff member within these institutions, and as a community member advocating for change from outside their walls. Through rigorous examination and constructive critique, I’ve sought to hold these institutions accountable to their missions of fostering creativity, inclusivity, and cultural enrichment for all Sacramentans.

Artists Daniel Alejandro Trejo and Esther Marie Hall recently engaged in institutional critique at Verge Center for Contemporary Art, where they both participated in the studio program. You will find some of their critique in these art notes. Trejo and Hall (Both Brown & Queer) were subsequently evicted from their studios for daring to question, challenge, or interrogate the predominately white-led and centered institution and its executive director, Liv Moe.

I firmly believe in the power of critique. I advocate for a culture where artists and art institutions, particularly within our city, are not only open to receiving critique but actively seek it out as a means of growth and improvement. It’s essential that we foster an environment where listening, learning, and taking meaningful action in response to critique are valued principles. By embracing constructive feedback, we can work together to create a more dynamic, inclusive, and responsive arts community that truly reflects and serves the diverse needs and perspectives of our city.

Daniel Alejandro Trejo, I’m Never Going to Look at the Sunset the Same Way Again, 2018, 22” x 23”x 2”, Underglazed Ceramic

“In our mandatory Studio Artist Meeting, we asked for intentional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – in which I applauded Verge for their work in gender and generational diversity, but they needed significant work in racial diversity and called out their performative gestures and instances of tokenization. The work on DEI was not done with intention or meaning, but obviously done for the sake of optics and hopes for receiving more grant funding. We were met with defensiveness from the director, artists expectedly coddled and enabled the behavior: then you be the leader. It’s alarming when BIPOC bodies are burdened to resolve the issues created by institutional racism. We did not design this program. As a Brown Queer, I didn’t feel safe speaking out to a group of symbolic authority figures that create obstacles instead of dismantling them.” -Daniel Alejandro Trejo Instagram | Website

Trejo was a resident at Verge Center for the Arts where he maintained his studio practice (evicted on Friday 3/15/24)

Born in Stockton, CA, Daniel Alejandro Trejo is an emerging Latinx artist working in ceramic sculpture. He received his BA in Art Studio and Art History from University of California, Davis. Subsequent to completing his undergraduate studies, he obtained studio residency at Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento. He concurrently taught ceramic classes as an educational associate at Verge. Trejo also participated in group shows at venues in Los Angeles, Austin, Chicago and has held solo exhibitions in Sacramento at Panama Art Factory’s gallery and at Alpha Fired Arts gallery. He has also co-organized and curated Sacramento Zine Fest under Unibrow Collective, a Sacramento based collaborative. Trejo has also been the recipient of The Howard R. Kottler Testamentary Trust Scholarship, and has participated in an intensive two-week residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME.

“As a studio artist at Verge, it was extremely discouraging walking through the doors into the studio project every day and the first 5 faces you see are white, amongst both staff and residents. As a POC, you are immediately sent into fight or flight and become hyper aware that this space is potentially not for you and you may actually not be safe. My work has always been about the oppressive structures we live within, but now, I was working directly under one with an authoritarian-esque “leader” who does not allow any discourse, feedback, or questioning accompanied by a predominantly white studio space.

In my time there, I really didn’t see many of these artists show up because they had second studio spaces and I realized that these people had never really struggled and experienced the BIPOC mentality of “I paid for it, I NEED to use it so it doesn’t go to waste” because a majority of us do not have expendable income to do so. My studio neighbor’s space became riddled with cobwebs after not seeing her for 8 months and really just became a storage space of sorts. This is unfortunately the majority of spaces in the Verge Art Studio Project. Verge touts their subsidized studio spaces and in their guiding principles writes: “Verge is committed to becoming a more open and welcoming organization. Historic and systemic discrimination have created barriers to inclusion, participation, and opportunity that have excluded the embracing of different ethnicities, skin colors, gender identities and body types, religious beliefs, physical or cognitive challenges, or socio-economic standing.” But this is unfortunately untrue. Upon my leaving, the studio project had a total of 7 BIPOC artists out of 36 and 1 BIPOC out of 7 office staff members. Where is the inclusion? Where is the embracing of different ethnicities, skin colors, and gender identities? Because here we are in 2024 asking for inclusion, gender neutral bathroom signs, and begging for clean water in a contemporary art space, but instead we are met with micro aggressions and evictions.” - Esther Marie Hall Instagram Website

Hall was a resident at Verge Center for the Arts where she maintained her studio practice (evicted on Friday 3/15/24)

Esther Marie Hall is a multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on fiber and textile work based in Sacramento, CA. She uses her work to illustrate her cultural identity through the use of traditional Filipino and American crafting techniques such as weaving, crocheting, embroidery, and quilting. Esther utilizes these mediums with the intention of expanding this material’s language and reconfiguring the meaning of what a quilt can and cannot be, by stretching and skewing forms, using an array of material not typically found in traditional quilting, and thinking about them compositionally as paintings. Quilting has a long history of resistance and documenting the current state of affairs, so the use of this medium felt streamlined as her work has long had existentialist, anti-authoritarian, and climate disruption undertones. Hall predominantly collects and hoards fabric related ephemera and uses donated and secondhand materials as a representation of quantum entanglement with the idea of carrying on any energy the previous owner had intended for the material. Esther was born and raised in Northern California and has resided in Sacramento since 2011. She attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Francisco where her practice in textiles began. Hall has worked with organizations such as the Latino Center of Art and Culture, Planned Parenthood, and Facebook, and has shown work throughout California, Florida, Kentucky, and Washington.

On April 2, 2024 I recorded Advocate + Critic + Curator Talk on YouTube discussing Verge’s response to this institutional critique.

Crocker Art Museum’s latest exhibition, Making Moves: A Collection of Feminisms, positions itself as a feminist exhibition “inspired by the writings of bell hooks”, organizing over seventy works from the museum’s permanent collection around themes of self-representation, care, sentimentality, the erotic, and memory. Yet while hooks’ name anchors the exhibition’s conceptual framing, her writing is notably absent from its interpretive materials. This omission is not incidental. It reveals a broader curatorial tension between feminism as a political framework and feminism as a thematic or aesthetic category.

bell hooks (1952–2021) was a Black feminist theorist, cultural critic, writer, and educator whose work fundamentally reshaped feminist thought by insisting that race, class, gender, and power be understood as inseparable systems. Writing across theory, memoir, pedagogy, art criticism, and children’s literature, hooks insisted that feminism be both politically rigorous and radically accessible. Throughout her career, hooks challenged institutions—universities, media, museums, and cultural canons—to confront how domination operates through representation, education, love, and memory. Her writing emphasized that theory must be lived, named plainly, and made available to everyone.

hooks consistently defined feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” This formulation demands structural analysis—of race, class, gender, and power—rather than broad gestures toward inclusion or representation. In Making Moves, however, hooks’ framework is paraphrased rather than cited, translated into institutional language that emphasizes “women’s experiences” and diversity of expression. The result is a softened feminism, one that privileges affect and visibility over critique and accountability.

The press release proclaims that Making Moves “makes space for open-ended feminist thought,” yet offers no definition of feminism, no engagement with feminist theory, and no didactic materials situating bell hooks’ political framework. bell hooks repeatedly warned that feminism loses its transformative potential when it is rendered vague or purely thematic. In Feminism Is for Everybody, she defines feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression,” a clarity absent from the exhibition’s interpretive approach. By substituting thematic openness for political grounding, the exhibition frames feminism as an aesthetic sensibility rather than a critical methodology, placing the burden of interpretation on the viewer while absolving the institution of pedagogical responsibility.

The exhibition’s treatment of self-representation exemplifies this slippage. As bell hooks argues in Black Looks and Art on My Mind, representation is a site of political struggle shaped by histories of domination and the gaze. Without this grounding, self-representation in Making Moves risks functioning as an expressive category rather than a refusal of imposed narratives. Similarly, the theme of care gestures toward relationality and tenderness, yet remains detached from hooks’ insistence that care and love function as ethical practices tied to justice, labor, and resistance, most clearly developed in All About Love and Teaching Community.

Sentimentality and memory are likewise framed as affective registers rather than contested terrains. hooks repeatedly cautions against sentiment when it obscures power, insisting instead that memory functions as counter-history—embodied, racialized, and tethered to place. In foregrounding feeling without historical or structural analysis, Making Moves neutralizes the radical potential of these themes. The erotic, too, is treated primarily as visual expression, bypassing hooks’ insistence that desire is shaped by patriarchy, trauma, and domination, and therefore is not inherently liberatory.

A November 2, 2025 blog post, further notes that the exhibition “embraces an inclusive view of gender and feminism, resisting definitions and boundaries in favor of diverse perspectives and lived experiences.”

Yet this resistance to definition directly contradicts hooks’ repeated insistence that feminism requires clarity to remain politically effective

As hooks writes in Feminism is for Everybody:

“Feminist politics is losing momentum because feminist movement has lost clear definitions. We have lost those definitions. Let’s reclaim them. Let’s share them. Let’s start over. Let’s have T-shirts and bumper stickers and postcards and hip-hop music, television and radio commercials, ads everywhere and billboards, and all manner of printed material that tells the world about feminism. We can share the simple yet powerful message that feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression. Let’s start there. Let the movement begin again.”1

By naming hooks while withholding her language, Making Moves transforms a rigorous Black feminist methodology into a curatorial mood. This move mirrors a broader institutional tendency to cite radical thinkers as inspiration while avoiding the political clarity they demand. hooks wrote accessibly and insistently so her work could circulate beyond the academy—not to be aestheticized, but to be used.

Ultimately, Making Moves offers feminism as a collection of gestures rather than a practice of critique. In doing so, it reveals the limits of conceptual alignment without intellectual commitment, reminding us that bell hooks does not provide themes for visual exploration so much as a framework for interrogating power—one the exhibition gestures toward, but ultimately refuses to inhabit.

There were numerous ways the exhibition could have meaningfully engaged bell hooks’ work while remaining accessible and visually compelling. By defining feminism clearly, citing hooks directly, and situating thematic concerns within her political framework, the curators could have invited viewers into feminism as a lived and contested practice rather than an open-ended aesthetic. hooks did not write to be inspirational in the abstract; she wrote to be used. Engaging her work fully would not have narrowed interpretation but expanded it, offering viewers the tools to understand feminism not only as something to feel, but as something to practice.

—

as a Black feminist critic + curator, and scholar of bell hooks, I offer this institutional critique with the hope that the Museum will deepen its engagement through programming and interpretative materials that meaningfully reflect hooks’ feminist politics.

Cotton Hangup, 1966, Welded steel, 32 × 30 × 30 in.

“Crafted from repurposed industrial materials, Cotton Hangup reflects Melvin Edwards’s investigations into the dynamics and associations of suspension as he expanded the scale of his art. The title refers to the history of cotton-picking by enslaved peoples and sharecroppers in the United States. Creating the shape of a hanging figure from the materials used to process cotton, Edwards suggests a central connection between the systemic violence inherent in the cotton industry and the practice of lynching.” from The Studio Museum in Harlem

“Melvin Edwards is a pioneer in the history of contemporary African American art and sculpture. Born in Houston, TX, Edwards began his artistic career at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, where he met and was mentored by the Hungarian painter Francis de Erdely. In 1965, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art organized his first solo exhibition, which launched his professional career. He moved to New York City in 1967. Shortly after his arrival, his work was exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 1970, he became the first African American sculptor to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

His practice reflects his engagement with the history of race, labor, and violence, as well as with themes of the African Diaspora. Making welding his preferred medium, his sculptures are studies in abstraction and minimalism. Ranging from colorful painted sculptures that expand on the Modernist vocabulary of artists like Alexander Calder to barbed wire installations to tangled amalgamations of agricultural and industrial elements, his work is distinguished by its formal simplicity and powerful materiality. He remains best known for his series of Lynch Fragments, welded combinations of disparate objects that invite competing narratives of oppression and creation. This body of work spans three periods: the early 1960s, when the artist responded to racial violence in the United States; the early 1970s, when his activism concerning the Vietnam War motivated him to return to the series; and from 1978 to the present, as he continues to explore a variety of themes, including his personal connection to Africa. In addition, he has a longstanding commitment to public art. Since the 1960s, he has created sculptures for universities, public housing projects, and museums. Edwards’ large-scale sculptures extend his extraordinary range of aesthetic expression, reaffirming his commitment to abstraction.” from United States Artists.

Number 80, 2002, Paper, dimensions variable. Created in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

“Number 80 represents a transition in Leonardo Drew’s work. A significant portion of his previous work is assembled, piece by piece, from the debris of contemporary life, which he transforms and presents back to us. Often, early works were painted over in one color or covered by rust, which gave a uniform patina to the disparate parts of the whole and emphasized the decay of the discarded objects. More recently, in works such as Number 77, the artist chose to leave the objects unchanged, adding to the tension between the chaos of the vast number of interacting objects and the grid-like pattern in which they are carefully arranged. In his collaboration with FWM, Drew continued his investigation of collected objects, but instead of presenting the objects themselves, he made paper casts—thin shells or ghost forms of the original objects.

To create the installation, Drew collected over four hundred everyday objects— toys, furniture, appliances, and household wares—from thrift stores, junkyards, and off the street. With a large group of interns and staff, he cast each object in paper, removing the original object once the paper cast was created. They are hollow, nearly weightless forms that echo the original objects from which they were made more than they replicate them.

Drew’s work has been described as “somber and full of memory” (Patrick Murphy, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 2001) and though Number 80 is a departure from the darker tones of much of the artist’s previous work, a contemplative mood still prevails. Instead of presenting the ongoing and transformed life of discarded objects, the installation takes us beyond the life of the object itself and portrays the ethereal essence of things that once existed.” from The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s website

“Leonardo Drew was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he was six years old. He began making art at a very young age and pursued formal art training at Parsons School of Design, New York (1981–1982), and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (BFA, 1985). Drew is best known for his abstract, monumental sculptural assemblages. His works are never titled because the artist does not want to impose an interpretation on the viewer; instead, they are assigned numbers. Drew has had many one-person exhibitions in national and international museums, including the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Ireland (2001), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC (2000), and The Bronx Museum of the Arts in Bronx, New York (2000).” from The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s website

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Clown Portrait, 2018, Oil on canvas, 45” x 34”

“Beverly McIver’s body of work is decidedly autobiographical, consisting of portraits of friends, family, and herself. As she once explained: “I try to face whatever is going on in my life, joyful or painful, through my paintings. I express myself with brushstrokes. It’s how I process my happiness or grief, and how I communicate with the world.” The likenesses are mostly close-up views, closely cropped, presented in rich colors with a lot of black, and painted with a loaded brush.

Beverly Jean McIver was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and did not know her biological father until she was in her teens. Years later, he became one of her primary models especially after she became his caregiver. Her mentally disabled sister Renee was the subject of a documentary that was aired on HBO. In high school, which was largely attended by affluent white students, McIver joined the clowning club. Wearing make-up and a wig, she became a different person: “As a clown…I was transformed, and in many ways more acceptable to society. No one cared that I was black or poor. I was embraced.” from The Johnson Collection website.

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still from Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death, 2016, Single-channel digital video, color, sound, 7 min., 25 sec.

Watch on YouTube

“In Jafa’s Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death (2016), viewers encounter myriad visual elements, including photographs of civil rights leaders and politicians, a video clip of tennis player Serena Williams Crip Walking on the court, and camera phone footage of police brutality against Black people—all interspersed with close-ups of the sun. Though the sequences of images seem to defy logic, the frames are cut and spliced rhythmically, producing a choreographed procession of anti-Black violence, mourning, celebration, and intimacy—all inhabiting the immensity and power of the sun.

Arthur Jafa’s eye continually seeks out, and draws into focus, unlikely and uncanny companions. Through his work he invites viewers to look along with him, not turning away but bearing witness to a chorus of beauty and terror that, for Jafa, define the richness of Black life.” from MoMA’s website

“Artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa has been assembling his substantial catalogue of film and imagery since the 1980s, serving as a rich repository and springboard for still images, videos, paintings and sculptures that celebrate and reflect Black life in America and beyond. Jafa, who studied architecture and filmmaking, choreographs both cinematic and physical space in his visceral, hallucinatory films and expansive installations. He sequences and forces into dialogue fragmented extracts from disparate visuals, including social media videos, low-resolution television recordings, celebrity interviews, raw footage of police encounters, cartoons and video game content. Jafa explores and approximates icons, brutalities and aesthetics associated with Black culture, the radical power of Afro-American music and the prevalence of a white gaze in Western cinema. He forms astute juxtapositions and sensory experiences that heighten emotive responses to the real events and histories portrayed, encouraging witness, empathy and confrontation.” from Sadie Coles HQ website

*Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death is in faith’s Top 3 artworks ever made by an artist.

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“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991, Candies in variously colored wrappers, Dimensions vary with installation; ideal weight 175 lbs.

“Although it avoids literal representation, this is a work about queer desire, queer bodies, and queer history. It is named after his love and life partner, Ross Laycock, and is about his personal experience of AIDS as well as the AIDS Crisis as a whole. The ‘ideal weight of 175 lb’ is a reference to Ross’ healthy weight, which diminished because of the virus. …As visitors to the gallery take the candies (as they are invited to do) it speaks to the weight loss experienced by Ross as he fought the virus. …Ross died from complications due to AIDS on January 24th, 1991, and Félix would go on to make this work later that same year.” from Queer Art History

“Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) was one of the most significant artists to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In its reduced formal vocabulary, conceptual rigor, and evocative use of everyday materials, the artist’s work resonates with meaning that is at once specific and mutable, rigorous and generous, poetic and political.

Gonzalez-Torres was an American artist born in Guáimaro, Cuba. He lived and worked in New York City between 1979 and 1995. Gonzalez-Torres died in Miami on January 9, 1996 from AIDS-related causes. He began his art studies at the University of Puerto Rico before moving to New York City, where he attended the Whitney Independent Study Program, first in 1981 and again in 1983. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, New York, in 1983 and his MFA from the International Center of Photography and New York University in 1987.” from David Zwirner’s website

website

Ascension Device II (actions for earth… or some other oscillation… a haptic and sonic engagement… a breath… or an architecture for gathering between space and time), 2024. Timber, aluminum, polypropylene ropes, spoked wheels, and electric gear motors

Ascension Device II is currently on view at Driftwork curated by Essence Harden at Southern Guild Gallery in Los Angeles, CA from November 14, 2025 through January 10, 2026.

“Azim is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with ancestral roots in Aiken, South Carolina and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Her conceptual practice explores the tensions between personal and collective narratives – both known and indecipherable – in order to explore black migration, movement, and belonging. With longstanding interests in the poetics of Black embodied knowledge, her work encompasses a variety of media, including photography, works on paper, sculpture, video, sound, and is rooted in archival research and experimental field work.

Considering the relationships between space, history, memory, and time – linear and otherwise – her recent works notions towards questions that situate conceptual concerns. They ask: Can the liminal/unseen experiences of migration (such as the spaces between ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’) act as a constellation of ideologies towards enlivening our imaginative possibilities? How does the process of movement impact the poetics of black belonging, desire, and liberation? How are topographic terrains informed by the unfolding histories of displacement, relocation, and fugitivity?” from the artist’s website.

website | instagram

Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins), Barkley L. Hendricks, 1975-76, Oil on canvas, 52” × 52”

Somebody almost walked off with all of my stuff.

That’s what I thought. But my shit was hidden underneath that pile of unwashed clothes. Next to the old pizza box, by the overflowing trash can. Near the empty bottles of whiskey. -- they could have walked off with all of my stuff. I don’t want this stuff.

Take my depression, my boredom, take my sadness, my debt and doubt, take the people that take and take, and don’t leave me nothing but my two feet and my two hands. I will find new stuff.

Why didn’t someone walk off with all of my stuff?

Because he was trying to get rid of his own stuff, he didn’t want mine; just wanted to see what I had. He could have had this stuff. I'm going to give this stuff away.

I wish somebody would have walked off with all of my stuff.

by Faith J. McKinnie

My original work is inspired by Ntozake Shange's 1975 Choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf - Juanita Sims (Lady in Green)

Juanita: Somebody almost walked off with all of my stuff and didn't care enough to send a note home saying "I was late for my solo conversation" or "two sizes too small for my own tacky skirts". What can anybody do with something of no value on an open market? Did you get a dime for my things? Hey, man! Where are you going with all of my stuff? This is a woman's trip and I need my stuff to "Ooh" and "Ah" about. Honest to God, somebody almost ran off with all of my stuff and I didn't bring anything but the kick and sway of it. The perfect ass for my man and none of it is theirs. This is mine, Juanita's own things. That's my name. Now give me my stuff. I see you hiding my laugh and how I sit with my legs open sometimes to give my crotch some sunlight. This is some delicate leg and whimsical kiss. I gotta have to give to my choice. So you can't have me unless I give me away. And I was doing all that till you ran off on a good thing. And who is this you left me with? Some simple bitch with a bad attitude? I want my things. I want my arm with the hot iron scar. I want my leg with the flea bite. Yeah, I want my things. I want my calloused feet and quick language back in my mouth. I want my own things. How I loved them. Somebody almost ran off with all of my stuff and I was standing there looking at myself the whole time. It wasn't a spirit that ran off with my stuff. It was a man whose ego walked 'round like Rodan's shadow. It was a man faster than my innocence. It was a lover I made too much room for. Almost ran off with all my stuff and the one running with it don't know he got it. I'm shouting, "This is mine!" and he don't even know he got it. My stuff is the anonymous ripped-off treasure of the year. Did you know somebody almost got away with me? Me, in a plastic bag under his arm. Me, Juanita Sims. Somebody almost walked off with all my stuff.

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!), 2020, 9.84 x 14.37 feet.

“I’m not interested in the hierarchy that portraiture suggests. I’m interested in the codependency of humans, existing in spaces, along with other really important information, or materials that humans subject to wear and tear. So it’s like I’m interested in environment as much as the figures that sit within it.

I think a feeling of power in the medium fluctuates. When I’m making images, I can force myself to see things I don’t want to see or don’t feel like I can deal with. I can create confrontation that is psychological and intensely personal, even as I think about these larger social or structural issues.” - Jennifer Packer from Audio Guide courtesy of Serpentine Gallery, London

“Jennifer Packer creates portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes that suggest a casual intimacy. Packer views her works as the result of an authentic encounter and exchange. The models for her portraits—commonly friends or family members—are relaxed and seemingly unaware of the artist’s or viewer’s gaze.

Packer’s paintings are rendered in loose line and brush stroke using a limited color palette, often to the extent that her subject merges with or retreats into the background. Suggesting an emotional and psychological depth, her work is enigmatic, avoiding a straightforward reading. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” she explains. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.”

Born in 1984 in Philadelphia, Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler University School of Art at Temple University in 2007, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. She was the 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014-2016.

Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, the largest survey of Packer’s work to date, presented at Serpentine Galleries, London (2020) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2021-22), and Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2021-22), her first exhibition on the west coast. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was presented at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL (2017) and the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2018). Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5 - Prospect New Orleans (2021). Packer currently lives and works in New York.” from Sikkema Malloy Jenkins

Jennifer Packer has neither website | Instagram

Bitten #8, 2022, Ceramic shards, fiber, zip ties, beads

“Rooted in the exploration of traditional textile and craft practices, the work of multimedia artist Ramekon O’Arwisters reflects his lived experiences as a Black and Queer man in the United States. Growing up in the de facto segregated Jim Crow South of the 1960s and 1970s and later moving to San Francisco during the pivotal 1990s—a transformative era for LGBTQ rights—O’Arwisters anchors his complex sculpture and socially engaged work in material and object politics, drawing from cultural, familial, and personal histories. These explorations materialize through a multitude of objects, including sharp ceramic shards, zip ties, leather, torture devices, and jewelry, which O’Arwisters densely knots, wraps, braids, and crochets into abstract forms using shredded fabrics. Through these combinations of found objects and craft techniques—many associated with domestic spaces, O’Arwisters investigates topics of intimacy, gender, race, and queer identity. Challenging the histories and inherent meanings of materials, O’Arwisters questions the neutrality or passivity of objects, while highlighting the pleasurable and painful histories they carry. These investigations into materialized emotion, spirituality, and trauma are uniquely informed by O’Arwisters’ background in divinity and his early connections to religious and spiritual practices. This is further reflected in his ideas and practice of crafting as an act of care, healing, and resilience—a concept rooted in childhood memories of his grandmother, Celia Jones Taylor, who first introduced him to quilt-making as a safe space for creative expression. This foundational experience resonates throughout O’Arwisters’ sculptural work and his socially engaged project Crochet Jam, which uses craft as a tool for healing, dialogue, and resistance, embodying his vision of art as a communal act of transformation and liberation.” from Craft Contemporary.

Ramekon O’Arwisters: HOUSE OF is currently on view at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles from February 1, 2025, through May 4, 2025.

Ramekon O’Arwisters is a San Francisco-based multimedia artist exploring textile and crafting traditions through found-object abstract sculpture and socially engaged community projects. Born in Kernersville, North Carolina, O’Arwisters earned an M.Div. from Duke University Divinity School in 1986. His works have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA), and the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles (San Jose, CA). O’Arwisters has received numerous grants and awards, including the Artadia Fund for Art and Dialogue, the McLaughlin Foundation Award for The Project Space, and the Eureka Fellowship. His ongoing socially engaged community art-making project, Crochet Jam, has been presented at various institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and ICA San Francisco.

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For Those Who Chose the Sea, 2024
Synthetic hair on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

“Angela Hennessy is an Oakland-based artist and Associate Professor at California College of the Arts where she teaches courses on visual and cultural narratives of death in contemporary art. Through writing, studio work, and performance, her practice questions assumptions about Death and the Dead themselves. She uses a spectrum of color and other phenomena of light to expose mythologies of identity. Ephemeral and celestial forms are constructed by everyday gestures of domestic labor—washing, wrapping, stitching, weaving, brushing, and braiding.

In 2015, she survived a gunshot wound while interrupting a violent assault on the street in front of her house. Alternating between poem, prayer, and call to action, her manifesto, The School of the Dead, was written in the following months of recovery.

As a hospice volunteer, she has worked with families on home funerals, death vigils, and grief rituals. She is certified in the Grief Recovery Method and trained with Final Passages and the International End of Life Doula Association. She serves on the advisory boards of Recompose and Death Salon. She lectures and teaches workshops on the aesthetic and social practices that mediate the boundary between the living and the dead.” from Pt. 2 Gallery

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Darker The Better…,2013

Plastic bottles, black spray paint, black acrylic, and nails on wood panel, 243.8 x 243.8 x 35.6 cm / 96 x 96 x 14 in

“Throughout his career, Taylor has remained committed to uncovering stories—about his family, about black people, about power and despair. “My painting is about…trying to be about some love shit, you know what I mean?” the artist said. “I had a cousin I called Aunt Peggy, and she came to me in a dream. ‘Henry, just tell the truth!’ That’s all she said! And I’ll never forget it. I’m still digging. I just want to be honest and make something beautiful that I can go back and look at and say: ‘I’m proud of that.’” via Artsy

“Born in 1958 in Ventura, California, the youngest of eight children, Taylor’s initial exposure to the medium of painting came from his father, who was a commercial painter employed by the U.S. Government at a naval air station. When he was at school, Taylor had an avid interest in the art historical movements spanning the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Taylor later attended Oxnard College, where he studied Journalism, Anthropology, and Set Design, and Taylor’s formal training came in the 1990s when he studied at The California Institute of the Arts; at the same time as studying he also worked as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital.” from Hauser & Wirth

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Way Over There Inside Me (A Festival of Inches), 2022

Painted steel, glass, painted aluminum, dry-erase marker. 2 Connectors each 203 x 33 x 93 in. 4 Trapezoids each 83 x 40 x 78 in. 2 units each compromised of 1 Connector and 2 Trapezoids 70 x 364 x 93 in. Overall circumference of each unit 364 in.

“Torkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Examining the history and future of black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by black and brown bodies. The artist has distilled a vocabulary of poetic forms to address the spaciousness of freedom and question what type of climates are born out of world building.” from Pace Gallery

“Dyson builds the paintings slowly, accumulating washes, building surface, and configuring minimal geometric elements that lend a productive tension between image and object. The paint-handling producing various visual qualities using brushwork and other tools is made poetic by a juxtaposition of delicate marks and scored diagrammatic lines. This compositional rigor imbues the works with an architectural presence and optical gravity. Dyson considers spatial relations an urgent question both historically and in the present day. Through abstract paintings, Dyson grapples with ways space is perceived and negotiated. Explorations of how the body unifies, balances, and arranges itself to move through natural and built environments become both expressive and discursive structures within the work.” from artist website

Tonight at 4:30 pm, Dyson presents an artist talk at UC Davis, organized by The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residences in the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program. Co-sponsored by the Manetti Shrem Museum.

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Pleasures Known, 2019

Agate, amazonite, amethyst, aragonite, aventurine, black silk stone, bone, calcite, carnelian, chalcedony, Ching Hai jade (dolomite and fuchsite), chrysanthemum stone, citrine, crystal quartz, feldspar, fluorite, freshwater pearls, garnet, hematite, jasper, labradorite, lepidolite, magnesite, malachite, marble, moss agate, onyx, quartz, rhodochrosite, rhodonite, rhyolite, rose quartz, rutilated quartz, serpentine, smoky quartz, tektite, tigereye, tree agate, turquoise, unakite, yellow turquoise, ruby in zoisite, acrylic, glass, steel and stainless steel pins, polystyrene, wood and steel tools, fishing rods, steel trailer, rubber tires, 91” H x 174” L x 79” W

“Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures reimagine the detritus of American consumerism, creating a spectacular vision of beauty and abundance now marred by decay. Originally inspired by holiday kitsch—artificial fruit ornaments frozen in time—Ryan enlarges these trinkets into monumental sculptures, mixing precious materials with salvaged objects. Over weeks, Ryan observes actual decaying fruit in her studio. Mimicking their blooming mold and soft bruises on gem-encrusted sculptures, she builds a universe of rotting excess where materials of luxury now symbolize mortality. Fruit slowly dies while mold grows and thrives.” from ICA San Francisco

I viewed this work at Miami’s Art Basel in 2019. I was one of the thousands of people clamoring to devour the spectacle of decaying fruit. Ryan’s work made an impression, and for the last 5+ years, I think of ‘Pleasures Known’ when I consider how we view, document, recreate, and consume the progress of destruction.

Visit ICA SF through March 16, 2025, for Spotlight: Kathleen Ryan, where she offers viewers the fruits of her labor.

Kathleen Ryan (b. 1984, Santa Monica, CA) studied art and archaeology as an undergraduate at Pitzer College, and received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, US; and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Her work is held in numerous public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, US; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US; Crystal Bridges a Museum of American Art, Bentonville, US; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, US; LAM Museum, Lisse, Netherlands;the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, US; ICA Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Kistefos Museum; Norton Museum of Art; and the Crocker Art Museum She lives and works in New Jersey.

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Lacks (Brass), 2024

Cowhide, Wood, Wax, Steel, 14 x 17 x 17 inches

Lacks (Brass) is one of several works included in Lynne’s solo exhibition, Convergence, opening February 28, 2025, at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio, that addresses the pervasive issue of medical racism and its disproportionate impact on Black women. Illuminating the paradox of our cells being instrumental in groundbreaking scientific advancements and the healing of a people, this work is a nod to Sun Ra’s theory of cosmic vibration and an ode to body as an instrument of survival.

“Lynne’s work is grounded in a deep curiosity about how people navigate complex identities and histories, particularly in diasporic, postcolonial, and urban contexts. She uses materials, imagery, and forms that carry their own histories—reclaimed objects, natural materials, archival footage—to tell layered narratives. By integrating sculpture, video, and performance, she aims to create experiences that feel both intimate and universal, inviting viewers to reflect on their own connections to place, culture, and transformation. At its core, her work is about relationships—between self and environment, body and memory, and individual and collective. Through her practice, she hopes to create spaces for reflection, conversation, and a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness that shapes us all.” from The Sculpture Center

Convergence is on view through April 26, 2025.

Jova Lynne is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in New York City, of Jamaican and Colombian heritage. Lynne is interested in the parallels between fictional, historical and personal archives in identity development. Lynne seeks to subvert anthropological practice in utilizing lens, sculpture and performative practices. She is interested in the cognitive dissonance one experiences when navigating material, text and media-based archive specifically as it relates to Black culture. Lynne completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Photography at Cranbrook Academy of Art in May 2017. Since then Lynne has been based out of Detroit, MI, and has exhibited widely including institutions such as Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Detroit Institute of Art and Redbull Arts. Lynne is a grantee from various foundations which has supported her work in media and social practice based projects in Kingston, Jamaica and Berlin, Germany in addition to her work in the United States.

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“Untitled (Garvey Day, Deedee in Car)” (c. 1965, printed 2018), archival pigment print

On 4/1/2023 at the age of 85, Kwame Brathwaite transitioned into the ancestral realm.

“As a career photographer, Brathwaite was best recognized for his work in pop culture and media rather than in the white walls of galleries and exhibition venues. Through his representation at Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles, California, Brathwaite’s iconic photography has been featured in solo exhibitions, group shows, and art fairs over the last decade. The Aperture Foundation also organized a traveling exhibition honoring Brathwaite’s contributions to the “Black is Beautiful” movement that moved from coast to coast between 2019 and 2020. Contemporary Black artists today credit Brathwaite’s photography as inspiration for their craft, including Barbadian singer Rihanna who used his “Black is Beautiful”-era photography as a parallel to her own imagery for her Fenty clothing line ad campaign.” from Hyperalleric

May we never forget what Brathwaite exclaimed to the world... “Black is Beautiful”

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Untitled, 2022

Within this installation at the Coordinates: Ice Pac exhibition, a question is simply being posed. If Christianity was used as a tool to acquire slaves and used to keep slaves under control while they built the United States of America on free labor from approximately 1600 - until current times;

Why were those biblical principles and guidelines abandoned and discontinued out of use?

If those same words out of the same bible are true, what makes the black people so deserving of generations and generations of being enslaved and treated like lower-class citizens?

If these words are false and manipulated to control a people, why do we still assimilate to the bible that has been in print and unchanged for these same 400 years?

Why do we not, still use the bible to control black people in slavery now, since these words and culture have been used as such an edict? And if the bible isn’t, why do we perpetuate the Christian religion in any way? 

Or why did the god of the Christian religion allow slaves to go through the torturous and tumultuous times that they endured, if we are all created equal

Reviewing the work of the white churches, Frederick Douglass had this to say: “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I, therefore, hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”

Can anyone explain the difference between the two churches Frederick Douglass speaks about?

What if the history and religion you have been handed were only meant to distract you from reaching for something higher, just a few questions.

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Safety Pillow Room, 2022

cotton batting, parachute silk, cyanotype on paper, dimensions variable

"During the worst of Covid, when we were all sheltering in place, I made a giant, bright orange, safety pillow, as a visual reminder of our collective need for care and protection. My architect father suddenly passed away during this time and I was unable to return home to grieve in real-time with family. My safety pillow became a giant safety/grieving pillow. The images in the monumental cyanotype, loosely aligned with architectural blueprints, are self-portraits. I welcome visitors to sink into the pillow and summon safety and comfort.” - Robin Hill

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