YEAR IN REVEIW
2020-2021
I went into this year thinking that I would pursue medicine. I planned to come out of the year with an internship or research opportunity for the summer; I planned to have a more complete idea of what I'd like to dedicate my studies (and the rest of my life) to, and planned to be content pursuing it. Instead a year of creation, beekeeping, women’s studies, and stillness forced me to reevaluate my goals, values, and view on productivity as a whole. For the first time this year, I spent my time as a student fully developing works of art. Especially as the world was slowed by a pandemic, I felt discomfort in the process of spending time with ideas after years of finding my place in a conventional classroom setting. This year, I also took my first womens, gender, and sexuality course, which certainly reframed my understanding of the systems that shape our lives without our knowing. As the world slowed, I found myself exploring where my hobbies wandered without the structure that had long dictated how I spent my time. I ended up discovering the value and creativity of cultivating life through raising 3 hives of honey bees, gardening, and through growing oyster mushrooms.
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I initially felt that these events and experiences had no connection; I was occupying myself until I was able to be busy again; Until I found myself creating art focused on the value of intention and rest. In my foundation studio classes, 4 pieces stood out to me the most; a video piece that I created, a small wooden sculpture, a photo series, and a wearable sculpture. Each of these focused on the value that is found in intentional moments.
I certainly feel that my women's studies class allowed me to think critically about what shapes the goals and desires that I have, that discovering the value of cultivating life has helped me discover a passion for creation and intention, and that my art has helped me define the value that these things have in my life.
The slowness of this year has completely changed my trajectory. I've realized that I am meant to pursue a creative career, something that I was previously scared to admit out of fear of straying from my pursuit of what I defined as productive. In this coming year, I hope to embrace the ways that change can be brought about through creation. The slowness of this year allowed me to find certainty in the pursuit of creativity and stillness.
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2021-2022
For my year in review I will be talking about an issue that was important to me that coincided with an honors seminar that I took; Colony collapse disorder refers to a relatively new phenomenon among honeybees in which the colony leaves the hive, their food stores, and their queen, ultimately to die. Currently, we do not understand the cause of colony collapse disorder.
Coming to know colony collapse disorder has been one of the most significant events for me this year, as it has resulted in transformation in my way of thinking about the array of complex, intermingled, issues that we face, and more importantly, our role in creating a better future.
When I entered the honors seminar “Sticky Innovations” I already knew quite a bit about honeybees. Id been beekeeping for a year, and had a general understanding that the situation of the honeybees was dire, that we were responsible for their plight, and that their decline would have serious consequences. I expected to leave the class with more information, with clarity, and possibly with solutions; instead I left with something far more valuable; comfort in the fact that I do not, and will not fully understand the issue. I left understanding that many systemic issues mimic this one. I left understanding that, if I am to play a role in the resolution of this I must be comfortable relying on a network of my peers, and must be comfortable with the idea that it is not an issue that I can understand in full. I left with a transformed way of thinking about the issues that we face.
CCD is not the result of any one issue; it is a symptom of compiled wrongs against our environment. It is a symptom of viewing our ecosystem as capital. Of overuse of pesticides, of climate change, of poor environmental policy. It is a symptom of unsustainable farming practices, lead by seemingly unstoppable corporations with complete control of our countries food supply. It is a symptom of century old landscaping practices rooted in colonialism that urge us to view our natural spaces as objects of beauty that are meant to serve us, rather than as spaces containing and sustaining life. It is a symptom of unsustainable solutions such as migratory beekeeping becoming backbones of our food systems. Furthermore, if we were to simply remove any of these contributors to CCD, it would have a cascade of effects sure to majorly disrupt our economy, our society, and our world as we know it. And if we are unable to easily abolish even one of these contributors when there are so many, shouldn’t we view the situation as hopeless?
We could certainly see colony collapse disorder as a place of doom. We could even see it as an indication of the fate of other systems facing similarly complex issues. But this year, there are quite a few things surrounding my education about colony collapse disorder that have brought me hope; In a class full of interdisciplinary innovators, I witnessed a dedication to solution seeking; One that was collaborative, and one that required each of us to accept an array of unknowns as we sought solutions. Ive realized, the only way to solve seemingly impossible systemic issues is though the mutual understanding, interdisciplinary collaboration, teamwork, and willingness to change that I witnessed in my Honors seminar!
Another place where I found hope was through creation. Through understanding the bee issue, I’ve come to understand that the art that comes with it is an outcry; It is an intangible response to an intangible issue. It can function to educate, to foster feeling, to work as an outlet. When one of my own hives was lost to CCD, I found hope in creating, and those who saw my creations would give me their ears to better understand CCD. Ive come to understand that art is meant to be combined with solution seeking that occurs around intangible issues, because it is a place of exploration, education, and hope.
Another hopeful result of my involvement with CCD has been a reformation in my way of problem solving, and in my ways of thinking as a whole. This year I have learned that you must be comfortable sitting in unknowns, and thinking outside of existing systems. Problem solving demands that you set aside “the way it should and must be”.
A major result of the way that learning about CCD has impacted me this year was the realization that I would love to teach. Id love to to lead a classroom that acts as a space of collaboration, as a space that encourages flexible ways of thinking about complex issues, and as a space where students can come to understand that while seemingly hopeless issues exist, there is hope in the fact that they can go about their lives in a way that says “it doesn’t have to go this way!” This year, through learning about and experiencing colony collapse disorder, Ive found that there is hope in the collaboration, flexibility, and a generation of individuals who are willing to do it differently.
2022-2023
For my year in review I have chosen to create collages reflecting on the ideas that have been most formative to how I have moved through the world this year, how I've developed my practice as an artist, and how I've come to better understand the union between art, science, and community.
These collages are reflections of the ways that I have come to understand queerness this year. The imagery used is mostly from microscopic photography that Ive done, along with images of insects and natural scenes. I've created this work in the same way that I've come to define queerness- through layering, through collecting, through looking at things on a microscopic scale and on a large scale, through merging, growing, through looking at the ways that the environment operates, through listening, through seeing what isn't there, and through reimagining what is there.
I have been playing with the idea that the natural world operates in a way that is queer for awhile, but I feel that I began to fully understand this idea while taking a class in the fall titled “Topics in Contemporary Art: Reimagining Queer Art” in which we read the book Cruising Utopia; The Then and There of Queer Futurity by Josè Esteban Muños. I'd like to note that for the context of this description, I am defining queerness as all that is other/ all that cannot be defined by binaries and systems. While this definition of queerness absolutely ties into and is inseparable from LGBTQ+ identities and topics, it extends beyond topics of sexuality and gender as well. I'd also like to acknowledge that when I'm talking about queerness, I am talking about something for which words are insufficient. As I read Muños’ “Cruising Utopia'' I felt as though I was gaining language for something that I had long sensed and held within myself, but did not have the language to express. I've found and felt that queerness itself is something just beyond. Queerness itself is the ebb and flow between solidity and liquidity that allows us to sense but not grasp unknowns. Queerness is something that exists beyond language, beyond what can be described; So how are we to read about it? How are we to write about it? How are we to share between ourselves this sense of something beyond….
I think that one way that we are able to begin to grasp queerness is through art. Art exists in a space that is thin, a space that is of our collective being, a space that is an extension and manifestation of ourselves. Art is what is on the border of what we know, it expands there, making space to be whatever it must be to fill gaps, to expand, to express. Art cannot be defined. I believe that the closest we can get to understanding queerness is through engaging with art. I believe that the closest we can get to understanding art is through accepting and knowing that art is queer, and queerness is a horizon- something that we can sense, but not quite define, as it is something that is not meant to be defined.
Immediately as I define art as queer, I think of the natural world and the ways that it is always in the act of creating and existing in queer ways. I think that understanding my own queerness has been inseparable from coming to understand the way that I think about ecologies in this past year. I've found that I'm interested in the notion that nature is much queerer than we paint it to be, and that the very act of defining it in order to dominate it undermines that. Furthermore, as I think about nature as a space of queerness, I think of the idea that queer communities act as spaces of mutualism, evolution, and abundance, both mimicking and providing an example of connections within ecosystems. This year I have developed a queer mindset in which binaries are not primary deciders; this allowed me to better understand the wisdom of our ecosystems, and the wisdom of our ecosystems has allowed me to better understand that I am not meant to exist in binaries.
My new understanding of queerness was on the forefront of my mind throughout this year, and I choose to write about it now in my year in review as it has greatly altered the way that I move through the world and the way that I understand nature, community, and life around me. Especially now as policy targeting genderqueer and trans individuals is passed, it is essential that we take time to understand queerness as something that relates not only to LGBTQ+ issues, but to the way that we define the world around us, and the way that we operate within the binary and definitive systems, and to the ways that we build community and understand each other.
