My work is inspired by observations found in popular culture: sandwiches, color blocking, dollhouses, malls, gable roofs, best culture, and fake materials. While strolling through the mall is less possible at the moment, there is an abundance of visual imagery found online by browsing real estate photographs, Tik Tok accounts, virtual galleries, and e-commerce sites. I’m now creating my own cabinet of curiosities, storing away ideas for the next project.  

I am currently engaged in work that presents different “futures” for people of color and those marginalized through institutional planning and paternalistic infrastructure. As my career has progressed, it has become clear to me that “we,” people of color in the US, are not represented in the future, that we exist only in the past. We need new, powerful expressions of the everyday and the mundane where we are present and prosperous.

I like to walk around my neighborhood in Crown Heights and the bordering Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene neighborhoods, taking photos of empty lots, alleyways, and rooftops. I then create photo-montages of a speculative Brooklyn Afro/Eco/Agro Futurist world.

I started running over the summer and rediscovering my love of this state park near where I live in Crenshaw called Kenneth Hahn. I took to learning the names of many native and non-native plants that line the trail there. It was one of the few activities that felt safe in an uncertain time, and I have an enduring fascination with nature.

These days many of us are isolated and feel as if we are powerless to fight unseen forces. I offer up the creation of art as part of the antidote. We can create art to reshape public perception and demand for a more humane world. Let artists take this time to beat back the despair and panic and create works that will make us more unified and compassionate.

Artists have a special dexterity for adapting to change, and the emergence of virtual artists talks, panels, and studio visits have united the arts community through this pandemic. This forum has kept me learning, connected and entertained throughout the past year. I have been able to share my studio and process to an unexpected new audience and really enjoyed getting a glimpse into other artist worlds.

The crafts have been part of many human civilizations as a way to document life, celebrate life, and survive. Craft is ever relevant. It has been part of our past, it is part of our present, and will be part of our future. We are creatures who create for function, for food, for shelter, for beauty, and for self-expression. Craft is a form of resistance and acceptance; it helps us connect as humans.

As an artist who often works in social collaboration, I have returned to my studio practice and taken active steps to protect the health of my loved ones and our Indigenous communities who are being affected by this pandemic disproportionately. The gift I see emerge from this time is that so many of us can be home with family after years of travel and engagement in the public realm.

What’s important to me more than ever before is space. I purchased a building in March, days before the global shut down, to create artist studios, a gallery, and a residency in the city of Detroit called What Up Doe Studios. This is my special place in town. This building will forever be a place where creativity is nurtured.

As the days of 2020 crept by, I felt more empowered to stay in the studio and decline social engagements. I began reaching out to other artists in more intimate ways. I attended group meetings with textile artists to fundraise for causes, exchanged pictures from the studio with artists I admire, and traded books and letters via the mail.

I want to believe in the transformative power of art; that art can bring about real change in the human condition. This belief has informed much of my work and my processes. I want to believe I can change this world for the better. And, being an artist, art is the only tool I have with which to do this.

Breathing exercises and practicing yoga are two activities that have helped me connect with myself and my practice as a dancer this year.

I’ve been working within a thought process called Architecture of the Overflow, which asks: How do we develop a new model of future-focused, community-determined creative action that moves forward from a performed moment, into our collective futures? My goal is to craft a replicable yet locally-responsive structure that centers Indigeneity and encourages collective community self-determination for the ways this work—and the relationships it builds—can broaden, deepen and serve equity and justice.

I connect back to myself by walking every day. I am fortunate to live near a couple of parks. I get out, breathe fresh air, and walk for miles daily. It is my sanity during this time. It also connects me to my late-father with whom I used to walk quite a lot. It clears my head and helps me think spaciously.

I have been walking and hiking, for multiple miles most days, to move beyond the insides of the inside—the four walls of my home. I have been taking myself on long wanderings to look for the quiet noise or see something strange. When I am the most present, I feel time. When I am the most blessed, I hear a hawk cry.

I am reminded of myself by engaging in durational acts throughout the day. Turning trails into personal labyrinths, biking handless for interminable bouts of time, sitting with stillness until the void animates, sweeping until the strokes merge with my own bodily syncopations; all frequent sources of escape and expansion.

For years, I’ve enjoyed taking a moment to appreciate clouds. I call it my meditation. I usually take photos but never share them. During the last few months, I’ve felt that my newsfeed needed a content oasis. So, I decided to share my photos of clouds through my social networks. To my surprise, everyone appreciated it, and now I receive, almost daily, cloud photos from friends and family.

The last year of anxiety and uncertainty left very little of our former lives unburdened, in fact, mostly waylaid by the constraints of survival, so I’ve been grateful for a few chances to explore pockets of the outer boroughs with my young daughter. In a forgotten corner of Charles Memorial Park in Queens, the years of beach drift and erosion are a quiet but powerful reminder to try and pause, be more present, and intuit more generously—especially in a year that often suggested otherwise.

Be patient, extremely patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be gracious to yourself. The need to produce, exhaust oneself, meet deadlines—all of those things do not matter. Although I’ve continued to create, I’ve rejected being constrained by this ridiculous push to return to normal. I’m embracing my understanding of this new reality. I’ve learned to take naps. Turn off the tv and phone. Go on long walks. I’ve decided to finally put my mental, spiritual, and physical well-being as a priority, and I advise fellow creatives to do the same.

I practice togetherness by exploring the connective tissue that Black people have to dream into existence to keep the idea of family together. Right now, I am doing this with my own family. I edit images that I am consistently and constantly taking of them.

My “studio” is the window facing the end of the long farm table in the middle room of the house I share with my three young children, two cats, one cattle dog, and a forty-year-old box tortoise. I think best at home; I write best at home; I map out the path to the next film best at home. This house is loved and lived in. It’s not quaint or quiet here. I practice “togetherness” every day here in this house with my family.

I left Iran in 2007 at the age of twenty two on a single entry student visa. I have spent very little time with my family in the last decade. This year, I spent three months at my mother’s house with my sister. We took care of each other, cooked for each other, laid down on bed many afternoons and talked, watched old videos of our house in Iran, and more. I felt “home” in a way I have never felt as an adult.

I have recently discovered the magic of staying in place. I was on the go for about three years straight. It has been a luxury to get reacquainted with my thoughts, my people, my home, and my community.

Feeling completely disconnected, I created TALKING IS DANGEROUS, trying to break through it. Showing up on doorsteps, I delivered a monologue via phone screen and text-to-speech. I explained that I just heard masks and six-feet are not safe enough because when you speak, tiny particles fly through the masks at high velocity. They’ve recommended we stop talking to each other; they say talking is dangerous. So I made an alternative. I invited each person to visit a URL on their phone to continue the conversation. Over the months, we have learned to say things via text that perhaps we couldn’t in a more embodied way.

When the pandemic first began, calling attention to the things that we rely on and take for granted — including supply chains and utility services — I sought grounding in the intelligent technologies of nature. I rediscovered small-scale farming and started a community-supported farm box share. While the country was locked down and most social life relegated outdoors, I opened my backyard for flower harvesting. My garden, like an Internet-connected mesh network, is a site for reconnection.

A song as a sonic and literary manifestation is life’s soundscape, a unique, cathartic memento as well as a powerful political tool. A person’s testimonio, life views, triumphs, aphorisms, and struggles can be expressed in song lyrics. When practiced in community, songwriting can be a powerful exercise in consensus building and collective knowledge production. The pandemic made me revisit this process via Zoom. It has been fun, rewarding, and keeps me connected to my students and community!

My wife, kids, and I are always playing, singing, listening to, and talking about music. Music is how we think about life. It’s the discipline of doing something that keeps you looking forward to the next thing. We distance of course, but we still enjoy talking, sharing, and eating. That’s a New Orleans thing. Our culture is our life, so we continue to be who we are with restrictions. 

Be gentle with yourself. Be flexible. Be forgiving. Be patient. But also allow yourself space to be upset, confused, disenchanted. This moment is both devastating and enlightening. Don’t force yourself or beat up on yourself if you feel you can’t do it at the moment. Listen to your body and take as much care as possible. Love is really all there is.

Creativity is a reflection on the quality of who you are, and one’s ability to dig deeper within themselves and connect with the environment. For me, I am a reflective person and I am affected by what I read, personal experiences, and my dream state. I shut down one week before the national shutdown and immediately started to work on String Quartet #13, 14, and 15, and Ankhrasmation symbolic scores.

Practicing mindfulness helps me understand how to improvise and, through improvisation, learn to trust myself, trust what happens, and trust that the process in place is the right process for right now. It’s what allows me to be free. Free from shoulds, from being “right,” and from the delusion that I am-, this is-, we are- not enough. It allows me to be.

The rage, despair and hopelessness I feel regarding violence and injustice towards Women, People Of Color, Queers, Animals, The Planet, Children are not feelings I know how to express in everyday life. They are too big, or too dangerous. The stage is a utopian space rife with possibility for expressing these truths. In this way, particularly in the current moment when people seem to be more disassociated from each other and themselves than ever, live performance seems almost a radical act.

I was given roses by my friend, their beauty sustains me in pandemic times. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Native American environmentalist, had a great idea. She proposes to change the pronoun “it” when referring to living things. Using “ki” singular and “kin” plural when referring to living things will change our thinking. We will have more respect. Mi roses, my kin fill me with joy and beauty.

One of my favorite places in the world is Lands End, near my home in San Francisco. It’s one of the few places I allow myself to go these days where I encounter numbers of other strangers (all masked, mostly). Encountering these strangers who have been pulled, along with me, to the sacred beauty of nature reminds me of the spiritual pulse in other human beings in this time of division and isolation.

Be kind to yourself. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Know that the emotional and energy highs and lows are normal. There are days you will want to create and others when you want to curl up in bed. Both are okay. Both are necessary. Listen to your body. Connect to nature as often as you can. Call someone you’ve been thinking about. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Be kind to yourself.

These days I am trying to  walk and make inside my values. I have six core values that drive and ground me. In these very anxious days, it provides a grounding and clarity around where to best position my creative energy.

What might usually be drudgery is now a creative release. Newfound time went to home improvements. Then fashioning a space for work when I went to my mother’s to shelter together. I am learning her recipes from the Philippines and cooking for us. There is the continued pleasure of learning a piece of music to sing with my niece on Christmas. We hope to continue the family tradition of spending the holidays together.

My father’s work as a public health official during the AIDS epidemic has greatly influenced my work as an artist. The way my father improved lives was not to focus on a cure, but to shift a culture of fear, shame, and indifference to that of compassion and commitment.  Public health is about creating a stage for dialogue that invites change. It is about changing the misperceptions of a population. This is why I am a playwright. I want to be part of the change that sees all people’s stories as worthy.

During this pandemic, I have found myself back at my beginnings as an artist, working with what I have available to me at home. Throughout the years I have collected many found objects and handmade items that I cannot part with. Many have ended up as part of small vignettes or assemblages in my garden, where I spend most of my time. I find this activity to be essential to my creativity and sustainability.

Saxman native village is a special place to me as it has been a place for me to carve for the past 35 years, doing projects for the Totem Park there and the Tribal House.  It’s special to me because every summer they have tours, where I can share my culture with visitors from all over the U.S., and even worldwide. This year was very different as there were no tours whatsoever, too quiet.

I’m overjoyed to share that I’ve relocated my studio from St. Louis to Ghana this year. And, I am currently settling into this place that I now call home. I decided to make this move just before the pandemic plagued the world, which slightly delayed my move date, but the promise of this solace was a guiding light through the spring, summer, and fall. So while I wouldn’t call this new home a surprise, I’m certainly discovering it every day. 

During this time, I have been able to give a refined focus on my cultural practice. For myself, this is the perfect time to research and experiment on techniques and skills. This time has also given me more one-on-one time with students. Use this time to refine and focus your art, and find creative ways to connect with your students.

Making art has sustained and nourished me while cocooning at home and not being able to see my beloved grandchildren. Whereas I cannot see them, I decided to use their images in a new series of quilts. The work makes me feel closer to them.

My art is so deeply connected to my relationship with [my grandmother] that it has been so difficult to pick up her tools and weave again—but I know she would want me to, so I do. She wouldn’t want me to hold back, either—so I won’t. I feel that the way I embody creativity has changed so much in the pandemic, and in the wake of my grandmother making her journey—I have changed. My art is changing and will blossom like it never has before.

Anishinaabe values are rooted in the belief of love: to treat everyone and yourself with kindness, forgiveness, and generosity. I approach art as a medium to self-fulfillment, a way to wear the dignity and distinction of the original Great Lakes and Woodlands people.

The garden has been a surprise discovery for me [during this time] because I was never a plant person. One of the first things I do each morning after waking up is to walk around the garden and observe all the little changes in each plant. Taking care of my plants has been a great avenue for self-care as well as a time marker in this period.

For some, this has been a time of meditation. For others, a time of displacement and violated human rights. Most, including myself, have lost someone. But there is a beauty to the omnipotence of this unrelenting experience. There is nowhere to hide from the truth. For me, it meant releasing a crumbling foundation of negative situations and thought patterns. I rebuilt with a greater sense of alignment and renewal of solid belief that was missing for years.

It’s important to create an opportunity for an embodied investigation where I can be connected to people and to land wherever I work. This form of address gestures towards a method of building a relationship to space out in the open, in such that an audience can reflect upon their own relationship to the site and the work.

As an artist, mother, and teacher, I’ve been thinking about the ways that womyn in my life are constantly creating and how making is embodied in all facets of our lives. The process of art making is not exclusive to the production of art objects. What has been explicit to me during this time is that caring for my elders, drawing with my child, or teaching young artists includes boundless acts of creativity.

I heard someone recommend, in these unpredictable days, you should ground yourself in routine but I find it more helpful to embrace unstructured time. Follow a track for days on end; fall off into a ditch and lose my way; throw myself into some urgent collective activity; play a board game with my kid; read the same email five times in a row; stay up late doing something that could take far less time. In unstructured time, I find things I didn’t know I was looking for.

I do the creative practice of everyday life before, during, and hopefully, after the pandemic. That means everything I do is creative. Art is not some sequestered activity: it extends from and is a part of living. Survival under white supremacist capitalist conditions requires creative ingenuity, and, most of all, it requires each other.

In this contemporary pandemic scenario, drawing is a strong medium of expression that can grasp the current pathos of this world situation and help provide a space for personal healing. Where we all, after recovering back our natural impulse for drawing, could, through the creation of symbolic images, exorcise our fears and anxieties, or chant to the human spirit of solidarity that has always prevailed in catastrophic times in the history of humanity.

Though shifting my work to be presented in the virtual space felt daunting and compromising, this pandemic offers a unique opportunity to recalibrate what the process or studio means to makers. I was approached by the Japan Society to use their online gallery to think about the process, so I made performance attempts in collaboration with my graduate students.  It was a surprise educational space for students, presenters, certainly for me, and hopefully even for viewers.

There’s a fortune-telling practice Evangelical Methodists used, bibliomancy—I first read about it in George Eliot’s Adam Bede. You ask a question of God, close your eyes and flip the Bible open, running your finger down the page, and where it is compelled to stop, that is your answer. But I do that with my library, choosing 7 quotes at random, writing down the quotes, and there’s always a message for me.

As a writer, I’m sort of always “making in place,” especially because a sense of place plays such a huge role in my work. What’s been special is being home rather than on the road—building routines, walking my dog, and paying more attention to the parks and open lands near where I live, being grateful for those, and having time to be there and be slow.

Do not be afraid of talking to yourself. This has been a very difficult year for me, a year of loneliness and isolation. However, once I embraced that I couldn’t change reality, I discovered a deeper exploration of my art, through an abundance of verbal self-reflection. During the pandemic, I stopped having so much fear.

I work best when I’m full of delusions of grandeur. Lately, I’ve achieved this by getting up to swim at dawn at Barton Springs, the enormous spring-fed pool in the center of Austin. It’s 68 degrees year-round, so when it’s cold, steam rises off the surface. The sun comes up. There are a dozen swimmers or so. I am the slowest and pudgiest and smuggest. It reminds me there’s beauty in the world.

Social distancing does not mean to be socially distant. This pandemic reminds us how much we humans need each other. I am of course looking forward to our three-dimensional world where we meet people face to face, including those kind strangers who come to readings and ask questions. Meanwhile, it’s an opportunity to adjust ourselves to online platforms that take us everywhere from home.

One of my virtual backgrounds is Aretha Franklin’s “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” album cover for a bit of levity. I know most of us are tired of Zoom—ready to ditch the virtual gatherings and be in person. But these Zoom calls have kept me connected to friends, family, and collaborators while sheltering at home. I’ve been able to test out new material, toast friends’ achievements, and feel some semblance of togetherness.

Risk. Dig. Pry open. Try. The world feels like another world to me, so I’m trying to make whatever I can, however I can, ‘cause who knows what and how and when “after this” this gonna be, what normal will look like, what it ever was. If your life is not demanding your creative energy to survive the moment, I think now is much a fertile time to break new ground, and grow your own rules and ways. 

If the process is not fruitful for you, if the work itself is not coming, give yourself permission to step away and immerse yourself deeper into your world. Living in deep awareness and attention to your world, your life, the people around you, all this is part of the work—perhaps even more substantial, though unquantifiable, than the work itself.