your responses

Thank you for your fantastic and thoughtful responses in regard to the last newsletter I sent out, talking about art and climate change. 

Your words moved and held me these last few weeks.

Your reach toward connection -- hugely appreciated and deeply felt.

This is one of many responses that dove into that conversation, and gutted it:

“Dear Joanna, 
I have been reflecting on your letter yesterday – about the person who said everyone should be making art about climate change.

It really got me thinking… as this matter is at the heart of my endeavors at the moment. How are artists to address? Join in the clamor? Contribute? To the challenges of climate change. Clearly we need a new paradigm. But new paradigms are not easily made. And I think, if they are to be authentic and have any true meaning, they need to start inside and gradually emerge in the world. 

It seems to me that there is a danger here – a sort of fascistic danger – that everyone who is an artist should be doing DIDACTIC pieces about this immensely daunting matter. I keep thinking about Germany in the 1930s, when all the brilliant Expressionist artists were suddenly regarded as “decadent", while all the artists who were “doing it right” were doing revolting pieces that were in line with the aesthetic  of the Third Reich. 

The question I am holding and exploring, and trying to unfold is: how as artists do we ground our work in a new paradigm?  I think this begins in what I call “the subtles” - and may take some time to emerge and be visible if we are not to rain thunder and brimstone on art aficionados – a didactic, top down, YOU SHOULD JOLLY WELL WAKE UP YOU IGNORANT LOUTS!  tone to our work.

I would dearly love to talk about this with you over tea.

Amore e coraggio, “  — Laura Marshall

Also from Laura, sipping tea:
"We have to listen, so that the world comes rushing in."

A few months into Trump’s presidency, I had a conversation with a man who had recently immigrated to the United States from the Ivory Coast. He spoke about the beam of light, the hope, that is this country.

“Still,” I said, “Still you see a beam of light?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “A bright bright light.”

“But….Trump…” 

“The light is brighter.”

• Ground up.

• Inside to outside.

• "The Subtles."

And the world, rushing in.

That light is bright.

With Warmth,
Joanna