In Matewan, a small town in southern West Virginia with fewer than 500 residents, two bullet holes from a notable 1920 shootout are still visible in the brick wall of the old post office facing the railroad tracks.

Across downtown’s one-lane Mate Street, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum chronicles the whole ordeal: The Stone Mountain Coal Company, fed up with union demands, sent private detectives to town, instructing them to remove striking miners from company-owned homes and disrupt the makeshift tent cities and camps employees set up with help from the United Mine Workers of America. As the henchmen boarded the train to leave, Matewan’s Mayor and Chief of Police stopped them with a warrant for their arrest for illegal evictions. This led to a shootout that resulted in ten deaths—including the Mayor—and marked a crucial moment in the fight for workers’ rights in a state known for the lowest employee protections and the most exploitative industry.

The Battle of Matewan followed the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Strikes and preceded the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, one of the largest labor uprisings in U.S. history.

Despite a rapid decline in coal production over the past decade, working in the mines, widespread throughout Appalachia, remains dangerous and deadly. The most alarming issue is how the mortality rate from Black Lung is rising again after decades of decline and labor reforms.

Part of this is due to the fluctuations that come with extracting ever-dwindling fossil fuels: to reach ever-thinner layers of coal, for instance, one must excavate deeper into silica-rich rock. Another factor is that government protection standards have become more lenient or are not enforced at all.

The symptoms from inhaling soot and micro-particles can take years to develop, starting with a cough or tightness in the chest, then progressing to small dark spots on the lungs that grow into larger, irreversible scars, and eventually to Progressive Massive Fibrosis or Silicosis, often resulting in long-term bodily consequences or, more likely, death.

Known in medical circles as Coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, Black Lung is classified as an “occupational disease”—only affecting those who risk their lives and venture deep into the Earth to gather combustible materials for multi-billion-dollar corporations.

The enforcement of 2024’s “Silica Rule,” which imposes stricter exposure limits and penalties on mining companies, is on indefinite hold. Workers are left to rely on inadequate solutions within an unjust system.

Photographer Stacy Kranitz is no stranger to the challenges that come with making work in and about Appalachia, nor to the baggage that comes along with those working in the documentary tradition—shaped, in ways, by generations of photographers whose own preconceived notions and subtle prejudices were heightened by the direction they took in image-making.

Much of this thinking culminated in her recent decade-and-a-half-long project As It Was Give(n) To Me (2009-2022), a series that’s part snapshot of a place in time, part thesis on the dangers inherent in relying on small parts to represent a whole, and part investigation into the myth-making capabilities of images deemed real, true, factual, and empirical while relying on deep-seated cultural assumptions.

Dramatic images of snake-handling preachers, families living in trailer parks, and soot-covered coal miners are contrasted with striking mountain landscapes and pictures of Kranitz as “Christy,” an archetype of the early 20th-century Appalachian missionary who comes to town to save wretched souls but becomes unraveled in the process.

Kranitz’s photos examine the long shadows that stereotypes and preconceptions cast over Appalachia, along with the industries and economy that shape those perceptions. For many, coal mining remains central to regional discussions and debates over the right approach to environmental stewardship, climate collapse, intergenerational poverty, and the area’s economic vitality.

This tension has also spilled into the art world in recent months, particularly with Fia Backström’s exhibition The Great Society at the Queens Museum.

As Paige Phillips wrote in her response to the show for Hyperallergic (and in relation to Lauren O’Neill-Butler’s generalizing review for the same magazine), “Appalachia is a complicated place that embodies pride, humor, stubborn self-determination, deep community ties, and fierce attachment to place. These realities do not negate hardship, but they resist the idea that hardship is our only story.”

“Though [Backström’s] exhibition is filled with photographs and videos, not a single image includes a person,” she adds. “This absence is framed as ethically corrective, a move away from exploitative War on Poverty imagery. But you can remove bodies and still construct a spectacle of devastation.”

“When sludge, crumpled-up paper that looks like trash, aggressive security fencing, and ruin dominate the visual field, the viewer is left with a singular impression: There is nothing but misery here.”

Phillips’ spot-on observation that a “non-representational” photograph can still communicate sociopolitical preconceptions brought a key question I’ve been pondering for years back to the forefront of my mind:

How does one accurately represent a region that has long suffered from the destructive impacts of extractive industries without replicating that same extraction through photography itself?

For The Brooklyn Rail, I wrote about Entirely Preventable, an exhibition curated by Kranitz at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum that traces the rise of Black Lung and other fatal respiratory diseases in Appalachian communities over the past century through the lens of three different photographers.

For me, as a writer, having this exhibition at an Appalachian-based, community-run history museum (with a unionized staff!) felt like a rich locale to examine and discuss issues around photography, representation, and audience—along with, of course, the ongoing dangers of coal mining.

Through the exhibition and accompanying events, Entirely Preventable looks to foster conversation with those directly affected by these issues. With folks fighting for better working conditions in a region they love and call home.

Thinking about The Great Society while penning this, I’ll say: it was nice to see the Queens Museum focus on work about a much-maligned area of the country. However, without proper context and nuance—not just by artists and curators but writers and reviewers, too—the message can become muddled or reduced to oversimplified, sweeping statements that claim to apply to an entire locale.

Finding the “right” way to photograph Appalachia may be an impossible task, but I’m interested in how artists throughout the region address this challenge, as well as the strong emotions and controversies it can sometimes evoke.

Entirely Preventable brings together a reflective trio creating images that range from journalistic documentation to historical reimagining, confronting the region's difficult aspects while prioritizing consent and dignity.

While there may not be a definitive answer for how to approach this subject, the exhibition reminds us that, as curious audiences, we can gain much more by engaging with multiple (and, in looking to the world outside these walls, sometimes contradictory) perspectives.

Also, as organized labor experiences a resurgence nationwide, Entirely Preventable stands as a testament to decades of workers’ resilience, a resource for a new generation facing similar struggles, and a call to action for a better future.

Read the review in the September print issue or online here.

Learn more about the exhibition and the incredible West Virginia Mine Wars Museum on their website.

Forever grateful for the funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, which made this road trip possible.

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Also, check out this special Union-printed tote bag the museum made for the exhibition, featuring a design by Shaun Slifer that honors Vivian Reynolds' original 1970s activist graphic. (More about that here.)

I get asked about this tote weekly—even once, awkwardly, at the bank—probably because it’s so punk rock. You can buy it directly from the museum here. (Not sponsored, just infatuated.)

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“One has to face the fact that there is something a little elusive about the Folkehøjskole,” Olive Dame Campbell wrote in the introduction to her 1927 book on the topic—still the most definitive volume of its kind. Almost a century later, not much has changed.

For Burnaway’s 2026 feature themes, tied to our annual print reader, I wrote about the early intentions and the enduring appeal of American folk schools, examining foundational ideas from Denmark, two almost-opposing early models adopted in Appalachia, and how this progressive model could serve communities today.

It feels so high school to spell it out so directly, but really, I hope to encourage thinking of folk schools as a tool for activism and civic engagement, with art and craft classes presented alongside coalition-building work that can foster conversation and a real, dependable sense of community (in a proximity-and-mutual-aid way, not a self-selective, “we paid to come here, so we are a community” way).

I see today’s “adult summer camp” model of a craft-centric folk school acting as a Trojan horse, encouraging us to log off, truly engage with one another, heal schisms brought on by bad-faith political actors, and start something new with people who think, live, and vote very differently from ourselves.

This is, of course, very easy for me to say as a white man who finds a campy pleasure living in the rural American South. Many subscribers are likely familiar with the fact that I worked at the John C. Campbell Folk School for a few years post-pandemic, after spending summer 2019 as a work-study there, an experience I wove into a larger piece for The Bitter Southerner.

I clearly have a deep love for Campbell and tons of fond and formative memories from my time in Brasstown, and yet it was easy to see how isolating it could be for many friends and loved ones, and how the institution was often caught in a Catch-22 in trying to address the challenges of appealing to a diverse group of young, progressive creatives while also trying to stay non-partisan and avoid rocking any boats with a devoted audience.

“Politics really has supplanted pop culture as the national obsession, to a depressing degree,” Spencer Kornhaber wrote recently in The Atlantic, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how, in earlier decades, it was easier to vaguely gesture at a non-political, peace-keeping, “Switzerland-like,” mindset, but even then, that approach communicated a lot by what it omitted.

All said, Campbell and other rural folk schools have done a lot in recent years to spark much-needed change, and it’s been inspiring to witness. My essay is not meant to say that long-running folk schools should change their approach to fit my thesis, but rather to capture how a new generation, looking to these institutions as models, could start a new and exciting movement.

Feels like kismet, then, that while I was researching this essay, Ashby Combahee and Jada G. Patterson announced plans to start a new folk school for the global majority. I profiled Olamina Folk School for the American Craft Council, speaking briefly to Combahee and Patterson about how this all came together and what they envision in both the short and long term.

The two co-founders are currently in the initial stages of fundraising, working to accrue $100,000 towards start-up costs. But, as Patterson says, “just because we don’t have a school yet, doesn’t mean we can’t start holding workshops and other programming.”

The article has more information about how to get involved, but please, please, consider donating and supporting their endeavor! There’s a lot of momentum, excitement, and work happening behind the scenes.

Olamina is one effort to counter the pervasive whiteness in stateside folk and craft schools. Crafting the Future is working to change the narrative by offering a number of encouraging, intentional programs in partnership with these schools. Journalist Nylah Iqbal Muhammad, who named this problem so directly in her Eater article about North House exploring the rise and appeal of tradition-rich environments (thank you for being a source!), has since started her own folk school in Chicago. There are many others out there, and I hope to shine a brighter light on them, too!

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There’s plenty more to say, and maybe a Substack with bonus content in the drafts, but, primarily, I’m very proud of how this Burnaway piece turned out (especially after sooo many rounds of edits…all worthwhile!)

And yet, I recognize that it’s the tip of the iceberg.

I’m grateful to the many people who, through numerous conversations over several years, helped shape this piece into what it is now, and I am looking forward to exploring this topic in hopefully many more writings down the line.

Read “What Is a Folk School?” on Burnaway here.

Read “In Alabama, A Newly Announced Folk School for the Global Majority” on the American Craft Council’s website here.

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Lately, I’ve been trying to establish new routines and define a structure for my freelancing days, but most evenings I end up feeling like Peanut Butter—splayed out, cranky, and over it all (despite only using my brain, not my body) because it’s hard to suss out what this is all for.

Writing is immensely fulfilling, a dream come true that it’s my sole focus at the moment, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities this year has brought so far.

But I’d be a Pollyanna if I didn’t acknowledge the disheartening nature of artificial intelligence, how it’s already greatly impacted creative industries and, really, our day-to-day life. Its subtle shift to general language, the way we structure our sentences and arguments (It’s not just x, it’s y.), has taken hold like a runaway train. And, considering all the other shit to slog through these days, it’s easy to feel like it’s the beginning of the end of critical thinking and personal composition overall.

I bought a membership to an arts-minded, very hip coworking space (there’s local pottery and bookshelves of museum monographs all around!), but I constantly overhear talk of AI Assistants, custom chatbots, and ways work can be streamlined and simplified by these models that churn out a sophisticated blend of Alphabet soup.

I tried to write some of this entry longhand—in an attempt to counteract hours of screen time and avoid the intrinsic distraction of electronic devices—but I forgot the minor inconveniences that come with the analog world. I sat down and, within minutes, both pens I brought with me quickly ran out of ink. I scribbled little circles, making indentations all across the margin, to no avail.

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Instead of ignoring the AI beast, I’ve wondered how I can make reflections of it more central to my art writing and critical practice. Appalachia is still the core, but what kinds of influential art have been made without the distractions or corrections of AI?

I mentioned in the newsletter about Bone Thrones that I’ve become so invested in self-taught artists and unique environments because their presence and practices subtly advocate against an AI world. (Sometimes, before we knew that would become an option.)

I also recently finished The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman, which had a lot of searing, important passages about how a homogenized culture makes us actually less free, less adventurous, less interesting. AI feels like its own form of gentrification, especially given how it’s taken over so many communication platforms and sanitized huge swaths of life. As for the book — I let a friend borrow it, I’m sorry, but I’ll include some great passages in the next newsletter. Maybe we should start a book club, too?

I guess what I want to advocate for is: Take time to foster boredom that leads to innovation, bring back alternative economic streams that involve talking to each other and not digitally hawking our mental real estate, bring back spiritual-fueled psychosis instead of computerized ones (please, Lord, don’t be like the TikToker who fell in love with her psychiatrist and constantly consulted her BFF Chatbot Claude about it), or simply make big cement grottos because what the hell else is there to do in the dead of winter.

I’m maybe sounding too blasé and minimizing in trying to keep a sense of humor and levity about this, but really, it’s a defense mechanism to keep from feeling defeated. It’s obvious AI is a big software bubble that’s about to burst—that I’m not worried about—but what happens to our brain chemistry afterward?

Craft, by its nature, takes things slower, prioritizes the hand, but it still feels like it could slide into stickiness. (See the recent changes at VCU for an example of how a lauded, influential institution can quickly dump craft due to vague economic, keeping-up-with-the-world reasons.)

My hope is that craft remains somewhat democratic in spirit and in practice, not another luxury good for the wealthy.

I also hope craft continues to be in the service of something larger — a way to trick our brains into focusing on something while, maybe, we have difficult conversations with others in a shared studio space or simply sit with ourselves in order to move through something else. (I’m working on an essay about folk schools and democracy and another short piece about craft and addiction recovery…all these thoughts are swimming in my head like goldfish, forgetting the plot halfway through because the topics are so layered and lead me down so many rabbit holes.)

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Anyway, this is getting rambly. Just wanted to think through some things and send a missive out to the world. It’s been too long since my last Substack, ack!

In the spirit of providing a proper update, here are some articles published over the past few months since the last newsletter. There are a few projects behind the scenes that have yet to see the light of day, but alas.

My output is getting to the point where I don’t expect any one person to read half the things I put out, but maybe something in this list strikes yer fancy. Thank you, as always, for reading.

OH, ALSO! Write with me this summer at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in coastal Maine! It will be an absolute dream. Registration is open again, but spots are limited. Let’s fight against all these chatbots together.

Anyway, the stories:

• Beverly Buchanan: Beverly’s Athens – Brooklyn Rail

• In the Studio with Harley Burns - Burnaway

• middle of somewhere at the International African American Museum, South Carolina - American Craft

• Big Percy Dwarfs the Competition - American Craft

• Agenda: From Hosiery Factory to Art Haven, Derby Fest – Garden & Gun

• Agenda: Coulter Fussell, American Aquarium – Garden & Gun

• Craft-itarianism Focuses on Craft That Sustains - American Craft

• Visual Index Brings the Whole Country to North Carolina - American Craft

• Silver River Weaves Again – American Craft

• A New Kentucky Residency Offers Space for Exploration and Dialogue - American Craft

• Utility Objects Shifts into High Gear - American Craft

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The Playlist:

• Yo La Tengo – Painful

• Charley Crockett – Clovis

• Cat Power – Jukebox

• Ratboys – Singing to an Empty Chair

• Wednesday – Bleeds

• Rogue Wave – Descended Like Vultures (10th Anniversary Edition)

In one tightly cropped shot, a line of miniature chairs made out of spare chicken and turkey bones hangs along the wall like garland, tied together with twine and wire. In these “bone thrones,” the pelvis and wishbones form the wingback; the ribs become the seat.

In another photo, more tiny bones are stacked to form two towers, both covered in shiny, jewel-toned paint, and foregrounding a modeling-clay pink heart that reads: My Valentine, Marie, 1979, from Gene.

Looking at a photo of their kitchen, you can see a pin-up of Marie hanging on the wall, a portrait taken by her husband and printed in his bathroom darkroom.

In another snapshot, there’s a table covered with ceramic masks and crowns, more Valentines, and other odds and ends. The furniture is crammed into the nook of an attic—as if there was simply nowhere else for it all to go.

Ruth DeYoung Kohler II visited Marie and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein's Milwaukee home in 1983, two weeks after Eugene—the eccentric artist, who was once a florist and baker—had passed away.

(Eugene referred to his wife Eveline Kalka as “Marie,” supposedly to honor his favorite aunt; subsequent archives, texts, and exhibitions about the couple have followed the same pattern.)

Ruth had been working at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center since 1968, was promoted to Director in 1972, and led many significant initiatives, including the acclaimed Arts/Industry Residency with her grandfather’s plumbing company, Kohler, as well as other community-focused projects.1

She visited Eugene’s at the request of Milwaukee Art Museum curator Russell Bowman, who was contacted by a family friend hoping the artist’s work could be sold to support his widow or preserved in some other way. (Years before, Ruth was instrumental in getting an entourage of public and private partners to save Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park.)

Reminiscing later on, Ruth wrote:

Without a doubt, that first visit [to Von Bruenchenhein’s home] was the most astonishing and moving experience in the arts that I have had. Surrounded by relief heads of painted concrete—Asian warriors and royalty that served as sentinels—the Von Bruenchenhein home was painted inside and out in large shapes of vibrant colors: bright blue, phthalo green, deep yellow, salmon pink, and moody reds. The tiny foyer was stacked floor to ceiling with Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes filled with chicken bones from a nearby restaurant’s refuse—all to be used for Eugene’s exotic thrones and towers. Marie, then age sixty-two, allowed us to wander at will; seeing the immensity and power of Eugene’s output left me forgetting to breathe.2

Ruth’s visit to Eugene and Marie’s sparked a new fascination and an ongoing critical project for the museum director and overall art-world visionary. As the Art Preserve Reader tells it, “Disregarding all the reasons not to, the Arts Center acquired six thousand Von Bruenchenhein objects, including photos, paintings, and sculptures, marking its transition into a collecting institution and its commitment to a more expansive arc of art making.”3

Right before the start of my junior year in undergrad, a new professor joined the faculty at my small Nashville arts college. He was more inspired by grassroots conspiracy than contemporary art. (How prescient that all seems now from the rearview.)

Instead of the standard lectures on Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky, or Jeff Wall, he showed us a documentary film about the Toynbee Tiles—elusive, anonymous, license-plate-size mosaics, mysteriously embedded into pavement in a handful of major cities, with an enigmatic poem that maybe references a conspiracy between Russia, United States, and mainstream media: TOYNBEE IDEA / IN MOViE `2001 / RESURRECT DEAD / ON PLANET JUPiTER. (Again, how prescient.)

He had us read passages from Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone, among other unorthodox lessons, creating an alternative canon of aesthetic ideology shaped not by the logic of the academy but by the random nonsense of the real world. I was emboldened to think that none of his lesson plans had anything to teach me about contemporary art, but our professor insisted there were more parallels than differences between the oddballs and the established avant-garde.

Maybe he hoped we’d see that artmaking is its own form of sanity, a coping mechanism for the chaos of modern times, and recognize that compelling makers are everywhere, not just in museums or galleries or New York. Maybe he hoped we’d see through the art school bullshit, and grasp that a fulfilling practice meant following our own creative impulses with conviction, no matter who was paying attention (or, more likely, not paying attention) to us.

In those days, I begrudgingly listened, and his lessons stayed with me in unexpected ways; I saw a lot of forgettable art when I later moved to NYC, but I never skipped the chance to see a Toynbee Tile.

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The professor was on my mind again as I traveled with the Burnaway crew up to Milwaukee recently (in mid-December—brr!) for a trip with the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. There were plenty of worthwhile art experiences and curious cheese dishes to write home about, but the highlight for me was when Courtney rented a van and drove us up to Sheboygan to explore the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Art Preserve.

The Art Preserve, in particular, is a can’t-miss yet hard-to-pin-down kind of place. Opened in 2021, the Preserve is part museum and part storage facility, housing the Kohler Art Center’s enormous collection of “artist-built environments” across three stories and 56,000 square feet.

Some repertoires are installed as exhibitions, some as visible storage, and most as a combination of the two. The Preserve also seeks to foster “responses” to its collection through new commissions and exhibitions with contemporary artists.

Just past the Preserve’s entrance, acclimating you to the museum’s peculiar world of “environment builders”,4 is a reproduction of the exterior of Eugene and Marie Von Bruenchenhein’s Milwaukee home. The false facade guides you into a mini-museum with floor-to-ceiling vitrines, sliding racks full of paintings, a projection room moving through pin-up photos of Marie, and several salon-style displays of works.

My favorite works by Von Bruenchenhein were the “bone thrones,” painted in all sorts of colors, including a watermelon-candy-like pink and green, mustard yellow, gold, copper, and bronze; I have a deep love and growing collection of dollhouse chairs in Craft Revival styles, and Gene’s would fit in with them nicely.

At The Preserve, each chair is displayed side by side on large shelves behind glass, in the manner I’ve seen historic woodcarvings displayed at Asheville’s Folk Art Center. No garland, no twine, no wire here.

While some of the collections at the Art Preserve came from a place of urgency (a recently deceased artist, a home or “environment” about to be bulldozed), there’s a healthy balance of ones from living artists who still contribute—like Dr. Charles Smith, who asked that the Center reuse exhibition materials in building his display platforms, making for a cheeky, self-referential patchwork pedestal.

The work in the Preserve is also not wholly made by relative unknowns living in obscurity; there’s a reconstruction of Lenore Tawney’s SoHo home and studio, along with Stella Waitzkin’s room at the Hotel Chelsea, and a section displaying the eccentric kitsch and art collection of artist and influential SAIC professor Ray Yoshida.

The breadth of the collection speaks to the open-endedness of the term “Artist-Built Environment,” which The Preserve’s website defines as “spaces that have been significantly transformed to embody and express aspects of the artist’s life experience, their surrounding geography, or culture. The works are immersive, typically immobile, and are found around the globe…”5

Initially, this somewhat vague description led to humorous confusion on my part—I made the mistake of calling a contemporary artist’s installation in one of the Center’s galleries a “built environment,” and was quickly corrected by a staff member—but it became a teachable moment, bringing the thorniness of talking about what’s often described as “self-taught,” “vernacular,” or, most frowned upon, “outsider” art to the forefront.

Oftentimes, I roll my eyes when institutions and marketing professionals try to come up with new words to describe knotty concepts, but it seems like there is actually something different happening with the Preserve’s embrace of the “artist-built environments” designation: encouraging critical consideration, serious discussion, and fostering an archive of unconventional ways of working.

Of course, the art world’s overall view of “self-taught” artists, along with the respect for studio environments, forgotten relics, and unusual collections, has evolved significantly since Kohler visited the Von Bruenchenheins’ in 1983. But the tide is still turning.

As noted in their Reader, the Preserve “houses, both physically and metaphorically, the Art Center’s conviction that significant, original, and compelling works of art are created everywhere, by people from a broad spectrum of life experiences.”6

Memories of The Professor came flooding back. In undergrad, my view of art was so limited because it felt like it had to be—we were learning what was good and bad, what was successful and forgotten, and trying to make our own go of it. I felt like discernment, judgment, and criticism were the faculties I needed to be successful and fit in with the Art World, capital-A, capital-W. My view had to contract in order to one day expand again. (It made me into a bit of an asshole, too.)

Looking back on those years, I was drowning in a sea of cynicism, doubt, and art theory essays. I’m thankful, though, that The Professor was there to interject something more transcendent.

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Returning to North Carolina, I spent a quiet afternoon reading TK Smith’s review of The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans at the High Museum of Art, soon to travel to the Whitney, in Art in America. His writing sparked a small firestorm on social media because of the web headline that sets up one of Smith’s main points: “Minnie Evans’s Legacy Raises Questions About Power Dynamics Between Self-Taught Artists and the Art World.”

The article explores how the reception of Evans’ work was, for a long period, shaped by art historian and photographer Nina Howell Starr (1903–2000), who was credited with “discovering” Evans in the 1960s and later became her art dealer, archivist, and main documentarian.

Starr, as the overarching narrative tells it, helped Evans’ career gain the attention of influential folks that would lead to a preeminent market and major museum exhibitions for the artists down the line.

In hindsight, is this sort of relationship bad, good, ethically dubious, problematic, or justified? Personally, I loved Smith’s conclusion, which, like all great writing, leaves more questions than answers:

Spirituality is often emphasized in writing on Evans’s work, as if her Christian faith authenticates her compulsion to create as a Southern Black woman. [...] Then again, what if Evans was, in fact, a prophet, and her spiritual power was commodified by a white woman with a camera? Or what if Starr was an incredible businesswoman and helped secure financial freedom for a Black artist, as well as for herself? What if Evans and Starr were best friends and loved each other dearly? Making space for inquiry makes space for humanity and offers us the opportunity to read Evans as an actor in her own artistic success. The retrospective offers us a chance to sidestep othering narratives from the past and consider her work on its own terms.7

Smith also asks the great question: “Have the power dynamics between Southern, Black self-taught artists and white Northern scholars and institutions been truly problematized, and in the present, have those dynamics changed much?”

I don’t see the review as passing judgment on the artist or the facilitator who ensured Evans’ work was seen and archived. (Despite what the Instagram bru-ha-ha suggested.)

Smith, in my eyes, is advocating for what should be obvious: that it’s hard to truly know someone’s prerogative and intent. That we shouldn’t trust every tidy narrative as a total fact, and that every art experience is likely mediated through lenses we’re sometimes conscious of and sometimes not. And that we shouldn’t assume much has changed.

A similar dynamic—between what a maker originally intends versus what is curated or exploited—is also at play in traditional Appalachian craft, which I’ve discussed extensively (and am working on writing more about soon).

I always return to Jan Davidson’s introduction in the 1989 edition (and 2010 reissue) of Frances Goodrich’s Mountain Homespun (1931), where he discusses at length how Goodrich’s coverlets, and those produced by the women in her cooperative Allanstand Cottage Industries, all featured straight, precise seams—something uncommon in coverlets made before the professionalization brought by traveling missionaries.

Davidson explained that, in the past, coverlets were often deconstructed to wash and dry; the uneven seams could result from quick sewing, piecing together parts as they became ready without strict adherence to a pattern. (For most of the women, “the thing was a set of pieces,” he wrote.)

There was also a bit of superstition at play: “A crooked seam throws the devil off your track,” went one old adage.

However, as Davidson surmised:

…The missionaries, having no doubts about the superiority of their own culture, assumed that their artistic judgments and ideas of “quality” were the only correct ones. As in many other points of encounter between Appalachia and the dominant culture, the labor and resources were Appalachian, while the decisions made and the ideas behind them were “fotched-on.”

Today, an innovative, eclectic, personal tradition of skills—mostly held by native mountain elders—lives next door to a professionalized, quality-conscious, object-oriented, market-wise craft business. Each is, in its own way, “Appalachian handicrafts.” Each has a long and interesting history, the one finding its roots in necessity, the other in a “systematic cultural intervention.”8

Davidson’s essay cracked my head open like an egg the first time I read it—and continues to be a North Star of sorts—for the way he tackles the thorniness of craft practices and reminds us that terms and concepts often evolve to encompass new standards, unwelcome contributions, or disruptions to the norm. Memories and histories illuminate and obscure. Tradition does not always correspond to the truth.

The ethics behind displaying works by makers who did or did not consider themselves artists continues to push and pull me in many directions, but when looking at the Art Preserve’s “built environments”—along with the Kohler Center exhibition about the “Midwest Grotto Tradition”—I couldn’t help but mostly think about the unforeseen and possibly damaging effects of the internet, social media, and widespread use of artificial intelligence.

A few artists I’ve chatted with about art and craft in the Midwest explain individualistic creativity as partially a result of the cold weather: “People need something to do in the Winter when they’re stuck in their homes.”

The undercurrent of “keeping busy,” “staving off boredom,” “following one’s fascinations,” or, in one case, building a large-scale installation to fight against illness and metaphysical conspiracies, hums beneath the question of an artist’s intent.

Boredom and a sense of homesickness may explain why Madeline Buol took the seashells from her sunny-day travels and embedded them into slabs of cement to create towering altars in her front yard, but how are we to know?

Today, though, we have an abundance of entertainment options, of platforms to connect with like-minded folks, and access to ever-sophisticated generative tools, for better or worse. I think of its effect on many levels, from AI music climbing the charts9 to the end of elevator small talk.

While I still want to learn more about the motivations of these “environment builders,” and what their day-to-day experiences looked like, I can’t help but wonder what form their practices would take today.

To be blunt: what would motivate someone to make grottos and masks and “dream houses” and rudimentary depictions of Bible stories, if computerized image generators can render the most fantastical, unrealistic-looking imagery imaginable? Instead of collages and watercolors, what if Henry Darger used Google Gemini to make illustrations of the Vivian Girls?

One could argue that artists will continue to make no matter the conditions, but a hallmark of these “self-taught” artists is that their works are often made with humble resources and determination to illustrate a vision. (And, unfortunately, their practices are often tied to poverty.)

As slop proliferates across social media—even on government-run channels—and digital tools “disrupt” our economy10 by promising expensive skills for free or cheap, the question becomes: will everyday people from all walks of life still experiment with unusual and offbeat forms of creativity and connection, or will they, more often than not, rely on a machine to manifest their dreams? After all, the quality produced by these apps is much more convincing and professional than attempts at drawing, painting, or sculpting most of the time.

I ask this mostly out of curiosity, since many people in my life have started relying on ChatGPT or AI-powered apps, and I wonder whether I’m being too harsh or becoming a Luddite in my rejection of them.

There’s a Twitter and Threads trend currently circulating that says 2026 will be the year we finally log off, with an avalanche of posts advocating for people to read more books, make more art, get rid of their smartphones, go to birthday parties, and learn new hobbies.

So far, I am making disconnecting a priority. I have stopped bringing my phone into bed. I buy print subscriptions and read magazines on the porch. I listen to CDs, full albums front to back, in my car.

More than wishing everyone else would join an analog revolution, though, I want to see idiosyncratic practices flourish. I want to see whimsy return, and not in a way that’s “doing it for the ‘gram.”

There was a promise, a hope, in the Web 1.0 days that the internet would provide us with just enough tools to do something unexpected. What it seems to have done is lulled us into a sort of somnolent submission.

Scrolling has become the main way to soothe the nerves. Or, it causes a sad desensitization to traumatic atrocities happening in our backyard and around the world, while we are continuously lied to by an administration determined to bend the truth to their will and whim.

The World Wide Web has become an infinite rabbit hole, making the desire to act on intuition and superstition feel less pressing when you can Google—or ask a chatbot—for a more workable solution.

I fell in love, hard, with the artist-built environments at the Preserve, but I worried that another effect of institutionalization is that it reminds us how these practices are becoming increasingly hard to come by.

That preserving them becomes paramount because, in a few decades, the phenomena and the magic of such endeavors will become a distant memory.

I wondered about the plausibility of our generation crafting an eccentric installation that isn’t performative, that is divorced from the idea of influencer, and maybe a little conspiratorial, but not in a harmful way. I want to believe it’s possible. I want to see new examples. I know they’re out there, and I’ll keep my eyes open.

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This has been a long one, so thanks for reading. (And if you’re scrolling down to see how far this goes and thinking, “Woah that’s way too long”—skip it, girl! No offense taken.)

Other readings I recommend and wish I had the space to reference:

“Assemblage and Inheritance” by Kristina Kay Robinson

“Got to Be Real” by Angella D’Avignon

“Andrew Edlin Explains How the Outsider Art Fair Helped Establish a Market for the Genre” by Elisa Carollo

Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-1940 by Jane S. Becker

The Playlist:

This is Lorelei, Holo Boy

Justin Townes Earle, Harlem River Blues

Ratboys, The Window

Little Junior Parker, Sun Records Originals: Mystery Train

Fiona Apple, When the Pawn…

Snocaps, Snocaps

Jad Fair and Yo La Tengo, Strange But True

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One of my perfectionist tendencies—I’m working on it, okay—is that I want everything, narratively speaking, to tie up in a red satin bow before I share it out. I don’t like to tell folks about significant updates or big life changes until everything falls neatly into place.

But by then, when it all comes together, the news can feel an overwhelming mess of information that makes it look like I’m losing my marbles. (See: leaving NYC for rural North Carolina to be closer to family and work at an almost hundred-year-old craft school whose website was still very early 2000s—but I digress!)

So, first, the big news: I’m the recipient of a 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in the short-form category. Over the next year, I will write a series of articles on contemporary art in southern and central Appalachia, focusing on artist-run spaces that promote a more holistic view of cultural life in the mountains. This funding will help me travel throughout the region, meet more folks, and, most importantly, focus on writing in the year ahead. (Know an artist, gallery, or a very cool person I should connect with? Send me their info!)

This grant is truly a dream come true and a real humbling moment: I’ve always been passionate about writing but never saw it as the “right path” to take, and yet…here we are. Doubt be damned. In the words of Catherine Lacey, “apply for every fucking thing you are eligible for every single year you are eligible for them." (Her post is a necessary motivation for all of us—happy to forward it to anyone who would like it.)

I had already decided to leave my full-time marketing job, and Basil and I had started planning a new chapter in Asheville, before I found out this exciting news. (Talk about trusting your gut.) He’s really helped me see that sometimes you have to jump, take the risk, and trust that it’ll all work out.

So, on top of receiving this life-changing award, I am also:

• Leaving my full-time job at Sawtooth School for Visual Art. (Very bittersweet—one of the best gigs I’ve ever had with the most supportive, passionate team!)

• Pursuing writing and editing full-time through freelance and contract opportunities. (I’m not leaving Burnaway!)

• Moving to Asheville, NC. (We bought a house in West Asheville!)

• Dedicating more time to this Substack. (Finally, paid subscribers—the playlist and bonus posts are coming!)

• Teaching a writing workshop at Haystack in summer 2026. (Lobster dinner!) The news is out, and class and registration information will be available soon.

• Saying yes to whatever else comes my way this year.

It’s a time of true transformation, of believing in myself and hustling harder than ever before. I’d be remiss to not say that I’m absolutely fucking terrified by all of this, but the support and opportunities that have opened up so far have been overwhelming in the best way. It feels like I made the right decision, at the right time, and it’ll be exciting to see where it goes. Thanks for following along.

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For Garden & Gun’s December/January issue, I have a small piece about Old Salem and Lot 63 in the Agenda section. I was also fortunate to write a web blurb about the new Ralph Eugene Meatyard exhibition at the High Museum, celebrating what would have been the artist’s 100th birthday.

Greg shared so many great tidbits and stories about “Gene,” many I had never heard before, and I loved his summation of the talented, enigmatic photographer who has inspired tons of image-makers (myself included). “Gene was a regular American dad,” he told me. “He coached little league, collected jazz records, and was also an innovative photographer.”

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The Playlist

Instead of the usual album list, I’m compiling a handful of unconventional, underappreciated holiday songs that have been in heavy rotation for me lately:

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings – “Just Another Christmas Song (This Time I’ll Sing Along)”

Eisley – “Star on the Tree”

Jan Terri - “Rock N Roll Santa”

Los Campesinos – “The Holly & The Ivy”

Low - “Taking Down the Tree”

The Magnetic Fields – “Everything is One Big Christmas Tree”

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This is usually how it goes: I have an inkling for a newsletter idea, and then I start hoarding vignettes that fit the mold. The metaphorical satchel of stories gets heavier—it sags, it slumps, it slides off my shoulder—but I keep trudging along. I tell myself that just one more anecdote or factoid will come along that will neatly tie up all my loose ends and trailing thoughts. It doesn’t happen. The satchel stretches more.

So, okay, lesson learned—the missives have to get shorter, more spontaneous. I am determined to write this newsletter with some regularity as soon as I find the time. (Ha!) This was always meant to be a collection of writings about art, not about the practice of writing itself, but, you know, whatever, the road leads where it’s led.

Things I promise to get to: the excellent Dorthea Lange exhibition at The Carnegie Center for Arts and History in Jackson, TN; Photos from Helene at Little Animals; what I learned about myself and my body from our ropes course staff retreat; and a bunch of other recent articles by art and culture writers you should read noooowwww!

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Currently, I’m in Atlanta for the Art Papers Art Writing + Publishing Symposium, a pivotal part of their three-year Fire-Ecology-inspired wind-down that already feels like it’ll become a defining moment in their long, influential legacy. (Everything’s being recorded and will be available in due time!)

There’s too much to write about the conference for now—adding that to the story satchel—but what’s most energizing isn’t just the warm fuzzy feelings from having everyone together, but the radical, vulnerable, unselfconscious openness that folks in attendance are bringing to the table.

There are honest conversations about financial struggles—with spreadsheets!—and panels about the challenges of navigating as a non-profit, even suggesting how we can reimagine the standard model altogether. I keep saying “it’s a lot to chew on,” but this weekend has truly become a pulse-check for the field, one that feels like it could only be led by an organization that’s been upfront about bowing out.

Instead of pontificating about a crisis, an artificial scarcity, it’s: “Hey. This approach wasn’t sustainable for us. Here’s why. How’s it working for you?” A collective sigh of relief. Finally, we can be real with one another—compare notes and see how we can build something better together.

This is, of course, all presented against the backdrop of a world on fire, and more specifically, a dwindling support for artists, critical endeavors, and vital institutions at all levels across the country.

I’ve heard a few friends bemoaning the state of the local scene and the lack of patronage in [insert city here], and I see so many parallels between their situations and the struggles in my current home of Winston-Salem, the self-proclaimed “City of the Arts.” (a moniker some leaders have admitted was always more aspirational than reflective.) There are many complex personal and systemic issues behind these problems; I would love to read a rich, meaty, long-form piece that tracks the challenges across multiple mid-sized cities over the years, especially as a historically philanthropic class has seemingly shifted its priorities. (Summarized in many memes.) The piece will end on an uplifting note, hopefully!

I’m not quite sure where I’m going with all this, but there’s something about being on the 18th floor of an unfamiliar hotel, overlooking a large swath of Atlanta as the sun rises, that makes such intense focus—and the determination to write a newsletter—possible.

Recent Writings

For Burnaway’s yearly print reader, I profiled the work of Indigenous artist and photographer Benjy Russell, whose latest series, Dark Big Bang, is—in my eyes—his most powerful and personally affecting yet.

Russell crafts images that are meditative and celebratory, indicative of a queer futurism that’s firmly rooted in the rural. His ethereal, dreamlike images are often documents of improvised monuments, fashioning permanence out of the often forgotten or fleeting.

And under the gloss, the sparkle, the filters, the layers of pleasure, Russell’s works are deeply personal, working through private and generational trauma with illusion, grandiosity, and slapdash glamour.

Read it online here, and keep an eye out for the print reader in early 2026.

Also, in the October/November issue of Garden & Gun, I have a short blurb about Punkin Chunkin—an absolute dream come true to write about this fever dream of an event. I was tickled to see the lede I fussed so much with become a 1/3-page pull-quote: Carving jack-o’-lanterns is a fall tradition, but what about launching them thousands of feet into the air?

The Playlist

I bookended the conference with two Rilo Kiley shows—one with a low-energy crowd in a disappointing, too-expensive venue and another that was standing-room-only, a lovefest, and somehow hit all the heights one hopes a nostalgia tour would. (The better show was in Asheville, of course, further solidifying my affinity for the western part of the state.)

Dancing was a highlight; being in a tight, jittery, excited crowd was a highlight; slow dancing with my man was a highlight; seeing my high school bestie was a highlight; but the best part by far was the band’s in-good-spirits, half-joking attempt at “Glendora” after some passionate begging from the crowd. It’s also why their debut, originally dubbed Initial Friend, has jumped to the top of the list. (Take Offs and Landings has also been perfect for these dreary days—pulled “Go Ahead” for the newsletter title and sub, sorry.)

Rilo Kiley – Rilo Kiley

Leith Ross – I Can See The Future

Wednesday – Bleeds (album of the year BY FAR)

Charlie Crockett – Dollar A Day

Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky

Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood

Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights

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1. I wrote a whole blog-style newsletter a few weeks ago and trashed it because I thought, Who cares? Then I wrote a second newsletter about the problem of worrying about who cares. Trashed that one too.

2. Working a full-time marketing job, a contract-based editing job, and freelancing here and there leaves little time for “pleasure writing.” It’s partially why I made this Substack, although it’s easy to procrastinate on.

3. Sydney told me to stop trashing newsletters and give the people what they want. Anthony told me, “I think the power of substack is letting it fly.” I protested too much in response. “No shame, just hit send bb. Long live blogs.”

4. One of my mentees in Burnaway’s Art Writing Incubator told me they wanted to experiment with essay structure, and mentioned Camille Bacon’s eight verses for Lorraine O’Grady. (A masterpiece.) I thought of another masterful piece of writing I’ve always loved: Susannah Felt’s This is Not My Neil Young Essay. (republished by the troubador himself!)

5. Something about a list, stanzas, feels less intimidating when you have so much to say. I sent Susannah’s essay to them for inspiration and thought, hm, maybe I should play around with this format too.

6. Oh no. Doubt is already seeping in.

   

7. Last week, I spent 24 hours in rural Virginia with photographer Jonas N. T. Becker for a long-form interview coming out later this year. (I’ll share more much, much later.) The trip was made possible thanks to a travel grant from the Rabkin Foundation.

8. I’ve often heard that western North Carolina is a “different brand” of Appalachia, and, after that day, I can see why.

9. In the last half-hour of the drive, I stopped at a small gas station a few miles from the maximum security prison. I had to pee badly, and this was the only one I’d seen for miles.

10. I was going to buy a bottle of water—restrooms were for customers only—but there were none in the coolers. Just soda, Monster, Red Bull, Gatorade.

11. Jonas and I stayed at a motel right outside the Breaks Interstate Park. It was one of those roadside joints we had both always dreamed about staying in, but never did out of a fear of bedbugs. Nothing to worry about this time: 4.7 stars on Google! The most pleasant reviews! A fire pit and picnic area! No itching reported!

12. The population of Breaks, VA, where we stayed, is around 322. Population in Grundy, VA, the town with the Walmart, is 820.

13. We asked the owner for restaurant recommendations. There was a Mexican restaurant and a pizza place in Elkhorn City, KY, the closest town over. That was it.

14. Elkhorn City, KY, has a population of 978.

15. We met in this part of the country to visit former coal mining sites that had been redeveloped for “better or equal use,” per a 1977 congressional act that made such dubious mining processes legally possible. The redevelopment is, in a way, a repentance for blowing up mountaintops and tearing apart ecosystems. Jonas has been documenting these sites for years, printing them in the darkroom with coal taken from the areas depicted. (Again, much more later! It’s fascinating!)

16. We followed a gravel driveway to a road and found ourselves under the Grassy Creek Bridge, the tallest bridge in Virginia, built as part of the new Coalfields Expressway. Standing under it gave me some haunting feeling, the opposite of vertigo that I’ll never forget. It felt larger, more imposing than any skyscraper I’d seen in recent memory. It was in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t seem to make any sense. It was so clean. I didn’t have the words to explain my feelings to Jonas other than to say it was surreal.

    

17. A press release from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority stated: “The benefits of the road include how it will allow better access to the region, enhancing economic development efforts, health care and quality of life, as well as to improve travel times for local residents.”

18. The bridge takes us directly to Elkhorn City, to the Mexican restaurant, but Google Maps didn’t suggest it. It was a couple of minutes faster to take the already-established mountain highway.

19. A 13-year-old kid on his dirt bike noticed my Subaru pulled off to the side of the road, and saw us gawking and pulling out our phones. “Y’all trying to take pictures of the bridge?” Jonas said yes. I was still a bit speechless.

20. He pulls off his helmet. He has eyes that are so blue they look like a clear stream, like tinted ice used for a sculpture or skating rink. Later, Jonas and I try to describe the color to one another accurately. The closest we come is “aqua.”

21. “I know a good place where you can get a really pretty picture,” he told us. “Shooooot,” he said with that good ol’ Virginia drawl. He offered to take us up there if we wanted to follow behind his bike.

22. Jonas, ever the sweetheart, said something to the effect of, well, only if you have time, we don’t want to bother you.

23. Kid tells us he has nothing but time. Has just been riding around in circles all day.

24. He takes us up a winding road, then over to another, and then up into a neighborhood with dogs running free, and kudzu growing up over the power lines and hillsides. We came to a dead-end cul-de-sac with an unbelievable view of the bridge. I felt forever indebted to this kid. We wouldn’t have found this on any map, nor would we have expected such grandiose results.

25. There’s a hill to the left of the bridge with shorter, greener grass. Jonas tells me how this is new growth, indicative of where a mountain was blown off, mined, or destructively altered in some way. When they came to visit during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these areas were still exposed rock, but now they look pastoral again. We discuss how that will impact generational memory. Will people even remember that there was a mountain here, or recall that this highway came about because huge swaths of the natural landscape were destroyed?

26. The teenager tells us how he likes to come up to this vantage point early in the morning. “You can sometimes see elk wandering over there,” he said, pointing to the new growth. He loves it. It’s a real special sight.

27. Days later, on a plane to New York City, I read the newest issue of Garden & Gun. I have three pieces in the Southern Agenda section, a roundup of cultural happenings and quirky events taking place throughout the region. (I love writing these so much, I can’t tell you enough.)

28. I flip through the other Agenda entries, and I notice that Virginia’s blurb is about the popularity of late-summer Elk Tours in the small town of Breaks.

    

29. The kid got back on his dirtbike and left us at the top of the hill. Jonas and I decided to try the Mexican restaurant. We took the bridge to Elkhorn City anyway, despite Google’s suggestion, because we wanted the experience. Right now, the bridge dead-ends after about seven miles. You’re forced to take the off-ramp and end at a Double Kwik gas station.

30. The next day, we drove by a few more sites and came to the other dead end of the still-developing Coalfield Expressway. Jonas took me to an old dirt track they had photographed, one that was now overgrown with weeds. It was lunchtime, and a food truck was now parked there. A group of construction workers in WV DOT jackets sat together at a nearby picnic table. Jonas pulled over.

31. Jonas asked the construction guys about the highway. They say they have no idea when it’ll be done, tease us a bit about it, and head out. The woman who owns the food truck told us that the crew is working on the mega-sized high school that is going up a few minutes away.

32. We order some Philly Cheesesteak fries, which are honestly delicious, and two frozen lemonades—the last ones in the freezer.

33. She told us we had to drive by the new high school. “You can’t miss it. It’s big and long and yellow.”

34. We leave the truck and drive through an eerie, half-built neighborhood on top of a hill. The high school, maybe, sort of, is part of this complex. Jonas wants me to see it first for context.

35. There are mega mansions with mountaintop, panoramic views—because they are built on former mining lands, former peaks blown apart to make way for mining operations. There’s a fire station at the start of the neighborhood. I see two firefighters in the front yard, using a torch to burn paperwork.

36. There are plots of land saved for retail businesses that never materialized. The road is outfitted with a handful of parallel parking spots. Jonas pulls into one as a joke. “So convenient!”

37. The high school is exactly how the woman described it. It appears to be designed to accommodate tens of thousands of students, far more than the hundreds who live in the immediate area. The result of consolidation, perhaps.

38. The site is far off in the distance. There’s a long gravel road, construction traffic only, no trespassing.

39. We parallel parked near the construction entrance and stood in the grass, taking photos with our phones. A man emerged from a tractor and approached us slowly. “Can I help y’all?”

40. Jonas remarked about how big the school is. Asked for details. The man said he knew nothing. Told us he’s helping to build a house on this little plot and is waiting on word from an engineer about how deep he has to dig.

41. Because this was former mining land, he told us, they have to dig further down, lay plastic webbing, add some water and other materials to create a more solid foundation. The ground can settle unnaturally, resulting in various issues.

42. Jonas makes a joke later that maybe all the houses are built on little waterbeds.

43. I make a note in my phone to look up the specifics later, I’m too chicken to ask this man for the details now.

44. I told Jonas that I was a little spooked to be “playing journalist” in a rural area. It’s something I need to get over.

45. We joke with the man, ask him, who would want to build a house so close to a gargantuan high school? “Well, he’s a former principal,” he replied. “He’s used to it.”

46. The man apologized for bothering us; he just wasn’t sure what we were up to. Jonas asked about the high school again. We’re both amazed by it.

47. “I don’t know nothing about it,” he said, “except that they built something real big, real fast.”

48. The heat wave started to hit hard, so Jonas and I looked for a quiet place where we could sit, chat, finish the interview, and maybe eat something. We found a Dairy Queen in Vansant, VA, and headed that way.

49. It’s perfect. Quiet. No one there but some workers, a few senior citizens, and us. We order chicken strips. I put the tape recorder between us. We talked for another couple of hours. I think about how I should interview more subjects at fast-food restaurants. They are secretly the best third-space.

50. Our conversations ends. I don’t know how I’ll put it all together for publication, but as the end of the trip is in sight, I start to grasp how transformative these 24 hours have been. How much Jonas’ work, artistic concerns, parallel with my own.

51. I’m amazed by how Jonas approaches political acts, systemic issues, and ideas of exploitation with the language and ambiguity of conceptual art, sparking a deeper conversation and consideration beyond the what that happens in front of our eyes. I have a lot more to say, but now is not the time or place.

52. I could have spent another few hours there, at that table, if I had access to a little stronger coffee.

53. We say our goodbyes. I hit the road, spent the night in my own bed, and woke up early the next morning to fly to New York City with Basil.

54. I guess I’ll write about that trip next time. Perhaps in paragraph form.

(Go subscribe to Susannah at F I E L D T R I P! She’s such an inspiration in so many ways!)

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My excuses for not starting a Substack were only growing, partially out of stubbornness but primarily out of fear. I’m not good at writing casually or off the cuff—I proofread every Instagram caption way too many times—and I hate to feel like I’m bothering folks with emails, updates, music recs, and ramblings. But Substack is the writer’s and reader’s social network, and that sort of digital connection is hard to find these days. Mailchimp, for now, goes off into the sunset.

Recent Articles

For Garden & Gun, I wrote about how “Winston-Salem is Worth Another Look” thanks to the city’s surprising use of its generous plenty of old buildings.

It was a joy to highlight some of my favorite gems in the place I’ve called home for the past few years; it was equally wonderful to speak to Michelle McCullough, Winston’s historic resource officer, for the story. She’s passionate about Winston’s architectural history and was quick to share quirky, entertaining tidbits about how our buildings came to be. When I asked her about Winston’s eclectic blend of architectural influences, she put it simply: “Well, you had wealthy people picking and choosing from many styles. And it wasn’t always high-style.”

I also took a deep dive into the career of Grace Hartigan for ARTnews with “Grace Hartigan’s Artistic Kinship with Midcentury Poets”, a feature tied to a new Hartigan survey exhibition here in North Carolina.

Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention, curated by Jared Ledesma, focuses on the painter’s connections with midcentury avant-garde poets, including Daisy Aldan, Barbara Guest, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, among others. The show emphasizes the strong bonds she developed with these (primarily queer) writers, forging relationships that provided a sense of belonging in a downtown scene where she initially felt out of place.

The exhibition catalog is also a treat, collecting some of the most poignant works of Hartigan’s career. I can’t recommend it enough!

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What’s Playing, Looking, Reading, Doing

I’ve been in a spirited reading phase lately—not the norm!—and recently finished Yiyun Li’s masterful, heartbreaking, impossible-to-put-down Things in Nature Merely Grow, a meditation on an unthinkable amount of grief that I’d recommend again and again. Finally got around to Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X, an art-world speculative metafiction that feels more prescient than pretentious. (Yes, The Mobius Book is next.) Lucas Schaefer’s The Slip has garnered praise from many far and wide (Ron Charles!!), but I’ve got to get through the Laceys first.

In short form, n+1’s recap of the early days of DOGE takes the long view of a nonsense fiasco, nailing the confusing paradox at the heart of the effort: “If the government is good for business, why destroy the government?” Texas Monthly’s chronicle of Buc-ees’ bathroom art gallery is the kind of art writing I want to see more of.

Pavements is a pitch-perfect, inscrutable document of the ‘90s slacker kings. The band’s immense influence has always conflicted with their desire to stay arm’s length from fame, the cultural zeitgeist, and the legions of fans who remain hopelessly devoted to them. Weatherspoon at UNCG has a powerful exhibition on view, "The Opioid Project: Changing Perceptions Through Art and Storytelling," showcasing the importance of art as outreach, therapy, and a means of communicating hope. I wish I had the time to make the road trip to Lexington to see Ceirra Evans’ show at Institute 193. Belle Townsend describes it perfectly in the show’s statement: “As a queer artist, her gaze challenges caricature and patronization alike, offering a vision of rural life that is honest, complex, and political by nature. The absurdity of blow-drying a plant in such bitter weather lands not as mockery, but as survival.”

The playlist?
Lorde - Virgin • Addison Rae – Addison • Swearin’ – Fall into the Sun • Beach House - Depression Cherry • Bright Eyes - Cassadaga • Cartel - Chroma • Garbage - Bleed Like Me

Addicted to this one and waiting for more Baby Bash interpolation to infiltrate pop:

For some extra YouTube-rabbit-hole-weirdness, I’m celebrating Cole Escola’s incredible Tony win (and their red carpet tribute to Bernadette Peters) with an early sketch from their OG YouTube series VGL Boys with equally-hilarious Jeffrey Self: Bernadette Peters on Prop 8. (“Vote No on Patti Lupone!”)

See you next month, friends! As always, thanks for reading.

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