In the Direction of the Sky

Who are we to each other? In the space of work—the nonprofit, the academic institution—we are helping each other to get a job done. We are operating in service of the people we engage. Employees link up in meetings. We attune (or not) ourselves to a company line and then we scurry alone to our corners to face the obstacles that stand in the way of our work. 

In the space of art, we are differently arranged. We are conduits carrying a charge that circles, builds, flies in the direction of the sky. I have felt this in workshops where there is no endpoint, and in collectives when there is no show date set. It was this way with a Teens Council at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. 

I wanted the artists I was working with to take bodily sensation rather than visualization as a starting point for figuration. We did body scans and then drew the sensations in our bodies as they felt to us. I wanted them to understand that before we are a body painting ourselves or a model or any face or figure we have dreamed up, we are a collection of sensations unable to constellate a sense of self except in reference to others. They made work I still look at. Scribbles in notebooks that felt like singing. It was my first time teaching.

A close-up of a drawing on pages of a journal in low lighting. Thick red marker overlays line drawings of the body. Some parts of the body are exaggerated; some parts are missing.

In meditation, I can reach an openness in which I am not sure who is speaking the thoughts I call my own. Not in the touch, not in the sight, not in the voice. There is an implied, imposed, unexamined structure that seems to cinch heaps of sensations together. A leap is made: from the sensation in a foot, with so much conditioning, to the sense of possessing that foot; from a visual field appearing to the idea of dimensional space. 

It is not as if a body is not there; of course it is. Or that space does not exist, because I am in it. But, for me, with whatever brainpower I can muster, I can see leaps—assumptions—are made. And not only that, but the imposed structure of the self is a point of tension—it prods further leaps—of course it is “you” looking, making, thinking. 

It is so much harder to say, no, there is no one independent there. No one who is not porous. No one whose thoughts are entirely their own. Show me where the inhale begins, when it fills the lungs, where the exhale ends. Is there a precise point at which these events occur? I blink, and the parts separate out. I blink again, and there I am. I was surprised when the dissolving and reemerging of the self resurfaced in the space of arts-based community work. 

What “gets done” in the arts? In the space of the artist-run community projects, I can tell you that very little “gets done.” Or if it does, it is beside the point. Because what is being sheltered in the space of “artist-led” community work is, in the best case, the chance to undo the incessant and deeply internalized grind of the regulatory systems that make us get so much of nothing “done” all the time.

It’s a space to see how our experiences intersect with those of others. It’s where and how we can exchange dreams, thoughts, visuals, symbols. When allowed, it is a space where we can unravel the sticky knot of self—and see what might meet us as nobody.

By circuitous routes, I became involved in working with a group of Indigenous artists associated with Little Earth Residents’ Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I began by bringing individuals from the artists group into the fold of my community-based art class. Later, my work with these artists spun a web of its own. I was visiting the community center when I could, sharing drawing lessons. I was becoming involved in the work they were already doing. 

Then my own little piece of it fell away. One morning, my student’s painting of a feather appeared in the sky before me. The clouds had created it. I thought immediately of her brother, who had passed. I wasn’t aware of which direction it was pointing—but it was pointing ahead. I thought, let me continue this if I can. It was not the first time an art object has become a portal of communication. 

I have felt the mediumistic dimension of drawing and painting since I was young, the sensations in the body guiding the movement of an art-making implement. But it was a surprise to find a tugging in the space of community work. Like a gust of wind or some kind of magnetism, which arranges us in a manner that is not inherently productive but is purposeful and insistent. 

Since moving away, I have been thinking of the sacrifice being an artist requires. Sacrifice, which because of my own privilege, was not at first apparent, but which, in recent years, has taken a toll for me. I come more and more nakedly to the task of making art because the cost is so palpable. Economically, and socially. Whatever enrichment is in it, the risk, the odd contortions of this “vocation” remain. 

And that stripping down, that laying bare, which is also just aging, growing more sober, knowing one’s mediocrity, is where this path leads (nowhere): toward no expertise, toward no profession at all. And this nowhere is what allows artists to operate by charge rather than by production, even when our work is always already in the space of the market. 

Two artists work together to install a painting. They hold a level over a diamond-shaped canvas bearing the image of a dreamcatcher. Image courtesy Genvieve DeLeon.

How does a unit form in artist-led community work? It doesn’t really. There is nothing simple or unified that comes out of a project that is artist-led. Because artists don’t lead, they follow. It is more stops than starts. But when there is a reckoning with limits, together—and everyone’s limits are particular—then the acknowledgement that we are mediums for each other’s expression, interpolation, articulation becomes obvious, and a lot gets released from the false positionality of “organizational structure.”

What does it mean to touch one’s head to the ground? When I do it, I feel as if there is a coming together of the humming in my body, and the humming in the bodies beyond it. Whatever is happening there, 

in the ground of the tennis court; 
there in the ground of the rooftop patio; 
there beneath the living room floor. 

In doing it, I am closer to knowing what comes from the kind of shedding I am interested in. 

Artist-led community work is our chance to reanimate a relationality that allows the self to disappear and brings forward the whole. A rapid dilation. The shift in parameters remakes as it undoes.