Invading the Archives

Myself (in the back with the flowers) and Janan (in the front center) with the rest of the scholars during our final reading celebration.

I spent June 10 - 25 working with the MacLeish Scholars, a competitive program for rising Seniors at the Hotchkiss School that combines literary research with creative writing and bookmaking. The students spent the majority of their time at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. They then would work with myself and poet Janan Alexandra in separate sessions on a variety of experiments and projects. We talked about the definition of a book, what is required (materials, content, etc.) and how the book as an object can engage in a dialogue with its content through formal and aesthetic considerations.

This is the 3rd year of the program’s existence — I’ve been with it since the beginning in 2021, but this was the first year I was able to fully integrate into the cohort and spend time getting to know their research and personalities. I also spent a decent amount of time haunting New Haven and Yale’s campus, something I never did much of during my years living in central Connecticut. It was unexpectedly inspiring to be surrounded by centuries-old New England architecture again. Simply sitting in the various libraries at Yale was enough to strengthen my recent interest in history and narrative.

Entrance to Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, whose interior matches the grandiose nature of its exterior.

I often talk about how my teaching practice blurs into my studio practice. I prefer to not separate them into distinct aspects of my ultimate project of being an “artist”. They inform each other, they build off each other, they talk to each other. This was especially evident last year — during the summer 2022 program, I was planning for an exhibition at Jacksonville University (what would ultimately become we all have to make concessions). Inspired by the literary research my students were accomplishing, I decided to do my own historical research into Martin Johnson Heade. The result was happening upon a letter, which coincidentally is held in the Beinecke’s collection, where Heade made the bold claim that he’d never paint an alligator as their “ugliness” was contradictory to his general thesis of naturalist subjects being an embodiment of sacred beauty. This led to a series of works utilizing the alligator as a metaphor, standing in for the various marginalized populations in Florida who, despite deserving dignity, are treated as ugly, unworthy, or undesirable.

Installation view, we all have to make concessions, solo exhibition at Jacksonville University, 2022.

With that in mind, I consider my personal philosophy surrounding contemporary art; as artists, we are always tackling the things that are haunting us. History repeats, reminding us of the lessons we seemingly refuse to take to heart. The ghosts of the past return to our present and transcend time to haunt our futures. Archives are full of power and potential. Despite being housed in sacred institutions of knowledge, their contents often remain a mystery. Some of my students found letters between disparate authors, showing unexpected and undocumented friendships. Others happened upon completely unrelated writings (like technical descriptions of dental hygiene) from their chosen authors that offered a new insight into their work and process.

How many stories exist in archival boxes, stored in climate controlled facilities, never requested by scholars due to a lack of interest or knowledge of their existence? How much work goes unread or unseen due to factors outside the control of their creators? These questions don’t even begin to factor the political reality of archives — who is and is not deemed worthy of archiving results in power dynamics and hierarchies that often disenfranchise marginalized groups. Value, an incredibly subjective concept, is determined by institutions whose histories often involve slavery, misogyny, and other forms of interconnected oppressions. Their collections are also the result of those histories, despite relatively recent attempts to rectify these biases.

One of the many now obsolete catalog systems in the Sterling Memorial Library. The drawers are now mostly empty.

All that to say; I am interested in critically engaging with the archive. I am not an historian. I am not an archivist. I think of myself as a storyteller, an artist, an educator. It is with that in mind I plan to invade the archives in search of stories. Perhaps real, perhaps fiction, perhaps something else altogether that is both/and/neither.

I have recently been obsessed with the term “dialectic” — perhaps an alternative to historical “fact” and “fiction” is necessary to find the unspoken goal of all art; to seek truth.