In March 2020 when we went on lockdown due to the pandemic, the Shoebox Arts team created “Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance” as a way to stay connected and to check in with and support each other. We are just finishing up Round 14 and have enjoyed the process, experiences and friendships that we have made. The project draws on the tradition of Jazz and Exquisite Corpse as a way for the artists to ping pong creatively off of each other.
Cover image by Jody Zellen
Artist Talk July 30th
Pradnya Kapshikar and Shloka Shankar
Aishwarya Vedula and Nino Khundadze
bsh
Kristine Schomaker and Sheli Silverio
Joas Nebe and Karen Hochman Brown
Sue Jenkins and Monica Marks
Faina Kumpan and Vince Alanib
Reksi Muhammad Sidik and Julie O’Sullivan
Laura Henneforth and Ashley Hester
Rebecca Bennett Duke and Leo Francisco
Morgan Grimes and Kamelyta
Sergey Dobrynov and Pascha Goodwin
Ruby Vartan and Anne M Bray
Megan Geckler and Maddie Maser
April Bermudez and Adrienne Cole
Eva-Marie Amaya and Stacey Moore
1 Eva-Marie CLOSED
2 Stacey Moore
3 Eva-Marie it
4 Stacey Moore
5 Eva-Marie Now
6 Stacey Moore
7 Eva-Marie Letter Toss Liberty
9 Eva-Marie We the People
10 Stacey Moore
11 Eva-Marie YOU
12 Stacey Moore
Sue Cutler and Regina Morales
Stacy Prihoda and Sina Evans
Susan Karhroody and Beatrice Antonie Martino
June Stoddard and Genie Davis
1 June Stoddard – Speak
2 Genie Davis
What are Words…
In the face of inchoate longing? Salient advice to laugh love sing. I mean those are the
important things. But I have the right to remain silent and sad. I have the right to feel bad.
I have the right to not love you. I have the right to demand the truth.
But ask and you might not receive. Hope and you may still grieve.
What are the words, the ones I never got to say? They fly on the wings of distant doves
to the rumble of thunder like aching drums, and they beat away, away.
2 Genie Davis
3 June Stoddard
Hope is a muscle
And mine are slack
Unused moving along a tired track
The train of my brain
Easily moves to worries to fears
Rather than being here
Habits move along tired
Easier to travel the same route
The comfortable trail
Than dream beyond it
Though my wishes are there
Waiting for me to see them
When I close my eyes and
Breathe
4 Genie davis
Soon
You know the soul stands at the crossroads of hope and a quarter to moon…
waiting for the rights of passage to this world, from this room –
Looking out the window to the past, in my present state
I need to stretch the focus Between endless time and too late. The signs are waiting,
take a road, take a seat, draw a number, read a moment,
weave the day upon your loom. Take a chance –
just make it soon.
4 Genie Davis
5 June Stoddard
Lying in bed
Need my head
Sun about to rise
My wide-open eyes
This is not my room
Did I get away too soon?
Am I up to this travel?
Or will I unravel?
Mind on fire
Or is it a liar
Train in the distance
With so much insistence
Honking alarm
Then a voice of charm
Different sounds
Aboud
Not my room
But same moon
I’ll be alright
If just for one night
Open the door
I want more!
5 June Stoddard
6 Genie Davis
Blue Ice
I live on the corner of fire and flame, waiting for the ashes to rise up again. You’ll see where I’m standing, no shadows, no shame,
if there’s something I’m missing, please call it by name.
I am a dancer, on a stage of blue ice, step lightly tomorrow, it pays to be nice.
Feel this rapture of cold? Still it’s this burning within me That makes me so bold. I’ll ask, but will not wait,
for the answers to come. then I’ll run. I’ll run into night. I will let you stay waiting –
you will miss my light. There’s only one longing, it’s always for more, you once said you’d take me –
I once said I’d take you – but we’ve closed that door. Come open a window to the place in my heart
where a small new beginning could get a fresh start. Remember the moment, be happy, alive,
there’s no reason for waiting, no pain left to hide.
6 Genie Davis
7 June stoddard
The Calling Place
Fling open the window
And fly out
To the calling place
Where you can’t hide
Down the block
Up the street
In the sky
On the beach
A beaconing cry
Reaching inside
Turning and churning
To open your heart
Into a vastness
Your mind cannot see
Turn off the news
If just for a moment
Take a dip in the ocean
Dive deep and clear
Burdens washed off
You are still here.
7 June Stoddard – The Calling Place
8 Genie Davis
Pass
And the earth rested, because we were gone, and my words drifted away on pillows of smoke
and time passed as it does, when I speak to the candle I lit to remember you – and apologize
as we do for the past, (we will be sending such fervent hopes of forgiveness to this earth but alas)
as it was your time to go years ago, baby inside me you never got to know,
as we laughed together before the facts I hate to remember it was too late. The fragrant wax melting by
this window etches shadow scents across the glass. I can write words with my fingers that equally will not last.
All things pass. Love you thought you’d keep forever, death because you die only to this life
smoke and embers fire and ash sky beyond this window this world
our path. See our shadows, drifting past? And the earth rested. Peace at last.
8 Genie Davis
9 June Stoddard
“Take it out” you wrote those last words weigh on me I never got to apologize For the hope doctors gave That I latched onto You were Superman The one who would live on.
The costy last week of life No one knows how to speak Of death How to let go We will never die, right?
The love becomes part of you You merge as one Then half of you is gone An earlier self surfaces From before Rootless.
9 June Stoddard
10 Genie Davis
Journeys
Like the ocean with her waves, the ache to be saved the road well paved with good intentions,
from the cradle to the grave it’s the queen, the king, the knave – dusty fragments that is all,
and the bones. But I choose to make a home, let my feet weigh down like stones,
we choose our journeys. Once I drove so many miles of road, loving every stop, every sight every memory –
that no one remembers except for me. Does it matter anyway, these tendril wisps of day,
it is all so fleeting. If we pass each other hence, leaving notes hung on a fence what will we say as greeting?
On we go, travelers alone every minute every word every second that I heard – onward onward onward
on we go. Until we reach the end when nothing can be said road closed – no retreating.
Write it down you’ll forget, no cheating. That’s the test memorize the map —
Your heart’s still beating
10 Genie Davis
11 June Stoddard
A red ripe strawberry yesterday Today is gone, a pothos leaf upon the ground A breeze, wind chimes stir, bell whirs Fountain bubbles next to me thinking of longevity Decades within this home We created together Now I am alone
So much space I’ve filled With memories and potential selves Piles of desired unread books Closet bursting with color Spider webs swiffered away yesterday Malaise weighing the brightness down Years of masking, laws struck down Would my IVF daughters exist? If the righteous had their way?
My mind cannot go back to White gloves at the women’s club Poise class to learn to move with grace and subservience Men’s eyes, words, and hands upon me As if my body weren’t my own This is not the world I Voted, marched, protested, organized for and changed! Does my voice no longer matter? How will my daughters fare? This world turned us-under.
Who ate the strawberry? Always gone before I get it.
11 June Stoddard
12 Genie Davis
For Someone Who Counted Stars
I’m giving you another sky. If there is one thing you remember, and one I won’t forget, it will be the moon watch at night,
the sunset clouds, the rainbows from sun through a prism of glass at the top of the stairs.
Until I see you, in a later or another life, I will give you one more sky.
Because we never really said goodbye. I can imagine you take wing and fly.
I hope you’ll try.
12 Genie Davis
Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja and Yula Tregub Morris
1 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja My Body…
2 Yulia Tregub Morris
3 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja Good Vibes Love
4 Yulia Tregub Morris Red
5 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja Rose Cola
6 Yulia Tregub Morris Subway Music
7 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja Sub Way Music Take Two
8 Yulia Tregub Morris Love Republic
9 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja Love Republic Take Two
10 Yulia Tregub Morris Look Above
11 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja She Looked Up
12 Yulia Tregub Morris If looking down
13 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja Water Falls
14 Yulia Tregub Morris Message
15 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja The Message Is We Fight On
16 Yulia Tregub Morris At the exhibition All in the garden
17 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja At The Exhibition At The Cheech
18 Yulia Tregub Morris Music
19 Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja The UnderTown Shops
Darren McManus and Jody Zellen
Pau Gold and Mary Ruffato
Glynnis Reed and Lybra Olbrantz
Day 1. Glynnis Reed- Body is Blooming Alive
Alive
My body is blooming, alive awake at the whim of the tide wide eyed glances at the power of morning and the deepest dive to the dropped out bottom of midnight rushed black to the surface of our center and the boiling rot of the Earth
Day 2. Lybra Olbrantz – Diver Portal
Day 3. Glynnis Reed – Descendants of the Crossing
Day 4. Lybra Olbrantz – How does one come to know oneself
How does one come to know oneself? Hidden veils of spectral beauty delight, tell a story of the souls true flight. Cyclic transformation through a web of interpretation, a monolithic lens of internal alchemical transmutation, absorbs molecular energy into ethereal evaporation. Cellular celebration, a dance, a decadence, a delight to be new every seven years. A release, a filling of the cup. Every 28 days full again, like the moon, like the goddess, like the river flows, divine feminine will always shed her womb and begin anew. The force that makes things happen, all life comes through she, from the we, true divinity, no boundaries, what lies within transforms constantly, a multilayered entity as sacred energies. The difference between ideologies and the rhythm of the soul pounding the heartbeat of the earth into eternal song and dance: I sing, I cry and most importantly I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive!
Day 8. Lybra Olbrantz – The wild cat graces my presence -amazing!
The wild cat graces my presence -amazing! Ratatat, split splat, lined up with the 20 posh white kids from Connecticut. They won’t let me through, they won’t let me pass but I’ll be damned if I’m not front row for the last- Song and it goes 17 years, 17 years? Yes, 17 years, I’ve been rapping for 17 years and the hook had me hooked from the beginning of the drop, the beginning of time and I’m just a step in line and I’m flashing back to a time when I was 17 years, 17 years? Yes, 17 years old and I wouldn’t take it back. When we stole the Hot Chip poster off the walls of Terminal 5 (I swear I’ll be back). It’s autumnal, it’s no lens glasses, long brown hair, free sweaters and stolen glances, Pink Berry on the steps of the New York City Library, college hipsters, flourishing in fluorescence, it’s 80’s babies parties in the Bronxville mansions, I heard they’re worth a million and the taxi driver tells us about the stories of the famous. So here I am 20 with my high top sneakers, 2 headbands to stay ahead of the trends and all I care about at this moment is can I get ahead of these damn posh white kids from Connecticut so I can be front row when the band plays Wildcat.
Elena V. Stromberger-Harnoune and Skye Amber Sweet
Comentarios