In ART TALKS! pieces, I write about the art and artists who have helped me heal, helped me get to know myself, and helped me remember that crying in public can be a good thing. This art and these artists have also strengthened my practice as a facilitator to social impact organizations.

These pieces are presented as (sort of) imagined conversations between my various selves and specific pieces or exhibitions of art.

This piece may look familiar. This version, though, is written in the stye of a script. This stylistic change is inspired by my dear friend Gabi Fitz, who generously turned the latest PLANT TALKS! into a script format. This is an experiment! Let me know what you think and I will keep playing with the format. We will see how ART TALKS! evolves…

One of the ways I care for myself is by spending time at art museums. I visit with my husband, with friends, and I take myself on solo dates. I carry a tiny notebook where I (sloppily) write my feelings and thoughts. I take photobooth photos by myself. Sometimes I come up with art-based jokes to send to my friends.

I’ve developed a ritual to engage with the art that excites me. If an exhibition or a piece makes me:

• cry

• ask “what are they talking about?!” multiple times

• grunt

• stare in disbelief

…I buy the exhibition book or a biography and I go home to learn everything I possibly can about the artist. If there are documentaries, I watch them. If there are articles, I read them. I yell at my husband and my friends about what I’m learning. I send crooked photos of passages in books accompanied by messages in all caps. Once I have a sense of how the artist thinks and works and lives and loves, I go back to the exhibition. It always feels different.1 Layers become more visible. The work is more relatable and more unbelievable.

This installment of ART TALKS! is born from my visits to the MoMA’s Ruth Asawa Retrospective, which closes on February 7! If you’re in NYC, get amongst it!

Ruth Asawa’s work is bonkers. From the Exhibition:

“Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective charts the artist’s lifelong explorations of materials and forms in a variety of mediums, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public works.“

I didn’t know anything about Ruth Asawa, except that my friend Gabi told me I should see her work. My husband and I walked through the galleries and our mouths opened wider and wider as we saw Asawa’s lifetime of work. We’d turn a corner and there’d be MORE?! And they were even MORE wild than the works before?!

WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT?!

Before seeing Asawa’s work, I didn’t realized how solidly and stubbornly the idea of the lonely, starving, suffering artist had taken root in my brain and heart. Walking through, I found myself thinking:

“She must have sacrificed a lot for this work.”

“There must have been nothing else in her studio or home in order to make room for these works.”

“It must have been quiet. Austere. Minimal.”

There’s so much to unpack here. Woof.

As I’m writing this, I’m wondering how much the parts of my white american brain that are soaked in internalized capitalism took the fact that Asawa and her family were forcibly incarcerated by the U.S. Government during World War 2 and said: “suffering, suffering, suffering. great art only comes from great suffering.”2

Hmm.

As these parts of my brain hummed and clanked in the background, the looped wire works hit me the hardest. I kept trying to find her starting point, to figure out just how “much” made up these pieces:

• How much wire? (space)

• How many hours did they take? (time)

• How much do these weigh? (gravity)

On a subsequent visit, I realized that I was trying to solve the art. (More on this later.)

My husband—also trying to solve the art—pointed out that all of her wire works were called UNTITLED. Sorry, what?!

And here’s the thing: the wire works don’t represent all of her work. Not even close! Once I looked up from trying to solve the wire forms, I realized that drawings, lithographs, and paintings—delicate, beautiful, colorful—are all over the exhibition.

HMM.

A section in the exhibition is dedicated to her public art and her work with schoolchildren. What?! Wait, my brain decided that all of this was austere and serious and a little bit melancholy.

What are you talking about, “collaborating with schoolchildren?!”

What are you talking about, “she illustrated a guide to container gardening in partnership with her friends?!”

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, “SHE PUBLISHED A HOW-TO ON MILK CARTON STRUCTURES AND WORE A MILK-CARTON CROWN?!”

Hmm. We’re definitely getting the book.

On the way out, I picked up the Exhibition Catalogue and Jordan Troeller’s Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury. One of the blurbs on the back of Troeller’s book mentions “collaborative care” — more evidence that my “austere” theory was completely wrong. Just look at the cover:

The books are both so great. They reflect Asawa’s joy, community, care, curiosity, and presence. My ideas of “austerity” are gone.

Each book offers some of Asawa’s thoughts, in her own words. These ideas translate to so many things, and they got me thinking about my own facilitation practice.

Ruth Asawa on her wire sculptures:

“I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing it from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.”

A core part of facilitating for social impact orgs (or anyone, for that matter3) is stewarding space. A facilitator takes up space, and a good facilitator does this in a way that creates even more space for the folks in the room. This makes me think about abundance—”space” isn’t a finite resource in this context. There aren’t 10 pieces of space that we have to scramble and compete for.

In more general terms: we don’t have to fuck each other over to survive. Solidarity. Abundance. The air is for the people.

Ruth Asawa on calligraphy and negative space:

“When you’re working in calligraphy, you’re not watching what your brush is doing, but you’re watching the spaces around it. You’re watching what it isn’t doing, so that you’re taking care of both the negative space and the positive space. In a way it’s like if you begin to apply that in a practical way, if you talk about one person, if you concentrate on oneself, you don’t really see yourself. But if you don’t concern yourself with yourself and you begin to become aware of the people around you, then that defines you.”

What’s not said is just as important as what is said. The folks not in the room are just as important as the folks who are. I tend to negative space in my facilitation practice through honoring silence, acknowledging the paths we don’t take, and being explicit about what we’re not doing.

Ruth Asawa on her artmaking process:

“Begin in the middle and move out from there. Let the medium do the work.”

We each have a middle. None of us can do this work alone. None of us are saviors. We can trust our colleagues to do their work from their middles, and if we’re supposed to, we’ll meet each other along the way and create new middles. This makes me think about surrender and trust. Let the medium do the work. Trust the people.

Also, some middles are not ours! Mind your business. Let the people work.

When this essay (or whatever it is) goes live, I will have visited the exhibition four times, and I will continue to visit until it closes on February 7.4

Below, I offer a conversation I’ve been having in my head with the pieces in the exhibition. This conversation is not a comprehensive analysis—or an analysis at all, really—of Asawa’s work.5 This conversation is the best way I could think to express how Asawa’s work and her ways of living and loving make me feel.

CAST OF CHARACTERS, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

• ASAWA’S WIRE: forms made from wire! Some are looped and woven like baskets, some are tied and bent and tied and bent and tied and bent again, some were placed in an electroplating tank for months where they grew layers of rough, green “skin.”

• ANALYST GV: my self who is a structured, curious, insufferable question-asker

• RULE-FOLLOWING GV: my self who, despite my politics, is terrified to break the rules and terrified of getting yelled at

• ASAWA: quotes from Ruth Asawa, pulled from the Exhibition Catalogue and Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury

• FACILITATOR GV: my self who runs GV Advisory and helps folks have big conversations, get unstuck from each other, and make sense of their work and their world in new ways. (In other words, my self who helps groups of people talk to each other.)

• REGULAR GV: my playful, mischievous self

• LOGISTICS GV: related to Analyst GV. my self who is a structured question-asker. My efficient self.

• FRIENDSHIP GV: my self that is obsessed with friendship

• ASAWA’S 2D WORK: drawings, paintings, works made from repeated use of stamps …

  • Within Asawa’s 2D work are ASAWA’S DRAWINGS OF BOUQUETS. I’m breaking these out on their own because their stories make me lose my mind in the best way. They’re delicate line drawings of bouquets gifted to her over the years by friends, her children, her husband (who grew beautiful flowers in their yard). The bouquet-gifter often received a drawing of their bouquet as a gift.

• CONSULTANT GV: my project-managey, “I think I have an idea for how to do this” self, who has a part-time job at GV Advisory

• ASAWA’S PUBLIC ART: fountains, murals, a rock garden … most—if not all—done in collaboration with schoolchildren and fellow artists

• THE DOORS TO ASAWA’S HOME: Doors. Doors Asawa carved from local Redwood, in partnership with her kids. Each kid got a “wave” to carve. These doors were the entry to the family home in San Francisco for many years.

• ASAWA’S MASKS: The masks Asawa made from casts of the faces of her friends, family and neighbors (from what I’ve read, these groups were one and the same). The masks hung on her house and documented the comings and goings of her community.

• ASAWA’S INSTRUCTIONS: throughout her career, Ruth Asawa published different instructions that laid out how to do what she did. Some of these informed classes she taught. The instructions I know of (though there are likely more) include steps for her patented folded paper panel, origami, and milk carton structures.

These are the voices (some imagined, some real) you’ll hear/read in the conversation presented below.

Ok! Let’s go!

[BEGINNING OF RECORDING — CRACKLING AIR]

[SOUND OF MUSEUM AMBIENCE — DISTANT FOOTSTEPS, THE SOFT MURMUR OF A CROWD]

ASAWA’S WIRE: (informative, warm) The forms are transparent in some ways: you can see inside of and through them. Looking into the center “lobe” or “sphere” feels like looking back in time at old starlight, at the big bang, at a singular event. Looking through the forms and trying to trace them back to their origin feels like an exploration of space, of history, of time. One can see the complete, large whole at the same time as the small beginning.

ANALYST GV: (perplexed, impatient) But where is the starting point?

ASAWA: (matter-of-fact) “Begin in the middle and start from there. Let the medium do the work.”

ANALYST GV: (more perplexed, more impatient) OK BUT WHICH MIDDLE? MIDDLE IN RELATIONSHIP TO WHAT?

ASAWA’S WIRE: (confident, a little mischievous) The beginning is here, somewhere.

FACILITATOR GV: (quietly, in awe) Some things are not meant to be known. It’s enough to know that the beginning is there, somewhere.

ANALYST GV: (frustrated) Hmf.

[A BEAT — AS IF THE GROUP HAS TURNED A CORNER]

REGULAR GV: (playful, curious) Some of these look like they might be wormholes. I wanna climb in there and see where/when I emerge.

ASAWA’S WIRE: (inviting, open) The forms change as the viewer moves. Vantage point matters.

FACILITATOR GV: (agreeing, thoughtful)

Right, Vantage point matters. Where we sit in the organization, where we sit in the world, where we’re coming from … vantage point matters.

LOGISTICS GV: (baffled) Wait, is there ANOTHER form nestled in there?

RULE-FOLLOWING GV: (earnest, fearful) Am I allowed to just sit on the floor for a second? I don’t think I’m allowed.6

ASAWA’S WIRE: (philosophical) One can never see the whole form from one place. One is invited to move. The work invites, but doesn’t demand, movement. The work doesn’t demand anything, but it’s not passive.

REGULAR GV: (pacing, squatting, bending to look at all angles) I feel compelled to move, to walk around the pieces. To sit on the floor! To see from all possible angles. I wish there were ladders in the gallery.

At the same time, when I stay still, I think the pieces are moving. Slowly, gently.

FACILITATOR GV: (warm, hopeful) Each of us impacts the air we pass through. What if the movement of the pieces is a reflection of how this group of people is moving, together and separately?

A series of quiet, awkward, half-apologies as we all try to get a version of the same photo. But! The photos are all slightly different, and they will be shared with different people. They might not be shared at all.

Time travel. Multiple universes. Many possible futures.

[A LONG BEAT — AS THOUGH THE GROUP IS SUSPENDED IN CONTEMPLATION]

ASAWA’S WIRE: (wise, painting a picture) Something can be frozen and in motion all at once. Frozen enough for the forms to look like individual frames of a film of a water droplet falling into more water and splashing back out. The form is steady, but it still moves.

REGULAR GV: (satisfied) I feel so weird and good.

ASAWA’S WIRE: (dry, professorial) Sometimes the only way you know how many forms there are in a piece is by reading the titles, like UNTITLED (S.398, Hanging Eight-Lobed, Four-Part, Discontinuous Surface Form within a Form with Spheres in the Seventh and Eighth Lobes) or UNTITLED (S.395, Hanging Asymmetrical Twenty-Three Interlocking Bubbles), or UNTILED (S.797, Hanging Two-Lobed, Three-Layered Continuous Form within a Form).

LOGISTICS GV: (relieved, if not a little confused) Thank gods she developed this taxonomy with her family and named them the way she did. I keep going crosseyed trying to count the forms.

FRIENDSHIP GV: (genuinely moved, tearful) She developed the naming system with FAMILY?! Even the taxonomy was developed in loving community?! I can’t.

FACILITATOR GV: (objective, practical) Things don’t need flowery, mysterious names to be worthy or creative or beautiful. Call the thing the thing. There’s something so lovely and generous about clarity—it doesn’t seem like she wanted to outsmart the viewer. Up-front. Honest. No tricks, no gatekeeping.

There’s something here, too, about openness: I’ll just tell you what it is. I won’t make you guess. I’ll let you in on it from the very start. Communicate early and often!

LOGISTICS GV: (quickly, tripping over the words) HOW DID SHE MAKE THESE?

How long was the wire? Was it one long wire? If so, how did she not go crazy in the beginning of a piece, working with a very long piece? How much time did one of these take? Which ones did the kids help out on? Where did she store them? How heavy are these?

FACILITATOR GV: (gently, slowly) What would it look like for me to stop trying to solve the art?! Maybe the point is not to reverse engineer it, not to try to figure it out. Not to know it.

LOGISTICS GV: (annoyed) Ugh, fine.

[A LULL IN THE CONVERSATION — SOUND EFFECT: DISTANT OVERLAPPING CONVERSATIONS, SHOES SQUEAKING ON THE FLOOR.]

ASAWA’S WIRE: (informative, warm, repeating) The forms are transparent in some ways you can see through and inside of. Looking into the middle “lobe” or “sphere” feels like looking back in time at old starlight, at the big bang, at a singular event.

Looking through the forms and trying to trace them back to their origin feels like an exploration of space, of history, of time.

MOST OF ASAWA’S WORK: (interrupting, like an announcement over a loudspeaker) Motion in unknown directions at an unknown velocity.

ANALYST GV: (confused, dizzy) Am I looking in? Out? Down? Up? Am I moving? Am I staying still? Where is the movement coming from?!

ASAWA’S WIRE: (informative, warm, repeating) One can see the complete—often large—whole at the same time as the small beginning.

FACILITATOR GV: (glowing, with reverence) Process. So much of the work is about the process. The process is the point. What comes out of the process will likely be helpful, but that’s not actually the point! The awkwardness, the stumbling. The moments of tension and moments of release. That’s why I love facilitation—we can make the process visible!

[A BEAT — THE GROUP WANDERING OFF, STARING UPWARDS]

ASAWA’S WIRE: (urging the GVs to notice) The forms cast shadows. Shadows on the floor, on the walls. Shadows intersecting with each other.

FACILITATOR GV: (curious, thinking something through) What would a new wire form look like if it were based on the shadow of another form? How might different folks interpret the shadows? They might look totally different! I think there’s an exercise somewhere in here.

ASAWA’S 2D WORK: (professorial) The moisture changes the paper or the fabric. The work is always playing with dimensions and physicality. 2D is actually 3D.

The moisture has left an echo of the process.

FACILITATOR GV: (quietly, with a note of wonder) . . . “An echo of the process.” Process leaves behind evidence—an echo. The process can change us, heal us, hurt us … all of these things. Facilitation comes with responsibility. Facilitation is stewardship of time, space, emotion, and wisdom.

We—as humans living in the world together—have these shadows, these echoes. We’re carrying so much and leaving so much behind all of the time. What does it mean to be responsible for our shadows, our echoes? How would our work be different if we tended to our shadows and echoes with care?

CONSULTANT GV: (excited, affirming) Responsible knowledge management, baybee! Process documentation! Clear, compassionate norms around information sharing and storage!

FACILITATOR GV: (slowly, thoughtfully) We need space for aftercare, too. For naming the process after we’re finished, for recovery. For metabolizing the work! Sometimes we’ve got to sleep on it!

MOST OF ASAWA’S WORK: (revealing, as though pulling back a curtain) Wire, ink, and paint are mediums, sure. But so are the air, the paper, the shadows, the light, and the space. What we think of as the main “medium” is held by all of these other things. And they’re not passive!

FACILITATOR GV: (making a connection) Right! An “agenda” isn’t the medium for facilitation work. It’s the room. The culture, the vibes. The people! We’re constantly collaborating. Facilitation is not “my” work. It’s a collaborative art, morphed by the folks in the room (and the folks not in the room).

ASAWA’S PUBLIC ART: (proud, warm) These fountains and murals were created in collaboration with San Francisco schoolchildren. The kids had ideas and they had agency to act on those ideas.

FACILITATOR GV: (quietly, charmed) Collaboration is everything.

REGULAR GV: (excited, with conviction) So much JOY! Also, we should trust kids more than we do.

THE DOORS TO ASAWA’S HOME: (gently, but with gravitas) Massive, carved from Redwood. Carved in partnership with her children and installed as the entrance to their family home.

FACILITATOR GV: (in awe, tearing up) Her art was not separate from her home, from her family, from her humor or relationships. She didn’t sacrifice her art for her family or her family for her art. They were all parts of her world, working together, dancing together.

Creativity doesn’t have to come from suffering, from violence, from deprivation.

REGULAR GV: (hopeful, with a note od melancholy) I’ve been unlearning the idea that growth comes from deprivation. Uprooting internalized capitalism is a lifelong project.

ASAWA’S WIRE: (softly) Intersection doesn’t mean destruction. Intersection is part of what keeps the forms whole, together. Each individual form has boundaries, even if they can be hard for the viewer to discern—they’re there.

FACILITATOR GV: (firm, loving) We depend on each other but we don’t destroy each other. Boundaries are love.

FRIENDSHIP GV: (sighing, grateful) I love my friends. I love my marriage.

ASAWA’S WIRE: (inviting the GVs to look more closely) Some of the forms are “nested” within other forms.

FACILITATOR GV: (thoughtful) Safe. Held. Not squeezed or compressed, but solid. Structurally sound. These are community agreements, shared purpose, clear communication. Boundaries.

FRiENDSHIP GV: (yelling, joyful) I LOVE MY FRIENDS I LOVE MY MARRIAGE

MOST OF ASAWA’S WORK: (sincere, authoritative, still warm) The methods repeat. The subjects repeat. Masks of friends and neighbors, casts of baby feet. Loops and loops of wires over a span of many years. The repetition feels soothing. As we move through her work chronologically, the method tightens up. Repetition does not devalue the work.

FACILITATOR GV: (with deep admiration) Repetition does not devalue the work. Repetition can be an act of care. Repetition is sometimes necessary. Repetition is how we hone our craft(s).

The whole Retrospective is like watching someone hone their craft. To see the progress—I don’t want to say “improvement,” because it’s not exactly that—over six decades is such a vulnerable, lovely, humbling, and human experience.

REGULAR GV: (light, excited, with a note of mischief) Sometimes we repeat things because we love them and they’re fun. Embrace frivolity! Do a thing for the sake of the thing! Baby feet are CUTE!

ASAWA’S DRAWINGS OF BOUQUETS & MASKS: (warm, inviting) The drawings of bouquets and the masks are histories of friendship and love. The flowers her husband grew, the bouquets her friends and family gifted her. The masks that hung in her home were the faces of friends, frozen in time.

ASAWA: (joyful, aware) “. . . when I cast a face I know I’m just capturing a minute of a person. Or if I cast a foot of a baby I know that baby’s foot will grow and grow and grow. . . . I know it’s going to go away but I like that, I like that moment.”7

REGULAR GV: (tearful, inspired) So much of her work is a monument to her friendships. These frozen, lovely moments in time are artifacts of love.

ASAWA’S INSTRUCTIONS: (inviting, practical) Simple, illustrated instructions say “you can do this, too” and “come with me.”

CONSULTANT GV: (excited, in agreement) Share the process! Creative Commons BY 4.0 licenses! We don’t have to commit to scarcity! Knowledge as a collective good!8

FRIENDSHIP GV: (delighted) Inviting other people along makes things so much more rich. No pretension! Let’s hang out! Yeah!

ASAWA’S WIRE: (revealing a fun fact) Wire forms in miniature. (According to Janet Bishop’s piece in the Exhibition Catalogue, A Seat at the Table: At Home with Ruth Asawa, these miniatures were born out of an assignment Asawa’s son received in high school: to build a shoebox model of a room in their house. This became a family project. Since some of Asawa’s wire forms were hanging in the house, she made miniature versions of the sculptures. Naturally.)

REGULAR GV: (slightly scandalized) She did this BECAUSE OF HER SON’S SCHOOL PROJECT?!

WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT?!

ASAWA: (warm, like a closing benediction) “Doing is living. That is all that matters.”

ALL OF THE GVS: (quietly, grateful, feeling changed) Love as an action, love as a verb.9 I’m never gonna be the same.]

[SOUND OF THE GALLERY FADING — RECEDING FOOTSTEPS, VOICES MOVING AWAY]

[END OF RECORDING]

One of the ways I care for myself is by spending time at art museums. I visit with my husband, with friends, and I take myself on solo dates. I take photobooth photos by myself. Sometimes I come up with art-based jokes to send to my friends so that they’re with me, in some small way.

I’ve developed a ritual to engage with art that excites me. If an exhibition or a piece makes me:

• cry

• ask “what are they talking about?!” multiple times

• grunt

• stare in disbelief

… I usually buy the exhibition book or a biography and I go home to learn everything I possibly can about the artist. If there are documentaries, I watch them. If there are articles, I read them. I yell at my husband and my friends about what I’m learning. I send crooked photos of passages in books with messages in all caps. Once I have a sense of how these folks think and work and live and love, I go back to the exhibition, and it feels different. Layers become more visible. The work is more relatable and more unbelievable.

This edition of ART TALKS! Is different. This is not a deep-dive. This edition of ART TALKS! Is based on what I saw, read, and felt in the gallery without any other information.1

Two weeks ago, I went to the New York Historical to see the Gay Harlem Renaissance exhibition before it closed on March 8. It was fantastic.

Afterwards, I wandered around a bit and I found myself in a small room listening to a recording of a Magnolia Warbler! It was lovely and unexpected. I made a lot of noises about it.

This small room is called Audubon’s Birds of America Focus Gallery, and it’s dedicated to Audubon’s Bird of America.

From the New York Historical:

“Did you know that The New York Historical houses the world’s largest collection of work by the renowned artist and naturalist John James Audubon (1785–1851)? His landmark Birds of America (1827–38) comprises 435 lifelike and life-sized images glorifying the beauty of North American birds in the wild.”

No! I did not know!

Thanks to this lovely small room, the BIRD TALKS! subsection of ART TALKS! is born. The New York Historical rotates the featured species bi-monthly2, so you can expect BIRD TALKS! to mirror that cadence.

Below I offer a conversation I’ve been having in my head with the gallery. The cast of characters in this “conversation” include:

• MAGNOLIA WARBLER: Setophaga cerulea. The gallery’s spotlighted species at this moment in time.

• NEW YORK HISTORICAL: The museum. More specifically, the museum’s descriptions of the art and its context.

• JOHN AUDUBON: Audubon! Speficially, his illustrations of the Warbler(s).

• FACILITATOR GV: my self who runs GV Advisory and helps folks have big conversations, get unstuck from each other, and make sense of their work and their world in new ways. (In other words, my self who helps groups of people trying to make the world better talk to each other.)

• REGULAR GV: my playful, mischievous self.

• POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: my self who is learning and yelling about the state of our world and how we got here. My self who helps my other selves unlearn white supremacy and racialized capitalism. My self who is thinking about class, race, gender, and all sorts of other things. My self who knows that my lineage is steeped in power-hoarding, domination, colonization, genocide, and land theft. My self who is working to break violent cycles.

• LOGISTICS GV: my self who is a structured question-asker. My efficient self.

• KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: my self who thinks about data and knowledge, archives, and how organizations learn. Works part-time at GV Advisory. Excellent notetaker. Only shows up sometimes.

  NOTE: Knowledge Management is “the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge within an organization to achieve its goals.” “Knowledge” can include meeting notes, datasets, and the stuff in people’s heads.

This edition of ART TALKS! is written in the style of a script.3

[START OF RECORDING]

[SOUND OF MUSEUM AMBIENCE — QUIET, EXCEPT FOR DISTANT FOOTSTEPS AND THE VERY FAINT SOUNDS OF NEW YORK CITY OUTSIDE]

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (informational, welcoming) The intimate Audubon’s Birds of America Gallery offers visitors the unique experience of viewing John James Audubon’s resplendent watercolor models for The Birds of America (1827-38) together with their corresponding prints, expertly engraved by Robert Havell, Jr.

REGULAR GV: (decisive, disappointed) As a society, we do not use the word “resplendent” enough.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: (concerned, a little arrogant) That’s not, like, at the top of the list of what’s wrong with society, though.

FACILITATOR GV: (gentle, curious) Sometimes it’s helpful to focus on what’s in our sphere of influence or control, though. How might using the word “resplendent” on a more regular basis contribute to collective liberation?

LOGISTICS GV & POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: (together, annoyed) Ugh. Stop it. That isn’t how that works.

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (matter-of-fact, sober) While [Audubon’s work] spurred early conservation efforts and remains central today to both environmental activism and the history of American art, it was produced within the complex system of racial oppression. Audubon was a slaveholder and defender of slaveholders’ rights, and he also enabled projects of scientific racism.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: (unsurprised, melancholy) Yes, this sounds right. We just did that deep-dive into orchids and wow, we really cannot separate natural ‘discovery’ and documentation from colonial violence. We learned that from the orchids.

ALL THE GVS: (in unison, quietly)

Everything is political.

[A BEAT — AS IF THE GROUP HAS TURNED A CORNER]

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (informative) Bi-monthly rotations spotlight each species in publication order of the 435 prints.

LOGISTICS GV: (perking up) Excellent. I can work with this.

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (inviting) Push this button to hear the calls of the spotlighted species.

MAGNOLIA WARBLER: (sweetly)

Listen to the Magnolia Warbler!

ALL THE GVS: (in unison, gleeful) Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (connecting some dots) Aren’t these the folks who are responsible for Merlin Bird ID? Talk about Knowledge Management!

KID GV: (impatient, curious, a little frustrated) I can’t WAIT to sit in the backyard and listen to the birds with Merlin! I’m tired of the cold.

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (clear, informational) The species stands out with its bold black tasseled necklace, black mask, and signature white patches on the wings. Here’s a photo by Rhododendrites, which we’re using under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (excited, proud to have this knowledge) Yayyyyyyy Creative Commons! This is similar to how I try to license my work, too—my friend Gabi taught me how to advocate for this in ‘Intellectual Property’ clauses of client contracts.

LOGISTICS GV: (impressed) So cool.

REGULAR GV: (amused, getting a little carried away) “...bold black tasselled necklace, black mask, and signature white patches on the wings.” I love this: like they are fashionistas! The bird planned this outfit and, per usual, is wearing those white patches on his wings. He’s always wearing those white patches! He doesn’t leave the nest without them!

KID GV: (in agreement, excited) They’re his signature! Like our fruit earrings!

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (informative, a little surprised) Contrary to its name, the Magnolia Warbler does not nest in magnolia trees, preferring spruces or firs. It was named by chance when, in Mississippi in 1810, ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed the bird on a magnolia tree during migration.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (as if remembering a lesson from long ago) Right. Names are not always the most reliable signals.

FACILITATOR GV: (informative, encouraging) Of course—we only ever see a moment in time! In a session or a meeting, we’re not getting a full picture of someone’s working style, ideas, or self. We shouldn’t make assumptions about who someone is or how their brain works based on one or two interactions.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: (genuinely confused) I’m no ornithologist, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to, like, observe the bird a bit more before naming it? Is this not a bit arrogant?

LOGISTICS GV: (sarcastic) What were they gonna do, call it a ‘Maybe-Magnolia Warbler’ (Setophaga perhapsiamagnoliamus)?

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (earnest) MAYBE! What was version control like back then?

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (matter-of-fact) It is also known as the Black-and-Yellow Warbler.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (relieved) Yes, great. Love it. Sturdy. Informative. Objectively true.

JOHN AUDUBON: (with a note of stoicism)

LOGISTICS GV: (surprised) Wait why is he blue?

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (perplexed, worried) Perhaps the name ‘Black-and-Yellow Warbler’ is not objectively true?

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (reassuring, calm) This young bird does not yet have the brilliant yellow and black plumage of an adult of the species, but it has already begun to sport white patches on the wings and tail.

ALL THE GVs: (relieved) Ohhhhhhhhhh!

KID GV: (scheming, excited) He looks like he’s gonna do some mischief.

FACILITATOR GV: (a little condescending, yet gentle) We all view the world through our own preferences and biases!

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (providing a peek into the process, excited to share a little-known fact) Audubon intended this study of a juvenile Magnolia Warbler, mistakenly labeled a male Swainson’s Warbler at bottom, to serve as one part of a plate also representing the adult male and female of the species. …

FACILITATOR GV: (inspired, validated) Learning in public! It’s cool to see parts of this process. Of course there are mistakes along the way! That’s how being alive works.

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (continuing the thought) …He depicted two adult Magnolia Warblers in plate 123 and eventually joined them with this juvenile in the royal octavo edition.

JOHN AUDUBON: (academic in tone)

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (filling in the gaps) Audubon published a small version of The Birds of America, referred to as the royal octavo edition for its printing at 1/8 scale of the original. … Sold in sets of five plates for one dollar per set, this more accessible edition expanded the reach of Audubon’s work.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (nodding in approval) More accessible is good.

LOGISTICS GV: (vexed) “1/8 scale of the original.” This ‘royal octavo’ edition isn’t that small. Right, the original copies of The Birds of America are MASSIVE. How did that even work?! How did they even make the original version?

NEW YORK HISTORICAL: (anticipating the question) Audubon intended his watercolors of the birds of North America to be reproduced and distributed in print form. For all but ten of the 435 prints, he partnered with Robert Havell, Jr. of Robert Havell and Sons, who translated Audubon’s watercolor models onto copper plates through a complex process of etching, engraving, and the layering of aquatint tones.

The plates were printed onto double-elephant-folio sheets—so named for their unprecedentedly large paper size, which allowed the birds to be reproduced life-sized. These prints were then hand colored by yet-to-be-identified women who worked in assembly-line fashion, each applying a single hue. The resulting Birds of America prints, sold on subscription five at a time, rank among the finest in printmaking history. This is a rare example from a complete, bound, four-volume set.

LOGISTICS GV: (satisfied) Got it.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: (interrupting, slightly scandalized) Wait. “...these prints were then hand-colored by yet-to-be-identified women who worked in assembly-line fashion, each applying a single hue.” Isn’t this ALWAYS the story?!

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: (concerned, skeptical) So what do we mean when we say “yet-to-be-identified”? Is someone working on this?

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: (quickly, flustered) Were these women compensated? What were their hours? I have so many questions.

JOHN AUDUBON: (moving on)

ALL THE GVS: (in unison, excited) He’s all grown up!

KID GV: (sitting on the floor, unbothered and in awe)

THIS BOOK IS HUGE!

ALL THE GVS: (in unison)

This book is huge.

[THE SOUND OF THE GATHERING OF SOFT FABRIC, A PEN CAP BEING REPLACED ON A PEN. FOOTSTEPS RECEDING. THEN, QUIET.]

[END OF RECORDING]

Share making mischief at the end of empire

One of the ways I care for myself is by spending time at art museums. I visit with my husband, with friends, and I take myself on solo dates. Sometimes I come up with art-based jokes to send to my friends so that they’re with me, in some small way.

I’ve developed a ritual to engage with art that excites me. If an exhibition or a piece makes me:

• cry

• ask “what are they talking about?!” multiple times

• grunt

• stare in disbelief

…I buy the exhibition book or a biography and I go home to learn everything I possibly can about the artist. If there are documentaries, I watch them. If there are articles, I read them. I yell at my husband and my friends about what I’m learning. I send crooked photos of passages in books with messages in all caps. Once I have a sense of how these folks think and work and live and love, I go back to the exhibition, and it feels different. Layers become more visible. The work is more relatable and more unbelievable.

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This is a PLANT TALKS! edition of ART TALKS! About my visits (three visits and counting) to the New York Botanical Garden’s Orchid Show: Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle. It’s on through April 26, 2026! If you’re in the area, get amongst it!

This is what NYBG has to say about Mr. Flower Fantastic and the 2026 Orchid Show:

“He grew up in Queens, New York, where his love of flowers began in his mother’s garden. Over time, he taught himself floral design and began experimenting across creative mediums, eventually merging his passion for sneakers with his floral work. His signature mask and gloves, originally worn to manage his allergy to flowers, became part of his identity, allowing the focus to stay on the art rather than the artist.

…

Mr. Flower Fantastic is driven by a joyful, optimistic belief in the power of flowers to uplift, inspire, reconnect us to nature, and encourage a greener future. That vision comes fully to life in his 2026 exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden, The Orchid Show: Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle—a vibrant celebration of New York City and the extraordinary beauty that can bloom in even the most unexpected places.”

My first visit to the show was on opening day and it was PACKED! I haven’t perfected the art of layering for 10 - 20 degree (Fahrenheit) days AND spending time in a humid conservatory. That said, since it’s been so cold in NYC, and the sun coming through the conservatory windows was a welcome reprieve. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to have sweaty knees.

Before this show, the only thing I knew about orchids was that they’re lovely.

I had no idea that there are so many different kinds of orchids! I didn’t know some of them smell incredible (some smell like chocolate). I didn’t know that some of them are very, very, small. I certainly didn’t know that some of them mimic insects (like bees, flies, and wasps) to trick pollinators into helping them reproduce.

I spent a lot of time saying things like, “oh, wow”, “what?!”, and “no way!” So did the other folks at the show.

After exploring the show, I sat down for coffee at NYBG’s Hudson Garden Grill and happened to make a new friend. She’s recently retired from the EPA (woof) and is volunteering at the Garden. She was so kind and interesting! She asked me what I do for work—when I described my job, she said, “Wow, you must have a very gentle way about you.” What an observation!

I said, “Sometimes.” I’m gentle, but firm.1 My practice requires a lot of care and presence to maintain the “right” headspace for facilitation.

On the way out, I stopped by the gift shop to see if they had anything I could read about Mr. Flower Fantastic. No luck, but they did have a lot of books about orchids! I grabbed a copy of Extraordinary Orchids by Dr. Sandra Knapp. She’s a botanist and works as a merit researcher of the Plants Division of the Natural History Museum, London. While some of it goes over my non-botanist head, I’ve learned a lot about orchids, and I love them even more than I did before going to the Orchid Show.

For the next week, I read the book, took in the illustrations, and took notes on what I learned while I had my morning coffee. I also tried to learn more about Mr. Flower Fantastic, though there’s not a ton out there.

Orchids are wild. People are wild.

Here are a few things that made me think about my facilitation practice a little differently:

Dr. Sandra Knapp writes about orchid care:

“...[James Bateman] described his growing techniques in wonderfully flowery language, and a plan for an orchid conservatory completes the instruction. The rules were simple: 1st The plants can scarcely have too much light or too much sun’, ‘2nd Take care of the roots’, ‘3rd Beware of noxious insects, ‘4th Give the plants a season of rest’, ‘5th Attend to the condition of the air’ and ‘6th Do not over-water’. Pretty simple, really.” - Dr. Sandra Knapp in Extraordinary Orchids

“Pretty simple, really.” Ha! These read like instructions for facilitation.

1. “The plants can scarcely have too much light or too much sun.” The problems we face—interpersonal or global—can scarcely have too much light, air, or care! I’m not talking about indulgence or spotlighting something so it burns, I’m talking about spaciousness.

2. “Take care of the roots.” In my practice, the “roots” might be community agreements, our shared purpose or goal, and a group’s stated values. The “roots” might also be the dynamics between people—the care and the tension. We take care of the roots by acknowledging they exist in the first place and revisiting them as we work together.

3. “Beware of noxious insects.” If we’re gathering outdoors, we might need to take this literally! If not, we still need to be on the lookout for destructive “pests.”

   The most common “noxious insects” I come across are shame and gossip. Left to their own devices, these guys can transform a conversation into a conflict FAST. If we ignore that transformation, conflict can become harm in the blink of an eye. They’ll always exist—we’re not seeking to eradicate shame and gossip from the human experience. We’ve just got to be aware of them so they don’t rearrange us against each other.

4. “Give the plants a season of rest.” Take a break at least every 90 minutes! Don’t try to cover too much ground at once! We can’t be in a reflective, curious, open state all of the time. We can’t hold up a mirror to ourselves to understand if we’re moving in alignment with our values all of the time. This work can be a lot—even when it’s fun and generative (which isn’t always). It’s a heavy lift! It’s emotional work. It’s deep brain and heart work. It can be exhausting.

5. “Attend to the condition of the air.” This works figuratively and literally—if people are too cold, it’s hard to concentrate. Same for if it’s too hot.

   I think this can also apply to the overall “vibe.” If an organization just learned that they’re under threat from the federal government, or they just lost funding, or they didn’t get a grant they were counting on, it’s going to be really hard to have a creative conversation about what they hope for in the future. The opposite is true—if folks at an organization feel like they’ve finally turned a corner and things are going well and I invite them back into the muck, productive conversation can grind to a halt. I’m interpreting this one as, “Attend to/be aware of the condition of the air,” since we don’t always have a whole lot of control of the air. This work can’t stay in a greenhouse.

6. “Do not over-water.” Don’t overwhelm! Don’t flood the zone! Organizations can get root rot, too! In my work—the work of helping folks imagine new possibilities—being aware of what’s actually possible is really important. We’ve got to be rooted in reality and aware of capacity constraints. “Too much” can cause a lot of harm.

NYBG On Mr. Flower Fantastic:

“His signature mask and gloves, originally worn to manage his allergy to flowers, became part of his identity, allowing the focus to stay on the art rather than the artist.”

So many possibilities open up when folks have what they need to be safe, healthy, and creative. When I’m facilitating, this might look like:

• wearing masks

• Covid testing protocols

• security protocols if ICE or other bad actors show up

• soft lighting

• plenty of breaks

• materials sent in advance, and time for folks to think and process

• wide chairs that provide comfort and stability for fat folks

• soft seating

• plenty of space.

I have more to learn about things like neuroinclusive facilitation, but I’m building that skill!

There’s something here, too, about anonymity—I don’t remain anonymous, but I do work to make sure that the work’s content comes before my personality. I’m a weirdo, and that comes through in my work, but it’s never the most important thing. I also make sure the outcomes of collaboration belong to the folks I’m working with. In other words, I am never the sole author.

Yes, I am very good at what I do, but my job doesn’t matter at all if folks can’t do their own work. I’m an excellent guide, but transformation and its artifacts belong to my clients! They did that!

Going back to the Orchid show a week later was wild. There were more blooms! The show changes in real time—much like my work. I’m looking forward to heading back several times before the show closes on April 26. I’m really looking forward to bicycle weather and to no more snow banks in bike lanes.

See you in the Bronx! If you’re driving, watch for cyclists!

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Below I offer a conversation I’ve been having in my head with the orchids and Mr. Flower Fantastic’s installations. If you haven’t seen the show yet and you want to be surprised, STOP! Spoilers ahead!

The cast of characters in this “conversation” include:

• THE ORCHIDS: the orchids! Sometimes they speak as one large group, sometimes a specific orchid speaks.

• DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS: Dr. Knapp is a botanist and works as a merit researcher of the Plants Division of the Natural History Museum.

• MARK W. CHASE IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS: Botanist, Professor, and Researcher. Wrote the foreword in Extraordinary Orchids.

• MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC: Floral artist, sculptor, designer. Responsible for the 2026 Orchid Show and a bunch of other things!

• NYBG: The New York Botanical Garden. In this instance, quotes from NYBG signage around the exhibition.

• IMAGINARY BABY TRICERATOPS: The baby triceratops in my head who sniffs orchids. Maybe not so imaginary? We may never know. I like to think he was real at some point. He is CUTE.

• REGULAR GV: my playful, mischievous self

• KID GV: my kid self. Also playful, also mischievous. About 6 or 7 years old.

• BIKE BOY GV: My self who is obsessed with bicycles. Closely related to Kid GV—builds, maintains, and rides bicycles. Especially loves vintage Italian bikes and the 1979 film Breaking Away.

• FACILITATOR GV: my self who runs GV Advisory and helps folks have big conversations, get unstuck from each other, and make sense of their work and their world in new ways. (In other words, my self who helps groups of people trying to make the world more just and equitable talk to each other.)

• POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: my self who is learning and yelling about the state of our world and how we got here. My self who helps my other selves unlearn white supremacy and racialized capitalism. My self who is thinking about class, race, gender, and all sorts of other things. My self who knows that my lineage is steeped in power-hoarding, domination, colonization, genocide, and land theft. My self who is working to break violent cycles.

• LOGISTICS GV: my self who is a structured, curious, insufferable question-asker and thrives on a clear plan

• GABI FITZ, THINK TWICE CONSULTING: my friend and collaborator Gabi! We work together quite a bit—she runs Think Twice, where she works with social change organizations make meaningful use of data and knowledge. She’s taught me so much about Knowledge Management and friendship.

• KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: my self who thinks about data and knowledge, archives, and how organizations learn. Works part-time at GV Advisory. Excellent notetaker. Only shows up sometimes.

NOTE: Knowledge Management is “the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge within an organization to achieve its goals.” “Knowledge” can include meeting notes, datasets, and the stuff in people’s heads.

On to the conversation!

Thank you for reading and engaging with ART TALKS! I won’t ever put my writing behind a paywall—If you appreciate these pieces, consider contributing to the ART TALKS! fund. This helps me with museum admissions, with art books, and other art-learning activities that cost dollars. No expectations here, at ALL. love u bye

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MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Here’s a brownstone covered in orchids!

REGULAR GV:

I want to live in there.

KID GV:

Do you think there’s an orchid version of Oscar the Grouch in that garbage can?

ALL THE GVS:

ORCHID THE GROUCH!

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Has a flower allergy. Wears gloves, a mask, and glasses to protect himself from the flowers while he works with the flowers.

FACILITATOR GV:

When we understand our needs, we can meet them. Or we at least can be clear when we can’t meet them!

Clear, healthy boundaries make it possible for us to get close to the work and other people without hurting or getting hurt by them.

LOGISTICS GV:

Right, and in my work, these boundaries are not only things like community agreements and values-aligned ways of working together, but also things like masks, covid testing protocols, soft lighting, wide chairs, and space for folks to move around however they need.

FACILITATOR GV:

That Mr. Flower Fantastic’s anonymity came out of accessibility is kind of incredible.

This makes me think about how, in facilitation, we steward the space. We (hopefully) don’t own or dominate the space. Sometimes the work actually calls for our removal from the space! This doesn’t mean we should shrink ourselves. It does mean we need to have an acute awareness of the room, our own feelings, and power dynamics.

There’s also something here about possibility: what’s possible when we have the protections and accommodations we need? A flower allergy doesn’t mean you can’t be a flower artist!

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us are tiny and elusive, some of us are giant and showy!

ALL THE GVS:

Just like us!

NYBG:

Across 30,000 species on six continents, orchids are incredibly diverse. Their blooms may be waxy, warty, or hairy. They may have petals three feet long, or flowers so small they are impossible to see with the naked eye.

THE ORCHIDS:

There are very many of us. One of us is called Vanilla!

REGULAR GV:

Wait, Vanilla is an orchid?!

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Talk about the need for taxonomy. This is bonkers.

REGULAR GV:

The fact that these are all orchids makes me think of Jack Whitten’s work—so much of which is described as “acrylic on canvas,” but that description doesn’t even begin to capture the depth and breadth of his work.

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like we’re coated in sugar.

KID GV:

Yum!

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like we’re made of velvet.

KID GV:

I want to touch. I bet they feel like a dog’s ear.

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like animals—real and imaginary. We all have little mouths if you look at us in just the right way.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

Lady Grey of Gorby’s fanciful imagining of orchids as a menagerie of animals underlines their strange and wonderful forms and appeals directly to the Romantic imagination.

REGULAR GV:

YES! That’s what’s in my head!

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

Plants are truly extraordinary, their apparent stillness and lack of behaviour conceals a great deal that is left to discover, if only we look carefully and through a lens that is not animal-centric or anthropomorphic.

FACILITATOR GV:

Ah, dangit.

Metaphors are great (my clients and friends know I will take a metaphor as far as I possibly can until it breaks down). They can help us relate to our work and each other and open up creative ways to think. They can help make invisible connections visible. My friend Gabi and I use a garden metaphor in nearly everything we do!2

Sometimes, though, metaphors can actually obscure the thing we’re talking about and create confusion.

I GUESS what I’m hearing Dr. Knapp say is that we should respect the orchid’s identity and agency.

KID GV:

But they DO look like animals.

REGULAR GV:

The conservatory is so warm. It’s nice to feel humid and sweaty in a cold, cold NYC.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

The sheer variety of form found in tropical orchids spurred a mania for orchid collection and cultivation in the nineteenth century…Termed ‘Orchido-mania’ by James Bateman in his 1843 mega-book The Orchidae of Mexico and Guatemala, this new condition ‘pervades all (and especially the upper) classes to such a marvellous extent.’ …

… It took a lot of experimentation to tease out the best conditions for cultivating these seemingly delicate plants. In the early 1800s, Joseph Banks - of the voyage of HMS Endeavour fame and then President of the Royal Society - invented a hanging basket filled with moss and twigs in which to grow his specimens; he was more successful than most.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Hold on.

From what I can tell, HMS Endeavour was purchased by the British Navy in 1768 for a “scientific mission” to the Pacific to explore for “unknown southern land.” It was commanded by Captain Cook. You know, the Captain Cook who was not only cruel, violent, and bigoted, but whose “voyages of discovery” played a huge role in the British colonization of the Pacific.3

We can’t talk about orchid classification and “discovery” without also talking about imperialism and colonization. So you’ve got this guy, James Bateman, who really understands orchids and appreciates their beauty, and contributes a ton to our understanding of the plants, but who was also likely party to (or at least didn’t stop) some heinous acts.

Pillage, pillage, pillage. Conquer, conquer, conquer. This is so much of my lineage.

LOGISTICS GV:

Right, think about the (beautiful) illustrations of orchids in Extraordinary Orchids. Many of them are from expeditions with Captain Cook—the illustration feels different when we start to imagine what else was happening. What a wild dissonance. To illustrate and categorize these plants while you or your colleagues committed some of the most intense and disembodied violence folks have known. Woof.

FACILITATOR GV:

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Context matters. What’s happening next door? What kinds of behaviors were these guys co-signing in the name of beauty and scientific discovery?

This makes me think of how philanthropic and nonprofit institutions tend to co-opt and water down the language of movements and of people.4 How can we talk about care and collective liberation while we’re standing in a building owned by a violent corporation engaging in surveillance and worker repression?

Ooof. I think there are a lot of answers here, and they all have to do with accountability and transparency.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

So many of the orchids were named after the so-called discoverers’ wives.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Ugh. These already had names, you jerks.

REGULAR GV:

Yeah, but I love a wife guy. I’m married to a wife guy.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

How do we decide who gets to name things?! In history, it’s been the ruling class. What about in organizations? Who gets to decide? Often, it’s leadership or a very small team. Part of this is about efficiency, sure, but a lot of it is about top-down decision making.

This makes me think of Malika Hodge’s recent Head Tilt piece: Reflections of Labor, Leadership, and Dignity. I think anyone in a leadership or middle management role (that includes fellow consultants!) should read it.

REGULAR GV:

I can’t ever remember the names of things, anyway.

It does feel tropical in the conservatory, and it’s lovely. My knees are sweaty and I’m not upset about it.

SOME GUY WALKING BY:

It’s like Jurassic Park in here!

KID GV:

Yeah it is!

MARK W. CHASE IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

DNA data can be used as a ‘molecular clock’ to determine the time of origin for a group of plants without a fossil record. Previously, orchids were thought, due to the lack of a fossil record, to be recently evolved. However, by using this DNA-based clock, we have learned that orchids are one of the oldest families of plants and originated before the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago. Early orchids grew throughout the then closely spaced land masses, and coexisted with dinosaurs, but they survived the great Cretaceous extinction and are now one of the two largest plant families.

This co-existence with the dinosaurs makes me wonder if small dinosaurs might have pollinated these early orchids, given that modern orchids are pollinated by such a wide range of animals. Obviously, any orchids depending on a dinosaur for pollination would have died out with the dinosaurs, and since we have no orchid fossils from that time it is difficult to think how we could prove such a phenomenon ever existed.

ALL THE GVS:

EXCUSE ME?!

IMAGINARY BABY TRICERATOPS:

waddles up to a large Cretaceous orchid

sniffs

ah CHOO!

runs over to mama and papa and sibling triceratops for comfort

KID GV:

THAT IS EXACTLY HOW IT HAPPENED. I don’t need to prove it, I know it in my heart to be true.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Ummmmmm, we can’t just say something existed based on, y’know, vibes.

REGULAR GV:

Oh my god I have to stop thinking about this. I’m going to burst into tears.

FACILITATOR GV:

Humans are so NEW in the scheme of things. I find geologic time so comforting. And in so much of my work with teams and organizations, I’m asking, “what’s made possible when we slow down?”

Maybe there’s an exercise here. How might a baby triceratops help ground us?

REGULAR GV:

You’re just looking for an excuse to talk about dinosaurs at work.

FACILITATOR GV:

AND I WILL FIND IT.

A dinosaur-themed workshop about manufactured urgency, pacing, and deadlines. Who wants in?!

LOGISTICS GV:

Oh my god.

KID GV:

LOGISTICS GV:

Ok, we have other topics to discuss. Put the dinosaur toys away.

ALL THE GVS EXCEPT FOR LOGISTICS GV:

hmf.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

This Brazilian species, Stanhopea insignis, was the first of the spectacular stanhopeas to be cultivated in Britain and was described in 1829. Franz Bauer made this painting in 1827 from those first flowering individuals.

REGULAR GV:

Franz Bauer must have gotten this illustration wrong. Surely that’s not how they grow.

FACILITATOR GV:

Prioritize curiosity over judgement!

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Ha! So arrogant. I do come from a very long line of colonizers—back as far as the Normans and the crusades. Woof.

THE ORCHIDS:

Just because you’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it’s not real.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Right—what kind of knowledge do we value? Do we trust folks when they share what they’ve seen, felt, heard, and lived through?

NYBG:

REGULAR GV:

Ohhhhh it’s like a scavenger hunt. Feels sneaky, mischievous.

KID GV:

Hehehehe

REGULAR GV:

Every time I notice an orchid that’s kind of hidden, I get so excited!

KID GV:

It’s like those summer reading challenges the library used to give us as kids. For every book I read (or maybe it was for how many pages I read?) I got a sticker to put on my book tracker. I think there was also something about a Pizza Hut gift card.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

I wish they had an orchid tracker.

FACILITATION GV:

THERE IS AN EXERCISE IN HERE SOMEWHERE.

LOGISTICS GV:

Are you going to build a whole tracking book for a retreat? What would you have participants track? Hmm?

FACILITATION GV:

I dunno, the number of times Logistics GV is a bummer.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Look on the roof!

REGULAR GV:

Ha! They look like they’re giggling, like kids playing hide and seek.

THE ORCHIDS:

We don’t have massive root systems. We can grow in the air!

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

Many, if not most, tropical orchids are epiphytic; that is, they live on other plants (the word comes from the Greek epi, meaning ‘on’, and phyte, meaning ‘plant’). Early tropical explorers thought of these plants as parasites.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Well, yeah, if you’re in the business of expanding empire, of course that’s your assumption.

THE ORCHIDS:

You can see our roots!

FACILITATOR GV:

The orchids’ exposed roots give us a glimpse into their growth process. They’re vulnerable and sturdy at the same time. We can show our roots in ways that are safe—at the right time in the right place.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

Orchid roots are also specialized for living in the air. If you have ever looked at the roots of an epiphytic orchid, you might notice they are covered in a spongy white layer that looks almost like very thin foam. This white layer is called the velamen, and its structure greatly increases uptake of water and atmospheric gases, allowing the plant better access to both water and nutrients. The velamen is formed of layers of cells that die as the root matures.

FACILITATOR GV:

“The velamen is formed of layers of cells that die as the root matures.” We don’t need to bring everything with us! Our work is best served by fairly consistent unlearning and learning—by making space for new growth.

We don’t need everything all the time.

REGULAR GV:

AND it’s important to say that self-improvement can become an addiction and turn into self-optimization. “Consistent unlearning and learning” doesn’t mean we should always be poking and prodding at our wounds. Sometimes we’ve just gotta hang out and not learn anything.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Right and there’s a whole industry built on the idea that we’re not good enough or efficient enough. We were not meant to optimize everything, especially ourselves!

Hang out! Waste time! Engage in useless behavior!

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

Some of the roots of epiphytic orchids anchor the plant to tree trunks or branches, where they form part of an epiphytic community.

REGULAR GV:

So that’s what our Monstera plants are doing when their roots stick to the walls. Anchoring.

FACILITATOR GV:

Anchoring is so important in facilitation. Anchoring can look like coming back to community agreements, shared definitions, purpose statements, design principles. It can also look like anchoring in the fact that we’re human people—we make mistakes, we get tired.

Our agendas should serve the people, not the other way around.

Anchoring can also look a lot like a callback in a comedy set. If someone said a funny thing in the beginning of the conversation, I often weave that through the day. It’s a cool way for us to connect and laugh together, and for us to share the room in a different way. I love jokes.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

And community it is - orchids are rarely the only ones up high in the canopy. Along with orchids, the branches of tropical trees bear communities of mosses, lichens, and sometimes other epiphytic plants. These aggregations can create soil, and even supply the tree itself with minerals that diffuse from the soil through the bark into the host tree.

Epiphytes also create mini-ecosystems for insects and other arthropods5, and certainly contribute to the extremely high species diversity of tropical forests.

ALL THE GVS:

We belong to each other.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

It was not until the turn of the nineteenth century that the key to unlocking orchid seed germination was found - French botanist Noel Bernard discovered that fungi known as mycorrhizal fungi were necessary for the successful germination of orchid seeds. Mycorrhizal fungi had been known since the middle part of the nineteenth century, and their relationship with plants was beginning to be understood. These fungi colonize the root systems of a host plant and provide water and nutrient absorption capacity. The plant, in turn, provides the fungus with the carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis. This mutually beneficial relationship is a symbiosis, or mutualism. …In fact, forests are often connected by complex nets of mycorrhizae that have been termed the ‘wood-wide-web’; mycorrhizae have been implicated in plant-to-plant communication and stress responses.6

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

We use mycelium metaphors in this work a lot. Mushrooms are so cool. There’s something here about information sharing, but Gabi always says it better than I can.

GABI FITZ, THINK TWICE CONSULTING:

[on mycelium as a useful metaphor for knowledge and information sharing at a social justice movement organization]

The vast mycelial network which not only connects trees to one another but also entire ecosystems to one another is largely unseen. One mushroom in one corner of the forest has little awareness of how it is connected to every other mushroom.

It enables the exchange of mutually beneficial nutrients for each organism within that ecosystem. Benefit is multi-directional.

There are what are called “hub trees” in these systems which typically have the most fungal connections. Their roots are established in deeper soil, and can reach deeper sources of water to pass on to younger saplings.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Yeah! So good.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

“Botanist William Stearn characterized the orchid-fungus relationship in colourful terms: ‘From Karl Marx’s standpoint, wealthy Victorian orchid-growers enjoyed their orchids as a consequence of the sweated labour of underpaid miners that they never saw. Research on mycorrhiza suggests that orchids can be regarded in much the same way - as ostentatious floral capitalists dependent upon the obscure activities of fungi.’”

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Um. Human exploitation of other humans is different, my guy. Comparing orchids to the aristocracy and ruling class and fungi to workers … BOOOO!

First, we’re the same species, even if eugenicists don’t think so.7 Also, Dr. Knapp just said that this was a mutually beneficial relationship—unlike the relationship between the ruling class and the working class.

FACILITATOR GV:

Well, right, like we were talking about earlier—metaphors and comparisons aren’t always helpful! At their worst-best, they can be reductive. At their worst-worst, they’re harmful and they perpetuate violent ideologies.

ALL THE GVS:

Woof.

THE ORCHIDS:

Sometimes we rest our little heads on things.

REGULAR GV:

Sometimes they rest their little heads on things! Just like Duds!

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like spiders!

Some of us look like lace.

Some of us look like bees or wasps!

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

… many plants trick insects to visit the flower with the promise of a reward but no follow-through. The uncanny resemblance of some orchid flowers to insects or mushrooms is not just a quirk of development or a case of mistaken identity due to an overactive human imagination - this resemblance is at the heart of a deceitful, almost certainly manipulative, pollination system.

LOGISTICS GV:

I am reading the words and I believe them but HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?! Evolution and adaptation is so cool. I don’t understand.

FACILITATOR GV:

This level of adaptation is bonkers. It makes me think of how most problems we get stuck on at work are actually very solvable, as long as we know how to collaborate with care.

IF AN ORCHID CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOUR ORGANIZATION.

LOGISTICS GV:

… I don’t think that metaphor holds up.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

[Charles Darwin wrote] …”Mr. Price has frequently witnessed attacks made upon the Bee Orchis by a bee, similar to those of the troublesome Apis mushroom.” What this sentence means I cannot conjecture.’ It boggled the imagination that a bee would attack an orchid, when so often they served as pollinators, carrying pollinia from one plant to another.

…It took a female amateur naturalist in Australia, however, to really unravel this apparent mystery.

…she published a follow-up study in which she conclusively showed that the male wasps were seeking out the orchids using their scent - she covered up the flowers with cloth and the wasps still arrived - and that the pollinia attached to the abdomen of a wasp visiting one flower were transported to another plant, thus effecting cross-pollination. ‘It is, I think, safe to assume that, as the orchid C. leptochila is visited by male wasps only, and as these are seeking neither nectar nor edible tissue, they are answering an irresistible sex instinct. ‘... Insects were trying to mate with flowers - ‘based on the resemblance of the flower to a female wasp…’

REGULAR GV:

Wow, wasp sex is to thank for multiple things I love. Orchids, figs8 … thanks, wasps!

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us smell like chocolate.

A GROUP OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KIDS ON A TOUR:

[after the tour guide told them that chocolate comes from cacao]

A COW?!?!

ALL THE GVS:

hahahahahahaha

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us smell SO fragrant. Sweet!

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

FACILITATOR GV:

I want to use magazine mock-ups in my work with organizations.

In Emergent Strategy, on page 238, adrienne maree brown offers a great prompt for newspaper visioning….

You imagine yourself in the future(set a date that people can imagine—twenty years out, say), walking to work, and you see a newspaper. You pick it up and the headline is celebrating the work of your organization/group/movement. Recreate the front page: What paper is it? Is it a hologram? What is the headline? Picture? Leading article? Put the front pages up on a wall where everyone can see each other’s vision—discuss the patterns and longings that your future headlines unveil.

I’ve done that, but it would be cool to take it further and co-create an actual piece—with articles, photos, etc. It could help folks get really specific about the world they’re creating.

LOGISTICS GV:

I’m actually not worried about this one. This is more practical than some of your other ideas.

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like pitcher plants. We’re called Slipper orchids.

REGULAR GV:

Are some orchids carnivorous?!

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

When an insect tries to land…, it slips and falls into the bucket-shaped labellum, from where it must exist by crawling up a ladder of hairs, then squeeze out at the base of the column to emerge from a tiny opening, getting the sticky pollen all over its back.

REGULAR GV:

Ok, so not carnivorous. I saw a fly near some slipper orchids and waited for SO LONG for it to go inside of one. It didn’t. A watched pot, I guess.

FACILITATOR GV:

So much happens that we don’t see.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

(again) Their apparent stillness and lack of behavior conceals a great deal.

FACILITATOR GV:

Same with people. Just because someone is silent or we can’t read their face doesn’t mean they have nothing to say.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Same with silences in archives or in datasets. Just because something isn’t there doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. What questions can we ask to tend to apparent silences?

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Welcome to Orchid Avenue Station!

REGULAR GV:

Are you kidding? I love this.

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like little monsters!

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look painted.

THE ORCHIDS:

Some of us look like the inner leaves of an artichoke.

KID GV:

I want to chomp on that orchid.

REGULAR GV:

Me too, but we’re not allowed.

A GROUP OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KIDS ON A TOUR:

[matching their color swatches with some cacti in the desert section of the conservatory] I found my color!

REGULAR GV:

I want in on a tour! I want a color swatch!

FACILITATOR GV:

The color swatches are such a cool way to encourage a specific focus or lens—kind of like asking folks to listen for certain things or keep certain questions in mind. I’ve done versions of this, but never with something that folks could hold in their hands. Hmm.

LOGISTICS GV:

It is a cool idea but you’ve got to be reasonable.

FACILITATOR GV:

Folks could each have a different color of embroidery thread that represents a question or a theme! And as we notice those themes in conversations, we can make a collaborative woven piece …

LOGISTICS GV:

I don’t know …

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Ok, but how does a “collaborative woven piece” translate to something people can read and use? Where are the notes? What’s the governance plan?

FACILITATOR GV:

You guys always do this.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Welcome to the orchid laundromat! Have a seat and watch the show.

REGULAR GV:

Gotta keep the orchids clean!

FACILITATOR GV:

I love that this transforms something so ubiquitous—something that’s such a big part of people’s lives—into something to look at.

Changing our scenery or changing the presentation of something we think we’re used to can unlock something in our brains!9

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

This can be your street, it can be your block, your neighborhood. It’s everyone’s home. And we’re celebrating you.

NYBG:

MFF invites you in to experience the real New York, a shared experience where we grow together and celebrate the in-between moments where the concrete jungle comes into flower.

FACILITATOR GV:

The in-between moments! That’s where the real work is. The process changes us.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

People share information and learn together at the laundromat. Knowledge sharing often happens outside of organizations and technological systems.

It’s smiles at the grocery store, it’s “hellos” on a dog walk.

NYBG:

Orchids can grow in trees, rocks, in the ground …

REGULAR GV:

So, pretty much anywhere.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

Like on this fire escape!

REGULAR GV:

I spent so much time out on the fire escape of my first NYC apartment during the pandemic. Me and Tiny the cat would just hang out and watch the birds and neighborhood cats.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

And in this dumpster!

KID GV:

ORCHID THE GROUCH

FACILITATOR GV:

This whole exhibit is making me think about how we can take the most common, perhaps mundane—even gross—objects and make them beautiful.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

And on this steam vent cone!

ALL THE GVS:

RAT POPE!!!!!!

REGULAR GV:

Ok. Breaking the fourth wall (or whatever it is) to provide some important context: Steam vent cones are all over Manhattan. They’re often featured in transition scenes on TV shows based in New York City, and there are tons of stock photos of NYC featuring moody lighting and these bad boys.

ANYWAY, several years ago, someone on the internet asked what was going on with these steam vent cones. Some folks answered them with facts, but one lovely genius said: “that’s what happens when the rats select a new pope.” (sorry, Catholics)

It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, and whenever my husband and I bike by a steam vent cone—which is often—we yell, “RAT POPE!”

FACILITATOR GV:

We can’t tell that joke at work.

REGULAR GV:

I think we have told that joke at work.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC:

POST NO BILLS!

REGULAR GV:

YES! Everyone stops to look through the construction window! Especially my husband.

MR. FLOWER FANTASTIC & NYBG:

Green thumbs not required!

REGULAR GV:

Oh? Hmmmm!

FACILITATOR GV:

This is so welcoming. I’m often reminding folks that traditional expertise is not required in order to participate in a conversation! By nature of being alive, you know a lot that other folks don’t!

NYBG:

Here’s an easy-to-understand orchid care card.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

When ‘how-to’ knowledge is shared freely and in clear, plain language, we can all participate.

DR. SANDRA KNAPP IN EXTRAORDINARY ORCHIDS:

So much is unknown, but the story of Edith Coleman shows you don’t have to be a professional scientist to make stunning contributions to the study of nature - all it takes is patience, attention to detail and a love of the subject. Nature was part of Edith Coleman’s life, and if you let it be part of yours too, who knows what you will discover!”

REGULAR GV:

Right! The lady who figured out why wasps “attack” a certain orchid. This is nice and I like it.

FACILITATOR GV:

“...patience, attention to detail, and a love of the subject.”

These are ingredients for skillful facilitation, too! In my case, it’s a love of collaboration and helping folks see that they’re capable of solving sticky problems and moving through discomfort.

My favorite part of my job is when folks move from “This is impossible and we don’t have the skills” to, “I’m capable! We’re capable together!”

LOGISTICS GV:

Ok, so week over week, new orchids bloom. This is wild. These exhibitions looked different a week ago, and they’ll look different next week, and the week after that.

FACILITATOR GV:

Change is constant. The light changes, the moment changes, the mood changes.

I work with people, but I also work with moments in time. The work will always be influenced by how people feel, what’s going on in the world, and where people are in their own growth cycles.

adrienne maree brown and Taj James teach us: “There is a conversion in the room that only these people at this moment in time can have. Find it.”10 That’s how I understand my job.

BIKE BOY GV:

I cannot WAIT to ride my bike to the orchid show. I wonder if the orchids will look different to me after biking through four boroughs.

LOGISTICS GV:

You’ll be hungry. Bring snacks.

Thank you for reading and engaging with ART TALKS! I won’t ever put my writing behind a paywall—If you appreciate these pieces, consider contributing to the ART TALKS! fund. This helps me with museum admissions, with art books, and other art-learning activities that cost dollars. No expectations here, at ALL. love u bye

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thanks for reading! I would love to get my writing in front of more people, so please feel free to share, comment, and like with abandon.

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P.S. NYBG won us over with their insistence that orchids don’t deserve their reputation for difficulty. We brought some new friends home! They smell so good, and it’s so fun to watch them open up.

In ART TALKS! pieces, I write about the art and artists who have taught me about the world and myself, helped me heal, and helped me remember that crying in public can be a good thing. This art and these artists have not only helped in some way to heal me—they’ve also strengthened my practice as a facilitator to social impact organizations.

These pieces are presented as (sort of) imagined conversations between my various selves and the art.

NOTE: I am not an art historian, and sometimes I’ve waded through art jargon and feelings of inadequacy to learn more about the artists who have broken me open in some way. In these pieces, I’ll use layman’s terms and layman’s understanding: I love the art that I love because it makes me feel good.

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One of the ways I care for myself is by spending time at art museums. I visit with my husband, with friends, and I take myself on solo dates. I carry a tiny notebook where I (sloppily) write my feelings and thoughts. Sometimes I come up with art-based jokes to send to my friends.

I’ve developed a ritual to engage with the art that excites me. If an exhibition or a piece makes me:

• cry

• ask “what are they talking about?!” multiple times

• grunt

• stare in disbelief

…I buy the exhibition book or a biography and I go home to learn everything I possibly can about the artist. If there are documentaries, I watch them. If there are articles, I read them. I yell at my husband and my friends about what I’m learning. I send crooked photos of passages in books with messages in all caps. Once I have a sense of how these folks think and work and live and love, I go back to the exhibition1, and it feels different. Layers become more visible. The work is more relatable and more unbelievable.

This installment of ART TALKS! is a conversation with (part of) a Jack Whitten Retrospective at the MoMA from the summer of 2025. It was called Jack Whitten: The Messenger and it made me lose my whole mind. I first saw the exhibition while my brother was in town—we walked around the galleries and said “whoa” a lot.

From the Exhibition description:

Jack Whitten created visionary beauty from righteous anger. Born in Bessemer, Alabama, amid the violence of the segregated South, he joined the Civil Rights movement, then made his way to New York in 1960. There, he decided to become an artist. Through his exploration of materials and tools—from new paints to Afro-combs and electrostatic printing—Whitten invented art-making techniques that were the first of their kind. Through his confrontation with racial prejudice and technological change, he made art matter in a world in turmoil. …

In the 1970s, Whitten experimented with pulling layers of acrylic paint across a floor-bound canvas in a sweeping movement, producing a luminous, quasi-photographic blur. In the 1990s, he cut hardened sheets of acrylic paint into thousands of mosaic tiles to assemble richly textured paintings that suggest pixels or galaxies. For decades, Whitten spent his summers in Greece, constructing sculptures that fused the arts of Africa and the ancient Mediterranean with contemporary technologies. He often dedicated his works to figures in Black history, as if he were a messenger—and his art a way of sending meaning out into the world. “I am a conduit for the spirit,” he declared. “It flows through me and manifests in the materiality of paint.”

…Whitten faced great pressure to pursue representational art as a form of activism. Yet he dared to invent forms of abstraction—and offered the world a new way to see.

“A NEW WAY TO SEE?!” WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?!

He offered the world a new way to see, but he also invented new ways to paint. He would cut up dried acrylic into tiles and make mosaics. He would build up layers and layers of acrylic on an unstretched canvas and pull his invention called the Developer (essentially a massive wooden squeegee) across the canvas to produce what he called the Slab paintings. He made massive screenprinted paintings. He would mess around with photocopier toner and different types of paper. He used rhoplex ac 33 and I still don’t know what that means. He carved wood and made sculptures inspired by and based on African sculpture. He did so much!

Walking around the Exhibition, I had SO many questions about his process.

• How strong did he have to be to pull the Developer?

• How did he deal with things like—I don’t know—time and gravity?

• How did he come up with these new ways of making paintings?

• What the fuck is rhoplex ac 33?

• How are so many of these using the same medium but different processes?

• WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?!

I wasn’t trying to solve the art, like I sometimes do, but I was trying to understand the context. What was the context here? How, how, how did he arrive at these conclusions? What was he trying to figure out? Anything? Or did he just start down a path and say “I wonder where this will take me?”

While Jack Whitten’s work is vast—which may feel daunting and heavy—a lot of it is also playful. I don’t think you end up with pieces like this unless you’re really willing to play, to mess up. To say, “ I don’t know what’s going to happen but I’m going to find out,” or, “I wonder what happens when I do this weird thing.”

His work is also confronting! It’s political. It’s gotten me thinking about the archive and our histories, erased or suppressed histories, and violence—not only physical violence, but the kind of banal violence that shows up in bureaucracy and process.

Throughout and at the end of the Exhibition Catalogue are excerpts from Jack Whitten’s studio log and letters he wrote to friends and fellow artists. He’s introspective, aware, frustrated, curious, and funny. If you know me, you know that I think about my job—facilitation—a lot.

As I practice it, facilitation is about helping folks relate to each other, their work, and the world. Facilitation is about helping folks (and myself) be in right relationship with their values. If you say you believe in “X” but you practice “Y,” let’s talk about that.

In plain language, my job is to help folks have conversations, navigate conflict, and take some fear out of big questions. Jack Whitten’s work is teaching me a lot about my job.

Here are some of his thoughts, presented in no particular order:

“I realize that I am an artist and the message in me is not for my own personal benefit, nor for any single group of people. I belong to the world.” (From Application to the Whitney Foundation for an Opportunity Fellowship, 1964)

I belong to the world. We belong to each other! In my facilitation practice, I’m often guiding conversations about collective power and collective responsibility. I’m curious about what the world might look like if philanthropy and foundations acted more like stewards of public money rather than stewards of the legacies of the wealthy. (This is a generalization—there are some foundations doing work along these lines, but I want MORE!)

“I am not a mathematician. I am not a scientist. I am an artist. My work is about feelings. Feelings are the artist’s most valuable asset.” (From “Jack Whitten Talking,” presentation at the MoMA, NY, May 1994)

No matter how much I’ve tried to make my career about data, about knowledge, about some process or some framework, my work is about feelings. Facilitation and working with social change orgs is about feelings. Working with and around other humans is about feelings.

“Improvisation is the password when working on paper. Improvisation is freedom to play, to expand beyond the conventions of academic boundaries. Drawing is an act of brave exploration into unknown territories. I investigate everything and anything through the act of drawing. I have no sacred cows. I insist upon the casual, informal exercise of play which leads to discovery.” (From Jack Whitten’s Studio Log)

YES! Play!

Play leads to discovery! I try to bring some aspect of play to all of my work. I also try to give myself room to play outside of work‚ to play for play’s sake.

At work, though, there’s something that happens when folks let go enough to play. And play looks different for everyone, which is neat—it offers us a way to learn about how other people think. Just like Jack Whitten said, it leads to discovery. We find something new or rediscover something ancient. We can imagine systems and futures that actually DO work for everyone.

NOTE: As of February 2026, I’m not very interested in the “science” of play. I don’t want to have to prove that play is effective. I don’t care if McKinsey or some other large capitalist firm has signed off on it. Our bodies know. Our hearts know. Jack Whitten knew.

“My paintings are designed as weapons. Their objective is to penetrate and destroy the Western aesthetic.” (From Jack Whitten’s Studio Log)

I know that me and my work are firmly rooted in the Western aesthetic, being a part of American philanthropy and the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (and being a white femme, which is white-leftist-queer-speak for “white lady”).

And, every day, I try to get further away from serving the Western aesthetic.

I believe this work—the work of relating, of being accountable to each other, of building systems and worlds and futures that care for people instead of oppressing them—should be a weapon whose objective is to penetrate and destroy the capitalist system by moving massive amounts of wealth towards reparations, class solidarity, and by helping to halt the ongoing land theft and genocide carried out at the behest of the U.S. Empire.

That said, (I think) I am aware of the limitations of working within a system to try and dismantle it. Some days I think there’s hope and possibility, and some days I think there’s not. I don’t think what I’m doing is radical enough for what we need, but this is where I am right now, in this moment.

I need to tell you that this piece has been difficult to write. It’s also been very fun. Also difficult.

The scope of Jack Whitten’s work and methods of artmaking is so vast. The scope of what his art and writing have taught me is so vast. It’s all just so … vast. For this reason, I’ve split this ART TALKS! into separate parts.

This is Part One, and it’s primarily a conversation with Jack Whitten’s Slab paintings. Who knows how many parts are left, and when they’ll be ready? They will exist, and they’ll be about:

• openly loving and hyping up other people

• light

• the inadequacy of language and taxonomy

• play

• inventing new things and ways of working

…but those will come later. Today, we start with a conversation about archives and history with the Slabs.

This conversation has a long list of voices, for a few reasons.

You’ll hear from art historians, who have studied and unpacked and learned from Jack Whitten’s processes. I don’t include these to “solve” the art. I include these because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be honoring Jack Whitten’s work. I think his processes, his invented ways of making art, his patience and his curiosity are so crucial to understanding ourselves and the world.

I’ve also included some authors whose work has informed mine and so many others’ political education. Jack Whitten’s work is inherently political. This moment (like all moments) is political.

In addition to these, you’ll hear from Jack Whitten, Jack Whitten’s art (as interpreted by me), and my many selves.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

JACK WHITTEN

• JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG: Excerpts from Jack Whitten’s studio log.

• JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS: Jack Whitten’s “Slab” paintings, made with The Developer.

• JACK WHITTEN’S BIRMINGHAM, 1964: A painting Jack Whitten made in response to the riots and uprising in Birmingham in 1964.

THE AUTHORS

• KAREN E. & BARBARA J. FIELDS IN RACECRAFT: “The Soul of Inequality in American Life.” Essential reading for understanding the invention of race and how it’s shaped the U.S. Find it here!

• LORGIA GARCÍA PEÑA IN TRANSLATING BLACKNESS: “Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective.” A really incredible study in “colonialism as an ongoing sociopolitical force. Find it here!

• JUSTIN AHEAS CHACÓN IN THE BORDER CROSSED US: “The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border.” A history of the US-Mexico border, bordered capitalism, and labor organizing. Find it here!

• HARSHA WALIA IN UNDOING BORDER IMPERIALISM: An exploration of the immigrants rights movement in the context of capitalism, imperialist expansion, and settler colonialism. Practical! She offers lessons from different movements and offers strategies for navigating the tensions that come with anti-state organizing and needing to operate within state mechanisms. It looks like it’s sold out everywhere, but you can find her newer book, Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism at Haymarket books!

• MICHEL ROLPH-TRULLIOT IN SILENCING THE PAST: “Power and the Production of History.” An incredible study of the West’s silencing of history—specifically the Hatian Revolution. A helpful companion in understanding propaganda, power, and silence in the archives. Find it here! It’s also a part of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All Brutes, if that’s your thing.

• DANIEL IMMERWAHR IN HOW TO HIDE AN EMPIRE: “A History of the Greater United States.” Essential reading for those wanting to understand U.S. Empire-building! Find it here!

THE ART HISTORIANS FEATURED IN THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE:

Each of these authors contributed an essay to the Exhibition Catalogue for Jack Whitten: The Messenger.

• MICHELLE KUO IN JACK WHITTEN: THE MESSENGER

• MICHAEL DUFFY IN ON SIBERIAN SALT GRINDER, 1974, AND THE ACRYLIC SLAB PAINTINGS

• EXHIBITION CATALOGUE (paraphrased): I paraphrase what I’ve learned from the Exhibition Catalogue.

THE GVS

• REGULAR GV: my playful, mischievous self

• KID GV: my kid self. Also playful, also mischievous. About 6 or 7 years old.

• FACILITATOR GV: my self who runs GV Advisory and helps folks have big conversations, get unstuck from each other, and make sense of their work and their world in new ways. (In other words, my self who helps groups of people talk to each other.)

• POLITICAL EDUCATION GV: my self who is learning and yelling about the state of our world and how we got here. My self who helps my other selves unlearn white supremacy and racialized capitalism. My self who is thinking about class, race, gender, and all sorts of other things. My self who knows that my lineage is steeped in power-hoarding, domination, colonization, genocide, and land theft. My self who is working to break violent cycles.

• LOGISTICS GV: my self who is a structured, curious, insufferable question-asker

• KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV: my self who thinks about data and knowledge, archives, and how organizations learn. Works part-time at GV Advisory. Excellent notetaker. Only shows up sometimes.

  • NOTE: Knowledge Management is “the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge within an organization to achieve its goals.” “Knowledge” can include meeting notes, datasets, and the stuff in people’s heads.

• TIME TRAVEL GV: My self who is very into time travel, multiple universes, and is convinced there are more dimensions and beings and worlds out there, somewhere. This self has no scientific training, just feelings.

• WRITER GV: My self who wrote this piece. Sometimes frustrated, sometimes smug. Starts one-sided fights.

Ok! On to the (first) conversation!

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

“I am a camera. Using my total extensions as a machine, a computer of extreme complexity conjuring images of a past, of a present, and capable of projecting into the future.”

REGULAR GV:

WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?!

KID GV:

I can take a picture of stuff with my mind if I blink really hard! I did that at the Grand Canyon once.

REGULAR GV:

I remember that. I do have a picture of that in my head. Cool.

FACILITATOR GV:

How might this stance—the stance of a camera—inform our work of building futures that support the people and the planet? How might our work change if we consider ourselves “computers of extreme complexity conjuring images of a past, of a present, and capable of projecting into the future?”

REGULAR GV:

Every time I read this studio log entry, I sit up straight. I feel … responsible. I feel a duty. Not a weight, not a burden—a duty. “Capable of projecting into the future.”

god damn.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Right—we’re crafting the future now, in the present. To do that, we need to understand what came before. How we got here.

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

“Through a critical analysis of history it is possible to re-claim a cultural identity ruptured by Colonial Imperialism.”

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

White supremacy and racialized capitalism are ideologies. We commit and re-commit to our ideologies every single day. I learned this from Dr. Johanna Fernández and Karen E. & Barbara J. Fields’ book Racecraft, and it changed my understanding of the world and my place in it.

KAREN E. & BARBARA J. FIELDS IN RACECRAFT:

Nothing handed down from the past could keep race alive if we did not constantly reinvent and re-ritualize it to fit our own terrain. If race lives on today, it can do so only because we continue to create and re-create it in our social life, continue to verify it, and thus continue to need a social vocabulary that will allow us to make sense, not of what our ancestors did then, but of what we ourselves choose to do now.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

We can commit and re-commit to other ideologies. To love, to collective liberation, to accountability and repair. Black feminists teach us!2

FACILITATOR GV:

So much of the work I do and the work I support other folks to do is about committing and re-committing to community, communities, and each other.

This work requires us to notice when we’re re-committing to violent ideologies. In philanthropy, this happens a lot. We work with and around wealth that was built on extraction and violence. I often ask the folks I’m working with: where did the wealth come from? Are we acting in line with our stated values?

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

This is where institutional memory and organizational archives are helpful.

FACILITATOR GV:

In order to answer questions like these, we need to be able to navigate shame, harm, defensiveness … and we need to have some kind of shared understanding of how we got here.

This requires compassion, accountability, and a willingness to be wrong. It requires us to stop tying our identities as “good people” to our jobs in the “social impact” world.

Committing and re-commiting to just, abundant, loving ideologies looks like a lot of things: community agreements, conflict navigation, and making room for both sorrow and laughter—sometimes during the same moment.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Everything is political.

MICHAEL DUFFY IN ON SIBERIAN SALT GRINDER, 1974, AND THE ACRYLIC SLAB PAINTINGS:

Whitten created an important new tool: his “Developer,” essentially an enormous T-square with a twelve-foot (3.6-meter) edge that he could pull across to level the poured acrylic paint, creating his “slab.” … Whitten would modify the Developer’s edge with a long metal blade or a serrated comb; he also used metal rods … of various lengths to weigh down the Developer (which itself weighed at least forty pounds, or 18 kilos) and control the thickness of the paint layers being squeegeed. As he described it: “The paint is applied very much like a tile setter, filling a layer of mortar. It is called ‘floating,’ and one must have the experience of knowing just how much concrete is needed to set the tiles in place. So my paint is put down, like a workman putting up a sidewalk”

LOGISTICS GV:

WHAT?! HE DID WHAT?!

FACILITATOR GV:

Sometimes the tools that exist now are not enough. Sometimes we need to adapt what exists to create something new. Flip chart paper can be used in SO MANY different ways.

LOGISTICS GV:

Yeah, but we’ve never made anything this cool.

MICHELLE KUO IN JACK WHITTEN: THE MESSENGER:

He poured acrylic paint onto unstretched canvas on the horizontal drawing board, as if laying concrete. He then pulled the heavy Developer across with one forceful stroke, sometimes using weights and metal rods to adjust the pressure of the tool as it moved across the field of paint.

LOGISTICS GV:

Slow, steady, intentional. Then, when it’s time: FAST!

FACILITATOR GV:

Slow down to speed up. When we’re intentional, patient, and present, we can set ourselves up to move rapidly, with care.

Some of the folks I work with hate this. Slowing down feels uncomfortable. It can feel like a betrayal to the urgency of the moment. But slowing down (not stopping—that’s an important distinction) always equips us to move more effectively when we speed things up.

REGULAR GV:

Right, slowing down can feel so similar to stopping. Sometimes, when I slow down, I worry I won’t be able to pick the pace back up when I need to. But I always get to where I need to go—I’m learning to trust myself.

FACILITATOR GV:

We’re learning to trust ourselves.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Manufactured urgency and productivity for the sake of productivity keep white supremacy and racial capitalism going. If we slow down in some places and speed up in others, we can gunk the system up and hopefully break it.

But right, I think a key part of political education is learning to discern between slowing down with intention and stopping because of paralysis. Also learning to discern between intentional action and urgent, flailing, “I-need-to-fix-this” saviorism.

REGULAR GV:

I love that specific do-this-task-very-slowly sabotage! I love being inconvenient!

KID GV:

I love pranks!

FACILITATOR GV:

Right, on the saviorism piece—the organizations I work with often need to examine what their “lane” is, so they can avoid that saviorism trap. Sometimes (oftentimes!) the answer is to move the money where it’s needed and get out of the way.

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

“Remove the self. The notion of self is a sick Western notion.”

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

A lifelong project.

FACILITATOR GV:

A group of people can like an organism. A group of people can also act like multiple, competing organisms.

We impact each other and the air through which we move. Nothing is neutral. The way we interact with each other (or the way we don’t interact with each other) has an impact.

We belong to each other!

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Nothing is neutral. The way we manage (or don’t!) knowledge, information, and data reflects some set of values—and if we’re not super intentional, these are often the values of the state.

Surveillance, extraction, and exploitation show up in the most mundane of places.

REGULAR GV:

Remove the self! I still have a lot of hyper-individualistic tendencies, but I’ve gotten so much better at asking for (and receiving) help. Wow, I love my friends. I love my marriage.

Unlearning! Reframing what ‘success’ is in terms of my contribution to the collective.

JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS:

These works offer a glimpse of their layers—each Slab painting offers a glimpse into its archive, into the process that created it.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

We can see the “archive” of the layers of paint, but we can’t reconstruct the sequencing or the weight of each layer.

We can’t always see the original colors. The process changes the nature of the medium.

FACILITATOR GV:

The process changes the nature of the medium! Each conversation we have—whether it’s about solving a seemingly intractable problem, navigating conflict and hurt, or dreaming up the future and then making it practical and implement-able—has the potential to change us.

And it’s not always for the better! These processes can cause harm! Facilitators wield an immense amount of power. We own some of that power, but some of it is referred to us by the folks in the room.

I don’t always get it right, but I’m always thinking about this. When to use my power decisively, when to share my power, when to cede my power responsibly.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

There are so many types of power. Power isn’t inherently bad, but abuse is. Something I see often (especially in philanthropy and nonprofits) is leaders and organizations making the assumption that all power is bad, so in an effort to get as far away from being perceived as “bad,” they want to defer to the communities they fund or the people they work with, so they sort of throw their hands up and say, “we don’t know, you decide!”

This isn’t sharing or ceding power, it’s abdication without support. It’s setting people up for failure.3

REGULAR GV:

Right, and it happens in friendships, too! Just tell me what kind of food you want, don’t make me decide for the both of us with no information. Not having an opinion doesn’t make you easier to be around.

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

(again) “Through a critical analysis of history it is possible to re-claim a cultural identity ruptured by Colonial Imperialism.”

JACK WHITTEN’S BIRMINGHAM, 1964:

REGULAR GV:

At first, I don’t know what I’m looking at. My brain mushes all of the information together before I realize what I’m looking at, and I’m still not totally sure.

FACILITATOR GV:

Like we were talking about before, it helps to slow down. When we try to take all the information in all at once, it’s overwhelming and hard to make sense of.

Sometimes we need space to refocus our gaze—in facilitation this looks like a carefully crafted agenda, plenty of space to digest and process, and, where possible: aftercare.

I don’t like to do one-off workshops. The work often needs more space and time. What we discuss in the room might land really well, but when folks are back in their regular day-to-day, the new way of working we agreed to can feel clunky, awkward, and even harmful.

We need space and time to untangle the information, to discern the layers and the texture. If we try to move too quickly, the information flattens and nothing ever comes into focus. It’s just noise.

MICHELLE KUO IN JACK WHITTEN: THE MESSENGER:

…what makes Birmingham 1964 so viscerally affecting is, paradoxically, its obfuscation—its distance from the “original” image. The screenprinting of the newspaper photograph, its savagery arrayed across a matrix of mechanically reproduced dots, is screened again through the grid of the mesh and the ragged edge of the painted foil. The “fast” news image is slowed.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Later, I learned that the newspaper photograph is 15-yr-old Walter Gadsden being attacked by a police dog during the Birmingham Children’s March in May 1963.

We’ve got to peel back the foil and reveal what’s in—or what’s been left out of—the archives. Folks have been peeling back the foil for years, since the violence started. Since colonization began!

Peeling back the foil is an action. It requires people power. It requires foresight. It requires memory.

LORGIA GARCÍA PEÑA IN TRANSLATING BLACKNESS:

Michel Foucault writes that archives are the “law of what can be said.” They are what organize hierarchies of time and statements of truth and are also locations of power that grant historians credibility. For historians, the archive is the place of legitimacy where their “truth” is sanctioned. But as many scholars of critical archival studies have noted, traditional archives, heritage institutions, and historical publications are filled with silences regarding the lives, agency, participation, and cultural production of Black people. The process of silencing, as Trulliot reminds us, begins at the source of creation, not at the archive.

JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS:

Nothing in the paintings is isolated. You can’t only look at a green streak or a pink triangle within the painting. The green doesn’t exist without the brown, rust, yellow, etc. You must look at the green streak or the pink triangle in the context of the whole painting.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

We can’t avoid the context. We don’t get to cherry-pick from the archive.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

… Archives are “the law of what can be said.” Right. What don’t we see? What’s been left out? What’s been erased?

MICHEL ROLPH-TRULLIOT IN SILENCING THE PAST:

“Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment go fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

“Because of the complexity of my approach to painting, I use three distinct processes: Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction.”

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Jack Whitten’s process, I think, rids his archive—our archive—of silences. “This is where we came from. This is how we got here.” This is much more honest than the chorus sung by many of my fellow white folks every six months or so: “This is not who we are! This is not America!”

The brutality with which ICE is moving through communities is not new. This is, and has been America. ICE didn’t suddenly get violent. ICE is the newest iteration of the Ku Klux Klan, working from the same playbook that has informed genocide, Apartheid, and land theft across the world. And it’s our playbook.

Made in America, baybee.

JUSTIN AHEAS CHACÓN IN THE BORDER CROSSED US:

The slogan “The border crossed us” has resonated from the migrant rights movement in the last few decades. It captured the reality and popular conception that physical borders only exist to repress people and enforce inequality. It also embeds a historical understanding: that the US-Mexico border crossed the people in multiple ways.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Right. Nothing about the systems in which we live is inherent. Borders, like race, are born from violent ideologies that we create and re-create every day.

JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS:

(again) Nothing in the paintings is isolated.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Nothing is isolated. Borders are violent inventions that protect capital. Also, everything is connected! We can’t understand what ICE is doing across the U.S, without also understanding the role of the U.S. Empire in destabilizing country after country, community after community.

WRITER GV:

Since we’re not the only ones witnessing this conversation, I think we need a brief history lesson.

DANIEL IMMERWAHR IN HOW TO HIDE AN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF THE GREATER UNITED STATES:

This is how most people envision the United States today, possibly with the addition of Alaska and Hawai’i. The political scientist Benedict Anderson called it the “logo map.” Meaning that if the country had a logo, this shape would be it.

The problem with the logo map, however, is that it isn’t right. Its shape doesn’t match the country’s legal borders. …

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Right, and this doesn’t even touch U.S. military outposts.

DANIEL IMMERWAHR IN HOW TO HIDE AN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF THE GREATER UNITED STATES:

Empire lives on, too, in the overseas bases that dot the globe. It’s easy to think of foreign policy as an affair of the negotiating table: sovereign nation-states sit down to threaten, bargain, or cooperate. But U.S. foreign policy, nearly uniquely, has a territorial component. Britain and France have some thirteen overseas bases between them, Russia has nine, and various other countries have one—in all, there are probably thirty overseas bases owned by non-U.S. countries. The United States, by contrast, has roughly eight hundred, plus agreements granting it access to still other foreign sites. Dozens of countries host U.S. bases. Those that refuse are nevertheless surrounded by them. The Greater United States, in other words, is in everyone’s backyard.

HARSHA WALIA IN UNDOING BORDER IMPERIALISM:

[Border imperialism] is characterized by the entrenchment and reentrenchment of controls against migrants, who are displaced as a result of the violences of capitalism and empire, and subsequently forced into precarious labor as a result of state illegalization and systemic social hierarchies. Border imperialism is a useful analytic framework … it takes us away from an analysis that blames and punishes migrants, or one that forces migrants to assimilate and establish their individual worth.

REGULAR GV:

Ok, now we’ve got some context. Back to Jack Whitten!

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

The main thing is immediate raking, horizontal rakings. They’re organized by chance. When I rake them in a split second, there’s no way of knowing. It’s a gambling situation, but you set up the situation to gamble ...

FACILITATOR GV:

“There’s no way of knowing.” This is how I feel about facilitation. We do set up the situation to gamble. With care, intention—not too tight, not too loose.

I set up the situation with agendas, community agreements, stewarding the “vibe,” and then—terrifyingly—I let go.

JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS:

Some of these paintings have distinct “wounds.” You can see that the pull of The Developer was interrupted or altered.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE (paraphrased):

Before pulling The Developer across the canvas, he would place objects underneath the canvas or on top of the canvas. In some instances, he would do neither: he would pull The Developer, uninterrupted, and a week later, after the paint had dried, he’d come back to “excavate” the painting.

MICHELLE KUO IN JACK WHITTEN: THE MESSENGER:

After a week or more of drying time, Whitten came back with steel wool, a chisel, or a razor-sharp carpenter’s plane and shaved away any remaining relief, exposing areas of paint underneath. He often had forgotten what lay below, so surprises abounded. Whitten recovered past strata, bringing an older layer back up to the surface and, at the same time, disrupting the last layer applied from below. … But this was a kind of collage in reverse: not through accretion but through removal were new shapes revealed; figures emerged through the “back-ground” layer, which was actually on top. The forms resembled raised scars, or keloids, as he called them.

JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS:

The keloids show what’s underneath. Sometimes the paint underneath is moving in the same direction as the rest of the painting. Sometimes the paint underneath is moving in all sorts of other directions—like looking into a whirlpool below, or like a tornado far away.

On the surface of the Slabs, movement is linear. Left to right. Below—what the wounds reveal—movement is churning, inconsistent, multi-directional.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

What’s below—many directions, ambiguity, uncertainty—feels like a peek into something honest. Nothing is linear.

FACILITATOR GV:

We all carry movement into rooms with us—eddies, whirlpools, tornados, calm waters.

Sometimes we assume moving in one direction is simple, as though we’re not all traveling in multiple directions all of the time.

Sometimes moving in a single direction isn’t the answer. How do we make space for the fact that there are many multiples of directions while still working together toward a common goal?

LOGISTICS GV:

Yes, yes, this is all lovely, but we’ve still got to get to the action items section of an agenda.

REGULAR GV:

This makes me dizzy but it feels true.

JACK WHITTEN’S SLABS:

Some of the disruptors are still there—a string, a wire. You can see what made the mark.

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

You can see what made the mark. We know how we got here. It’s not a mystery! Black and brown and Indigenous and colonized folks have been naming it since it began.

This is America. This is empire.

MICHAEL DUFFY IN ON SIBERIAN SALT GRINDER, 1974, AND THE ACRYLIC SLAB PAINTINGS:

Close visual and scientific analysis of these paintings reveals that each of the works is the result of a complex variety of technical decisions and factors: the controlled viscosity of the paint with its virtuosically calibrated thickness; the speed and weight of the Developer; the drying time of each subsequent layer; and the calculated interference of the disruptors.

FACILITATOR GV:

Every Slab painting is a collaboration between Jack Whitten and the paint, the air, gravity, velocity, his own physical strength, the ‘disruptors,’ and chance.

We are not separate from our environment. We can work with our environment. We can work with each other.

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

The idea of system is to remove sentimental involvement which allows the material to speak more on its own, in other words a method for removing the ego. After performing all twenty steps of the systems the painting works or it doesn’t.

FACILITATOR GV:

Right—and in my work, the ‘system’ is the agenda. It’s the Success Spectrum.

It’s listening and removing the self.

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

LOGISTICS GV:

So THAT’S how he did it!

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT GV:

Process documentation is a form of deep care and generosity. Care and respect for the work, and a gift to our future selves and the folks who come after us.

Also, he made art with the rigor of a scientist. At times, the studio log reads like a lab notebook! How lucky for us.

REGULAR GV:

“... + hope for the best” yep

FACILITATOR GV:

There’s so much wrapped up in the second to last step: “Decision made on stretching or destroying.” Jeez, that’s what we’re doing all of the time! When we ask which direction we should go, or if we should continue a conversation or a project.

Which systems we keep, which systems we destroy. Which ideologies we divest from or re-commit to!

WRITER GV:

Ok, this is already LONG and we haven’t even touched his other work. Part One, done.

LOGISTICS GV:

AhhhhhHHHHHH my perfectionst brain is YELLING! How will people know how cool is other work is?! We’ve got to be COMPREHENSIVE! We’ve got to show how GOOD we are!

POLITICAL EDUCATION GV:

Perfectionism is rooted in white supremacy! You have time, we have time. Be friends with “good enough.”

FACILITATOR GV:

Ideas need space and time. We need space and time. Put it down, for now.

ALL THE GVS:

For now.

JACK WHITTEN’S STUDIO LOG:

I really don’t know the meaning of what I am doing or the significance of working this way.

WRITER GV:

ME NEITHER. I feel bonkers. I’ll keep going, though, I think. Maybe. After I stare at the wall for a while.

Thank you for reading and engaging with ART TALKS! I won’t ever put my writing behind a paywall—If you appreciate these pieces, consider contributing to the ART TALKS! fund. This helps me with museum admissions, with art books, and other art-learning activities that cost dollars. No expectations here, at ALL. love u bye

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I write about the art and artists who have helped me heal, helped me get to know myself, and helped me remember that crying in public can be a good thing. This art and these artists have not only helped in some way to heal me—they’ve also strengthened my practice as a facilitator to social impact organizations.

These pieces are presented as (sort of) imagined conversations between my various selves and the art.

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One of the ways I care for myself is by spending time at art museums. I visit with my husband, with friends, and I take myself on solo dates. I carry a tiny notebook where I (sloppily) write my feelings and thoughts. I take photobooth photos by myself. Sometimes I come up with art-based jokes to send to my friends.

I’ve developed a ritual to engage with the art that excites me. If an exhibition or a piece makes me:

• cry

• ask “what are they talking about?!” multiple times

• grunt

• stare in disbelief

…I buy the exhibition book or a biography and I go home to learn everything I possibly can about the artist. If there are documentaries, I watch them. If there are articles, I read them. I yell at my husband and my friends about what I’m learning. I send crooked photos of passages in books with messages in all caps. Once I have a sense of how these folks think and work and live and love, I go back to the exhibition1, and it feels different. Layers become more visible. The work is more relatable and more unbelievable.

This installment of ART TALKS! is born from my many viewings of DOORS (2022), a film by Christian Marclay, on view at the Brooklyn Museum through April 12, 2026.

DOORS is a 54-ish minute film made up of clips of people opening and closing doors.

As a person who rarely has the attention span to sit and really take in video installations, I didn’t think this would be my thing. I was wrong.

Here’s description from the exhibition:

“Conceptual artist and composer Christian Marclay (Swiss American, born 1955) explores the relationship between sound and image across media. In his practice, Marclay considers the afterlife of obsolete ordinary items such as rotary phones, cassette tapes, and analog film. With DOORS (2022), his newest video work, his fascination with everyday objects continues, presenting doorways as portals. The work is an evolution from his acclaimed twenty-four-hour film The Clock (2010), which threads together thousands of film and television clips examining the unfolding of time.

Marclay describes doors as “rich with symbolism.” He adds, “They can hide or reveal, express opposites of light or dark, exterior or interior, open or closed. ... They are commonplace, yet unfamiliar.” He transforms these seemingly mundane barriers into gateways to film history. Shifting between tension-filled, romantic, and comedic, Marclay seamlessly splices silent films, early black-and-white talkies, and modern-day motion pictures, blurring time and space. With each turn of a key or knob, viewers find themselves somewhere new and are left to wonder: Is the film ending or is the next adventure about to begin?”

Every clip is a moment of transition—nothing resolves. At first, this made me uneasy. I looked for a code: what’s the key?!

Is it the outfits? Four clips in a row just showed ladies wearing incredible gowns as they opened and closed doors. Then men in suits and a kid in pajamas. Nope, it’s not the outfits.

Are clips grouped together by time period? If they are, it’s a coincidence.

I turned the piece into something for me to beat, to conquer: “I’m going to make it through all 54 minutes,” I told my husband as I trekked off to the Brooklyn Museum on New Year’s Eve for my third viewing. When I got to the gallery, I made a mental note of my starting point: Ok. I walked in right when someone said, “Sylvia!”

Let’s do this.

I listened intently throughout the film, waiting to hear, “Sylvia!”

To know—with certainty—I made it through. I stayed vigilant. I kept score. I turned the act of sitting and watching into a competition.

Tense! Sheesh!

I did it! I watched for 60 minutes until we got kicked out of the gallery for closing time. It wasn’t the grind I had prepared for. I didn't have to work to stay seated and pay attention—the film is incredibly compelling. I wanted to watch longer, even on a second lap of the film.

On my way out, I practiced my ritual: I grabbed a copy of the Exhibition Catalogue of the Centre Pompidou’s 2022 exhibition of Christian Marclay’s work.

It’s great. He’s a fantastic weirdo.

For example: his “Shuffle” Playing Cards. It’s a deck of playing cards with pictures of sheet music found in the wild—on signs, on plates, on clothing (often without a key signature) that musicians perform. The cards act like a sort of modular score.

Here’s a video of Anthony Coleman, pianist, performing Shuffle at the Whitney Museum of American Art:

…what is he talking about?!

The Exhibition Catalogue opens with a transcript of a conversation between Marclay and the art critic/historian Jean-Pierre Criqui. Their conversation has some great quotes that illuminate Marclay’s thinking. Though Marclay is discussing his artmaking practice, these quotes reflect my own thoughts and feelings about the practice and craft of facilitation2:

On moving away from amplification to acoustic sound and music making:

“I rediscovered a certain freedom by adopting a beginner’s position.”

As a facilitator, a crucial part of my job is not to know—when I’m not an expert in my clients’ field, I can ask powerful questions. Part of my job is to learn with and from my clients.

On silence:

“Silence is what surrounds sound, its negative space, so to speak. Noise can only exist in relation to silence. Silence is also death, because as long as there is noise, there is life.”

What’s not said is just as important as what is said. I tend to negative space in my facilitation practice through honoring silence, acknowledging the paths we don’t take, and being explicit about what we’re not doing.

On Zen:

“Accepting the intervention of chance in my creative process, and knowing that not everything can be explained, or even appreciated, has opened up infinite possibilities. But I always try to find a balance between a certain intellectual rigor and a great freedom in the way I create. It’s a balancing act because there is always a kind of gap between what the mind thinks and what the body does. One should also not neglect the power of humor, which can destabilize our Western rationalism.”

Not too tight, not too loose. Rigor and freedom. Spaciousness! All of my facilitation work is rooted in a goal or a shared purpose, but it’s crucial that we remain open to the possibility that we’ll end up somewhere we couldn’t have imagined. That we have the space to explore something that might mean nothing. Unpredictability is where the magic happens—the time-traveling, the creation, the laughter.

Five days later, I went to see DOORS again. I felt something shift. I surrendered to the piece: what if there is no code? Nothing to beat? Nothing to achieve?

I watched with no goal except to sit and watch for as long as my body allowed.3 No pressure. It felt good. I want to participate in things to participate, not to win or to dominate.

Below I offer a conversation I’ve been having in my head with the piece. This conversation is not a comprehensive analysis—or an analysis at all, really—of DOORS. This conversation is the best way I could think to express how this film and Marclay’s wonderful brain (at least, what we know of it) make me feel. The cast of characters in this “conversation” include:

• DOORS: the film, as interpreted by GV

• FACILITATOR GV: my self who runs GV Advisory and helps folks have big conversations, get unstuck from each other, and make sense of their work and their world in new ways. (In other words, my self who helps groups of people talk to each other.)

• REGULAR GV: my playful, mischievous self

• FASHION GV: the version of myself that loves outfits

• ANALYST GV: my self who is a structured, curious, insufferable question-asker

• WORRIED GV: my self who carries snacks for everyone and asks about blood sugar levels, just in case

• NONBINARY GV, FEMME GV, BOY GV: my genders. self-explanatory. fun!

• KID SITTING NEXT TO ME IN THE GALLERY: a very vocal kid who was having the time of his life during one of my visits. he was great.

DOORS:

There are more unopened doors than opened doors. Some locked, some ignored. More unknown possibilities than known possibilities.

FACILITATOR GV:

We don’t need to open every door or conversation. We might open one conversation and realize it’s not the one we were looking for. Good news: there are other doors!

Also, some doors are not for us to open.

REGULAR GV:

But why is that door locked? What’s behind that door? Open the door! OPEN ALL THE DOORS!

DOORS:

Sometimes the doors stay shut, but they’re not all completely opaque. We see part of what’s on the other side through the peephole or the keyhole.

FACILITATOR GV:

Some doors should stay shut. Some doors are only for looking through, not for opening.

REGULAR GV:

Open all the doors.

FACILITATOR GV:

No.

ANALYST GV:

I wonder what the ratio of doors without peepholes to doors with peepholes is.

FACILITATOR GV:

Are you trying to solve the art?

DOORS:

Doors as portals to multiple universes. Something is always happening, somewhere.

FACILITATOR GV:

There are infinite possibilities, and no wrong answers, as long as we’re not intentionally causing harm (and as long as we are accountable for the harm we inevitably cause by mistake).

Multiple universes can help us understand grief, diverging paths, and ourselves.

ANALYST GV:

Are the portals connected? If someone were to open the same door at a different time of day, would it lead somewhere new?

REGULAR GV:

There are universes with better timelines, timelines where folks are free and my dad is still alive.

There are also universes with worse timelines. This timeline is gnarly in the global sense, and also I love my friends and my life.

Hmm.

DOORS:

We only see folks pass through a room, between doors. Rarely do we see anyone sit down, and we definitely don’t see anyone “arrive.”

We don’t know what comes before the clip or after the clip. Nothing resolves.

FACILITATOR GV:

Facilitation is about stewarding tension. It’s about remembering that “resolution” doesn’t always look the way we think it will. “Resolution” doesn’t always happen. Tension and friction are a huge part of the work.

REGULAR GV:

I can’t leave ‘cause what if I miss something?! (the tension is addicting!)

FACILITATOR GV:

Right, yes, tension can be addicting. Drama and catastrophe can be addicting.

adrienne maree brown says: “Engage the tension: don’t indulge the drama.”

REGULAR GV:

Yeah, but … I like this tension.

We should be allowed to have snacks in this gallery.

DOORS:

Every transition is seamless, but not every transition is gentle. Some transitions feel jarring and abrupt, and that’s why they work.

FACILITATOR GV:

Maybe we don’t have to work so hard to engineer gentle transitions. They have their place, but some things aren’t smooth, and that’s honest! That’s the work!

Sometimes we need to notice and name and feel a transition, not smooth it over. I’m not in the business of making transitions palatable.

Navigable? Yes. Palatable? Not always.

REGULAR GV:

UGH but I want people to like me. I can’t believe I have to unpack this I-need-to-care-for-everyone-so-I-get-their-approval thing for the rest of my life.

FACILITATOR GV:

That’s the work, baybee!

DOORS:

Some individual clips repeat more than others. Some sequences of clips repeat. Some pairs and trios of clips stay together throughout the piece. Other clips stand on their own. Some clips are repeated AND mirrored, so the person we saw walking across the screen to the left is now walking to the right.

We think we’ve been here before, but a new sequence—a different before and after—shows us that we haven’t. Not at this moment, in this room, with these people.

FACILITATOR GV:

We often need to have different versions of different conversations. Not relitigating! Revisiting, maybe. Folks may think they’ve had a conversation, but haven’t found the sweet spot yet. We think we’ve been here before, but we haven’t.

REGULAR GV:

Wow this makes me feel so weird and good. Time is a spiral or something.

Joshua Burnside says, “Seems time it is no javelin, soaring, glinting / In the sun, more like the track that circles round each lap / You found you’re back where you began”4

Time is a spiral.

DOORS:

Sometimes we need to see the clip three times to make sense of it.

FACILITATOR GV:

Repetition helps us learn!

FASHION GV:

There’s that woman in the fantastic gown again! Is that silk AND fur?! Also how did she get her hair to do that?

KID SITTING NEXT TO ME IN THE GALLERY:

Why is her face mean instead of nice?

FASHION GV:

I think she’s “smizing.” I think she looks fantastic.

DOORS:

Depending on the before and after, the feeling of the clip changes.

A clip of a child hiding from a person who seems to be a headmaster or teacher seems joyful, lighthearted, and silly when it’s preceded by a clip of someone walking calmly through a room.

When that same clip is preceded by a gunman chasing someone, the clip of the child hiding feels more sinister. More high stakes.

FACILITATOR GV:

Context matters! The container matters! Where we come from matters!

WORRIED GV:

Oh, no, I thought that was cute the first time around but now I’m worried about the kid.

DOORS:

Space and time behave differently depending on their content—when clips repeat in rapid succession (within minutes or seconds rather than tens of minutes), time contracts, and space feels infinite. Time feels faster and slower all at once.

FACILITATOR GV:

Sometimes twenty minutes can hold hours. Sometimes hours feel like minutes. We morph time and space, and time and space morph us.

ANALYST GV:

DOORS:

The repetition is both disorienting and grounding. It makes me ask: “Wait. Have I been here before?” (disorienting) and then I settle in: “oh, I HAVE been here before.” (grounding)

Repeated clips feel like landmarks.

FACILITATOR GV:

This is why we need anchors! We need landmarks! Community Agreements, shared purpose, consent, predictable bathroom and meal breaks.

After an adventure, we need dry land or base camp to return to.

DOORS:

Gender presentation is all over the place. When doors open and/or close, men become women, women become men, men become children.

The constant is human bodies moving through space.

NONBINARY GV:

Gender is a spectrum!

FEMME GV:

Gender is a spectrum! These dresses are fabulous!

BOY GV:

YEAH! This makes me feel good. I want some snacks.

DOORS:

Even though we don’t have the story behind why an actor is walking through a door, there are so many emotions in these seconds-long clip. Fear, anticipation, joy, desperation, terror, anger, love, hope, exhaustion, annoyance … So much can happen in a matter of seconds.

FACILITATOR GV:

The energy in a room can shift in seconds. No one has to acually say anything for folks to feel it. We’re constantly communicating, whether we mean to or not.

REGULAR GV:

WHAT IS SHE SO UPSET ABOUT?! AND WHY DOES THAT GUY HAVE A GUN?

DOORS:

There’s a lot of mischief in transitions. A lot of sneaky behavior.

REGULAR GV:

hehehehe

DOORS:

The spectator has immense power. The piece starts (for the spectator) when the spectator walks in the room. It ends (for the spectator) when the spectator leaves. Everyone’s experience of art is going to be different all of the time, but there’s something about this that’s so personal and so universal. It centers and decenters the viewer.

You start separately. We watch together.

FACILITATOR GV:

We all hold power. Some more than others, and the types of power vary. But we’re not passengers. What might staggered start and end times mean for the power-sharing in a group?

ANALYST GV:

Hmm…

A KID SITTING NEXT TO ME IN THE GALLERY:

“what’s happening? Where is he going? Is that a mean guy?”

ALL OF THE GVS:

I don’t know, kid. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but wow it sure is fun to watch people walk in and out of doors.

Thank you for reading and engaging with ART TALKS! I won’t ever put my writing behind a paywall—If you appreciate these pieces, consider contributing to the ART TALKS! fund. This helps me with museum admissions, with art books, and other art-learning activities that cost dollars. No expectations here, at ALL. love u bye

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In ART TALKS! pieces, I write about the art and artists who have helped me heal, helped me get to know myself, and helped me remember that crying in public can be a good thing. This art and these artists have also strengthened my practice as a facilitator to social impact organizations.

These pieces are presented as (sort of) imagined conversations between my various selves and specific pieces or exhibitions of art.

NOTE: I am not an art historian, and sometimes I’ve waded through art jargon and feelings of inadequacy to learn more about the artists who have broken me open in some way. In these pieces, I’ll use layman’s terms and layman’s understanding: I love the art that I love because it makes me feel things.

One of the ways I care for myself is by spending time at art museums. I visit with my husband, with friends, and I take myself on solo dates. I carry a tiny notebook where I (sloppily) write my feelings and thoughts. I take photobooth photos by myself. Sometimes I come up with art-based jokes to send to my friends.

I’ve developed a ritual to engage with the art that excites me. If an exhibition or a piece makes me:

• cry

• ask “what are they talking about?!” multiple times

• grunt

• stare in disbelief

…I buy the exhibition book or a biography and I go home to learn everything I possibly can about the artist. If there are documentaries, I watch them. If there are articles, I read them. I yell at my husband and my friends about what I’m learning. I send crooked photos of passages in books accompanied by messages in all caps. Once I have a sense of how the artist thinks and works and lives and loves, I go back to the exhibition. It always feels different.1 Layers become more visible. The work is more relatable and more unbelievable.

This installment of ART TALKS! is born from my visits to the MoMA’s Ruth Asawa Retrospective, which closes on February 7! If you’re in NYC, get amongst it!

Ruth Asawa’s work is bonkers. From the Exhibition:

“Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective charts the artist’s lifelong explorations of materials and forms in a variety of mediums, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public works.“

I didn’t know anything about Ruth Asawa, except that my friend Gabi told me I should see her work. My husband and I walked through the galleries and our mouths opened wider and wider as we saw Asawa’s lifetime of work. We’d turn a corner and there’d be MORE?! And they were even MORE wild than the works before?!

WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT?!

Before seeing Asawa’s work, I didn’t realized how solidly and stubbornly the idea of the lonely, starving, suffering artist had taken root in my brain and heart. Walking through, I found myself thinking:

“She must have sacrificed a lot for this work.”

“There must have been nothing else in her studio or home in order to make room for these works.”

“It must have been quiet. Austere. Minimal.”

There’s so much to unpack here. Woof.

As I’m writing this, I’m wondering how much the parts of my white american brain that are soaked in internalized capitalism took the fact that Asawa and her family were forcibly incarcerated by the U.S. Government during World War 2 and said: “suffering, suffering, suffering. great art only comes from great suffering.”2

Hmm.

As these parts of my brain hummed and clanked in the background, the looped wire works hit me the hardest. I kept trying to find her starting point, to figure out just how “much” made up these pieces:

• How much wire? (space)

• How many hours did they take? (time)

• How much do these weigh? (gravity)

On a subsequent visit, I realized that I was trying to solve the art. (More on this later.)

My husband—also trying to solve the art—pointed out that all of her wire works were called UNTITLED. Sorry, what?!

And here’s the thing: the wire works don’t represent all of her work. Not even close! Once I looked up from trying to solve the wire forms, I realized that drawings, lithographs, and paintings—delicate, beautiful, colorful—are all over the exhibition.

HMM.

A section in the exhibition is dedicated to her public art and her work with schoolchildren. What?! Wait, my brain decided that all of this was austere and serious and a little bit melancholy.

What are you talking about, “collaborating with schoolchildren?!”

What are you talking about, “she illustrated a guide to container gardening in partnership with her friends?!”

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, “SHE PUBLISHED A HOW-TO ON MILK CARTON STRUCTURES AND WORE A MILK-CARTON CROWN?!”

Hmm. We’re definitely getting the book.

On the way out, I picked up the Exhibition Catalogue and Jordan Troeller’s Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury. One of the blurbs on the back of Troeller’s book mentions “collaborative care” — more evidence that my “austere” theory was completely wrong. Just look at the cover:

The books are both so great. They reflect Asawa’s joy, community, care, curiosity, and presence. My ideas of “austerity” are gone.

Each book offers some of Asawa’s thoughts, in her own words. These ideas translate to so many things, and they got me thinking about my own facilitation practice.

Ruth Asawa on her wire sculptures:

“I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing it from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.”

A core part of facilitating for social impact orgs (or anyone, for that matter3) is stewarding space. A facilitator takes up space, and a good facilitator does this in a way that creates even more space for the folks in the room. This makes me think about abundance—”space” isn’t a finite resource in this context. There aren’t 10 pieces of space that we have to scramble and compete for.

In more general terms: we don’t have to fuck each other over to survive. Solidarity. Abundance. The air is for the people.

Ruth Asawa on calligraphy and negative space:

“When you’re working in calligraphy, you’re not watching what your brush is doing, but you’re watching the spaces around it. You’re watching what it isn’t doing, so that you’re taking care of both the negative space and the positive space. In a way it’s like if you begin to apply that in a practical way, if you talk about one person, if you concentrate on oneself, you don’t really see yourself. But if you don’t concern yourself with yourself and you begin to become aware of the people around you, then that defines you.”

What’s not said is just as important as what is said. The folks not in the room are just as important as the folks who are. I tend to negative space in my facilitation practice through honoring silence, acknowledging the paths we don’t take, and being explicit about what we’re not doing.

Ruth Asawa on her artmaking process:

“Begin in the middle and move out from there. Let the medium do the work.”

We each have a middle. None of us can do this work alone. None of us are saviors. We can trust our colleagues to do their work from their middles, and if we’re supposed to, we’ll meet each other along the way and create new middles. This makes me think about surrender and trust. Let the medium do the work. Trust the people.

Also, some middles are not ours! Mind your business. Let the people work.

When this essay (or whatever it is) goes live, I will have visited the exhibition four times, and I will continue to visit until it closes on February 7.4

Below, I offer a conversation I’ve been having in my head with the pieces in the exhibition. This conversation is not a comprehensive analysis—or an analysis at all, really—of Asawa’s work.5 This conversation is the best way I could think to express how Asawa’s work and her ways of living and loving make me feel.

CAST OF CHARACTERS, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

• ASAWA’S WIRE: forms made from wire! Some are looped and woven like baskets, some are tied and bent and tied and bent and tied and bent again, some were placed in an electroplating tank for months where they grew layers of rough, green “skin.”

• ANALYST GV: my self who is a structured, curious, insufferable question-asker

• RULE-FOLLOWING GV: my self who, despite my politics, is terrified to break the rules and terrified of getting yelled at

• ASAWA: quotes from Ruth Asawa, pulled from the Exhibition Catalogue and Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury

• FACILITATOR GV: my self who runs GV Advisory and helps folks have big conversations, get unstuck from each other, and make sense of their work and their world in new ways. (In other words, my self who helps groups of people talk to each other.)

• REGULAR GV: my playful, mischievous self

• LOGISTICS GV: related to Analyst GV. My self who wants to know how and when things happen

• FRIENDSHIP GV: my self that is obsessed with friendship

• ASAWA’S 2D WORK: drawings, paintings, works made from repeated use of stamps …

  • Within Asawa’s 2D work are ASAWA’S DRAWINGS OF BOUQUETS. I’m breaking these out on their own because their stories make me lose my mind in the best way. They’re delicate line drawings of bouquets gifted to her over the years by friends, her children, her husband (who grew beautiful flowers in their yard). The bouquet-gifter often received a drawing of their bouquet as a gift.

• CONSULTANT GV: my project-managey, “I think I have an idea for how to do this” self, who has a part-time job at GV Advisory

• ASAWA’S PUBLIC ART: fountains, murals, a rock garden … most—if not all—done in collaboration with schoolchildren and fellow artists

• THE DOORS TO ASAWA’S HOME: Doors. Doors Asawa carved from local Redwood, in partnership with her kids. Each kid got a “wave” to carve. These doors were the entry to the family home in San Francisco for many years.

• ASAWA’S MASKS: The masks Asawa made from casts of the faces of her friends, family and neighbors (from what I’ve read, these groups were one and the same). The masks hung on her house and documented the comings and goings of her community.

• ASAWA’S INSTRUCTIONS: throughout her career, Ruth Asawa published different instructions that laid out how to do what she did. Some of these informed classes she taught. The instructions I know of (though there are likely more) include steps for her patented folded paper panel, origami, and milk carton structures.

These are the voices (some imagined, some real) you’ll hear/read in the conversation presented below.

Ok! Let’s go!

ASAWA’S WIRE:

The forms are transparent in some ways: you can see inside of and through them. Looking into the center “lobe” or “sphere” feels like looking back in time at old starlight, at the big bang, at a singular event. Looking through the forms and trying to trace them back to their origin feels like an exploration of space, of history, of time. One can see the complete, large whole at the same time as the small beginning.

ANALYST GV:

But where is the starting point?

ASAWA:

“Begin in the middle and start from there. Let the medium do the work.”

ANALYST GV:

OK BUT WHICH MIDDLE? MIDDLE IN RELATIONSHIP TO WHAT?

ASAWA’S WIRE:

The beginning is here, somewhere.

FACILITATOR GV:

Some things are not meant to be known. It’s enough to know that the beginning is there, somewhere.

ANALYST GV:

Hmf.

REGULAR GV:

Some of these look like they might be wormholes. I wanna climb in there and see where/when I emerge.

ASAWA’S WIRE:

The forms change as the viewer moves. Vantage point matters.

FACILITATOR GV:

Right, Vantage point matters. Where we sit in the organization, where we sit in the world, where we’re coming from … vantage point matters.

LOGISTICS GV:

Wait, is there ANOTHER form nestled in there?

RULE-FOLLOWING GV:

Am I allowed to just sit on the floor for a second? I don’t think I’m allowed.6

ASAWA’S WIRE:

One can never see the whole form from one place. One is invited to move. The work invites, but doesn’t demand, movement. The work doesn’t demand anything, but it’s not passive.

REGULAR GV:

I feel compelled to move, to walk around the pieces. To sit on the floor! To see from all possible angles. I wish there were ladders in the gallery.

At the same time, when I stay still, I think the pieces are moving. Slowly, gently.

FACILITATOR GV:

Each of us impacts the air we pass through. What if the movement of the pieces is a reflection of how this group of people is moving, together and separately?

A series of quiet, awkward, half-apologies as we all try to get a version of the same photo. But! The photos are all slightly different, and they will be shared with different people. They might not be shared at all.

Time travel. Multiple universes. Many possible futures.

ASAWA’S WIRE:

Something can be frozen and in motion all at once. Frozen enough for the forms to look like individual frames of a film of a water droplet falling into more water and splashing back out. The form is steady, but it still moves.

REGULAR GV:

I feel so weird and good.

ASAWA’S WIRE:

Sometimes the only way you know how many forms there are in a piece is by reading the titles, like UNTITLED (S.398, Hanging Eight-Lobed, Four-Part, Discontinuous Surface Form within a Form with Spheres in the Seventh and Eighth Lobes) or UNTITLED (S.395, Hanging Asymmetrical Twenty-Three Interlocking Bubbles), or UNTILED (S.797, Hanging Two-Lobed, Three-Layered Continuous Form within a Form).

LOGISTICS GV:

Thank gods she developed this taxonomy with her family and named them the way she did. I keep going crosseyed trying to count the forms.

FRIENDSHIP GV:

She developed the naming system with FAMILY?! Even the taxonomy was developed in loving community?! I can’t.

FACILITATOR GV:

Things don’t need flowery, mysterious names to be worthy or creative or beautiful. Call the thing the thing. There’s something so lovely and generous about clarity—it doesn’t seem like she wanted to outsmart the viewer. Up-front. Honest. No tricks, no gatekeeping.

There’s something here, too, about openness: I’ll just tell you what it is. I won’t make you guess. I’ll let you in on it from the very start. Communicate early and often!

LOGISTICS GV:

HOW DID SHE MAKE THESE?

How long was the wire? Was it one long wire? If so, how did she not go crazy in the beginning of a piece, working with a very long piece? How much time did one of these take? Which ones did the kids help out on? Where did she store them? How heavy are these?

FACILITATOR GV:

What would it look like for me to stop trying to solve the art?! Maybe the point is not to reverse engineer it, not to try to figure it out. Not to know it.

LOGISTICS GV:

Ugh, fine.

ASAWA’S WIRE:

(again) The forms are transparent in some ways you can see through and inside of. Looking into the middle “lobe” or “sphere” feels like looking back in time at old starlight, at the big bang, at a singular event.

Looking through the forms and trying to trace them back to their origin feels like an exploration of space, of history, of time.

MOST OF ASAWA’S WORK:

Motion in unknown directions at an unknown velocity.

ANALYST GV:

Am I looking in? Out? Down? Up? Am I moving? Am I staying still? Where is the movement coming from?!

ASAWA’S WIRE:

(again) One can see the complete—often large—whole at the same time as the small beginning.

FACILITATOR GV:

Process. So much of the work is about the process. The process is the point. What comes out of the process will likely be helpful, but that’s not actually the point! The awkwardness, the stumbling. The moments of tension and moments of release. That’s why I love facilitation—we can make the process visible!

ASAWA’S WIRE:

The forms cast shadows. Shadows on the floor, on the walls. Shadows intersecting with each other.

FACILITATOR GV:

What would a new wire form look like if it were based on the shadow of another form? How might different folks interpret the shadows? They might look totally different! I think there’s an exercise somewhere in here.

ASAWA’S 2D WORK:

The moisture changes the paper or the fabric. The work is always playing with dimensions and physicality. 2D is actually 3D.

The moisture has left an echo of the process.

FACILITATOR GV:

“An echo of the process.” Process leaves behind evidence—an echo. The process can change us, heal us, hurt us … all of these things. Facilitation comes with responsibility. Facilitation is stewardship of time, space, emotion, and wisdom.

We—as humans living in the world together—have these shadows, these echoes. We’re carrying so much and leaving so much behind all of the time. What does it mean to be responsible for our shadows, our echoes? How would our work be different if we tended to our shadows and echoes with care?

CONSULTANT GV:

Responsible knowledge management, baybee! Process documentation! Clear, compassionate norms around information sharing and storage!

FACILITATOR GV:

We need space for aftercare, too. For naming the process after we’re finished, for recovery. For metabolizing the work! Sometimes we’ve got to sleep on it!

MOST OF ASAWA’S WORK:

Wire, ink, and paint are mediums, sure. But so are the air, the paper, the shadows, the light, and the space. What we think of as the main “medium” is held by all of these other things. And they’re not passive!

FACILITATOR GV:

Right! An “agenda” isn’t the medium for facilitation work. It’s the room. The culture, the vibes. The people! We’re constantly collaborating. Facilitation is not “my” work. It’s a collaborative art, morphed by the folks in the room (and the folks not in the room).

ASAWA’S PUBLIC ART:

These fountains and murals were created in collaboration with San Francisco schoolchildren. The kids had ideas and they had agency to act on those ideas.

FACILITATOR GV:

Collaboration is everything.

REGULAR GV:

So much JOY! Also, we should trust kids more than we do.

THE DOORS TO ASAWA’S HOME:

Massive, carved from Redwood. Carved in partnership with her children and installed as the entrance to their family home.

FACILITATOR GV:

Her art was not separate from her home, from her family, from her humor or relationships. She didn’t sacrifice her art for her family or her family for her art. They were all parts of her world, working together, dancing together.

Creativity doesn’t have to come from suffering, from violence, from deprivation.

REGULAR GV:

I’ve been unlearning the idea that growth comes from deprivation. Uprooting internalized capitalism is a lifelong project.

ASAWA’S WIRE:

Intersection doesn’t mean destruction. Intersection is part of what keeps the forms whole, together. Each individual form has boundaries, even if they can be hard for the viewer to discern—they’re there.

FACILITATOR GV:

We depend on each other but we don’t destroy each other. Boundaries are love.

FRIENDSHIP GV:

I love my friends. I love my marriage.

ASAWA’S WIRE:

Some of the forms are “nested” within other forms.

FACILITATOR GV:

Safe. Held. Not squeezed or compressed, but solid. Structurally sound. These are community agreements, shared purpose, clear communication. Boundaries.

FRiENDSHIP GV:

I LOVE MY FRIENDS I LOVE MY MARRIAGE

MOST OF ASAWA’S WORK:

The methods repeat. The subjects repeat. Masks of friends and neighbors, casts of baby feet. Loops and loops of wires over a span of many years. The repetition feels soothing. As we move through her work chronologically, the method tightens up. Repetition does not devalue the work.

FACILITATOR GV:

Repetition does not devalue the work. Repetition can be an act of care. Repetition is sometimes necessary. Repetition is how we hone our craft(s).

The whole Retrospective is like watching someone hone their craft. To see the progress—I don’t want to say “improvement,” because it’s not exactly that—over six decades is such a vulnerable, lovely, humbling, and human experience.

REGULAR GV:

Sometimes we repeat things because we love them and they’re fun. Embrace frivolity! Do a thing for the sake of the thing! Baby feet are CUTE!

ASAWA’S DRAWINGS OF BOUQUETS & MASKS:

The drawings of bouquets and the masks are histories of friendship and love. The flowers her husband grew, the bouquets her friends and family gifted her. The masks that hung in her home were the faces of friends, frozen in time.

ASAWA:

“. . . when I cast a face I know I’m just capturing a minute of a person. Or if I cast a foot of a baby I know that baby’s foot will grow and grow and grow. . . . I know it’s going to go away but I like that, I like that moment.”7

REGULAR GV:

So much of her work is a monument to her friendships. These frozen, lovely moments in time are artifacts of love.

ASAWA’S INSTRUCTIONS:

Simple, illustrated instructions say “you can do this, too” and “come with me.”

FACILITATOR GV:

Share the process! Creative Commons BY 4.0 licenses! We don’t have to commit to scarcity! Knowledge as a collective good!8

REGULAR GV:

Inviting other people along makes things so much more rich. No pretension! Let’s hang out! Yeah!

ASAWA’S WIRE:

Wire forms in miniature. (According to Janet Bishop’s piece in the Exhibition Catalogue, A Seat at the Table: At Home with Ruth Asawa, these miniatures were born out of an assignment Asawa’s son received in high school: to build a shoebox model of a room in their house. This became a family project. Since some of Asawa’s wire forms were hanging in the house, she made miniature versions of the sculptures. Naturally.)

REGULAR GV:

She did this BECAUSE OF HER SON’S SCHOOL PROJECT?!

WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT?!

ASAWA:

“Doing is living. That is all that matters.”

ALL OF THE GVS:

Love as an action, love as a verb.9 I’m never gonna be the same.

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