Thanks Homay King, Erin Schoneveld, Natalie Hijinx, and Rachel Stern at the Phebe Anna Thorne School. They sent me documentation of their Extra Medium works in their new homes. Homay has my work next to a Joan Miró lithograph. Erin has another collage from a few years ago, so there are two, one on top of another. Natalie has me in a sea of other interesting works. Rachel’s work is currently hanging at the school, surrounded as it is by photos of me and the children during their visit to the exhibition.
Their promises:
Homay:
I promise that when I look at this work on my wall, in varying illuminations, in seasonal atmospheres and temperaments, proximate to other objects pleasant or unpleasant, thinking or not thinking, I will reflect on the way it came into my world, I will think of John and Extra Medium and our conversations and work in the months leading up to it and the years of study and fellowship preceding. I will continue to ponder about the fierce pull of the pictorial, the desire to identify and label figures; I will attune to art’s capacities to unexpress the expressible, the powers of abstraction, and the visual pleasure that is to be had in not immediately knowing what something is. Thus do I hope to create space for endless discovery within a single image over long durations of time.
Erin:
I will drive to Boston and get into a women’s eight boat and row down / race down the Charles River During the 5000m race. I will yell “Extra Medium” with jubilation and intensity. At the end of the race I will take a photograph of the boat and me and send to you.”
Rachel
I will talk with the Thorne Kindergarten class to choose something we can do all together to see our space in a new way.”
Natalie’s promise is encoded in this image:
Which I of course have to ask her about.
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