Loss+Ratio+detail
Photo courtesy Aaliyah Gupta

So far I have just the one collaboration to share, but I’ve titled this section of the website in the plural in a spirit of hope for and openness to future collaborations.

In 2019, I had the pleasure of working with visual artists Aaliyah Gupta and Schuyler Dawson, whom I met at Willapa Bay AiR, on “Loss Ratio.” The mixed-media piece was exhibited at the Core Gallery in Seattle during the summer of 2019.

The image here represents just a detail; you can see the entire piece at Aaliyah’s website. Here’s the text I contributed to the project; it turned out to be a kind of prose poem:

I could kill someone with this thing. Instead, I hold up our shredded map. It’s missing the part that points to true north. It’s missing the part that says, You are here. It’s missing its legend, and without legends, can history even begin? 

It is always fire season now. Have you noticed? 

I uphold our pitted cartography, skin crawling, angling for attention, for tension, for the red line, taut, bloodline, plumb-line, ashes to ashes, rust to rust. Every hole in the map a former address, someplace unwholed, someplace that might read, You were here. 

Here is the Lost and Found where you report your losses, not expecting them to show up. The line, a loss leader. These lines, loss lieder. 

Like I said: It is always fire season now. Like I said: I could kill someone with this thing.