Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round 6

Online Art Exhibition

September 4, 2020

Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round 6

In March 2020 when we went on lockdown due to the pandemic, the Shoebox PR team created “Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance” as a way to stay connected and to check in with and support each other. We are now going into Round 7 and have enjoyed the process, experiences and friendships that we have made. The project draws on the tradition of Jazz and Exquisite Corpse as a way for the artists to ping pong creatively off of each other. We are looking forward to continuing on for as long as we need to.

Please join us for the opening reception of the online exhibition via zoom Saturday September 5, 3-5pm pst.

Featured Artists:

Jamia Weir, Anne M Bray, Sarah Haskell, Anita Sinclair, Michelle Lopate, Deborah McAfee, Michal Greenboim, Kerrie smith, Marthe Aponte, Stacie Birky Greene, Kayla Cloonan, Angela Brooks, David Forlano, Mizz Conchi, Kristine Augustyn, Carla M. Wilson, Tami S Tsark, Jason Hadley, Catherine W Singer, Adrienne Cole, Aazam Irilian, Ann Storc, Francisco Alvarado, Stefania Aldabarab Breveglieri, Shaney Watters, Allegra Bick-Maurischat, Elena Victorovna Stromberger, Sally Baxter, Pascha Goodwin, June Stoddard, Sean-Michael Gettys, Brenda Oelbaum, Ibuki Kuramochi, Michele Mekel, Annie Clavel, Laura Henneforth, Arpad Petrass, Adeola D-Aiyeloja, M Melis Basmaci, Maria Sathaliya, Xavier Cázares Cortéz, Yvonne Jongeling, Frances Tseng, Jeremy Hight, Elizabeth Flinsch, Galina Kovshilovsky, Cristi Lyon, Jody Zellen, Rhiannon Barry, Kellan Barnebey King, Lark Larisa Pilinsky, Eva-Marie Amiya, Faina Kumpan, Heather Arndt, Ashley Violet Hester, Sarah Granett, Jessica Nora, Nancy Good, Madeline Arnault, Stacy Prihoda, BARD (Barbara Ayala Rugg Diehl), Lucy Boyd-Wilson, Sarah Pavsner Mael, Kristine Schomaker, Genie Davis

Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round #1 can be seen here Round 2 can be seen here Round 3 can be seen here and Round #4 can be seen here Round 5 can be seen here

Round 7 is open for participation through September 13 at 4pm pst. Info on how to submit is here

Cover image by Sarah Haskell

Yvonne Jongeling and Frances Tseng (Umami)

2 - UmamiArt - Connected — 2 – UmamiArt – Connected

Stefania Aldebaran Breveglieri and Shaney Watters

Stacy Prihoda and BARD

Stacy Birky Greene and Kayla Cloonan

Sarah Garnett and Jessica Nora

Sally Baxter and Pascha Goodwin

Nancy Good and Madeline Arnault

Michele Mekel and Annie Clavel

Maria Sathaliya and 2 Xavier Cázares Cortéz

Lucy Boyd-Wilson and Sarah Pavsner Mael

Laura Henneforth and Arpad Petrass

Kristine Schomaker and Genie Davis

2 Genie Davis

Transitions

I try to value me,
whoever I may be.
I tried to have everything,
conventionally.

I chose quickly but not wisely.
I wanted to
move on to the good part.
I want to savor

new starts, transitions.
I try to see the treasure
of now,
even as it stands.

There are certain small
things I never appreciated.
I had grand plans,
I loved …

what I loved.
I was bold for a while.
Driving in the desert
dirt roads, red rocks

beer in hand, radio singing
wheels forward, always
spinning forward. When I
was in a holding pattern,

I wept. Rolling on,
my children saw
icicles glaciers trout streams
hot springs geysers tropical

islands distant galaxies through
telescopes. Of course, much
of that was for me,
as is a garden now.

Reverse the view and
from the scope,
everything seems so small,
as we are ourselves

pinpricks of light,
silvery against a collapsing
darkness.
This is me.

I look for the worth in that
tiny flame. I take in
the momentary stillness.
Transitions come
in many sizes.

4 Genie Davis

I See You

Let me tell you how it is
or how it will be.
I see you
in the mirror of my soul.

I see you in a slice
of the moon
in the shiny glass,
through a night portal.

Looking for meteors
we stand in the velvet
blackness of the desert.
Wondering what it is

in the night sky,
under the night sky,
you and I,
stars in our eyes.

I see you glimmer
and streak out
past the house of
mosaics,

past the lone tree,
along the softly snowy road,
before we sink into the
steaming dark water.

I see you in the reflection.
in the undulating, mutable
waters of the heart
I like best to write stories,

stories that make you weep
written in the Sanskrit of the soul.
I see nothing really,
that’s my secret.

Only my own
words.

6 Genie Davis

Glow

I am a flame in the darkness.
I am a light in a dream.
I am the rock
that I cling to

I am the meaning of me.
I have a wish box beside me,
A child’s toy with a glow.
I am the rainbow of nothing,

I am the shell I call home.
Should I fly on tomorrow,
I’ll streak by
to let you know.

I am the firefly flicker,
the quick flash a meteor shows.
Watch me shiver and tremble,
watch me dance as I go.

8 Genie Davis

Lights

The lights burn like a soul,
or maybe my soul is a moth drawn to them
beneath this inchoate skin.
I want its time.

It’s warmth
It’s want
It’s fear
It’s strength.

It is me.
Moth and flame,
Joy that went
and came again.

How I feel:
choose carefully.
How I am:
choose fierce.

Touch me,
draw me,
want me,
see me.

Externals don’t work
anymore.
But then they never did.
Moth to light —

you don’t understand
and it is
not worth saying.
It all

Dissolves in the light.

10 Genie Davis

Magic

There is magic –
in tears time
light rust
paint.

In time passing,
like droplets of water falling slowly.
In light shifting,
fluid ribbons, shafts of flame.

In the translucence of tears,
the opacity of rust.
The pictures we paint,
in the words we whisper –

Magic.
Slight of hand,
flip of fate.
A matter of faith:

say this prayer,
keep this space.
Hold the heart
in the gauze of grace.

Chant the incantation,
run this sacred race.
Find the moment you remembered –
magic make.

12 Genie Davis

New Moon

New moon in Leo –
light a candle,
say a prayer.
You are the embodiment

of moonlight –
you are everywhere.
Have you found yourself
in that wonder?

Have you whispered to the
sky? Kissed by
Jupiter and Saturn and
every star sifting by.

Set your course from them
and wait for
that sweet eternal shift,
you will know it

when you feel it,
the new moon
cosmic shift.
And somewhere

deep inside you,
it trembles to be born.
What lies within the body,
like the rose,

beneath the thorns.

14 Genie Davis

Blessed

Blessed to be here
in the now.
To have known you,
to see Venus

at daybreak.
I was exhausted
long before what happened,
happened.

Time is a thing
I get impatient with,
and forget the small
moments when you hold

your breath.
There is always grieving,
waiting with regret
but the angels are watching.

Just whisper.
You are the sound of rain,
of multiple goodbyes,
of love and pain.

Which perhaps nest,
like yin and yang,
in the winged
flutter of your hands.

15a Kristine Schomaker

The Doctor is In

Our time is fleeting.
Who controls it?
Where does it go?

The Angels watch over us.
Don’t blink.
Time will pass you by.

We navigate the universe
in a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey
Sort of way.

We live in a world
that is timely
or timeless

Is timing everything?
We are here right now
frozen in time.

The cats know.
They watch
and wait.

Life is akward,
and absurd,
and beautiful.

Who says?
Who leads?
Who loves?

Time is an illusion.
It is a mask
meant to hide.

Who needs time?
Stop wasting time.
Start living.

16b Genie Davis

Travel

This corporeal flesh,
this body in which we stay,
goes beyond time
and place.

There is a passage
through beams of light
in the derelict
refuge of the night.

And so we travel.
There were moments
of bliss difficult
to imagine.

And grief impossible
to comprehend,
swallowed whole
into the gravitational pull

of darkness,
only to rise,
bleak metaphor
again.

What you think
doesn’t really matter.
Body floating
through space and time,

a vestigia limb,
heart and mind.
In the end we converge
into a single line.

We follow that path,
and find it curves
ever inward.
We travel …

We learn.

18 Genie Davis

Just a Little Pleasure

When the fairy lights come out to play,
my body fades,
my shadow stays.
I’ll carry you home, sweet shade.

You are the essence of me,
you will always be.
We’re ships sailing on a strange dark sea,
dancing for just a little pleasure.

Today, tonight, tomorrow –
don’t stray.
The stars will chase
your blues away.

At night, the warm stones
may come alive,
the spells that enchant,
the elfin wild.

I don’t know who I will ever be,
made of roses and flesh —
and something far more
transitory.

We pass, we pride, we wail, we seek,
we judge, reconcile, refuse to speak.
We take, we give, we move, we stay –
for a little pleasure at the end of the day.

22 Genie Davis

Stop

Land of some
who are sometimes free,
Faithless promise
of liberty –

of we I despair.
Stop the way it is,
and seems to forever
be.

The disregard
the hate
the seething
iniquity.

My own flesh glows
with inconsolable hope.
As if from sea to shining
tree

there might be light
so bright
the dark heart, the blind eye
would open,

the cruel would flee.
That’s the way
we wish we could believe.
But stop –

it is not.
We are formed
of cruder clay.
But it is time,

to read the signs
and finally wash
the mud, the blood,
the self – away.

Kerrie Smith and Marthe Aponte

Kellan Barnebey King and Lark Larisa Pilinsky

2 Lark

The ode to King
I still cannot believe
This thing I learned on Sunday
From generous Shoemaker:
I was matchmade to King!
Kin to the king? It was a little scary!
He was the first to start.
What to expect?!
I saw it bloom the perfect way!
I waited for his call –
One day.
And then forgot.
And finally on Tuesday, 6 pm,
As promised,
I got a letter from the king:
“I’m sorry, I was out of hot pink.”
And added “LOL!”
Oh, LOL! I can’t believe…
The king without something?
Hot Pink!! I have to look,
What’s all this pink about?
His art was beautiful and brave!!
And I forgave.
It was a call, and he was first
I needed to respond,
But had a real thirst
For time
That day…
What could I do
To match his yellow and red!
His plates and pigs and dogs
And honeycombs and strainers?
And on the top of it – hot pink sunsets!
Just days ago,
He was to me a total stranger
Today he was the king!
I need my red a LOT! and LOL
I need to move.
I did.
To bed.

4 Lark

Serendipity
Serendipity in our red colors is just the start,
You are building the metal breakwater
Whatever it means, it is hard.
And I need to play hardball too
And be bold
I need in response to create a powerful art.
But it breaks my heart to think,
That “Our water”, as you wrote, –
Is some of the worst in the nation…

8 Lark

WATER BRAKE
Into the innocent mouth of water,
Into the pure crystal of water,
into the very soul of water,
Whatever you spill,
From the big dirty belly,
Of the docked ships
Sneaks
In the depths of the ocean,
On the sparkling silver fish skin,
On the bird wings,
Killing them and and us slowly,
From the port to the shore
Covered with black foam,
Long Beach water break
What a heartache!