by Rowan Johnson
SOU Class of 2025, Creative Writing
Michael Parker, Winter Worms Water Works Week, Metal, 100,000 Worms, Insulated Plinth, Salvaged Sink, Solar Pump, Dawn Redwood, 2023
Photo by Maureen Williams
Communal Crying
Whether it’s just a day where nothing seems to go right, or we’re mourning the loss of a loved one, many of us have held off crying in public due to the stigma around it. Stemming from the loss and hopelessness many people have experienced during the pandemic, communities in India and Japan have started giving space for grief with “crying clubs”. Despite the biological benefits of crying, such as the release of cortisol and endorphins, many participants found that the social support of their community members helped in their healing process.
This practice may be coming to Ashland as a part of Art Beyond, with Artist Michael Parker hosting a group cry with his piece Winter Worms Water Works Week Metal at the Mary Campagna Sculpture Garden. The piece has a sink that looks to be crying placed upon a dozen crates with live worms decomposing food. Learn more about the practice of communal crying, and join us at the Sculpture Garden to experience some of the catharsis.
Theories of the technology responsible for neon signs have been around since the late 1600s. As knowledge of electricity began to grow, the discovery of the element Neon made it possible for the iconic “open” signs as we know them today to come into existence. Artist Alyse Emdur uses neon LEDs in her piece be mine but to grab the attention of drivers along Dead Indian Memorial Road, and ask them to ponder the meaning of the colorful lights in an otherwise industrial area. Learn more about the invention that made this art medium possible with the link below, and find Emdur’s work outside the Hassell Fabrication today.
Hannah Bakken Morris is an interdisciplinary artist that uses her work to critique and comment on land use in the United States. Bringing in reflections of identity, nationhood, economics, and the environment, Morris’s work explores the idea of place and our relationship to it. Her ongoing project Words to that Effect is a site specific piece that comments on Oregon State trespassing laws and ideas of control and ownership. Rather than using exclusionary language, Morris has set up mock signs that invite views in, and to question the illusion of land ownership. Learn more about Morris with the link to her website down below, and find her work scattered around Vesper Meadow as part of the 2023 Art Beyond exhibition.
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(VIDEO) Art Beyond 2023: Installing ¡Provecho! by Justin Favela
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The Schneider Museum of Art is located within the ancestral homelands of the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa peoples who lived here since time immemorial. These Tribes were displaced during rapid Euro-American colonization, the Gold Rush, and armed conflict between 1851 and 1856. In the 1850s, discovery of gold and settlement brought thousands of Euro-Americans to their lands, leading to warfare, epidemics, starvation, and villages being burned. In 1853 the first of several treaties were signed, confederating these Tribes and others together – who would then be referred to as the Rogue River Tribe. These treaties ceded most of their homelands to the United States, and in return they were guaranteed a permanent homeland reserved for them. At the end of the Rogue River Wars in 1856, these Tribes and many other Tribes from western Oregon were removed to the Siletz Reservation and the Grand Ronde Reservation. Today, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (https://www.grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (http://www.ctsi.nsn.us/) are living descendants of the Takelma, Shasta, and Latgawa peoples of this area. We encourage you to learn about the land you reside on, and to join us in advocating for the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous people.
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