Vol. 1, Issue 3
A publication of the Old furnace artist residency
Featured Artists Aubrey Longley-Cook
spoolspectrum.blogspot.com
Black Rainbow Collective black-rainbow.com
Catron Booker
freeandfunky.tumblr.com
deborah Wheeler
deborahalmawheeler.com
George T. Gregory Jr. georgetgregoryjr.com
Hermelinda Cortés
hermelinda@southernersonnewground.org
Jared Dawson
jaredddawson@gmail.com
Ron Geibel
rongeibel.com
SLAG MAG, Vol. 1, Issue 3 © 2014 | published by Jon Henry – Guest edited by Hermalinda Cortés – designed by Elizabeth Ygartua A production of the Old Furnace Artist Residency The Old Furnace Artist Residency is an ongoing artist project curated by Jon Henry. The residency is located in Harrisonburg, Virginia. It is open to all forms of artistry: sculpture, painting, video, sound, conceptual, poetry, fiction writers, critical theorists etc. Special attention is given to practices which are focused on social justice and being socially engaged. Emerging artists are especially encouraged to apply. O.F.A.R. is accepting residents through 2015. Visit oldfurnace.tumblr.com for more information and to apply.
INTRODUCTION
JON HENRY, artist and creator of SLAG MAG & O.F.A.R. This edition of SLAG MAG is my darling, as it explores the intersections that are foremost in my mind. I might be cheating to I use this edition of SLAG MAG to help tackle the tough intersections of queerness and Southernism. Many have written and exhibited work that examines these individual subjects, yet finding work that examines their interwoven relationship can be harder than finding a needle in a haystack. The lack of knowledge and research on this subject has not gone unnoticed, as recently highlighted in Southerners On New Ground’s recent Small Town Cross Roads publication. I reached out to their Rural & Communications Organizer, Hermelinda CortÊs, about this topic. Our conversations resulted in this collaborative edition of SLAG MAG. I hope this edition adds more to the Southern queer narrative and provides new insights, inspirations, intersections, and investigations. Too often, us Southern queers encounter metanarratives focused on migration to Northern cities or else ones about lifetimes of structural and/or internalized homophobia coupled with severe isolation. While these issues and experiences are important, they are not limited to the us, but exist across the sexual and geographic spectrum. The independent, tenacious, and resilient artists in this edition seem aware of this and their role in making cultural history.
Performance Still, 2014 Zenda, Longs Chapel, built 1870-1871, at a settlement formed after the Civil War by newly freed slaves; Harrisonburg, Va. 10. 02 X 5.64 inches
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Photograph: Two young African American women, probably somewhere in Virginia. ca. 1910, Library of Congress, Photographer Unknown
Catron Booker
SLAG MAG Dearest,
Dearest,
Your seasons are changing. I always have difficulty in these liminal spaces, the strip of moulding between the linoleum and hardwood.
Remember the summer I accidentally bit my tongue in half? We were drunk and fought and I jumped out of the truck in the middle of the intersection and fell running across the street,
Do you remember how Mother cleaned the kitchen floor on hands and knees? Her old, faded, purple kneepads scuttling as she crawled crab like from corner to corner. The smell of ammonia. The smell of ammonia she would scrub the floor with reminds me of her. And the smell of onions sweating in butter on the stove. There is a clumsiness of practicality I’ve inherited from her – a need to lay my hands on the bones of a thing and look its form in the eye.
I hid in the park, curled in an empty retention pond. I spit my blood in a circle around me in case you tried to find me. I could hear the rattle of your engine as you drove back and forth along the street, waiting for me to emerge from the trees. I’ll never forget the tick of your engine, the particular pump of your pistons.
This space between seasons is all formless and flux. All give. All swerve. Too much possibility doesn’t open doors, it paralyzes. I know you’ve had the same dreams as i. there are a thousand different introductions, a thousand different variations, but they all end the same way – you find yourself at a height with the ground rushing towards you. You watch from a space just off to the side. There is always an anticipation, a waiting, a desire, and then the body meets the earth and a shock travels out along the arms. Out along the legs. There is a hovering between sleep and awake, a standing in the threshold of your consciousness. You sense the body safe in bed.
How many times did I run? You never understood what it was that caused my need to flee. Your anger that I could see unfurling itself from some dark recess and bristling out to each strand of hair, each fingertip, each glance, each breath, each move, each touch, til I felt afloat in a white sea of static that would carry me out the door and down the steps without a coat or shoes on the wrong feet. The ground would carry the sound of your engine to me – warning that I turn down a side street – hide behind a tree – take the form of a shadow falling from the branches overhead. My tongue grew back that night I slept in the tall grasses. I came home. I made breakfast. I left the doors open and watched the static puddled on the kitchen floor burn away in the morning light. I tasted blood in everything that summer.
Jared Dawson 2014
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Aubrey Longley-Cook Brigitte Bidet, Cayenne Rouge & Ellisorous Rex 2013 Needlepoint 12 x 16 inches
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deborah Wheeler Mirror, mirror on the wall who is fairest of them all?, 2009, mirror & dildo Privilege, 2012, water fountain & signage Nothing runs like a Deere, from the Womankinn series, 2009, fiberglass, enamel, leather, & a tractor Dimensions variable
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Ron Geibel A Fanciful Notion (Installation View), & Everything is Perfect, from the Topiary Series, 2014 Porcelain, Wood, Acrylic Finish Everything is Perfect, 9 x 5 x 5 inches
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Black Rainbow Collective Jeff Sessions & Elisa Chan, from the Love Letters postcard series, 2014 Printed cardstock 6.25 x 4.5 inches
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George T. Gregory Jr. Pillow Talk, 2012 Yarn, latch hook canvas, & wood paneling 2 x 4 inches , 48 x 72 inches
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Mañana Voy a Correr What if we make the biggest mistake? Except it only seems like a mistake in the moment. Thirty days later and you’re good as oro. You almost forgot that it happened at all. That’s what you kept trying to tell them, kept trying to explain. It’s not them it’s your life. It’s the bill collectors and the hustling to make a living and the fucked up doctors and the car tires that you can’t afford and the new baby and the everything. This is your life you say. You say it with desperation You know that they don’t really hear it see it feel it, because they can’t. That is the biggest mistake of all.
Who Will Take Us? What if I’m queer and Latin@ and Southern Is that shit allowed? Because I don’t live in a world of Chicanos or of movement I live in a world of my people Who judge me For my femininity and masculinity all at once Who judge me For the men and women that I love to love and that I love to hate Are we allowed? To identify? When so many of our people are here? But they’ve left too… To go to places that they say they belong to I wonder where we belong? The queer the half- brown the Southern the working poor WHO WILL TAKE US?
Cueritos Pig skin fried but just for some of us.
Hermelinda Cortés 2014
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oldfurnace.tumblr.com