Spring Studio Updates
Perennial City, Sharing Free Seeds, Solidarity Fundraising and making time for new experiments.
Greetings friends,
Hello from a bird-song filled morning here in the northern hemisphere. I am wishing you all an abundance of spring blossoms that aren’t tarnished by the tumultuous reality of erratic weather and accelerating war. And I am hoping that your heart is finding some ease amid the immense grift of these times.
This is my quarterly newsletter to share a bit about what I have been up to with my personal and community based practices the past few months.
But first, some new art!
I am currently working on my next body of work (not included above), which for now is called “A World to Win” and will attempt to amplify some lessons and invitations for our collective humanity at this pivotal point in human history amid the rise of end times fascism.
In between those pieces I am trying to find time to play, experiment and flow with my creative practice by trying new mediums and putting less pressure on myself to share everything I make.
In other art news…
PERENNIAL CITY
I am honored and delighted to share that I have original artwork featured in the new exhibit at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum called “Perennial City: Experiments in Urban Gardening”.
Celebrating “gardens of the common folk”, this gorgeous installation dives into the history of urban gardening projects surrounding the Jane Addams Hull-House in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and connects those stories to today’s movements for environmental justice, food access, and land stewardship.
In addition to historical storytelling, the show includes custom wall paper by Relativity Textiles, mobile altars and wall installations by Carlos Flores as well as thirteen original pieces from my FERTILE FUTURES and CRITICAL CONNECTIONS bodies of work.
The show runs through December. Stay tuned for programming announcements and make a plan to visit!
PANSY SHOW- I also have four original art pieces included in the Pansy Pack Show with Hudson Valley Seeds Company in Accord, NY. Check it out if you are in the Hudson Valley area!
Speaking of seeds…
SHARING FREE SEEDS
Outside my personal creative practice, most of my time and attention these days goes into collaborating with my collective to maintain the Rogers Park Seed Library - a resource of free seeds, gardening resources and collaborative learning.
It’s been a very busy start to the year so far. In addition to our bi-weekly Open Hours and annual seed starting skill share, this year we were again able to ship over 200 free seed orders around Chicago and we still have more seeds to share. After six years of this project, we have reached over 1000 free seed orders!
We also attended the 21st Annual Food Justice Summit where we were able to share and connect with other growers around this great city. I love to bring my cardboard face cutouts to add some silliness to these gatherings.
This weekend we will be hosting our 4th Annual Native Fruit and Nut Tree Distribution + Mutual Aid Fundraiser. Come by if you are in the area!
We will be donating most of what we raise to the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund which fundraised to get community members targeted by racist immigration policies out of pre-trial detention so they can be back home with their loved ones while legal proceedings continue.
SOLIDARITY FUNDRAISING
Another fundraiser I have been working on is my print fundraiser for Duaa in Gaza. I printed this five layer poster last fall in my screen printing class and am very happy with the way it turned out. I learned a few new tricks for layering colors and how to create additional shades by adding or eliminating a white. Buy a copy of the print HERE!
I came across this quote from Heba Gowayed in We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition and reached out to her to ask if I could illustrate it for this purpose. The whole quote reads as such;
“For Palestinian parents, the natural act of loving one’s child is done in the unnatural conditions of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. In these conditions, love fuels resistance. To care for a Palestinian child is to abhor that they have to play under the buzzing of drones. To worry about them is to fight for their right to walk to school unthreatened by Israeli bullets and bombs. To dream for them is to topple the borders that confine them, that cut through land that should be theirs to freely roam. To be Palestinian is to be abolitionist. And to be a Palestinian abolitionist is to fight for us all.”
Duaa is pregnant and her baby is due in May. Her partner Abdullah is being held in Israeli prisons without charge leaving her largely alone to try to find the food and materials she needs to survive.
Her struggle, the struggle of everyone suffering due to the violence of western imperialism breaks my heart everyday. I firmly believe that none of us are safe or free until all of Palestine is safe and free. As we organize to dismantle genocidal apartheid systems, directing support to on the ground organizations or individuals is one of the best ways we can show our solidarity.
Last year I was able to raise and donate $11,810 from art related fundraisers + an additional $4,442 from collaborative fundraisers including the Seed Library’s Summer Solidarity Fundraiser and Solidarity Sauna which I ran with my partner Nell.
What creative ways are you finding to fundraise for community survival?
Drinking In the New
In February I turned 37 and for no reason, other than perhaps liking the number, I have been really looking forward to this age. I find myself attempting to challenge the larger experience of systems failure and collapse by wrapping myself in grace, newness and growth.
In that light, I am expanding my capacity to experiment and try new things. So far this year I am teaching myself how to knit. I sewed my first button down shirt out of an old skirt AND we tapped the Norway Maple tree in the front yard of our city apartment and made maple syrup with our friends for the first time. Mapling is something I have dreamed of doing for many years but never thought I would be able to as a city renter. I do love shattering limiting beliefs!
When we first put the spile in the tree in late February, the sap started running immediately. I was mesmerized, delighted and just wanted to sit there watching it drip, listening to the sounds of the “plink” “plink” into the metal can, drinking in the moment, experiencing the gift.
In the larger context of climate collapse and profound unfolding violence, I can find myself thinking that these practices, these pastimes are not helpful to our collective survival and are a waste of precious time. And while these critical thoughts are not entirely untrue I can acknowledge that skill building in any area expands our confidence that we can do hard things. We can move through fear of the unknown and make something new. That we have the capacity and agency to shape ourselves and shape our world and this confidence feels incredibly important right now when so many of our systems need to be rebuilt. So let’s keep experimenting, trying new things until everyone is safe and free.
If you got this far, thank you for reading!! And thank you for your commitment to our world.
Rooting & Resisting,
Olly