You Don’t Always Know Why, with Kathy Fernandez Blunt

Above: Photo of Kathy on a trip to Bermuda

Kathy Fernandez Blunt (Kathy) knows how to live life. She’s a beloved regular at Myrtle who loves to shares stories about her years as an Emmy-nominated news producer, touring tennis player, mother, and of travels around the world. Born in North Carolina, Kathy spend her teen years in NYC before following love to East Providence. Once in the Ocean State, she studied at Bryant and Brown, taking up admin jobs at school and Trinity Rep. Kathy’s a naturally curious “in the mix” type person; that energy got her looped in with WSBE-TV as a producer and panelist for a public affairs show which in turn, lead to further education at the Northeast School of Broadcasting in Boston. During that same period she’d started a gig at WJAR Radio (NBC), proved her chops, and became the first Black woman there to hold the position of Weekend News Reporter.

Family connections then brought Kathy to D.C. where she served as host, producer, and writer for a number of critically acclaimed programs including Eye on Washington (WDCA) and Black Reflections. In addition, Kathy’s found time to raise a family, own multiple video rental stores, support organizations like Black Miss America and the United Negro College Fund, and sneak in a little mountain climbing, too. We recently visited Kathy’s home in East Providence, turned a recorder on, and asked her to share whatever she felt like sharing. What follows are excerpts from that conversation, edited down for this format. Kathy’s currently at work on her full life story.

The Well (TW): Kathy where do you want to sit?

Kathy Fernandez Blunt (Kathy): I'm cooking Portuguese meal, Cachupa. It’s like the Cape Verdean Munchupa. Would you like a glass of wine or something?

TW: Yeah, sure. Sure, thank you. 

Kathy: You saw the pictures of my daughter, Pam? She looks very much like her mama, I mean her daddy. [Showing photos] This is my husband at a play at Trinity Rep. It was a Shakespearean play. You know I started in Trinity?

TW: Tell me about that.

Kathy: Well first I was a file clerk at Admiral TV. Somebody told me to check out Brown—it was Christine Hathaway, who was Secretary to the Librarian—she told me take a couple of courses there at night and blah, blah, blah. Someone spotted me somewhere and whatever I was doing, they thought I should go to Trinity. This is when they were in the Trinity Church. I started out as an assistant. What do you call it? 

TW: A stage manager? 

Kathy: No, no. It was…Executive Assistant. I was also in charge at times...at night, you know when the play is playing. Adrian Hall was the artistic director, and he wanted to know if I wanted to be his and Marion Simon’s assistant. I knew all the actors. So when we went to Edinburgh, I had to get all their birth certificates so I could get them their passports. I don't know if you remember the actor Richard Kneeland? He said, “Kathy, if you tell my age, I’ll have to kill you.” Everybody wanted to play young roles. I said, “Richard, please, I've kept all the secrets.”

TW: Where are you at in life right now? There’s a lot of boxes around here.

Kathy: Well, I'm very befuddled. Is that a word, still? Yeah, my grandma used to use that word. [Someday] this house will be sold. I have my name in at a couple of really nice senior living places. I have property in North Carolina but I don't want to move there. I’ve been away from there since I was 12; I had moved to NYC after my mother passed.

Above: Kathy getting reading to head out to work at WJAR in 1973

TW: So, just no connection there anymore.

Kathy: Yes, all my doctors and other people are in Rhode Island. I go to visit but wouldn’t want to stay. You know, my niece was killed in the World Trade Center and she was a wonderful, gorgeous child who was living with my brother in both NYC and North Carolina.

TW: On 9/11?

Kathy: Second building. I was at the foot doctors when the first [plane] hit Building One. Everybody was like, “What?” They were telling the people in Building Two, which was where my niece was, “Oh, stay put, it's an accident.” Well, then they said, “You've got to get out,” but it was too late. They couldn't use the elevator and they all burned up. I was living in Maryland at the time and I went to be with my brother in Brooklyn, which is where they all lived, and we had to go and bring identification and stuff. Ten years later they found her torso and they shipped it to our home at our church in North Carolina. So I mean, I don't want to go back there. I love it there when I visit, but I don't think I can live there. 

[A beeping sound is heard from the kitchen]

Kathy: That's my pot. I don't wanna burn it... We have to cook it in different parts, because you've got pig feet, which are very tough to cook, so you cook that all by itself. And then we've got spare ribs and and then it's beans, all kinds of different beans and kale.

TW:  How long have you been in this house? And how’d you end up here? 

Kathy: Well, I only lived in this house since 2003. [Years before,] I met a guy in New York and we got married, and so I had to come up to East Providence, which was like…I couldn't just like, walk down the street and go to Broadway anymore. I couldn’t just take a bus or you know, but I got used to it. He’s Spanish and Native, but had been adopted by a Cape Verdean family. My grandmother’s Native, too. So anyway, he passed away and that's a long story. I remarried about five years later. I had bought a house on Lancaster Street in Providence. Do you know Lancaster Street? Yeah, Raymond Patriarca.

Above: Kathy at WDCA in Washtington, DC.

TW:  The mob boss?

Kathy: Nice man, my height. Had a black poodle. When he walked the dog there was a goon on each end of the street just in case somebody wanted to pop. I did the story when I was at WJAR.

TW: You did a story when he died, or something else?

Kathy: When Bobo Marrapese supposedly killed Dickie Callei. The story was that Raymond had it done by Bobo when Raymond was away in jail, but there was never any proof of it. You know that scene in the Godfather, in the restaurant?

TW: I’ve actually never seen The Godfather.

Kathy: That's a scene that they supposedly stole from us. One version of the story was that in Johnston, Bobo and Raymond had told everybody to go to the restaurant. That was when the telephones were around from the bar. They were all sitting there drinking and the bartender said, “Dickie, you have a phone call.” So Dickie gets up, goes around the corner and a couple of guys went with him to the phone...when the guys were all gone Dickie was there with 37 stab wounds or something crazy like that. I'm working on this story, I'm new! I’d just graduated from Northeast School of Broadcasting. 

TW: How did it get assigned to you? I feels like an intense gig. 

Kathy: I had never covered anything like this. The station said, “Kathy, you've got to go.” Knowing what had happened and being new to the industry, it was very intimidating. So my first, my first real gig for TV, yeah. I was the Weekend Reporter.

I had to talk to the cops. The police called and told us where the killers had dumped Callie's body, it was in the Rehoboth area. The police took the body to the morgue, whatever the cops did. I was asking my bosses, “Well, what are we going to do? Take pictures of it?” He said, “Yeah, because you're going to see blood everywhere.” So I said, “Ooh, this is exciting.” It was during the time when we had one color camera and one black and white, and if you wanted to see red blood...use the color camera! The cameraman was a sweetheart. So we were going. A cop said “It's down there, it's a one-way road on the left-hand side.”

Above: Kathy’s press pass from the mid 1970s.

TW: This is not sounding particularly safe.

Kathy: It's one way in and one way out. We're driving along and I'm like, “Oh, my god, we're not alone.” We see this car following us, a yellow Volkswagen, unmarked, and we have the WJAR News Watch 10 logo on our car...everybody knew who we were. So I'm thinking, and the car is coming behind us, and I said to my driver, “You know, I think we should just pull over and let them get ahead of us. Either that or they're going to kill us.” They pulled up next to us and it turned out they were from the Taunton Gazette. 

TW: They scooped you on the story?

Kathy: I don’t know, since they were from a different station. But they’d gone ahead and said they couldn't find it. We drove maybe a quarter of a mile further and there it was. We got out and took pictures and it looked to me, it looked like they buried him in his car. I mean, this was a huge spot that they put him in. So we got back and we did the story and you know, I couldn't tell all that. I just said, “Blah, blah, blah...the police called and said yada, yada had been killed.” There was no clue that it was Raymond Patriarca doing until later—I knew some of the gangsters; I was all over Federal Hill so I knew everybody there. 

TW: You knew them through reporting or socially. 

Kathy: Socially, yeah. Mostly reporting, though, and the thing about it...on the news, you only got a minute and a half tops. Most of the time it's a half, but this was a minute. I managed to get through it and I ended with you know, “Call the police,” and I gave the police number if you want to know more.

Above: Kathy at the Washington Emmy Awards

TW: I think I have this right, you were the first Black female news reporter at WJAR?

Kathy: They had a couple of Black people working as photographers. I forget, but yeah. I'm in contact with them now—they just had their 75th anniversary about four months ago and they omitted me. I have a lot of pictures, but the people there now, I think the only one that's there now that was there during my time is Barbara Morse Silva. The guy that has a Sunday show said to me, “Kathy, you need to call her,” so I called, and she hasn't called me back. It's been four months. I don't want anything, but I want to know why they left me out. 

TW: It's a fairly important distinction.

Kathy: Yeah, absolutely, and you'd think they would be proud of having the first woman of color as a local news reporter.

TW: Well, maybe someone will read this and reach out! What are some other memorable stories that you covered? 

Speaker: Okay, we got a call from the police, who said a woman had been murdered by her husband in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Johnston. So the news desk said, “Kathy, you're going to have to go to Kentucky Fried and interview the people there, because somebody was murdered.” 

So I got there and I saw Donald, my friend who owned it, and he felt really bad. He said couple had separated—the husband and wife, and he didn't want to let her go. She worked there and he drove up in the parking lot...as she was getting out the door, her husband went over and said, “Come with me,” and this is what they all told me. She said no, so he put her in the car, drove about a quarter of a mile. 

I got all these pictures, beautiful pictures from Kentucky Fried. He shot her first, in the car, and then he shot himself. His car veered off the road into somebody's property with trees. When I got there, the cops came over and said “You don't want to take any pictures of the interior of that car,” and I was like, “Why?” He said we could go up there and take pictures outside the car, but nothing inside, out of respect for her, and him too I guess. That was pretty sad. I mean, the Bobo story was scary, but this was sad. To know that could happen to somebody. 

TW: I would describe you as an upbeat person, and I'm curious how you compartmentalize seeing things like that—does it get to you?

Kathy: I'm not sure. It was very sad, and the policeman told me not to look inside. But you know, here I am being a nosy new reporter, whatever. I wished I hadn't, but it's in my mind. Compartmentalizing something like that, I don't know how I did it—just being a new reporter and getting out of broadcasting school...trying to show that I learned something and putting it in the right place. The who, what, when, where, whatever. You don't always know why.

Above: Kathy’s graduation photo, Washington Irving High School, NYC, 1954.

TW: What your overall sense of Rhode Island was during your time as a reporter. Like a big picture understanding of the state, maybe?

Kathy: Yeah. Well, my brother had come up from New York to visit and he said, “Oh wow, look at this little place. I saw a sign that said Welcome to Rhode Island and a block later it said Come Back Again! God, he was so funny! But my feelings...I just had no intention of doing anything except maybe getting a job, because my daughter was born when....Oh, okay, before. That was when I did the Emmett Till story. [content warning: graphic images of violence].

TW: Actually let’s maybe switch and follow that—you started talking about it the first time we met.

Kathy: Emmett was killed in 1955. We, I mean, my husband was Roland Fernandez, we were traveling from New York all across the country selling magazines like Look, Life, and Readers’ Digest. We’d been to New Orleans during Mardi Gras and there was a famous restaurant at the time called Buster Holmes in New Orleans that said they had the best ribs in the South. 

TW: I think every place in the South makes that claim.

Kathy: It's true! I make my own barbecue sauce. I learned from my grandpa. So we were doing this in 1956 and got to Money, Mississippi. And so my husband, a big tall white guy and me, a cute little brown girl or whatever, had to stop in Money, Mississippi, which we didn't know, we just were stopping along the way. We stayed in every white hotel because they couldn't turn down this white man. [The staff would think] “She looks like she could be Puerto Rican, or Mexican. At least she's not a nigger.”

So we stopped to get a Coke or something and walked in the door and we just looked around, there's nobody there except two guys against the wall on the right, and then the guy behind the counter. And so he looked at us, like I guess they never saw a biracial couple before. We went up to the counter and the guys were still staring, these two guys. The reason we went there is because the sign said “Bryant Convenience” and well, Bryant is my family name.

Now, we didn't have a camera, we never took pictures of anything. I would be filthy rich if I had done that. Whatever. So the guy at the counter said, “I'm going to wait on you kids, but you've got to leave as soon as you can,” and my husband's like, “Why? This is America.” And he says, “See those two guys against the wall? That's Roy Bryant and his brother.” We knew about Emmett Till, how he had been killed by them. 

TW: They were just hanging out? 

Kathy: Did they ever serve any time in jail? I don't think they served any time. Bryan’ts wife had told her husband that these young black boys—I'm sure she said the N-word—came into the store and they were flirting with her. That's what she told her husband. And her husband got furious. So they went a couple of days later into this boy's Uncle Moses' house. He was visiting from Chicago. So Mr. Roy and his brother knocked on Uncle Moses' door and said, “Where's the boy from Chicago? We need him.” This is what was reported to us later by the person that was there. They pushed Uncle Moses out of the way, went and grabbed Emmett out of bed, broke every bone in his body and dropped him into the Tallahatchie River or whatever it is down there in Mississippi. Later when the undertaker was going to seal the casket his mother said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Leave my boy just the way he is. I want the world to see this.” They had a picture of him in the casket in Jet magazine and it showed him in the casket. It was really sad, she was leaning over him kind of, and so the world saw. 

TW: When you were in the store, you didn’t recognize them initially? 

Kathy: No, okay. No, no, I didn't. I only knew their names. I don't think they had pictures out at the time. His wife only recently died and she said she lied, trying to make her husband jealous. They found papers in the sheriff's office downstairs saying that she should have been put in jail. But anyway, we got through that. I mean, we drove on and we stopped in New Orleans, we stopped in Texas, we stopped everywhere, from New York to Rhode Island. 

TW: In that climate, going door to as a biracial couple…that’s very high risk.

Kathy: I was such a cute, adorable thing. I had long, beautiful hair and a cute little brown color, and my husband was white. He was so handsome. So when I rang the doorbell, if an older man answered….they saw me like, “Da-da-da-Da!” I was in. I mean, we were the best sellers.

Above: Clipping from TV and Entertainment Magazine, November 1978.

TW: Let’s leave Rhode Island for now and go on to your next chapter.

Kathy: Yeah. Get out of here, get out of here. My husband at the time, his brother was Roger Blunt. He's still alive in D.C., and that's how we went to D.C. in the first place. He offered my husband a nice job in landscaping. We got down there and found a beautiful apartment and I had to make sure the kids got to school, pick them up. All that. My former boss from WJAR, Arthur Alpert, he caught up with me and said, “You want a job?” I said, “Doing what?” He said you know, reporting and whatever at Channel 5, which is now Fox, but at that time it was something else. I forget what..I don't know, but now, it's Fox. Hmmm. Metromedia. My boss there, Hal Levinson said, “I'm going to have you produce Black News,” which was before...what's it called now? BET? Black Entertainment Television or whatever. 

TW: What was Black News like and what else was going on at the station?

Kathy: I worked with Maury Povich, his show Panorama was the noon talk show. One of the first in the country, I believe. Delores Handy was my main reporter (at Black Reflections) and she was something else. I had to write the stories for the teleprompter so that my anchors, Delores Handy and James Adams...you know teleprompters work. She never liked the way I wrote stories, so we were always at odds. Oh and Al Roker, remember him? Al came from um, Washington State or maybe up there, Portland Oregon—one of those places way up there. He was funny, he was hilarious! Al was very kind, he had a big party at his house in VA when he was picked for the job of weatherman in NYC.

Speaker: It’s a really specific skill, speech writing. How do you make it feel natural, or how do you work with the anchors’ own personalities?

Kathy: Oh, we were like oil and water. The producer is in charge, but Delores was the big-time anchor somewhere in the south. Beautiful girl and very smart. Very, very smart, and she thinks I'm “merely the producer.” Well what do we do as producers? We research, we read every newspaper, we decide what's important in our area. Delores once said to me, “You're not smart enough to write for me,” and all the newsroom heard it—all the reporters and the boss, Hal, came out asking what was going on. I just said, “Dolores, f-you!” because I don’t cuss, and figured maybe she would understand. The whole newsroom started laughing.

The thing was, I was not really clever enough to deal with these people. You know, I was happy to do my job and try to do the best I could and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We later renamed Black News to Black Reflections, and Washington DC is three-quarters black. So I had no problem finding stories. I was able to do my job and ignore all the extra crap.

Speaker: You have this really linear and logical way of working. Very head-down.

Kathy: I had no choice. I had to separate the crap. And I was never in fear of anything because I knew I could go to my news director. I would pick what was important and what I thought the viewer thought was important. You were really the eyes of the viewer when you're doing television, writing for television. I was very friendly and very nice, always smiling, and I remember whenever I went to interview people, they were very happy to see me because they were like, “Oh, she's going to tell the story correctly.” You know when I graduated broadcasting school in Boston there were thirty-three men and just two of us girls. Two. You had to prove yourself.

Above: Kathy’s winning doubles team from 1994. Note, this photo was edited to remove a sticker.

Speaker: Would you describe yourself as a competitive person?

Kathy: Oh no, no, no. Just driven. In tennis, for example, very few people are negative in tennis. I've got pictures of us in D.C., Houston, LA. We played in Boston. 

TW: Who is the us/we here?

Kathy: The USTA Intersectional. We were the Mid-Atlantic team which included D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Okay, it's not like Serena and Chrissy Evert, they're like 6 and up, their rankings. The Intersectionals were mostly ranked 2–5, and in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. That's the age group. We had the number one player. Her name was Margaret Russo, number one player in DC, in the mid-Atlantic. She was Australian and played when she was younger—against Martina Navratilova, with Chrissy Evert...all the big, big biggies and she won quite a few matches. Her husband was a big tennis teacher at the Fairfax Racquet Club. He was the best teacher.

TW: So you got into this in D.C.? 

Kathy: Nope, I got into it in Rhode Island when I was married to Gerald (Blunt), because he was a big athlete. He was the Big Guy from East Providence High and wherever. When we got down to Washington a friend said, “Kathy, you want to go and play some tennis?” I ended up playing the Turkey Thicket. It was where everybody played after work. They had tennis clubs all over the place. So everybody took an interest in me because I was so nice to get along with. I didn't talk about anybody, I didn't, you know—nothing. So one of the guys, his name was Ted Utkins, and he used to love to play with me when we played mixed doubles. I was not good, but he knew I could learn. So he said to me, “Kathy, there's a tennis club in Bethesda, Maryland. It's an indoor club. It's two courts. It’s $10 an hour.” I had my little Thunderbird so I was free, could drive everywhere.

So once a week I went. I learned how to serve, I learned how to drop shot, I learned how to lob, I learned how to volley, and I got pretty good. That's when I started doing tournaments I played the first tournament against the number one seed and she beat me so bad. I was embarrassed. I went back to my practice.

At the time, Pauline Betz Addie was a big star down in the Mid-Atlantic. She played Wimbledon, she played all over and she used to practice with us. Pauline taught us how to drop shot and lob and we used to get frustrated because she would drop shot you, lob over your head...you have run back, run, run. And when we got that, she was very proud of us. We traveled as the senior league. We met people all over the place and everybody was so friendly. That’s when I had my video stores, so I could take a week every month and travel to play, no matter where I was. New Orleans, wherever...my husband, also. We had two stores. I ran one and he ran the other. The video stores were in D.C. Yeah, in Silver Spring and Rockville, Maryland.

TW: Any particular matches that stand out?

Kathy: So we were in Boston and Margaret [Russo] lost a match. I was playing doubles at that time. Never did she lose a match, no matter where we were. She's walking off the court and doesn't look right. And I said, “Margaret, what can I do for you, darling? You want some water?” She said she wanted to go and lay down. She went to bed and we all went downstairs, had a good time in the hotel, blah, blah, blah. This was the night before we were to leave and come to Philly, I guess, and same thing in Philly. She wasn't feeling well; lost her match. She was our number one player. We got to D.C. and she didn't play...she was taken to the hospital and she was diagnosed with whatever that thing is that you die and there's no return. What was it? It wasn't a heart attack, but it's kind of like that. 

Speaker: A stroke?

Kathy: It wasn't a stroke...whatever it was. But she had that, and she died. I mean everybody was so sad, and her husband...Her husband was Gene Russo, a great tennis teacher at Fairfax Racquet Club there in VA.

Above: A photo of Kathy at one of her video stores in Maryland.

TW: So what got you into video store ownership? 

Kathy: What got me into it? Let me think...one was being sold, in Silver Spring. The guy who owned it gave us such an unbelievable price because he wanted it to stay there. Then we bought one in Rockville the same way. Then Blockbuster came along and ruined everybody. So then we had to end up selling ours. There was a young boy who worked for me. Freddy Tello. You can look that up, I'm sure you'll find him. T-e-l-l-o. He was from Nicaragua. I think it was Nicaragua. Nice, sweet boy. 

TW: What made you think of Freddy? 

Kathy: He became friends with two really bad boys. They were all rich in this little town. Every once in a while we would see these boys come to pick up Freddy at the store. They were his best friends, good friends. I got the article somewhere, they of course interviewed me because he worked for me. I forget what the headline was, but the headline was like “Spanish,” or wherever he was from, “Boy Killed in Rockville.” Right near where the store was. They lived in this particular little area and a woman saw two boys driving a wheelbarrow with a hump in it, and that was Freddy. 

They decapitated him. What happened was, supposedly, he was flirting with one of their girlfriends—plus being a Spanish kid and not being big time in Rockville—so they killed him. They took him to one of those vacant houses and they had a saw [content warning: graphic descriptions of violence] and they decapitated him, cut off his arms and legs, head, whatever, and I mean I was almost vomiting thinking about it. You know, I wasn't working for TV, I had my video stores and that was it… 

[Kathy gets a text message]

Kathy: …and so...Oh. Somebody's asking me to marry him. 

TW: You’re getting proposals texts? 

Kathy: Just one! Yes, so...that story. I've got all those articles upstairs, I'm packing stuff away and I don't know where anything is. But that was the most traumatic thing I remember down there. And then finally we got divorced and sold the house.

Above: Kathy posing with her bicycle, 1983.

TW: Well that brings us back to East Providence, to your home just down the block from Myrtle. We don't always ask people specifically about the bar, but you are a beloved regular... What does the spot mean to you?

Kathy: They had their anniversary just over a month ago. I mean, there's other taverns and bars but it's a unique kind of place. There’s Robbie, and Melissa who works there. I mean, I walk in and it's like I'm in Hollywood—I'm a movie star! And I come up with stuff that's interesting that Natalie [Myrtle’s co-owner] likes. I feel like I’ve talked so much about myself here, but I do really want to say how wonderful and exciting Myrtle has been; what a nice addition to the neighborhood it is. The beautiful atmosphere, all the different music, everyone there is terrific.

[Kathy is now looking through a box of papers] 

When my daughter was in town, we did a review. My daughter Pam’s a singer, she lives in Chicago and I’m a poet. I thought, what if we do a thingy with her, me doing poems and her singing, you know? Natalie said, “You know what? That would be great and I can play the piano to your poems.” It was so much fun. She's such a good piano player, Natalie. Such a good piano player. When I was being dramatic, she'd do the piano all dramatic. Why can't I find it? The one I wanted to show you? Oh, here it is. Yeah, this is what I came up with. 

TW: Were you doing poetry from a young age? 

Kathy: No, no. Most of these poems are written from familiarity with people that I met in life. Like when my good friend passed away, I wrote a poem. He was head of the NAACP in East Providence and we became real friends, I mean good, good friends. What was his name? George Lima. And this [holding a paper] is the one that Natalie fell in love with. I was just sitting around thinking, you know, I needed to start writing some stuff.

TW: Could I ask you to read it? 

Kathy: You want me to read it? Yeah, okay, my eyes are terrible. Oh, you know, Natalie is one of my favorite people. She's just a fabulous person. Isn't that weird, because I've only known her for a year? Okay, you want me to read this yeah?


What do you think?

When you hear a baby cry
When you see a bird fly

Do you get a tear in your eye?

Or…

Do you wish you could cry like a baby?
Do you wish you could fly like a bird?

Or…

Do you just wake up!

Bonus Documents

When asked for photos to go along with this interview, Kathy gave us a neon green shopping bag full of treasures. Below are some of our favorite finds; you can click them to enlarge.

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Marketing Agency, with Sheida Soleimani

Portrait by Shana Trajanoska

Sheida Soleimani (شیدا سلیمانی) is an Iranian-American artist, educator, and activist, as well as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Born in Indianapolis, she grew up in the 90s, raised as a Marxist atheist in the Bible Belt. Her parents arrived as Persian political refugees, having escaped oppression related to their pro-democratic activism during the ’79 Iranian Revolution. Since then, Sheida has become a widely respected artist and community organizer; she recently participated in a talk right here in East Providence, at Odd-Kin as part of the FABRIC Arts Festival. We talked about art, birds, and life.

The Well (TW): Hello! You got any wild stories?

Sheida Solemani (SS): Lots.

TW: Hah, okay. We’ll start with the basics and see where this goes. What was growing up in the Midwest like?

SS: It was wild. It's a beautiful place to grow up, but being a Middle Eastern kid post-9/11 made it really difficult. By virtue of refusing to make nice with their neighbors—think of being the only people of color in a midwest farm town filled with corn and soybean fields—and in many ways refusing to assimilate, my parents introduced me to principles and beliefs that I aspire to in my life and my work: speaking frankly to power, rallying around difference, and confronting ignorance and misrecognition. 

TW: Can you give a specific example or two?

SS: One Halloween during the Iraq War, my dad briefly became notorious for constructing a scene involving George W. Bush in a casket. Another memorable moment from childhood was when Touchdown Jesus—a really large foam sculpture of Jesus with his arms out in front of him, built in front of a mega-church—got struck by lightning and caught fire. My baba saw it on the local news right after it happened, and we drove to go see its burning remains. My baba has a booming laugh and cackle; I can hear him laughing with joy to this day in my memory, as we all watched Jesus burn. A few years later, he was 'resurrected' and rebuilt again, much to our dismay.

TW: Very goth! Your family’s been involved in your art practice recently, we’re thinking of the Ghostwriter work.

SS: Working with my parents is amazing. We're all really close, and so much of who I am is informed by them and all of the stories they have told me. When we work together, we bounce ideas off of one another. My maman will help pose my baba, or help me build the backdrops. My baba will always question my maman and I about our 'intention' and if it is coming across in what we are making. I feel really lucky that they are so supportive and so into being a part of the process. 

Above: Young Sheida with a baby raccoon. “This is what rehabbing in the 90's looked like. This photo is an example of what not to do. Please do not attempt to cuddle wild animals or allow your children to do so ;) ”

TW: That’s great, it sounds like a real point of pride. 

SS: [I am] really proud of the work I have been making with my parents. Also really proud and excited to be building my passion and work as a wildlife rehabilitator into a full blown organization. I feel the most proud when I can release a bird that I treated back into the wild where it belongs.

TW: What’s your official title when it comes to bird work?

SS: I am the Executive Director of Congress of the Birds, the state's only wild bird rehabilitation clinic and release center. We just got our non-profit status this year, and are gearing up to build a bunch of enclosures on 42 acres of land that were just donated to us. Last year, we took in over 1,500 birds, and this year I think we'll have over 2,000.

TW: What’s the process of getting a Federal Migratory Bird Rehabilitation Permit?

SS: Long! And really intense! I've been a rehabber my whole life, but I've been state permitted in RI since 2015. The federal permit is a really intense application that requires a lot of prior certifications and permits, as well as letters of support from rehabbers and vets in the field. It was not an easy permit to get!

TW: And where’d you get the 42 acres? 

SS: We were really lucky to get a private donation from someone who is passionate about the work we are doing with rehabilitating the birds. It came as a total surprise! I was completely shocked when the donor approached us about it, but am so grateful to be given the space to release the birds we rehabilitate.

TW: Before the birds are in your care…where are you finding them?

SS: My phone number is public, so when someone finds an injured bird, they can easily find my info online and call me. I give them instructions on how and where to drop off the bird to our clinic for care. I'm getting around 50 calls or so a day at this point!

A lot of my getting to know Rhode Island's every single little corner has been through bird rescues. Notable bird rescues in EP include an adult Osprey that was in an industrial park on the water, a Double Crested Cormorant near the Henderson Bridge, and a Common Grackle with a broken wing hiding under a car off of Anthony Street.

Above: Dissident from Ghostwriter

TW: How do you think about these two practices—art making and wildlife rehabilitation—in relation to one another?

SS:  I think all three facets of my practices are part of my world that I have built for myself—I don't differentiate being an artist or rehabber or professor from other things in my life/world. Foraging and cooking, making dumb stuff out of clay, collecting records, hoarding plants. Those are all just extensions of my base interests. I guess one thing many people don't know is that I am a classically trained violinist who left the conservatory because it had too many rules.

TW: What about early on in life...when did you start making things you understood to be art?

SS: I remember thinking I was making “art” when I was taking my first film photography class in high school. At the time, I was super obsessed with the concept of memento mori and time. I wanted to tell a story, which I never had really thought about doing visually before, and I made a tableau photograph of a wall clock that I placed a large dead moth on. The shadow of the moth was covering some of the clock, obstructing most of the numbers—it was very angsty, but I had this whole 'time is running out' thing going on at the time. It was exciting to feel like art could tell a story.

TW: Storytelling is still very central to your practice—even when abstracted, it’s rich in narratives. This is a big question for limited space but, what are you primarily concerned with conveying?

SS: Finding clever ways of seducing viewers to engage with a work is something I think is especially important in the art world, which is so profit-driven and so prone to turning a blind eye to entrenched inequality. In sweeping away the West’s blinkered, Orientalist view of the Middle East and centering the spectator’s gaze on actual ongoing drivers of injustice and inequality, I seek to put in the aesthetic hot seat those who continually evade the scales of justice. At the same time—and this is getting back to repair and care—I am just as concerned with giving the marginalized (including the non-human) visibility and agency within my work.

TW: When you’re creating a series like Medium of Exchange, do you start with pure research (OPEC email leaks, international press), or by playing with images and finding stories as you go?

SS: I always start with research before coming up with an idea. All of my images are inspired by specific events—historical, political, familial—and those events are always the jump off point. I then get to learn more about those events through different forms of research- whether those be visiting archives, reading documents, or transcribing and translating oral histories. From there, I start creating sketches and think about what objects and images can be put together to tell the story I am trying to portray. Once I build up my tableaus (days to months depending on the composition), I photograph everything, and the photograph serves as the final piece.

Above: From Medium of Exchange. Photo: GDP, Angola

TW: We like to ask artists how they’re getting by financially—is that cool?

SS: I've always had to work to make a living, and have had some really rough times in my life. One year while teaching adjunct, I was buying expired medical equipment on eBay—I'm type one diabetic. [Today] I'm lucky to have a solid job, and just got tenure at Brandeis University where I am an Associate Professor. My art pays some bills for sure, but I can never rely on it as a steady income as someone with a chronic illness, so I'll be teaching for the rest of my life. Thankfully, I also love teaching, so that helps. Basically, a stable job with university health insurance is much better than expired meds on eBay.

TW: What’s something you’ve learned by teaching, or from students?

SS: When I started teaching at age 25, I was really young. I made friends with many of my students, and while I value those friendships immensely now, I realize that distance is needed to be a good and fair educator, and one that can create distance between work and life.

TW: Teachers always have great reading lists—give us some assignments!

SS: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

TW: Has any of your work in education, art, or with birds led to travel? Any notable trips that made an impact?

SS: I travel often, and to many different 'far away places.' I'll go with the most remote. Visiting the Lofoten Islands in Norway was one of the most remote places I have ever been, and we visited during the winter months for my birthday. I was hoping to see the aurora, and on the last night, I got to see the green and orange lights 'dancing' in the sky during a solar storm.

TW: What’s something you’re currently aspiring to? 

SS: Maybe one day I'll learn how to leave time for self care. Until then, I rule my life by my baba's motto, “Comfort = death.”

---

TW: Readers, now for something a bit different. 

Sheida has a GoFundMe page up to support her effort to build an avian release center for Congress of the Birds. Below, we’ve excerpted some info from that page.

Help Build an Avian Release Center for Congress of the Birds

Above: Getting ready to examine an injured Great Horned Owl, photo by Jessica Rinaldi for The Boston Globe, via GoFundMe

Congress of the Birds has expanded rapidly in the past year, becoming a 501(c), training over 50 volunteers, receiving over 2,000 avian patients and getting 42 acres of secluded woodlands in Chepachet. Their organization runs 24/7; they never turn away an injured or orphaned bird, and volunteers pick up birds from around the state. Now, they need your help!

A release center means that rehabilitated patients will have the best chance of success once released into the wild. To create a center, the Congress needs to build aviaries and flight enclosures that help birds build up their pectoral flight muscles—without proper conditioning, a bird may not be able to survive if it’s “hard-released” into the wild. In other words, they get to practice flying and acclimate to their habitat before going out on their own.

The Congress is not state funded and has no institutional or corporate donors. This project is relying exclusively on donations from the community and, this is big: every dollar donated is being 100% matched by a private donor. Read on and consider chipping in to help this project—and its patients—take flight.

Place Setting, with Kara Stokowski

Kara Stokowski is queer feminist artist and educator whose practice involves DJing, event production, music video creation, collage, and more. A passionate and radical youth arts educator, her work has inspired countless kids at The Beam Center’s camp in New Hampshire and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. You’ve perhaps caught her playing tracks in Providence at Dyke Night, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and right here at Myrtle. Kara approaches fun and joy with a level of dedication matched only by like, Robert Caro’s interest in bureaucracy. We chatted via emails in early October.

TW: Hey Kara. We’re going to start by asking about a track you produced in 2009, The Glow Instrumental. It’s like, grime, 8-bit/glitch, hyperpop and a touch of Wrong Way Up, maybe? What were you listening to in 2009?

KS: Wow thanks! I probably made that in Tony’s [Antony Flackett] Beat Research class at MassArt. I was listening to a lot of video game music and sound effects and was enamored with analog synthesizers. 

TW: Up at MassArt, you co-produced a year for Eventworks. You had Future Islands play?

KS: I jumped into Eventworks because I was completely in awe of what the previous students had done in 2008. The Baltimore Round Robin show totally melted and reformed my brain. I wanted all of our events to feel like the floor fell out and the ceiling was coming down. I wanted everything we did to last all night long. I was often disappointed, even though we pulled off some monumental shows including Future Islands, Dan Deacon and this crazy VJ festival. There were so many forces pulling me in different directions at that time and I didn’t always have the clearest vision or intention. It’s really easy to be taken advantage of in that situation. I just went back to MassArt in September for the opening of Displacement at the MassArt Art Museum. I checked in with the SIM major studio, second class of the year! Eventworks had just put on a rave, there are lots of DJs in the studio right now, very deeply and rightfully skeptical of me, a 30-something lady playing records in the white cube space at school. 

TW: When we think of you as a DJ, Pink Noise comes to mind. Tell us about that.

KS: I love to throw a party. I wanted there to be a space for women who were DJs or made electronic music to be able to DJ for other women, at a party that felt fun and safe and queer. I wanted Pink Noise to be a place where people could try out DJing for the first time and feel supported. I also was really turned off by the darkness and self seriousness of the dance music scene in Boston at that time and really wanted to add some play and radical joy. Reflecting back on it now, I think I had a lot to prove: I was coming out of a deep grief, I put a lot of pressure on myself. Pink Noise was a way to focus some nervous manic energy. I learned so much! It was a real relief to wrap it up in 2016 and give space for someone else to create something special. 

Above: Kara DJing at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston

TW: Actually, let’s go back a sec. How did you end up at Mass Art, and in the event production world to start?

KS: I’ve been a theater kid, a ska fiend in high school, a bit of a computer nerd. I went to ska shows every weekend when I was in high school at the Flywheel in Easthampton. I went to community college in Greenfield and then MassArt to make more art with computers and tech. I’ve been a childcare provider, an educator. I’ve been a union organizer, a striking worker. I love a spectacle, I love producing events, I love gathering the masses for any kind of ritual or celebration. 

TW: Is this the world you met your partner, a local clammer and sax legend?

KS: I met my partner Joe DeGeorge on the beach 9 years ago. I love how we support each other. 

TW: And you moved here, to Providence, a few years after?

KS: I had been visiting friends and lovers in Providence since 2013, and finally made the move in 2018. It’s a perfect distance from all the places in New England that I visit frequently. I love the big city/small state vibes. 

TW: What’s in Kara’s Guide to New England?

KS: These are mostly from this summer’s travels: 

1. Beede Falls, Sandwich NH - fave waterfall and day off spot when I’m at camp

2. Look Park, Florence MA - My hometown park

3. Coney Island Hot Dogs, Worcester MA

4. Provincelands, Ptown MA 

5. Dinosaur Footprints, Holyoke MA

6. East Bay Bike Path, RI 

TW: Another reason you travel around is your work as a wedding DJ. It’s quite different from club DJ world…how have you approached it?

KS: I did a few weddings in 2019 and then, everything that was on my calendar for 2020 got rebooked to 2021. By that time I had gone from dipping my toe in, to diving into the deep end with a full calendar of clients. Wedding world is crazy. Wedding DJs (especially) have this notorious reputation for being the worst—weird dude energy, wrestling announcer vibes, pretentious and snobby with lots of “gotcha” moments. I just don’t believe that you need any of that to have an amazing wedding with a killer dance party.

Above: Kara in her MassArt Eventworks days.

I work with clients who are passionate about music, so that’s what we focus on. I feel very lucky to work with queer folks and creative people who give me a lot of trust and it’s such a joy to see them let loose and go crazy on a day that can be so stressful. Joe and I did a 80’s theme gig over the summer where he played live sax solos on some iconic 80s tracks and we’ve got a couple weddings booked with a live sax add on next year, very excited for this. 

TW: After those gigs, what’s on the drive home playlist? 

KS: I listen to the radio alot in my car. We love playing “name that composer” to classical music if we’re on a trip. I listen to jazz when it’s late at night near Boston. If I’m getting drowsy, it’s time to put on showtunes. I’m currently in this Patti Lupone phase thanks to this video of her on Joan Rivers. 

TW: What’s your favorite medium to play out on—records, midi controllers, etc?

KS: I love it all! I think I really like the limitations that a crate of records brings. You only have what you have to work with, and it’s all gotta work! 

TW: Since your weekends are usually booked with weddings, what do you do around here on a weekday? What’s poppin’ on Tuesday night?

KS: Well on Wednesday nights I’m usually at Hot Club. They have Name That Tune, and I am very, very good at Name That Tune. I welcome any challengers to name more tunes than me on a Wednesday night at Hot Club. Shout out to Kelsea, our incredible host who comes up with unique playlists every week. 

TW: No challengers here. Do you have visual art practices, also?

KS: I make a collage every day in November. I love taking the winter to work on visual practices. It’s meditative, it’s processing big feelings. I also love making music videos.

TW: Do tell.

KS: I had to rewatch some of these to remember them just because I made them like 5 years ago. The stranglehold that Deee-Lite had on my entire vibe is obvious, lol. You ever see the Groove is in the Heart video and decided to base your entire personality on it? For this Gauche video (below) I wanted the video to clash a bit with the downer lyrics. We repeat these things so much in capitalist culture: we’re running out of options, we’re tired, what is the point? It becomes goofy! And so the video is kind of this exaggerated exasperation of toys and neon and colors and trash and landfills and oil spills.

For this La Neve video, I just wanted it to be really cunty. The comments are SENDING ME. Wow, bless. I used this colorful big oil propaganda vid from the 50s for some of the green screen background to insert this idea about an energy source that seems so stable, but is actually pretty fragile. I like contrasting that with the stability of our natural world, the challenge we often present to it to keep on living and the many ways that it does despite everything. Sometimes just living is the best revenge. 

TW: This isn’t a great transition but, just remembered your bios often mention a gold prosthetic on your leg. We’ve known you a bit but don't know the story there.

KS: Oh, I wear a prosthetic on my right leg. I was born missing a bone in my lower leg, so I had an amputation when I was 9 months old. I’ve worn a prosthetic ever since. All bodies are absolutely amazing and mine is no different. 

TW: Agree! Heading into fall and winter here—as a nod to the disappearing warm weather, what’s a great beach book? 

KS: Okay. If you really want to know what my summer beach read was, it’s this book, Life in a Medieval Village. It’s not cool, not very sexy—but I loved it!  Peasants: they’re just like us! This really gets into some of the pettiness and small acts of rebellion that people who have very little power can get up to. I also read The Hotel New Hampshire this year and it’s so weird and beautiful. I also really like Britney Spears’ memoir. I’ll read just about any memoir. 

Above: Out, into the night! Kara around age 6.

TW: What’s the next chapter of your own memoir? What’s coming up? 

KS: November and December are for rest and recovery from the wedding season. I’m always down to DJ for a cause and I’ll be spinning at the Sojourner House Masquerade Ball at the Graduate in Providence on Friday Nov. 22nd. I might be at the Dirt Palace holiday sale selling polymer clay jewelry in December, and then on January 3rd, I’ll be back at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for First Fridays from 6-9pm. Members can reserve free tickets and it’s a fun time with some old art. I’m really into the Italian renaissance wing right now, especially this painting. And I’m definitely more open to collaborations and DJing around town in February and March, before weddings pick back up again in April. 

TW: Thanks Kara, you’re the best!

*

Readers, below is a selection of collages Kara’s made over the years. If you’re looking for collage source materials, The Well suggests the upcoming Rochambeau Library Fall Book Sale, October 30–Nov 2.

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Pressing On, with Lois Harada

Lois Harada. Photo by Rue Sakayama.

Earlier this week, we were visiting the Providence Public Library and stumbled upon a new show by artist Lois Harada. Pied Type: Letterpress Printing in Providence, 1762–Today explores the history of commercial printing in Rhode Island, and will be on view through January 11, 2025. Locally known for starting the #RENAMEVISTORYDAY project, Harada’s larger practice references a range of histories, aesthetics, and ideas, from WPA Posters to Sci-Fi authors Butler and Bradbury. Works address topics like language, non-verbal communication, xenophobia, and Brett Kavanaugh head on. Great stuff!

TW: Hello, Lois Harada. Who are you?

LH: I am an artist based in North Providence, RI. Much of my work is based on my family's history of Japanese American incarceration.

TW: Could you elaborate on that? 

LH: My paternal grandmother and her family were forcibly removed from their home outside San Diego to an incarceration site in Poston, Arizona from 1942-1945. They settled in Salt Lake City afterwards where she met my grandfather—also Japanese American, but excluded from incarceration due to being from Salt Lake City and not a coastal area. This history really was not talked about in our family. My dad learned about it in his tenth grade history class and proceeded to ask my grandmother about it when he returned home. She said something like, ‘Yes, it was a terrible thing,’ and then moved on. I started to make work around incarceration the year after she passed away but my family has had more conversations about it now and are helping me research.

TW: In 2019, you made a poster related to this that simply read #RENAMEVICTORYDAY, which led to a good bit of press, and a petition from Amanda Woodward. Tell us about that.

LH: Since 2019, I've been making work to encourage RI residents to rethink the naming of Victory Day—the official title on the books, but most residents call the day VJ Day or Victory Over Japan Day. I do not want to take the holiday away or take recognition from veterans who served in World War II but do want to think of a more inclusive name to the day. Asian Americans often feel isolated or singled out on this day and most residents use it as a day at the beach. Legislation has been slow—veterans lobbying groups have a lot of sway in the state.

TW: You brought the message right to the people, at the beach.

LH: In 2020, I hired a banner towing plane to carry #RENAMEVICTORYDAY across beaches in RI on Victory Day. It was a big project for me in scale and in cost and I raised money from supporters via social media to help fund the project. The plane made several loops over beaches and it was fun to hear reports of boos or cheers from the beaches.

Above: #RENAMEVICTORYDAY plane. Photo by Rue Sakayama.

TW: Was this method of message delivery more about like, hijacking a common beach advertising thing, or a nod to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 

LH: I didn’t realize that as part of the initial project, but it’s hard to separate it from the history. I knew that most residents used it as a beach holiday so wanted to take the project directly to them. I’m not sure if anyone at the beach interpreted it that way on the day of. I am also very interested in thinking about spinning common advertising forms and these planes often carry insurance or beverage ads. 

TW: You mention legislation here’s been slow, in part due to veterans’ lobbying. What do you think the pushback’s all about? We want to be respectful, and assume it’s rooted in deep trauma but, we also can’t ignore outright racism. There’s also Rhode Islanders being a bit resistant to change about anything, really.

LH: I can’t quite figure out what the pushback is—it seems like there is this golden idea of World War II that people are quick to defend, including veterans from other conflicts and family members. I was encouraged by the vote removing ‘Providence Plantations’ from the state name but that seems to have bolstered many people against changing Victory Day since it’s a ‘woke’ issue. It’s difficult to have conversations with people with this viewpoint too as there is nowhere to engage. We do have some veterans supporting our bill but those in opposition tend to outnumber them. I once got advice to just wait till everyone from that conflict had passed away but I’d like to change the bill while there are still survivors of Japanese American incarceration surviving too.  

TW: So you have a new show up at the Providence Public Library, Pied Type: Letterpress Printing in Providence, 1762—Today. Like #RENAMEVISTORYDAY, it’s rooted in history and research but now, looking at the physical history of your practice. How’d it all come together?

LH: I applied for a Rhode Island Humanities grant last fall and was awarded the grant near the end of the year. I worked with Dirt Palace Public Projects as my fiscal sponsor and got the project up and running in March or April of this year. I spent a lot of time visiting Special Collections at Providence Public Library with the Director, Jordan Goffin. It was very hard to winnow down materials—I could have spent a year just looking at everything. I knew we had a certain number of cases to choose from and the exhibition started to take shape by slowly identifying what fit together in each case and the overall ‘story’ of the exhibition. I realized we had some holes in material and reached out to some partner organizations who were very generous in loaning materials. Jordan was crucial in those connections as he was known in the archive and museum community. 

Above: Installation detail of Pied Type. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Writing labels and the catalog did take a good amount of time too especially since I wanted to control the design and most of the printing. The experience was a great opportunity to try curating on a larger scale—I’ve done some small group exhibitions in the past, but it’s a totally different set of muscles than making art and putting it in a gallery. 

TW: You’ve been doing print work at DWRI Letterpress for many years; how’d you end up there and what’s the shop meant to you?

LH: I met [shop founder] Dan Wood as a RISD student in 2009—he had just started teaching the letterpress printing workshop in the Printmaking Department. I was so keen to learn the medium that I took a class at AS220 the year before so I was excited to build on those skills. I started working part time for Dan about a year or so later and have seen the shop move and grow in terms of employees and the type of projects that we work on. Dan is always very supportive of other printers and is very generous with his own work (if you’ve seen him right after printing an edition, he’ll usually hand you a print!).

TW: For those who have never seen a Linotype machine, a press, etc in person, could you give a quick overview of your favorite few pieces of in-shop machinery? And outside the shop—walk us through the process of how one makes a custom souvenir-coin vending machine.

LH: I love printing on the Windmill at the shop. It’s a great commercial press that you can print around 1,000 prints in an hour…if everything is running well. I printed the show postcards on a Windmill. I am sadly mostly on the computer at the shop so this was also a great excuse for me to get on press and out of design or client management for a bit.

LH: The penny press was also grant-funded and I had some fun conversations with the grant officer about telling the story of that piece in the budget (i.e. maybe it doesn’t take the majority of the budget!). My sister is great at the internet so she helped me sleuth out the best place to order. I have a used machine; new machines were about four times the cost. They are usually rented too and not purchased outright. 

TW: Grant writing is a whole unique skill set. From the time you began applying for grants to present day, what are some pro tips and lessons-learned you can share here with first timers?

LH: It can be super easy to be discouraged by the grant writing process—I’m not telling you about the tens or hundreds of things I apply to and don’t get, you’re just hearing about the things I get! I try to think about always of simplifying my writing and getting out of the mode of ‘art talk’. Could my non-art parents understand my grant? Have I very clearly laid out how I will accomplish a project; even small things can help here. Budgets are also a great place to tell more of the story and show that you know how to get things done. I often ask for a reader, too. If the grant needs a letter of reference, I usually write a letter to 80% completion that I can share with a recommender so that they have all the stuff that I’m working on right now that should be mentioned for the particular application. Sme grants don’t allow this but I find that most people being asked for a letter find this helpful. I’m happy to read your grant or have coffee, email me! 

Above: Villa Adriana aquatint, from Harada's time in Rome.

TW: A lot of the work we’ve been discussing is Rhode Island-specific; you ever get out of here?

LH: I took a semester abroad in Rome while I was at RISD; the school had this amazing campus in Rome for many years. It started as a year long program then switched to a semester when I went. They just ‘sunsetted’ it and turned over the lease on the building that housed students and studios. I went with about twenty other RISD students in different departments. While there was a print shop there, I spent a good amount of time cutting paper into sketches of different sites that I was seeing on a daily basis. 

It was the longest I had been away from home and though scary, felt like a real chance to get to know a new place in a way that shorter trips couldn't accomplish. Grocery stores and markets became a favorite there and are still my favorite spot to check out on any trip.

TW: What’s your favorite local grocery shop? Other favorite local things, too if you’d like.

LH: East Providence is home to my favorite grocery store, Asiana. Sun and Moon across the way is also a favorite. I've celebrated several birthdays and sunny days at The East Providence Yacht Club. Odd-Kin is one of my favorite contemporary art spaces around right now too!

TW: It’s someone’s first time at Asiana—what are some must-try items, brands?

LH: They have a great selection of Korean and Japanese grocery items so I always shop there to fill up my pantry with rice and other staples, including instant miso soup or ramen or the ban chan from the fridge (the tasty side dishes served with a meal in a Korean restaurant). Freezer dumplings too!

TW: Back to Odd-Kin...we interviewed Kate a bit back and know you worked with her on the My HomeCourt project. Can you walk us through the process of initially visiting Davis Park, researching, and working with community stakeholders—and what you hoped to achieve with that project?

LH: Kate McNamara, who runs Odd-Kin, is the Executive and Creative Director of My HomeCourt and I worked closely with her and Jamilee Lacy (the former director) on this project. Davis Park was close to my old apartment in Mount Pleasant and is used by the neighboring middle school, VA, community garden as well as residents from around Providence. I spent some time visiting the park and My HomeCourt helped to gather community feedback and surveys. The park has an overlap with many languages, and I wanted to reflect that in the design through words that you might hear on a basketball court (play, together, run etc.). The letterforms were mostly printed in wood type and then scanned with the exception of the Khmer which I stitched together from other letters. I am happy with the result and love seeing people interact with it on a daily basis. 

Above: Davis Park Mural, 2022. Photo by Off the Ground Drone Services (FB)

TW: Way before you were doing murals on basketball courts and flying planes over beaches—what do you remember making as a kid? Like what’s the first ‘ah-ha!’ moment with the arts?

LH: My mom is a very crafty person (she's a quilter and avid puzzler too) and she always had fun activities for my birthday parties. One year we made plaster of Paris magnets from little molds and I remember being so entranced by the ability to make a multiple. I've been a printmaker since then!

TW: What was growing up like?

LH: My earliest memories are of family. My mom is one of ten and there were always dinners and events full of cousins and aunts and uncles. My dad and I were big fans of the drive-in theater and saw several Fast and Furious movies there. He is also an avid fly fisher and spends hours crafting flies. [Well’s addition: a great story about fishing flies]

My high school art teacher had an MFA in Printmaking and set up a studio in our classroom. I was lucky to have etching and lithography available during class and he encouraged me to apply to school at RISD.

TW: Are there other artists working with the idea of multiples / editions you’ve found inspiration in? 

LH: There’s a Sol LeWitt series of etchings that are these really rich black fields with small white shapes. I’m checking if I can find them, I saw them at a print fair in New York when I was a student. There was something super striking about seeing a wall of similar, or the same print repeated over and over that’s always stuck with me which I think informed that piece. 

Above: Young Lois, excited to be hiking. "I do not support the Dodgers, I don't know where that hat is from."

TW: As an artist who works so heavily with text, we have to ask you about other texts. Are there books, poems, etc that mean a lot to you?

LH: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I read this for the first time in 2020 and think about it often. Also, Ubik by Philip K. Dick—I'm a big lover of sci-fi!

TW: Parable is highly quotable. “Embrace diversity. Or be destroyed.” What would you pull out as a favorite?

LH: The whole thing is so moving—I couldn’t put it down. It had so many parallels to the election and quotes felt like they could have come directly out of the news. It doesn’t seem like we’re that far away from the world depicted in the book too. I’m realizing now that the quote that sticks with me is from Parable of the Talents: 

Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.

TW: Yow! Less than a month out from the election, that one really hits. Thanks for sharing it. So, what’s coming up? Where can people find you?

LH: We have a panel of letterpress printers on 11/12/24 from 5:30 to 7pm at PPL. Jacques Bidon, Andre Lee Bassuet, Dan Wood, and I will be talking about how we're using letterpress techniques in our practice (the first three have work in the 'contemporary' case of the exhibition!). The panel will be moderated by Director of Special Collections at PPL, Jordan Goffin. He and I will also host a hands-on print workshop on the last day of the exhibition on January 11th from 10-12pm.

And Social Justice for All, with Sussy Santana

Photo by Giovanni Savino

Poetry is Sussy Santana’s main medium for creative expression. She makes "llamados," or "calls" to community members and artists collaborators to participate in collective performance. Santana is Project Manager for the Providence chapter of Arts for Everybody, author of Pelo Bueno y otros poemas (2010), RADIO ESL, a poetry cd (2012), and the chapbook Poemas Domésticos (2018) and in 2015, was the first Latina writer to win the MacColl Johnson Fellowship. You can catch her as a special guest this October 19th at Grant Jam ‘24, a free panel talk night at AS220 hosted by the Myrtle-supported Awesome Foundation Rhode Island.

TW: Who was your first audience?  

SS: Rocks. I vividly remember being little, maybe five or six, and picking up rocks in my neighborhood to bring them on the bus with us when we went out. My mom just asked me the other day, if I remember doing that! We didn't have a car so we took public transportation wherever we went. I would pick up tiny rocks and tell them they were going to visit their cousins in another town. I had a whole little ceremony with them about how they had to say goodbye to everyone and go on a new adventure, visiting their other rock relatives. I would get emotional when it was time to part ways, but off they went to rock on.

TW: What does East Providence, land of sandstone and shale, mean to you?

SS: Providence is my home, at this point in my life I have lived in the United States longer than I lived in my birth country, and a lot of that time has been spent in Providence. While I go back to the Dominican Republic almost every year, when I think of "mi casa," I'm thinking PVD. When I think of East Providence, I think of how many hours I spent in the parking lot of the Philharmonic building, waiting for my oldest daughter to get out of her RI Children Chorus rehearsals. Rhode Island is where my affections are contained, it has a special place in my heart.

Above: Santana doing a pop-up performance at a local market

TW: What was childhood in the DR like? 

SS: In the Dominican Republic, I lived with my mom and my sister. We moved around a lot because my mom was a teacher and every year she went to teach at a new school, which also meant we had to switch schools. It sucked to move around so much back then, but it taught us to be comfortable with change.

TW: How old were you when you came to the USA? How was the adjustment?

SS: We moved to the Bronx the Summer I turned 14. It was a time of discoveries, learning a new language, getting on the subway for the first time, and listening to Metallica! I always thought the United States was like the movies, I was thinking Times Square and the Empire State. It was more like bodegas and Spanglish, Puerto Rican flags everywhere! We were embraced by a Latin American community of hard working people, my mom included, who came to this country to do their best, and they did, and they did it while listening to loud salsa and merengue.

TW: The Bronx and Washington Heights are major hubs for Dominican Americans, yeah? What inspired the move?

SS: You remember right, Washington Heights (Manhattan) is a hub for Dominican Americans, and where my mom had her business, a botánica, for 30 years. I lived there my last years in NY; before that I lived in the Bronx. Mine is the classic immigrant story. Mom lost her job in DR, came to the US for a better life, brought us here. The end. Of course, this omits the constitutions of a “better life” because that is always under construction, especially as we incorporate new understandings and experiences. 

Above: Goya and gold. Santana in Providence. Photo by Jenny Polanco.

TW: You seemed to be enthusiastic about Metallica...

SS: I absolutely love Metallica. I just went to see them last month at Gillette; took my girls and husband with me. It was a family affair. Metallica was my first live concert (in English) in the United States. I worked a whole weekend—doing inventory at a pharmacy in the Bronx—to pay for my ticket. Faith No More and Guns n Roses were also playing that night. Giant Stadium, New Jersey, I think it was 1992. Metal was a huge part of my teenage years. It allowed me to release some of the frustration I felt about moving to a new place. I bonded with people in my high school over music, which really allowed me to practice my English. I could scream the words and nobody would know if I was pronouncing it right or not. It was great! Highly recommended for anyone looking to learn English!

TW: Metal knows no borders! Related to language learning, we’re curious about your international travels and projects. What stands out?

SS: I went to Italy a while back where I learned I can eat all day and walk more than I thought possible. I also went on a creative trip to Chile, where I met brilliant women, many who were artists. Together with artists Ela Alpi and Shey Rivera Rios, we created a performance called Próceres and intervened monuments in the city of Santiago to address the lack of representation of women in historical monuments that are housed in public spaces. It was a meaningful action to all of us, as we tried to visualize the contributions of women in our society. It's not that men haven’t done things worth celebrating, it's that in the process of honoring those achievements, we forget the contributions of other people. But don't worry, we are here to remind you! From that experience, I learned from the wisdom of so many women, young and old. I learned to also value the wisdom that I carry. It's important to honor both.

TW: Before international residencies and being a published poet...can you think back to any early lessons learned? Like when you were coming into your own.

SS: I was so nervous during my first job interview that I mispronounced my own name. When the lady introduced herself, I was like: "Hi, my name is Sushi Santana." We just couldn't stop laughing, I still got the job, but I was mortified. I learned the importance of not taking yourself too seriously!

TW: Your work with the Creative Community Health Worker Fellowship...where do the arts and public health intersect?

SS: Artists are always contributing to public health, art is a healing practice, I’m intentional about engaging people in the creative process because I know from my own experience that it makes you feel better. It works. I’m interested in a culture that allows people to feel, communicate emotions, embrace their own creativity, and art does all of that.

Above: Documentation of an intervention on Broad Street. Video still by Cormac Crump.

TW: We read somewhere this kind of runs in your family?

SS: My mom has a spiritual healing practice; she had a show on cable (NY) about ancestral wisdom. The concept of healing through ritual, in my case, the ritual of writing and performance is a very comfortable place. I grew up around that. My paternal grandfather, Anselmo, was a medicine man. He was love personified; his presence was healing to everyone around him. He taught us the value of love, the importance of feeling loved. I think people who participate in the creative process are engaging in that type of kindness, even if for a brief moment, you are using the best of you to create something. I work to hold that space because it creates a healthier community, it’s public health.

TW: Going back...you mentioned the artist Ela Alpi and for a second we thought you said El Alfa. Quite different but, here’s another music question. Was/is dembow a big thing for you? What were you listening to as a teen back in the DR?

SS: Dembow as we know it now, wasn’t really big when I was a teenager in DR. What was popular was El General, a Panamanian artist who started a whole movement that eventually progressed into everything that is known now in the realm of Dembow and reggaeton. Obviously, Jamaican Dancehall music and reggae influenced the work of El General, but he was one of the first to do it in Spanish.

I went back to live in DR when I turned seventeen until I was twenty. My influences came from my sister who was really into Rock en Español and I listened to whatever she was playing. I think that first contact opened the doors to other bands and I eventually started listening to Spanish rock stations in DR who also played songs in English. She also loved Bob Marley and we used to listen to him all the time. We partied all the time, I don’t ever remember anyone checking my ID, we used to go bars and clubs with a bunch of friends. It was fun.

TW: Do you play or sing yourself?

SS: I'm interested in music, all different genres, languages. Live music always energizes me, it makes me want to create and explore. I don't play any instruments or sing, but I'm inspired by the experience of live music, theater, movies, etc. I love going to fall festivals, it's my favorite time of year, nature is so magnificent, fall landscapes inform my practice in many subtle ways.

TW: Scrolling through your blog now…there’s documentation of a few events described as being Fluxus-based. What’s your relationship to the movement?

SS: I love that it [Fluxus] is all about process; it doesn't have to be the totality of anything. It allows for a glimpse which is very much what we get in any given interaction.

Above: Outside Gillette Stadium, ready for metal.

TW: We’re close to wrapping up here...before we go, what are a few books everyone should read?

SS: La loca de la casa, by Rosa Montero and Dominicanish by Josefina Báez

TW: Let’s end with this: What are you doing tomorrow?

SS: I'm currently doing a poetry tour of small businesses in Providence. I've stopped at bodegas, supermarkets, and barbershops on Broad Street. Pop-up style. No announced days, I just go and walk in somewhere. This is ongoing work...

*

You can follow Sussy on instagram at @lapoetera, and via her website.

Reconditioning Fitness, with Muscle Brunch

Penina Gal (they/them) and J.R. Uretsky (they/them) traveled from New York and California to find each other in Providence, RI. Across the past decade here, they’ve worked in cartooning, illustration, music, performance art, education, and on curatorial practices—and have been active in spots like Binch Press / Queer Archive Work and the Dirt Palace. During the pandemic, a small home gym sparked a big idea, and now the duo’s putting their experience and energy into developing a queer/community gym called Muscle Brunch. 

The Well (TW): In our first round of questions, you teased a story about a lost bet, and the resulting acquisition of Bob Barker’s leg hair. We’ll get to Muscle Brunch, but this must be addressed.

J.R. Uretsky (JRU): Lol. My buddy Annabel and I went to Bible College in Los Angeles. Our dorms would go to TV tapings, and we had plans to be in the audience of The Price is Right. Annabel and I grew up together; she was always too nice, and kids in high school would take advantage of that. I once caught our friend Justin, who had been in and out of cancer remission his whole life, attempting to obtain Annabel’s lunch money, claiming that she should just give it to him because he had cancer. I called him out on it, and he apologized and granted us one free use of his “cancer card.” Annabel kept her lunch money, and we forgot about the whole interaction until a few years later when Annabel approached me with a problem, a lost bet. We had to get this lock of hair. We knew it was time to use the “cancer card,” and called Justin to get his blessing and set off to the set of The Price is Right. 

Bob, a true performer, would do audience work during the commercial breaks. He was answering audience questions when Annabel and I rose from our seats, demanding Bob’s attention. We told him about our friend Justin, his cancer journey, his bravery, and his one wish to have a lock of Bob Barker’s hair. Bob didn’t hesitate to respond, “Well, girls, I don’t have much left on my head, but I got plenty of leg hair!” Annabel rushed the stage with scissors she had snuck past security as Bob calmly began to cuff a pant leg. Before I knew it, she was shearing his shin. When she finished, she kissed him on the cheek, hopped off stage, and dumped a bunch of gray hair into my hands. We framed it, and it hung in our dorm room. 

TW: What a legend! So how’d you both grow up?

Penina Gal (PG): I was a nerdy kid in NYC, really into reading, drawing, and basketball. I was what was then just called “a tomboy,” since we didn’t have the acknowledgement or terminology for queer kids that we do now. I made a comic about it, Baller Baby.

JRU: I grew up on the California coast in the 1990s, which basically means that I call everyone "dude" and will never fully grasp how to dress for different kinds of weather. I played in a ska band in high school and was super into Jesus, so I assume I was pretty annoying. I moved to Los Angeles at seventeen to attend Bible College and become a youth pastor. In my second year at school, I realized I didn't like Jesus or youths and focused my energy on making art.

Above: "This is from our first public program, Art/PE, hosted by the Dirt Palace and featuring trainers Penina Gal and Dulari Tahbildar" —MB

TW: Penina, in Baller Baby, you recall fantasizing about someday owning a pair of Nike Air Penny 2's. So that's like 1996-7? What are your all time favorite pieces of footwear?

PG: Yeah exactly. Those are still my favorite from a purely nostalgic perspective. My aesthetic favorite is probably the Jordan 3 in simple and clean colorways–I have them in “Muslin” and wore them to a wedding. I like classic Vans, too; can’t go wrong with black canvas and a gum sole.

TW: Providence has always been a DIY comics hotbed—who are some of your favs? 

PG: Every single cartoonist in Providence is amazing. There are a handful of us at Binch, look all those folks up! My BFF Betsey Swardlick is not very online but is my favorite storyteller. Ariel Bordeaux, James Kuo, Leela Corman, Tom Hart, AK Summers, the list goes on. Ryan Alves recently handed me one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while. I’ll probably think of like twelve more people after this and feel bad for not listing them.

TW: And J.R., did your ska band have a pun name? The Skapostles? Skadam and Eve? Also, serious Q, what’s your take on the lasting importance of teenage ska bands?

JRU: I wish our name was Skadam and Eve or, more apropos of now Skadom and Skamorrah. The bands I was into as a teen represented a kind of male energy that I related to, but growing up female, I wasn’t allowed to access or show it. A very dumb ska band that has directly influenced my current practice is The Aquabats (more vibe than music). Like DEVO, they are very interested in building a community around their music or a myth about the band. There is something lovely and so stupid about that. 

TW: Do you think the initial desire to be a pastor was more about wanting simply to perform? What’s the relationship there?

JRU: Totally. My work is basically satirizing Western Evangelical worship practices and rituals because they are powerful. Singing together is healing. I believe the Church uses this power to manipulate people, and I am horrified by that. In my performance, I create affective experiences akin to the church, sans a god or a religion. It’s just us singing songs about queer experiences, heartbreak, and going to therapy.

Above: "A picture of my high school Christian ska band, Kick Me Jimmy. I am wearing the “Satan is a nerd” t-shirt, and Annabel, our lead singer and Barker hair conspirator, is to my left." -JRU

TW: Were you focused mainly on music as a kid? Or up to other art projects?

JRU: When I was a kid, I created a room-cleaning robot using cardboard. I attached a piece of cardboard to my closet door frame and drew a robot with a massive mouth on it. The mouth was a big hole in the cardboard. I used it to put all my dirty clothes and toys inside until my room was clean, or rather until all my belongings were stuffed inside the closet. The closet robot was my solution to cleaning my room and best illustrates “my thing,” which is stupid creative problem-solving–like creative problem solving however, not for the most efficient or best solution but rather the stupidest, weirdest, or funniest solution to a problem.

TW: How did you two meet and form this collaborative practice?

PG: We vaguely met through both being around the Providence art world, and I thought J.R. was cute and booked their band to play a show that ended up being moved to the grossest, moldiest punk house basement I’ve ever been in. At least the bands were good. We’re married now, and we have pretty different art practices, but we both got really burned out by jobs and decided to chase this gym idea as I got more into perfecting our home gym and started casually training some friends. It just sort of developed as the only thing we could think of to do that maybe would pay us while also feeling good and benefiting our direct community.

TW: Let’s get to the gym idea then...what’s the quick pitch?  

MB: Muscle Brunch is rooted in actively undoing the damage the fitness industry has done to women and queer people. We are not into exploiting people’s body insecurities and shame for profit. When the pandemic began and Penina built a home gym, friends would come over and say things like, “I don’t like going to gyms, but I’d come to *this* one!” This got us thinking about how Rhode Island doesn’t have a gym that specifically offers a welcoming and safe environment for its queer and female residents.

Above: "Our basement gym, with our dog Bobby." —MB

TW: How is Muscle Brunch different, in practice? What’s been the strategy to tackle these issues?

MB: We sent out a survey through local listservs and social media, and out of 114 responses, 83% of the individuals polled said they would be interested in joining a gym like Muscle Brunch. We asked how and why these demographics would use an inclusive gym, and learned a few things:

1. Women and queer people often feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in gyms due to potential discrimination, judgment, or harassment.

2. Our customer base requested a gym that centers queer, trans, and female bodies of all sizes and abilities.

3. Women and queer people often make less money than cisgender men, making it challenging to afford gym memberships. Gyms in the greater Providence area cost about $60+ per month. In our poll, we found that only 18% of respondents could afford that. 

4. Most gyms focus on weight loss, which can be harmful for people who have been socialized to believe that thinness is the ultimate fitness goal. This is what drives JR to want to start a gym that welcomes all levels and bodies. From a young age, JR was told that their body was wrong, which repelled them from fitness spaces. At Muscle Brunch, we aren’t working out to get thin, because health shouldn’t be measured by size. Health looks different on every person, and we want to celebrate that.

5. It is a struggle to find a gym that fosters a sense of belonging and support. Our customers may feel isolated or disconnected in fitness communities and with trainers that don’t understand what queer bodies go through. Our poll results showed that our customers are looking for bodywork professionals who understand queer needs, along with infrastructure like gender-neutral bathrooms and changing spaces.

TW: What's the process for getting involved and, is this a local only thing or is there a growth plan? 

PG: Scaling is the goal of our vision. Right now, we’re running a few workshops for artists, and we’re getting our home gym ready to start offering personal and semi-personal training for 1-3 people at a time. We’ll link a sign-up form via our mailing list and instagram when that’s ready. The big picture dream is to offer a full gym with memberships. We’ll be looking for investors to make that happen! For now, folks who are interested can join our mailing list and follow us on Instagram.

TW: This feels like a huge project; lots of hours and focus. Where are you both at now in terms of balance...between work, studio practices, the gym, etc? Any healthy habits that you rely on? 

JRU: I'm currently focusing on my recovery from being a full-blown workaholic, so I'm not putting too much pressure on myself to maintain healthy habits. I'm a bit skeptical of healthy habits because, for me, they have been more about "being productive" than "self-care." This is a product of living under capitalism and years of overachieving without ever asking myself what felt good. I'm working on my motivation around habits to avoid destructive thoughts like "If I start a workout routine, I will lose weight" and instead focus on "I swim four times a week because it feels good."

Above: Teenage Penina

PG: Capitalism and the medical industrial complex [are] messed up. I tried so hard to build an art practice and career with an undiagnosed sleep disorder that, among other things, has the same symptoms as pretty intense ADHD. I spent so many years thinking I was just lazy and bad and not understanding why it was hard for me to do things that I wanted to do. I’ve had to adjust my expectations and the pressures I put on myself to make art feel like something I enjoy again.

MB: Decolonizing Fitness has been an excellent resource for us as we think about creating a welcoming environment that is the antithesis of a toxic fitness culture.

TW: Outside of Muscle Brunch, you’ve been involved with Binch Press and Dirt Palace—what have these spaces meant to you and your practices?

PG: I can easily be a hermit and stay home and not talk to anyone for days. Binch has been a great way to stay connected to fellow artists and friends. Having access to such a great resource makes me want to print stuff more.

JRU: The Dirt Palace (DP) was how I made friends in Providence. It was also where I met other women(ish) people like me: buff, self-sufficient female-identified artists who loved music and art and could build things. I learned a lot from being a part of the DP community. The DP has had to adapt over the years. As an aspiring business owner and community builder, it has been helpful to watch how they have navigated adapting. 

TW: Well, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us, and best of luck with Muscle Brunch! If you have anything else upcoming you want to shout out, the mic’s yours.

PG: Honestly, I’m so proud of my gym. I put a lot of work into building a sick gym in our basement on no budget, and now I get to train people out of it. It feels like an art installation that gets fully realized when people use it! We’re almost ready to start running strength training services, and I’m working on a new zine about the pretty weird treatment I’m undergoing for my sleep disorder.

JRU: I’m really proud of my bands, Còmo Què Wao and J.R. and the Worship Band. I wish my entire life revolved around making music with my friends (and pushing paperwork for Muscle Brunch)!

Rock N' Roll Fun, with Ella Boissonnault

Above: Ella at Myrtle's opening night. Photo: Melody Matters

Ella Boissonnault is a guitarist and songwriter whose current project, Lady Pills, has performed just about everywhere—from DIY basement shows to SXSW; from Boston’s (soon returning!) Great Scott to Lollapalooza. Boissonnault’s songs—packed with fuzzy guitars, catchy hooks, and a kind of Butchies-era vibe—explore grief and loss as a means to foster strength and acceptance. Lady Pills’ upcoming LP, Renowned in the Roaring Twenties, won’t be out until spring 2025, but you can preview the album’s intro track BN2B, which recently dropped on Bandcamp.

TW: Hello, Ella! You got any good road stories?

EB: One time on tour we crashed with some dude we met at a show in the Midwest. We drove out into the middle of nowhere to get to his house and it turned out he collected bones, and built skeletons with said bones that were on display all over his house. He was reading to us from his books about bones and we didn't have cell service…the vibe was super wonky. We slept in shifts to make sure nothing weird happened! Thankfully, it didn't! Objectively, that could be a cool hobby, but I definitely made some ridiculous choices—like staying there—when I was younger that I would never make now.

TW: Searching for a Bone Iver joke here but failing…let’s just move on to the new record.

EB: My new record is my best work. I cannot fucking wait for this thing to be out in the world. I challenged myself on this album and grew so much both musically, lyrically, production wise etc. I am really proud of myself for not compromising or taking shortcuts and now this one has turned out exactly the way I envisioned it. It feels like I cleared a plot of land and built myself a shed from scratch or something.

TW: Very cool! And how’d you link up with Babe City records a while back, when Despite came out? We assumed it would have been on a Boston label.

EB: I grew up in DC! So we played a basement show with this great band Den-Mate and got to chatting with them and I think by the end of the night we had verbally agreed to the release. 

Above: Artwork for the new Lady Pills' record, Renowned in the Roaring Twenties. Photo credit: Sophie Adams.

TW: Many artists we’ve spoken to here cite how expensive rent, gear, touring, etc are these days. How are you affording a life in which music and touring get prioritized?

EB: Struggling! I don't make shit from my music but I am lucky that it manages to sustain itself in tiny ways. I haven't had to pay out of pocket for recording but I squirrel away everything we make from shows. Since I moved to PVD I've been working multiple jobs and taking on odd gigs wherever I can. Right now I am actually starting grad school in September and I am so excited. I'm studying acupuncture and I have this dream of opening an affordable sliding-scale traveling clinic to treat artists, musicians, and dancers because so many of us have tons of overuse injuries and no health insurance. So I'm about to go into a stupid amount of debt but I feel really stoked to be learning again and doing something I am really enthusiastic about.

TW: You’re liking Providence so far?

EB: I moved a little over two years ago and had always thought of Providence as an amazing, creative hub and a magical food city. Both have turned out to be even more true than I expected.

Above: Ella's dad, crushing it.

TW: Do you have other practices around health and well being that relate back to music making?

EB: I think cooking is a big one. I love to cook for anyone who will let me! It is so fun to assemble colors, textures and flavors in a creative way. It's pretty similar to music production I think. You shove all of these separate things together and it creates one enjoyable experience. Exercise is big, too. I love doing slow movements with weights. It totally clears my head and gets me into my body. 

I also love my app-blocker. I try to spend lots of time away from my phone, especially if it's songwriting time so that I don't get distracted. But the biggest one is sleep. I love my sleep. It's a whole routine now to go to bed and I have gotten kind of obsessive about getting the best sleep I can so I can wake up early and be productive.

TW: Do you write in your sleep?

EB: Not in my sleep, but definitely when I'm trying to go to sleep. I hear music being composed or played in my head when I'm trying to fall asleep. I have a ridiculous folder of voice memos on my phone of me whisper-singing melodies and lyrics.

TW: How’s it working for you in the studio?

EB: I am lucky to be able to have the process that I do. I have a really close working relationship with Sean McLaughlin (37' productions) where we work a lot of shit out just the two of us. Some songs I have a fully produced version of in my head, but others take a long time. We usually have sessions once or twice a month, so there is a ton of space to process and reflect on what's been done. It's like watering a plant and seeing it slowly come to life and bloom into what it is supposed to be. 

TW: There’s this WBUR article...the photos have a kind of Kate Bush energy. And the My Weight video has playful, choreographed dancing. Could you speak a bit about the visual / imaged side of your work?

EB: Dancing is just a fun hobby for me. I grew up in the ballet world; there were many holiday seasons where I was Clara in The Nutcracker and it was something I seriously wanted to pursue as a career before I pivoted to music. In terms of image, I know it has fluctuated a ton as I have gotten older. It's a really tricky thing to navigate; we all know that the algorithm will pick up a face but not a show flyer. I have a really difficult relationship to all of it because lots of it is furthering misogyny, appeal, branding etc. but I have to engage with it to some extent. So I just try to do it in a way that feels like me. I think about all the ways that social media fucked me up when I was younger relating to body image, so I try to represent myself, my personality and what is real, even if that's a morning I haven't brushed my teeth or gotten dressed yet.

Above: Ella with Robbie Wulfsohn (of the band Ripe) in front of the console at 37'.

TW: Sort of related—while DC and Boston are places with thriving, progressive DIY scenes, this interviewer recalls there being a lot of misogyny. Not just in the capital I Industry, but smaller clubs, basement shows…Is that a dated view now? What’s your experience been?

EB: It was very much that way when I was in college and living there. Lots of shitty remarks, expecting I don't know my gear or I don't play an instrument, intimidation, reduction, etc. I don't think that's a dated view. I think there is a lot more dialogue around these subjects, but the behaviors have not gone away. There's just a bigger chance that people will believe you, listen to you, and give a shit in some places. I think it's dangerous to say that things are better just because there’s more rhetoric. But I'm not shitting on the Bostonians, here...I was one for a long time and have a soft spot in my heart for New England culture. Misogyny is an issue everywhere.

TW: Your DC years...what was growing up like?

EB: I think growing up is weird for everyone! I have always been really close with my family and I have very creative people for parents. My dad was in a band through college so he taught me to play guitar and I definitely aspired to be cool like that as a kid. My mom does human rights and environmental work so there was always a sense of social responsibility and knowing that you are part of a bigger picture in my household. My brain had a hard time giving a shit about the mundane day-to-day like school drama. Normal teen stuff, I think. I was definitely an outlier throughout school and I had a hard time connecting with other kids because they were talking about fashion trends and I was freaking out about pollution. I also didn't really know anyone who was interested in music the way I was until I found a community outside of my high school. Lots of open mics, learning about DIY gigging, and just being around other creative people helped a lot and I found my footing.

TW: The early gigs you played...what were the spots? 

EB: Nova/DC area. The Lab, Epicure Cafe, Busboys and Poets. Some house shows in DC and also out in the burbs like Springfield, VA. 

TW: Across your touring career, or just generally, what’s the most distant land you’ve traveled to?

EB: Probably Kazakhstan. My mom traveled a lot for work and would take me with her to various places in Central Asia if I wasn't in school. I want to say I was five, and we stayed there for a little over a month. My strongest memory was the community. Everything was very tight-knit and everyone pitched in to make shit work. It is very opposite from individualism in US culture. People relate to their neighbors, their land, their food and their environment so differently than most people do here and that was a pretty powerful thing to participate in as a kid.

Above: Ella with her mom in St. Petersberg, Russia. Circa 2007.

TW: Between that and touring, it sounds like you’re pretty solid with a map.

EB: I've really worked on my sense of direction! I'm kind of infamous for insisting on taking detours either via car or foot; insisting that I know where we are going and that I'm not lost. I have definitely been late to shows because I brought everyone on a quick little eight-mile hike in the wrong direction...and now we are lost...and don't have service...and have to wait until we run into someone else who hopefully knows where the fuck we are!

TW: Is that a metaphorical hike or, you’re into nature?

EB: Big time. I grew up backpacking with my parents a lot. Hiking, nature, and the outdoors are huge places of grounding for me. I crave them if I don't fit it in enough. The White Mountains are my go-to! It is a magical terrain up there, especially if you're able to stay in one of the huts.

TW: Your dad taught you guitar...when did you first write something on your own?

EB: The first song I vividly remember writing was when I was 15. I had my first heavy experience with grief around this time. I understood things and people were finite, but I didn't understand what it meant to process loss. I had been playing guitar, learning covers and dabbling with songwriting for years, but for some reason this one is my strongest memory. I wrote a song called ghosts. I think it was the first song I wrote that wasn't about having a crush or playing in the sunshine—those big pre-teen thoughts that are still so relevant lol—and I think I realized how powerful music could be. I wasn't writing for anyone or with the intention of performing, but I learned how to lean on art to process shit and to make sense of things. I think it was the first time music really registered as an outlet. Once I had that in my tool belt, it kind of took over and I got super into lyric-writing. I always loved reading and playing with language, so songwriting went pretty hand-in-hand with that.

Above: Ella. Photo by Sophie Adams

TW: And now that you are writing for others, with audience in mind, how has that impacted your process?

EB: I think a lot of my songs speak to people and their experiences in a way that I hope brings visibility and provides support. There are definitely universal themes in my work. I've gotten a lot of DMs from people who are a lot younger expressing that they now know it is okay to be angry about shit, to be loud about shit, to be yourself, take up space, etc. and that they really relate to the stuff I'm singing, writing, and yelling about. It makes me happy that my songs can give that support and assurance. I learned a lot about who I am and what I stand for through the art and music I was exposed to when I was younger, so I'm stoked to be a part of that tapestry for someone else.

TW: Thinking about grief and loss—are there any works you’ve found particularly meaningful? 

EB: The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford. My friend Maya lent me this book. It's about generational trauma and healing. It is absolutely gorgeous! I don't think a book has ever made me cry so hard—tears of both sadness and joy—in my life. I think it should be required reading for everyone. 

I have been on a huge Louise Erdrich kick. My grandmother gifted me her entire collection and I've slowly been making my way through. Everything she writes is amazing, but I would start with The Sentence.

TW: Thanks for this chat, Ella. Any parting thoughts?

EB: Keep an eye out for the record! Singles are dropping! Shit is happening!

Come Away, with Sweeping Promises

Photo: Shawn Brackbill

Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug met in the Arkansas music scene of the late 2000s, quickly becoming friends and writing partners. Caufield was 19; Lira was 20. A decade later, a jam session in Boston gave birth to their current project, Sweeping Promises. Their 2020 release, Hunger for a Way Out, earned praise from Brooklyn Vegan and NME and others, eventually leading to a sophomore effort on Sub Pop and Ohio’s Feel It Records—2023’s Good Living Is Coming for You. Named one of NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the year, the Good Living cemented the duo’s place in a long line of post-punk greats—they’d fit right in on a bill with Kleenex/LiLiPUT, Suburban Lawns, or Boston’s own short-lived early 2000s trio, Squids. You can catch them live on tour with Bikini Kill through September or, get your minimal, angular dance on this Saturday with an intimate gig right here at Myrtle. 

The Well (TW): Sweeping Promises, welcome back to town! What does Rhode Island mean to you? 

Sweeping Promises (SP): We spent about a decade in the East Coast (Boston) music scene before moving to Kansas; we'd play Providence every now and then in our many previous bands: Mini Dresses, Dee-Parts, Blau Blau, Splitting Image, Silkies, the list goes on! We see Rhode Island as an important and inspirational node in the East Coast underground music matrix!

TW: Thanks for including us! Who were you as kids, long before all the bands?

SP: In broad strokes, Lira and Caufield grew up in the South as weirdo nerds, music obsessives, academically-inclined, and eventually Arkansas-bound. Caufield started music young, began playing shows in punk bands when he was 13 years old in Austin. Subculture saved his life. Lira was in youth choir programs and would sing every chance she could get growing up, secretly wanting to be in bands but not sure how to enact that fantasy in her small town.

Above: Artwork for Pain Without a Touch (Sub Pop, 2021)

TW: We’re always curious to learn how artists are supporting themselves; what’s making it work for you?

SP: Tour is the main income. Caufield works on about 40 albums a year in some engineering capacity to supplement that. We live ascetically in Kansas, and it took us 15 years to acquire our own gear and self-recording skills, without which we would not be able to exist now. Caufield's dad is a luthier and helps with gear and van repairs. Our network of friends and fans help us immeasurably on the road. The music industry has been captured almost entirely by robber barons who will not stick around once the other shoe drops. At least it feels like the rampant exploitation in this industry is becoming more widely acknowledged.

TW: Got a favorite stop on tour?

SP: One remote region we enjoy is Marfa, Texas! We try to travel there on tour when possible, and once we went there for a week to attempt music-writing. The semi-alien landscape there is like a hormone for the imagination. We wrote some songs from Good Living Is Coming for You  there.

Above: Live at Boston Fuzzstival, 2021. Filmed by Al Slounge.

TW: Can you give us a little look behind the curtain—your recording process, influences, or ideas about who you’re writing for?

SP: We are interested in finding non-standard recording and performance techniques, which port radical political ideas/sentiments into defamiliarizing yet rigorously-arrayed sound ideas. We are cinephiles; Caufield even pursued a PhD in film studies! We often write and mix our music with films in mind. Sometimes we project films silently while we make music. We [also] support charitable causes and creative community work in our hometown, offering affordable recording rates to new bands, etc. 

TW: Cool stuff! We know you’re super busy with tour right now, so we’ll keep this one short. Before we split though—got any books or texts that feel important to your life and practice?

SP: In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas, and Air and Dreams by Gaston Bachelard.

TW: Thanks! We’ll see you (and our readers) Saturday night, September 7, 2024.

Gather in Peace, with Sidy Maïga

From The Rail Band’s heyday in the 1970s to Ali Farka Touré’s posthumous release Savane in the 2000s, the music of Mali has brought joy and delight to listeners worldwide. If you haven’t already, take 45 minutes out of your day to enjoy Africa Express’ cover of Terry Riley's In C. As such, we’re big fans of local master djembe player, composer and producer Sidy Maïga, who celebrates the cultures of West Africa in schools and on stages across the Ocean State. Maïga’s projects, like the upcoming Afrika Nyaga at PVD Fest 2024, spread messages of hope, unity, and community.

The Well (TW): Hey Sidy. You’re a busy guy. How would you describe your involvement with the local cultural community, broadly speaking?

Sidy Maïga (SM): For the past 18 years, I have been involved in the Rhode Island community through teaching drumming, African culture, and music to dozens of schools and institutions. Currently, I conduct several healing arts classes at Bradly and Hasbro Hospitals, and produce the annual drum and dance festival Afrika Nyaga—this will be its 12th year running. We [the musicians involved] all live in Rhode Island; the cornerstone of my work has always been to bring people together because diversity brings more positivity to the world and contributes to the wellbeing of both the state and country. I’m raising my family in Rhode Island so, of course I also want a better future for my children. I strive to do things that improve Rhode Island.

TW: We love your involvement with youth—do you have a memory of a stand out gig or musical moment from your younger years?

SM: Yes, the first time our own group got our first “grown up” gig, and we were invited to travel for the first time outside of the city. We traveled to Kati, a city about 30 minutes Northwest of Bamako. We created our own songs in addition to playing traditional songs and the audience was so enchanted that I wanted to see myself on bigger stages.

TW: And you’re from Bamako, right? What was growing up there like?

SM: It was a community-oriented environment where doors were always open, and everyone in the neighborhood was like family. We lived as a close-knit community, where it was common to eat, sleep, or hang out in any house at any time. Music began, for me, with the rhythms of life in my neighborhood. The sound of women grinding millet in a mortar and pestle. The rhythm of the call to prayer five times a day. The music of celebrations, social events, and even funerals. Music and rhythm permeated every facet of day-to-day life. It created a musical structure upon which life happened. 

Music was also a communal experience. Even if you had your own musical group, other musicians could join in whenever they wanted, and it was always a pleasure to welcome them. This environment made it easy to immerse deeply in music, learning from everyone I encountered, in addition to my formal teachers.

This is how I became interested in music, especially because going to school was not easy for me. In my early teens, my friends and I got together and created our own drumming group and started performing for people our age and eventually, I got to apprentice with two master drummers. After my training, I ended up playing with the Drum and Dance Troupe of Bamako, which is the capital of Mali. I was working every day at the Troupe, and performing at weddings every Thursday and Sunday.

TW: Have you found that kind of integration here, too—music being a facet of everyday life?

SM: I have found similar patterns here, but it took time and effort. Over the years, I’ve created my own community within the larger community—one that supports and cherishes what I do. This community has become a space where music and culture are deeply intertwined, much like what I experienced growing up. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see how this shared passion for music has brought people together and created a sense of rhythm and connection in our lives here as well.

TW: What was it initially like when you came to the US? How did you find your way here?

SM: I moved from Mali to New York in February 2006. The transition was a cultural shock. When I arrived, I found it challenging to adapt to the more individualistic culture, where doors were always locked, eye contact was avoided, and greetings were often met with confusion. However, I am someone who adapts to any scenario. I began seeking out drum circles in New York, attending open mics, and introducing myself to other artists after their shows. It was easier to connect with people in New York than when I moved to Rhode Island in September 2006 because my ex-wife was accepted into the Trinity Rep Master’s program for acting. Rhode Island was smaller and culturally different from New York.

Fortunately, a friend introduced me to the Providence Black Repertory Company, where I became the resident drummer. I also started working with Michelle Bach and Seydou Coulibaly at Brown University. Gradually, I got to know the city and built connections with more people. I began building my own drumming class, where I met many amazing people, including Rachel Nguyen, who became my manager and started helping me push my career forward. As I became more known in the community, I began visiting schools, hospitals, and other establishments. Finally, in 2009, I was able to start my own festival, Afrika Nyaga. The first festival was held at Le Foyer in Pawtucket, and later, I brought it to Providence.

Above: Sidy leading a performance

TW: You mentioned that school wasn’t an easy experience; did you pursue any kind of formal education at later points?

SM: I dropped out of school because with classrooms that were 150 students in one class, I was getting more out of my musical practices than going to school. This caused a big problem between my family and I. Even though I knew school was important, I was drawn to music. But getting an education was what my family really wanted for me and so after 15 years living in the US, I wildly decided to apply for the Berklee College of Music and I didn’t know what my chances were—I didn’t have an official musical theory background. To my surprise, I got in with scholarships and grants which ended up allowing me to go to Berklee on a full ride!

TW: Full ride! That is awesome. So let’s talk about Afrika Nyaga. How’d it start? 

SM: For the first time, I’m going to share the true reason behind the start of Afrika Nyaga publicly. In 2008, I began wondering why I wasn’t seeing Malian performers coming together here in Rhode Island to create the kind of music and community we have back home. So, I decided to invite other drummers for a small, informal ceremony at Le Foyer in Pawtucket. We did it for free, and about 50 to 70 people showed up to dance and sing together. It was an intimate gathering, and we had an incredible time. People kept asking me to do it again because it felt so authentic and connected.

After that event, someone approached me with a lot of ideas about how we could turn it into a big production and make money. But for me, the goal was never about making money; it was about bringing the community together. I was already earning a living through gigs, and I felt that what I needed more was the sense of community, not profit. Eventually, that person decided to host their own event at her house, even scheduling it on the same night as my next show, charging people $15 to attend. Despite that, the event turned out to be one of the best I’ve ever organized. That success inspired me to take Afrika Nyaga further.

I started applying for grants from RISCA, seeking sponsors, and eventually began collaborating with organizations like the Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism, under the leadership of Lynne McCormack and later, Lizzie Araujo. I’ve also formed partnerships with FirstWorks, The Providence Foundation, and the City of Providence. This will be the fourth year that Afrika Nyaga is part of PVDFest.

TW: Could you talk a bit about the differences in style between music from Mali and say, Senegalese, Congolese styles? 

SM: In Senegal, Mbalax is a dominant musical style—perhaps 80% or more of the musical identity. Mbalax is rooted in a percussion instrument called the Sabar drum, which is deeply traditional and the most popular in Senegal. The entire essence of Mbalax comes from the rhythms of the Sabar drum, with some influence from the talking drum (tama). While modern Mbalax incorporates other instruments like keyboards, guitars, and more, there is no Mbalax without the Sabar drums at its core.

When you think of Congolese music, soukous is the genre that stands out most prominently. It features a heavy drum set rhythm, guitar, keyboards, and other modern instruments, and is a dance music style with roots in Congolese rhumba.

In contrast, Malian music is incredibly diverse, with each region having its own traditional instruments. For example, the blues from northern Mali typically does not use the djembe or talking drum. The Wassoulou region features instruments like the ngoni and balafon, which are unique to that area. In the Kayes region, you’ll find the djeli dundun and djeli balafon, which are distinct from the balafon used in Wassoulou. This regional diversity makes Malian music very different from other countries.

This is why Malian music stands out—each region contributes its own unique sounds and styles, unlike the more unified styles found in places like Senegal and the Congo.

Above: Ira, Sidy's son, gets in on the beat

TW: Who are some artists you look to for inspiration, collaboration, etc?

SM: One of my favorite artists in Mali is Salif Keita. His voice is extraordinary, but what truly sets him apart is his versatility. He doesn't confine himself to a single style; instead, he explores every corner of music, from deep traditional Malian sounds to reggae, salsa, and beyond. Growing up listening to him was truly inspirational. I believe we all gravitate toward different genres of music based on our mood, feelings at the time, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Salif Keita’s ability to connect with such a wide range of emotions and experiences through his music has had a profound impact on me and many others. 

Oumou Sangaré is another musical genius who could work and sing in any environment or condition, even though she has crafted her own unique identity with her magical voice. Her ability to convey powerful emotions and messages through her music has made her a significant influence in my life.

TW: Going back a bit, we’re curious to learn how you first begin drumming in hospitals, and what has that experience meant for you, personally?

SM: Playing and teaching at hospitals like Bradley and Hasbro didn’t come as a surprise to me, because in Mali, music is used for many different purposes—fun, weddings, naming ceremonies, and even healing. The djembe in particular, is often used as a therapeutic tool back home. I’m sure hospitals have done their research and recognized the importance of music for healing purposes. From my own experience, I’ve seen many positive outcomes when teaching and performing around the world. I can also speak from personal experience: even when I’m going through hardships, playing the drum transforms me completely. Many people have shared similar experiences with me from all over the world.

TW: You toured with groups like Troupe Artistique de Bamako and the Fakoli Percussion Troupe—what’s your favorite memory from that era?

SM: One of the most memorable moments for me with the Fakoli Percussion Troupe was when we performed at the Festival International of Percussion (FESTIP) in Mali. This festival brought together the best percussionists from all over the country—every top player in Mali participated. We won second place, and that achievement will stay with me forever. It was an incredible experience to be surrounded by so much talent, and the energy of the festival was just amazing. 

TW: We’ve been seeing your son up on stage with you. What do you learn about music and performance through playing together? 

SM: I see a lot of myself in my son, even though I didn’t get to play with my father because he wasn’t a musician—in fact, he didn’t want me to become one. But, like my son, I was passionate about music from a very young age. I used to get in trouble for banging on tomato cans, boxes, or even my chest, making noise wherever I could. Watching my son’s enthusiasm for music, I realize how much I wish I had the same opportunities he has now. Through playing together, I’m learning that if I had been allowed to follow my passion freely from the start, I might have progressed even further. But I’m still grateful for the journey that has brought me to where I am today.

TW: What’s something coming up in the next 2-3 months you’d like to have on peoples’ radars?

SM: My 12th annual festival, Afrika Nyaga, is returning to PVDFest on September 7th at 4:30 PM in front of the Providence City Hall. I’m also working on my next album which I’m very excited about so stay tuned!

Sideboy Chit Chat, with Matthew Lawrence and Jason Tranchida

Photo: Nelson Villarreal

Matthew Lawrence and Jason Tranchida are an artist / curator duo who publish the journal Headmaster, your go-to print magazine for sophisticated takes on art, culture, and man-loving. Born a decade apart and hailing from different parts of the country, they’ve come together to build an incredible creative partnership; their most recent work is the hybrid documentary, musical, and video installation Scandalous Conduct: A Fairy Extravaganza.

The Well (TW): Hey guys. Thanks for taking the time here. We want to start off with you Matt, being that you’re from the area. What do you know about East Providence? 

Matthew Lawrence (ML): Coming from afar (Cranston), East Providence was always where people’s Vovó and Vovô lived, but I really never went there until I started shopping at Savers as a teen. Honestly, I still get turned around all the time. The part on the map that looks like a bowtie will never not confuse me. What’s also confusing to me is that people—gay men, specifically—don’t make a bigger to-do about the fact that there's a landmark called Spooky Bottom.

Jason Tranchida (JT): I, on the other hand, as a non-native RI-er, pride myself on being able to navigate EP. Pawtucket, not so much.

TW: Spooky Bottom is a dock, too! What’s your relationship with the wider area today? 

ML: Living where you grew up is super crazy. I see people from high school everywhere. One of them wordlessly high-fived me on the street the other day and just kept walking without saying hello. While recording our musical, one of our musicians mentioned a brother and it triggered a memory of someone I went to elementary school with who had the same last name. I quickly Googled him and it turns out he became a professional poker player?! I won’t say too much more than that because once Scandalous Conduct is finished, my next project is going to be a novel about my childhood, which—because Cranston was wild in the 80s/90s—involves both satanic panic, child murders, and a drive-thru condom store.

Above: Scandalous Conduct. Photo: John Hesselbarth.

TW: Wild. Times may have changed but, we did once see a 15 year old at Garden City who was wearing a Burzum shirt while outside the Gap with his mom so—maybe still a weird energy there? Jason how about you—what’s your story?

JT: I was born in Detroit, but I grew up in the suburbs and then Ann Arbor for college years. I used any opportunity to get out of the suburbs and into the city when I lived there, mostly for the music, culture, and architecture, not to mention some awesome people. The Detroit Institute of Arts was a bit of a safe haven for me growing up—it was a place where I felt I fit in. It’s still one of my favorite places in the world. It was the same for the music scene. I’m totally dating myself, but I grew up in the height of the Detroit Techno scene. While I wouldn’t call myself a club kid (now or then, lol), I did sneak into plenty of them! It was a great scene and the dancing was incredible. While I knew it was something super special, it wasn’t until I left Michigan that I realized how influential Detroit Techno was on a global scale. After college I headed east and ended up in Brooklyn for grad school. I took a little break from New York in 1999, landed in Providence, and forgot to go back.

TW: Matt, one of your projects Rhode Islanders may be familiar with was Law and Order Party. Can you speak on that a bit?

ML: Sure, I started Law and Order Party in 2015 because there was nowhere to find out what was happening culturally in town without doing a ton of leg work. Since I was doing that legwork for myself anyway, I thought I’d start a newsletter. There was one out of New York called Gayletter that sent out five recommendations each week, one per night, and it was on my radar because they wrote about Headmaster parties a few times. There’s obviously less happening in Rhode Island than in New York, but I thought that idea was scalable. I reviewed art exhibits, plays and movies, previewed concerts and readings, and left space to cover performance work and other miscellaneous things. After five years of weekly newsletters and getting slightly burnt out, I relaunched it to write more in-depth pieces. Unfortunately that was early March 2020. I wrote about an exhibition of Warhol polaroids at RIC and then interviewed author Joanne McNeil, and then everything shut down and I floundered for a few months before retiring the project.

TW: And Jason, we know a bit less about your solo work. What are you up to outside the collaborations with Matt?

JT: As far as my creative practice goes, folks seem to know me, or my work, in very compartmentalized ways, which makes sense in that I’m seemingly all over the place. I studied architecture, then got an MFA in sculpture, became a graphic designer/creative director, worked in events and theater design, planned two weddings, and now I’m making a movie / documentary / installation / musical thing. So people are always surprised when they find out I do something other than the single thing they know me for. I also love gardening.

Above: From Headmaster No. 10, The Huxleys

TW: From working across so many fields...any core lessons learned?

JT: One (of many) professional fails was on one of the first photo shoots I ever directed. I was going for ethereal, but the products were pretty much rendered invisible. Lesson learned: trust your photographer and your clients.

TW: Are you “Never leave Rhode Island” types? Any memorable trips?

ML: In November of 2021, we went to Bilbao together for an art fair—two artists from Headmaster No. 9 lived there and their gallery got us set up with a booth. The artists, los picoletos (ig), were incredibly hospitable and even made us a whole Thanksgiving dinner because they knew it was Thanksgiving in the US that day. Bilbao is not the easiest city to love, maybe because I’m a vegetarian, but it does have some amazing punk bars.

I also very, very randomly went to Laos in 2013 on a family vacation with a family that was not mine. Aside from a high school trip to Paris it was my first venture outside of North America and I actually loved it. Because of its messy history, Vientiane, the capital, is a fascinating mix of Southeast Asian, French colonial, and Soviet architecture. I signed up for a trip to Phnom Penh, a city I’ve always wanted to visit (Cranston is very Cambodian!) and I got bait and switched not too long before we left. But I’m happy things worked out the way they did.

TW: Since we’ve mentioned it a few times now, can you give us a rundown on Headmaster?

JT: Headmaster is a vehicle to showcase the artwork and careers of queer artists, and we always include at least one RI artist in each issue. When deciding which artists to work with, we are very conscious to include a range of voices and ages for example. We often also include assignments that are based on hidden/forgotten fragments of queer history. This is actually where the germ of an idea for Scandalous Conduct came from.

Above: Matthew, age 5.

TW: You mentioned los picoletos from Bilbao; Headmaster’s also featured Slava Mogutin (NYC), House of Rice (Vancouver), and Barry Marré  who is, or at least was, out of Rotterdam. How do you get tapped into a global community and what's the process like for curating people and stories?

ML: The world is pretty small, it turns out. Smaller than we even realized when we started the magazine. We've worked with artists from…fourteen countries? I think? I never know whether to go by where people are from or where they live now. I’m counting quickly here—we've gotten to meet sixty of our contributors in person which is always exciting. I’m glad you mentioned Barry because we really like his work and haven’t really stayed in touch with him. 

By the second or third issue of Headmaster we were featuring a mix of people that we already knew, people that contacted us themselves, and people that were referred to us by friends and colleagues. In the early years of the magazine we were helped immensely by platforms like Tumblr, which were popular with visual artists and especially with the sexy queer ones. Honestly I have no idea where people go for that kind of visual community now. 

TW: And on to Scandalous Conduct, a project that feels very wide in scope. What’s the elevator pitch?

ML: Scandalous Conduct is a project about the year 1919, but its themes are super relevant today: surveillance of queer sexual spaces, the role of drag in the United States military, and so on. After close to five years, we are actually very proud to be finishing. Our public presentations began in May 2020 with a virtual talk about John Rathom, the enigmatic Australian rapscallion who was editor of the Providence Journal in 1919. This was early enough in Zoom Times that everyone kept their camera on and also stayed while we talked for over 90 minutes. The 2024 version of the project is much tighter. 

JT: Our collaborative practice has traditionally been centered around curating and publishing, so Scandalous Conduct is the biggest thing we’ve ever worked on together in terms of art “making.” It’s been a long process and I think we still like each other!

TW: The role of drag in the military...can you elaborate on that?

JT/ML: We started the research for Scandalous Conduct a few years before the recent brouhahas about drag and pride events on military bases. Last year the Pentagon declared that drag shows are “inconsistent with Defense Department spending regulations”, with the Biden administration caving to Republicans who were in a tizzy about drag story hours. Times change, of course, and the older I get the more I realize that things usually get worse even as they’re getting better. Shows with drag elements were big during World War II, and even in World War I drag wasn’t such a big deal. 

In 1919, the Newport Naval Station produced a musical version of Jack and the Beanstalk, touring it around New England to show young men how much fun military service could be. In this version of the story Jack has a love interest, Princess Mary, and the Navy capitalized on this in its marketing. A three-star admiral was quoted in newspapers as declaring Princess Mary “the daintiest little thing I ever laid eyes on”. An ad we found in the Providence Journal led with the boast that “Princess Mary will be prettier than ever before.” 

Above: Jason, age 25.

TW: A three-star review...not bad! Publishing a magazine and projects as wide in scope as Scandalous Conduct are resource intensive—how are you getting by and pulling these things off?

ML: This is a great question. Grants and crowdfunding donations are currently paying for Scandalous Conduct and subscriptions are sort of paying for Headmaster but certainly neither of those is paying the bills. Jason has a successful design practice and I am always doing my best to cobble together a semblance of a day job. Right now I am working as a contract archivist though August, and also doing PR/marketing work for a few local nonprofits. There are pluses and minuses to this setup—it allows me to take weeks off to work on filming a musical, for instance—but overall it’s less than ideal.

TW: With it being less than ideal for now, where do you find balance or comfort?

ML: We try to keep a balance of healthy habits and wild stories when we’re not working around the clock. In the first year of the pandemic, I discovered that the best path mentally was to not pick up my phone for the first hour that I’m awake and to not look at my phone for the last hour before bed. I’ve backslid considerably but still aspire to that two-hour daily information cleanse. I have an elderly aunt that won’t watch depressing world news on TV before bed because it will give her bad dreams. I aspire to that level of self-control.

TW: In one of the earlier presentations for Scandalous Conduct—your zoom talk for the PPL in May of 2020—you give the audience a heads up that the project's current status is in-progress; to expect lower image quality, etc. You presented again in June of 2021 at the Newport Art Museum...it's been ongoing. We're wondering how you think about project evolution—how to make early-phase presentations; present incomplete ideas, and how scope / scale changes over time.

JT: Both Matthew and I have creative practices that are project-driven. Unlike the development of a lot of our work, this project in particular evolved in a very public way. We spent a long time in the research phase of Scandalous Conduct, and we really dug into it. It actually  took a long time to decide what form would be best for the way we wanted to tell this story. A puppet show and opera were both seriously considered for a minute...Several of our in-process presentations were requirements of grants we received, but we always used them as an opportunity to push the project into a next phase. Creatively, it was great for me to have these iterations. There were so many twists and turns and rabbit holes that we went down, presenting these stories publicly really forced me to keep everything organized in my head.

Above: Matthew and Jason at a workshop. Photo: Nick Dentamaro. 

TW: Any particular books, archives, etc that have helped inform this, and other projects? Places we can learn more?

ML/JT: Well, everyone ought to read Lawrence R. Murphy’s Perverts by Official Order: The Campaign Against Homosexuals by the United States Navy. It’s a dense history but it’s also the only full-length book to date about the 1919 Newport Sex Scandal. 

Aside from that, this seems like a good moment to plug the weirdly large number of non-fiction titles released by our friends this spring. There’s Kate Schapira’s Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth, Phil Eil’s Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the 'Pill Mill Killer’, Michael Andor Brodeur's Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle, R. Tripp Evans’s The Importance of Being Furnished: Four Bachelors at Home, and Linda Kushner’s The Fight That Saved the Libraries: A True Rhode Island Story. 

TW: Love us some Broduer. Two decades ago his indie pop band, Certainly, Sir was a Boston favorite, and the House stuff he’s done as New Dad is outstanding, too. [Side Note, the New Dad tape was release by Dan Boucher, who The Well interviewed over here]

What role has/does music play in your lives? At home, in clubs, etc?

ML: Great question, and also a funny question because we are currently editing a musical and so we’re listening to the same handful of songs over and over and over again. To be honest, though, one thing we learned is that we don't particularly love music from 1919. There are some good songs, including the ones in our video, but the rest of that era is just a minefield of racism, cringe patriotism, and sounds that haven’t aged well. When we’re not working on this project, generally we always have something playing over the speakers at the studio. Our go-tos are Italian internet radio, Montreal disco playlists, the Wheeler radio station that plays 90s alternative music all day for seemingly no reason, and at home we play a fair amount of vinyl.

TW: Guys, thanks so much. Going to end this with a promo moment—what’s coming up? 

ML/JT: Our magazine Headmaster will have a table at this year’s Queer/Trans Zine Fest (QTZFest) at The Steel Yard, which we’re excited about because it’s the first year we’ve been able to even apply to the fest and it’s also the last year that it’s happening. So the stars aligned for once!

Aside from the Scandalous Conduct exhibit, which runs September 12 – October 6, we’re doing a Haus of Codec market with our magazine Headmaster at the end of October. We’re also probably planning a holiday event although we tend to plan those at the last minute. Last year we threw our party at Myrtle and it happened to be like two days after the bridge shutdown and we had a fantastic time even though we were afraid no one would show up, so maybe we’ll see about doing that again?

Chaotic Good, with neal t. walsh

neal t. walsh is a painter, activist, and collector of things who serves as Gallery Director at AS220. This Thursday, August 15, 2024, neal has a solo show, Our Days are Weatherworn, on view at Galerie le Domaine, which is a quick hop over the Henderson bridge. In advance, we had a chat with neal about his life and practice. Photo by Violetta DiChiera-Walsh.

The Well (TW): Hey neal. On the invite for your upcoming show, your full name is in lowercase. Is that a show-specific design choice, or a kind of bell hooks thing? 

ntw: Yes, that is inspired by my reading of bell hooks; wanting to background the individual in order to focus on what is being created. Also, I think of my paintings as fragments of a larger form that is never fully revealed. The titles of my paintings are often all lowercase because they are phrases from a longer story still being told. I think that, as people, we go through the same process; always changing throughout our lives, always becoming new, and are never fully formed into a single identity.

TW: How would you describe your identity, today?.

ntw: I’m a bricoleur, bibliophile, and a brambler. A slow walker with pockets full of stones, shells, and knickknacks, worrying away at thoughts and ideas like the sea against the shore. I was born and raised in Rhode island, spent over 20 years living in Providence, and now live in rural R.I.

TW: You have some fairly minimal works that call to mind like Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman...then others that are much more distressed or, "burned...with a torch, and then chipped, scratched, and cut at the surface" (Greg Cook, Phoenix, 2008). Are these all coming from the same place? What are the key themes you're exploring? 

ntw: I have always been fascinated by minimalist works. I would add to the list early Brice Marden and Blinky Palermo. But minimalism as a whole, as an art movement, always felt a bit too cold. I want my paintings to be poetic and emotionally evocative. I am also a ham-fisted materialist, piling on layers of paint, gesso, dry pigment, graphite, ash, collaging bits of paper, canvas, scraps of detritus onto my paintings to see what emerges. Sometimes that means minimal, subtle layering of paints and sometimes a much more layered visceral approach. Sometimes a painting can embody both of those things at the same time.

Above: walsh’s 2008 painting, Greenheart, oil on canvas, 84” x 60”

TW: Your materialism…there’s some Anselm Kiefer in there.

ntw: Anselm Kiefer was a revelation to me as a young artist when I was developing my own aesthetic. The very first art books I bought were with my last bit of money on the last day of a trip to London. They were large monographs on Anslem Kiefer and Frank Auerbach. Kiefer’s use of diverse materials, his approach to difficult historical topics, a touch of mysticism, and lines of poetry embedded in the paintings, inspired all the different threads that I began exploring in my paintings. His enormous lead books and vitrines of objects still hold me in awe. I made a lot of early works imitating his style and techniques: experimenting with rolls of flashing lead, photo transfers, tar, ash, and using blow torches and dirt. Most of these early works were failures, but I continue to incorporate many of those elements into my evolving practice.

TW: How about things other than paintings—recent books, texts?

ntw: Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu (NYT), Selected Poems 1975-2021 by Don Domanski, and The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild Mathias Énard. Also, The 95 Theses on Painting by Mary Zuckerman-Hartung.

TW: Your earlier works feel a bit more monumental, but it looks like the current batch is around 8” x 10” or smaller. How do you think about scale when working?

ntw: I used to make really large paintings: 6’ x 6’, 5’ x 7’, 4’ x 4’. At that time I had a bigger studio space and was grappling with the legacy of abstract expressionist painters I admired and the desire to create works that had a physical presence. Now I am a bit more practical. Large paintings are hard to move and sell. My current studio is in my house and the ceiling is low, so I have scaled the work to fit the space. The transition was hard at first, but now I enjoy being able to hold a painting in my hand and manipulate it as I apply paint to the surface. Sometimes I like to make paintings that fit in my pocket. So, many new possibilities opened up. Now I am thinking about applying what I have learned about working small and scaling that back into larger paintings.

TW: While it’s pretty abstract, your work has a documentary feel to it; recording textures and process. Is there anything to that?

ntw: One of my earliest memories, as a toddler, is playing on the carpet in my grandparents living room with the morning sunbeams streaming in from the dining room and watching all these motes of dust floating and swirling through the light and being mesmerized by how beautiful it seemed. I think that sense of awe, vastness, simplicity, and warmth is what I am still seeking in my creative work.

Above: young neal t. walsh ponders his relationship to spacetime

TW: Have you explored light as a medium?

ntw: I have not experimented with light as a medium beyond making cyanotypes. I live in a rural area and love using the sun to expose images onto various surfaces. Light is so ephemeral, we can experience a particular slant of sunlight only once. I think the light I am chasing is not a physical light, but rather the essence and feeling of light—of that experience.

TW: This kid who was watching dust dance; tell us a bit more about them. About growing up. 

ntw: I grew up in suburban Cranston in the 70's & 80's surrounded by a close extended catholic family. The rhythm of the year was governed by the public school calendar and the Church calendar. Hanging out at the mall and roller rink, long summer days at the beach until lobster red, cold war anxiety, Boy Scout camping adventures that always seemed to fall on weekends with rain or arctic temperatures, unsupervised wanderings in suburbia exploring building sites, creeks, and other feral in-between spaces slowing becoming paved and built over.

TW: You’re now yourself the parent of a teen. How’s that impacted your work?

ntw: Having a child changes your life in ways that are unpredictable and unexpected; there is no denying that my daughter’s birth impacted my studio practice. When my daughter was born, we still lived in Providence and my studio was in the garage behind our house. She would come out and visit with my wife but at the time, it was not very clean or safe for a small child. I developed safer practices when we moved into the house. She grew up coming to the studio and we would often paint together or talk about art and what I was making. Violetta is 16 now and has her own interests but she still loves spending time in the studio and talking about the paintings I am working on, or artists and museums that we have recently visited or read about.

I also recently got back involved in a childhood hobby, Dungeons & Dragons. I started running a game for my daughter and her friends during covid. I then fell into the DIY / indy role playing game scene and it is very similar to indy art & music scene, even overlapping in some ways particularly in regards to the creative and collaborative world building that happens. How it will inform my studio practice is yet to be seen.

TW: As someone who has the day-job of curating and installing art shows, you’re being a Dungeon Master (DM) feels pretty on brand. 

ntw: I was the DM for the The Wandering Wafflers; my daughter & her friends adventuring group, for about a year and half. They all used to go to school together but then some moved, some switched schools, interests changed and everyone's schedule became full and hard to coordinate times to play. I recently ran a session of Cairn, a rules light and easy game, in person with a former Waffler, my daughter, and a friend. It was everyone's first time playing and we had a great time!

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Above: Two more recent works by walsh. Left: moss glow, 2021, oil on canvas on found wood, 7.5” x 4.25” x 1.75. Right: sinecure, 20222, oil, gold leaf, graphite, cut canvas, on wood, 5.25” x 9”

TW: D&D involves imagined travel but, what about real life travel? Any memorable trips that have meant something to you?

ntw: I have traveled to Europe twice: London and Paris in 1998, and Italy in 2015. London and Paris was a beautiful and melancholic trip, the last kiss of a long romance coming to an end. I returned and vowed to focus on painting and committing to being an artist. The trip to Italy was a family affair. My father-in-law, at 80, retired from running the opera company he founded, Michigan Opera Theater in Detroit, (now Detroit Opera) and decided on a family trip to Rome and his parent's birthplace in Calabria. The trip was all planned and arranged for and I just surrendered to the sights, sounds, and sensation of Italy. Italy taught me how to embrace a certain slowness and pleasure in small moments, taking time to enjoy small daily routines.

TW: What are your small moments and routines?

ntw: I do yoga at home 4-5 times a week when I can. I walk a lot with the dog. Eat mostly vegetarian. Try to go hiking as often as I can. I used to have a membership to the Eastside YMCA, mostly because they have a pool, and I really want to become a better swimmer. I am thinking about getting that going again in the fall. I have the vague aspiration to hike the length of Vermont's Long Trail in the Green Mountains, in stages.

TW: Cool trail! This reminds us that up top, you mentioned having moved to rural R.I. Where is rural and, give us a sense of life there.

ntw: In 2013 my family and I moved out to Foster, Rhode Island to live a bit closer to nature. I began what was dubbed by my skeptical wife, "the neal t walsh memorial natural history collection" and began dragging home all sorts of bones, mosses, stones, feathers, and bark samples. At some point some wasps had built a nest on the side of our house. One rainy, blustery, cold day in the late autumn/ early winter I climbed out on the roof to carefully remove the wasp nest and add to my collection. 

TW: This doesn’t sound like it’s going to end well.

ntw: As I was pulling and prying on the wasp nest I realized that it was very warm to the touch, warmer than a miserable cold wet day. I thought that was odd, but the nest pulled away and I had the sudden flash insight that the bit of research I read that wasp abandon their nests in winter, was in fact not true. As the nest came free into my hands, I immediately tossed it to the ground below and climbed back through the window. I grabbed a garbage bag and went out and tentatively approached the nest, no wasps had emerged as far as I could see, so I quickly scooped it up and put it into the garbage bag. I then proceeded to bring the garbage bag with the wasp nest into the house and placed it into the freezer and placed a warning sign on the refrigerator to not open the freezer.

Above: Selections from the neal t walsh memorial natural history collection

TW: And you just left it there?

ntw: A few months go by and spring has begun. I removed the wasp nest in the garbage from the freezer and moved it into my closet in my studio. My sister-in-law and nephew were visiting for my daughter's birthday in April. The winter was very long with a couple of March snow storms and the spring was slow to emerge. April was still wet and chilly but warming. At one point during the visit I was in my studio and noticed a wasp crawling around on the floor. And another. And another. Further examination revealed that there were quite a few wasps crawling out under the closet door. Where the wasp nest was. I open the windows in the studio. I close the door to the studio and make sure there is no gap at the bottom of the door and wait. After a couple of days of checking in and shooing out wasps, (on another day no one is home), I open the closet door and gingerly pick up the garbage bag with the wasp nest still inside and take it out and leave it behind the potting shed. I later in the summer recovered the remains of the nest and still have bits of it.

TW: neal, you really know how to live. In the “neal t walsh memorial natural history collection,” what are your favorite objects? 

ntw: This summer I recovered the skull of the old snapping turtle that lived in the pond across the road from our house. The snapping turtle had died at the very edge of a weedy area of the pond, mostly submerged with its neck fully extended. I would check in on the process of decay, and it was fascinating to watch. The shell flaked apart and all sorts of pond creatures feasted on the flesh until mostly bones remained. I’d like to think the turtle died of old age. It is important to note that the neal t walsh memorial natural history collection is ever fluctuating. After a brief stay in the collection, many organic objects are released back into their natural environment to carry on with their natural life cycle.

TW: We also heard you’re a master gardener? 

ntw: Garlic. I grow garlic.

TW: Hah. Well, besides the garlic work, you’ve been an active member of the art scene here for over two decades. In a city with an up-and-down economy, how have you made it work?

ntw: My creative practice does not pay the bills. I have been working at an arts nonprofit [AS220] for the last 20+ years and it provides some stability and family health insurance. We have been privileged to have family support and left with a modest inheritance that gives us a cushion of support and the possibility of a future retirement.

TW: AS220 has always aspired to be a place that platforms radical and progressive ideas. It sometimes lives up to that, sometimes exceeds expectations and, maybe sometimes falls short. But we’re curious about how these ideas show up in your own work—if at all?

ntw: While my studio practice is not directly linked to activism or social causes, activism is very much a part of my life. I have been involved in a number of projects over the years, including an anarchist collective working on legal fee fundraising and anti-globalization protests that turned to anti -war protests in the post 9/11 world. I was an early member /volunteer at Urban Greens when it was just a buying club working out of White Electric coffee shop, then the Dirt Palace, and then the WBNA. I co-founded Recycle-A-Bike with Mary Blue in 2001, and I served on the American Friends Service Committee in Southern New England. During most of this time I worked at AS220 as the Gallery Director, providing resources and opportunities to RI artists. I think it is a radical act to make art, to live a creative life, and imagine new relationships and ways of being. I am humbled by the amount of amazing and creative people I meet in Rhode Island and it reaffirms my belief that every person should have the chance to pursue a creative life.

Above: walsh’s studio, January 17, 2015

TW: Before AS220 you were involved with another curatorial project, Apt. 3. This was the early 2000s? What was that all about? 

ntw: Apt. 3 was a collaborative pop-up exhibition space in an unfinished 3rd floor apartment in the West End of Providence. Our first show was The Drawing Show, and we had an open call, inviting everyone we knew to submit work. We essentially wallpapered the entire apartment with drawings. The opening had a huge turnout and most amazing was watching people slowly take their time to look through every room and at every drawing. People were excited to share and see artwork by their peers and neighbors. Similar to today, there were so few gallery spaces or exhibition opportunities in Providence and people were eager to see new work. Apt. 3 only lasted a summer. We went on to do a couple more exhibits, but a disagreement with the landlord led to us losing access to the space. 

TW: Classic. We highly recommend the “Apartment Show” model to all aspiring curators. Looking back across this near 25-year career, what do you think your best work’s been? 

ntw: hmmm. Not sure but, I was invited to join the board of the Providence Biennial for Contemporary Art in January of 2023 and was involved in the launch of their curatorial mentoring program that culminated in the large scale exhibition Curating Commemoration: Poiesis / Remedy at WaterFire Arts Center. I had the opportunity to work with rising curators Melaine Ferdinand-King and Joel Rosario Tapia to realize their unique curatorial visions into a singular exhibit featuring over 50 artists and collectives. The exhibition was a great success and the opening a joyful celebration. This was the largest exhibition I had ever worked on with lots of logistics and challenges. I learned a great deal from the experience, expanded my knowledge of the local art community, and am feeling more grounded in the work I do at AS220 and as an artist.

TW: What’s coming up?

ntw: Other than constantly fretting about my daughter spending four months studying in France, this Spring and Summer I’m going to try to do some pop-up or, long weekend art shows out in Foster.

TW: What do you hope for Providence? 

ntw: I would like to see Providence, and the state of Rhode Island, invest more in public schools, civic infrastructure, art & culture, and affordable housing. The city prides itself on being a creative destination and place to live, but to keep Providence’s unique, vibrant, cultural mosaic requires real sustainable investments in communities, neighborhoods, and institutions. These investments must be guided and informed by the people that live here.

*

neal t. walsh’s Our Days are Weatherworn opens at Galerie le Domaine this Thursday, August 15, 2024. The reception is from 5:30–7:00 PM.

Widening the Aperture, with Virginia Thomas

In addition to serving up delicious cocktails and hosting great musicians, Myrtle supports Awesome Foundation Rhode Island, a monthly program offering restriction-free grants of $1,000 in support of ideas that benefit the Ocean State. The foundation’s most recent recipient, RI BIPOC Trans Oral History Project, is spearheaded by Virginia Thomas. We had a chat to learn more about the project and Virginia herself.

The Well (TW): Good afternoon Virginia. Congrats on the grant! Who are you?

Virginia Thomas (VT): I’m a southern queer academic living on the unceded lands of the Pokanoket. I research the impacts of white racial hierarchies on the formation of family, gender, photographic archives, and property. 

TW: Tell us about growing up in the South.

VT: I grew up in a small one story ranch in the woods playing witches on a rock outcropping and watching a lot of TV. My sister and I would climb trees, eat spiders, and walk a mile out into the fields behind our house (used to be a dairy farm until it was developed into a mansion cul-de-sac) until we heard a whistle from our dad to come back home for dinner. Our dirt driveway led to a two lane highway (15-501) with a Black-owned old style country store (Gordon's) painted forest green with a line of empty glass coke bottles on a shelf near the ceiling. By the time I was 18 it had become a four lane highway with a Walmart, strip malls, and major developments. I attended a public school and made friends who lived in gated mansion communities and friends who lived in trailer parks. For a couple of years I attended a tiny hippie private school where kids were allowed to run around naked all day if they wanted to and half the school day was “nature class,” which I loved. Throughout my childhood, I went to a small Episcopal church every Sunday in Pittsboro. When I was 7 I cried because I wanted to be an Acolyte in the church so badly, but you weren’t allowed to be one until you were 8. Needless to say, this saintly child was an Acolyte from age 7-18. I learned to drive a stick shift at the age of 12 while helping my dad clean up branches from an ice storm. I have carried a handkerchief in my back pocket—trained by my dad—since I was 6. We did so many chores that my friends even knew not to call me at certain times on the weekend because it was “chore time.” I went to a loosey-goosey Quaker high school that taught me how to hold complexity, to never judge a book by its cover, and to really listen.

TW: How about art practices, or more self-directed hobbies?

VT: I was really into ceramics as a kid. I remember hand-molding my vision of Puff the Magic Dragon around age 7 and having a feeling of being truly proud. That and pressing wild flowers into books.

TW: Are you still molding dragons? 

VT: I am not molding dragons at this time, but I did build a cob oven—first time doing such a thing—with my friend, Kate Jones, for the West End Raices Urban Farm (a program of Movement Education Outdoors) which brought a similar kind of pride in playing with mud. And you can bake things in it so I guess the fire element is there, too.

Above: Virginia’s in the tree; red sweater

TW: So you’re now a New Englander now. Where exactly have you landed? 

VT: My partner and I moved to Warren from Providence last year and have been surprised by how much we love it. After living in a tiny one person apartment with our dog, Milo, for 7 years, the magic of sitting on our porch, growing vegetables and herbs in our backyard, and walking to the town beach for a dip at the end of a summer day is really not lost on us. We've gotten into clamming; my partner has the waders and everything. A lot of people like to go to Blount Clam Shack, which we love, but we also send as many people as possible to Amaral’s–a classic old school Portuguese spot with the best Rhode Island clear chowder and fish sandwiches around. There are also a fair amount of flashy spots, but we usually make our way to Arc{hive}, a bookstore slash bar owned by two really awesome folks, Janet and Euriah, who make it cozy for newbies and townies alike. 

TW: How about Warren through the lens of your research practice?

VT: There is so much history that has yet to be addressed here, so we are starting to slowly peel the layers back. I just got back from visiting the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama and Warren (along with Providence, Bristol and Newport) is listed among some of the top cities in New England to import enslaved Africans between 1501 and 1808. There is an annual Pokanoket Heritage Day held at Burr’s Hill in early August each year that we always recommend.

TW: And, what of Rhode Island more broadly?

VT: Rhode Island is a place profoundly shaped by the transatlantic slave trade and settler colonialism, with a wide array of present day collectives either reproducing these histories or fighting for their undoing. My relationship to Rhode Island is rooted in my own ancestor's multiple generations of settler colonialism here. While I grew up in North Carolina and my family has lived in North Carolina and Virginia since before and just after the Civil War, looking further back, I actually have settler colonial ties specifically to Rhode Island. Several family names appear on street signs and mills like the Cutler Mill in Warren. My current relationship to this place grows out of a desire to redress the harm of my biological ancestors, and a love of the communities I am part of who are aligned in those values.

Above: Artwork for Queer StoRIes Project by Hilary Nestor

TW: How are you getting by? Is research your paid gig and if so, where?

VT: I get by through my full time job as an Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Art History at Providence College. To do my research and scholarly projects like Queer Stories Project (QSP), I have gotten small grants ($1,000–$3,000) from places like the Awesome Foundation, Rhode Island Foundation, and Rhode Island Humanities.

TW: Read that before the Providence College gig, you did postdoc studies at Rice. Always curious to hear about life beyond our borders...what was Houston all about?

VT: It was incredibly hot and humid. I thought I was ready having lived most of my life in the summer heat of North Carolina, but it was a wholly different experience. Biggest, most intense thunderstorms I have ever witnessed occurred regularly. There, I had the opportunity to work with some amazing scholars who read my work and helped me develop it which was such a gift. Also, the food there was absolutely incredible. I am grateful to my dear friend Sophie Moore, who has the best taste in food of anyone I know, who educated me on this fact.

TW: Cool. Now that we know you a bit better, let’s get into the Queer Stories Project. What is it; what are the goals?

VT: The work I do with the Queer StoRIes Project is about creating space for queer and trans stories to be told. It's about challenging archival silences that perpetuate normative ways of thinking about who we are. But it's also rooted in understanding white settler colonial definitions of family, gender, and relationship practices that appear to be innocent and healthy, but are designed to perpetuate logics of property. I am driven by a craving to listen to and hear stories that might give us windows into other ways of being that have existed and persist despite the attempts to erase, censor, and remove them from our perception of reality.

TW: Where did this idea originate, and how is it taking shape today?

VT: The Queer StoRIes Project came out of a time when I was in graduate school doing my American Studies PhD at Brown. I noticed there was no centralized, publicly available archive documenting the area's LGBTQ+ history. I contacted the Providence Public Library to see if they would be interested in hosting an LGBTQ+ oral history archive since they had an orientation around community-based archives. They were excited about the idea of an oral history project and were also open to my approach of training youth how to do oral histories and then pairing them with "elders" to do oral histories. During summer 2018, I started working with youth from Youth Pride, Inc. and since then it has expanded to a training that is open to people of all ages and, particularly, working with organizations and collectives who want to record their histories for their own use. We are super excited because we are currently working in partnership with Project Weber Renew's Beyond the Understanding of Gender and recording oral histories with some of their members. Participating doesn't mean your oral history will go into the PPL's archives, but it's an option if that is important to you.

Above: Virginia highlighting student work at a Protest Against Censorship on Providence College’s campus

TW: Truly awesome work! When did you first start being interested in, or more deeply researching things like racial hierarchies, power structures, etc?

VT: Growing up in the South, the air is thick with its history as a slave plantation economy, the southern civil rights movement, and the ongoing consolidation of power by wealthy elites and their disenfranchisement of working and poor people. I grew up in a family and in schools that taught us about the importance of the civil rights movement and celebrated desegregation as the pinnacle of justice movements. However, from a young age, it was clear to me that race continued to be very powerful and it informed gendered and sexual norms (not how I would have articulated it, but those were the feelings). 

TW: Did you have the sense things were different elsewhere?

VT: I actually grew up with anger at "The North" because I perceived it to carry a superiority complex to the South. Now I can see that that was partly based in a problematic position fomented by a culture that perpetuated Old South nostalgia. But it was also based in a sense that the South was backward and the North was forward which is a logic that not only allows people from northern white families to avoid accountability for the ways their wealth and power derived from slavery and colonization, but also, as historian Natalie Ring has argued, enables the US to operate as an imperial country and global empire with the perception of itself as progressive. I was so angry at all of that and I still am. 

TW: You turned the anger into action. 

VT: It's hard not to let that rageful despair eat you. So I decided to try to find the words to describe it, to make the familiar strange, and to find ways to address it. I felt, and still feel, I must live my life looking directly at it, trying to understand it, and seeing what other ways to be are possible.

TW: Could you provide one or two concrete examples of how white racial hierarchies impact family and gender?

VT: What many do not realize is that the gender binary originated in European cultures as a means of outcasting and degrading the gender systems of peoples in Africa, Asia, and the lands that are currently known as the Americas. As Europeans sailed across the Atlantic and Indian oceans enacting genocide and enslavement in places like India, Nigeria, and Brazil, they used the idea that there are only two genders against the people they encountered whose gender presentations differed from this model as an excuse to dehumanize them. Holding the European gender system above other gender systems became a rationale for dehumanizing Black and indigenous people as well as settling upon their lands and robbing natural resources in order to concentrate power and wealth among European nations. It was the descendants of Europeans who transformed what was a largely British colony into a settler colonial nation state that began operating independent from British rule. This history is the foundation of our legal system, medical system, education system, and dominant culture writ large in the contemporary moment.

In addition to being used as a tool to legitimize the colonization of indigenous lands and forced displacement of indigenous people, the binary and heterosexuality became part of a system of passing down property. With the rise of capitalism in Europe and the translation of this emphasis on private property into colonialism, the question of how that property was passed onto others became a central cultural and legal concern.  As Fredrich Engels has argued, monogamous, heterosexual familial arrangements are not based on what is natural, but on upholding the transformation of indigenous lands into private property. Colonists imported to what is currently known as the United States very rigid, stringent gender roles, gendered division of labor and power construction of the hetero-normative family—to ensure that men who were the legal property owners had clear, undisputed paternity over their children, for whom women in that arrangement were designated to biologically reproduce heirs. This was a system designed to hold onto land from which colonists could extract resources to transform into social and financial capital.

Above: Virginia (left) discussing the history of quilting by Black women at Gee’s Bend, Alabama. With Betty Anderson (right), Executive Director at The Shoe Shop Museum in Camden, AL.

VT: This was in direct contrast to the equitable gender role distributions in many Indigenous communities—wherein women were farmers, in charge of resource distribution, where power balance was often equitable across genders, and women were leaders and decision makers. For the colonial system to reproduce itself and to take over, the policing and demonization of gender identities and sexualities outside of the colonial model had to be done in order to maintain the charade that heterosexual and cisgender identities are the most natural and therefore entitled to the ownership of property and the wealth derived from private property.

TW: You’ve elsewhere cited queer relational practices as being part of the toolkit we might use to combat oppression. Could you offer a definition for that concept, and talk about what it looks like in action?

VT: Queer relational practices will always be beholden to a legacy of LGBTQ+ folks fighting against capitalism, homophobia, and transphobia, but in our current political cultural moment, I think it's important to understand queerness—not as a style or identity—but a set of practices that work against dominant forms of power. Another way to put that is fighting for the world to become more livable for everyone. These practices change over time as the context changes. They can even change moment to moment. With the Queer StoRIes Project, I think it is important to hear about how people who have been marginalized due to their gender and sexuality built a life and formed communities while under police surveillance, being exiled from their bio families, struggling with employment discrimination, and so many other forms of structural violence. I also think it's important to look at the ways people hoped to challenge some norms while they perpetuated others; being able to hold complexity is its own vital praxis. I think listening to people's histories is a vital way to pass on skills and frameworks we can use to build futures that empower everyone to thrive.

TW: A few minutes ago, you mentioned this idea of the logics of property. Could you flush that idea out a bit for us?

VT: Basically, white settler colonial logics of property shape every facet of life. Advertising, intimacy, art, political discourse, historical archives, the food system, architecture, every facet. Every interaction is undergirded by a massive campaign to hide the fact that indigenous people here had their own ways and systems for relating to the land and that dominant culture has opted to invest in a system that white settlers have used which has involved writing English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish words on paper to claim ownership of indigenous land. This system of property and its logics also informs ways of relating to one another. For example, if you have ever wondered if a person is worth your time, you are operating out of property logic. Of course, there are and have always been groups of people—most importantly and originally indigenous people—who have fought these systems and ways of thinking. There have been and are other ways to be. But private property is a system imported from European contexts to suit their intended ends and we still live under the immense weight of that.

Above: A young researcher, out in the field

TW: We’re getting low on time and there’s a lot more to learn here—what are some books you’d suggest for folks who want to keep digging?

VT: Understanding Health and Care Among Sex Workers: Perspectives from Rhode Island by Claire Macon, Eden Tai, and Sidney Lane, and Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America by Camille Owens.

TW: You’ve got your own book in the works, too?

VT: Yes, tentatively titled Dark Trees: Visual Grammars of Family and (Anti)Lynching Aesthetics, which should be published in about two years. It is about the indelible ways in which racial capitalism has shaped the nuclear family through looking at the ways in which the figure of the tree has been used to symbolize family structure as well as racial terror through lynching violence. I focus on white supremacist applications of the tree as symbol for two out of four chapters and, for the other two, on how Black visual activists have taken the tree and reworked it into material to make worlds based in environmental and reproductive justice.

TW: At the top you mentioned an interest in photographic archives—we’d like to close by asking about a favorite photographer or collection.

VT: My favorite under-the-radar photographer is Pauli Murray, who I learned about via the Pauli Murray Center when I was an undergraduate student at UNC Chapel Hill. An album s/he made in the 1930s-1950s is an amazing portrayal of his/her life and Black life in Durham, NC and Harlem, NYC. It has photographs cut out into hearts, keylock holes, and a daguerreotype of her grandfather who was a Union Navy soldier.

TW: Thank you, Virginia. We can’t wait to head over to the PPL and check out the Queer Stories Project!

Oysters, etcetera, with Manya K. Rubinstein

For over two decades, Manya K. Rubinstein has been celebrating all things Providence. Her work with Outpost Journal helped bring critical media attention to the local art scene, and recently, she co-founded the Industrious Spirits Company (ISCO) which—despite being only a few years old—already feels like an Ocean State staple. In the photo above, Manya’s posed with a gorgeous Vendome Copper and Brass Works still. The ISCO team calls it Baby.

The Well (TW): Hello, Manya. Who are you?

Manya K. Rubinstein (MKR): I’m a co-founder and CEO of the Providence-based distillery, ISCO, a storyteller, a hand-talker, a hot glue aficionado, a mama, a surfer, a lover of tasty things, weird flavors and lesser-known edible flowers. I’m a believer in the brilliance of nature, the supreme silliness of French bulldogs, and the absolute necessity of sticking googly eyes on “inanimate” objects.

TW: We can get down with some hot glue and googly eyes. Do you remember any of your most early works, something with a similar materials list?

MKR: There’s a little sculpture I made when I was in kindergarten. It’s fashioned out of toothpicks and a block of wood and glue. It’s hot pink and neon orange and I’ve carried it around with me for 40 years. It still makes me happy when I look at it.

TW: Tell us a bit about this young sculptor. 

MKR: I had a really blessed childhood. I grew up in NYC but spent weekends in upstate New York helping my mom garden, hanging out in the woods, catching frogs and snakes. I developed a love of words early, enjoyed basketball and photography, and was a dedicated classical flautist. High school was a lot of fun—we had a huge amount of freedom, and NYC in the 90s was a very different place than it is today. I was lucky to have great friends, we looked out for each other then and still do to this day.

Above: An artwork by Manya K. Rubinstein, NYC, circa 1984 

TW: Can we ask about Pet Sematary?

MKR: It is my childhood handwriting (reproduced by the art department) on the tombstones for the 1989 version of the film Pet Sematary. And also here for some stills, but you might have to just watch it and wait for my credit...

TW: So NYC in the 90s. What were you up to? Sneaking into Limelight? Chloe Sevigny parties on Wooster street? Hanging low key in the libraries?

MKR: Oh, you should have seen the libraries!! I kid. I read ahead and did all my homework during class so I wouldn't have much work after school. My friends and I spent a good amount of time sitting around in parks or on stoops. An absolutely huge amount of time, actually. There are a handful of NYC dive bars that shall always hold special places in my heart. We also went through a few years of really good dance options: Wednesday hip hop night at BoB Bar (ig), Thursday 80s night at Don Hills, and Saturdays there was salsa and merengue at a place on Varick street that I can't remember the name of anymore! No sign of Chloë Sevigny but I did once style Kristen Chenoweth for a PAPER magazine shoot when I was interning there because the real stylist didn’t show. I hope you are picking up a theme! I am a good bullshitter. 

TW: Cool sighting! The Annabeth Schott arc in West Wing was solid; we appreciate that she stayed on with the Santos administration. Moving on...Let’s talk Providence. Why are you here?

MKR: I came to RI in 1997 for college [Brown], barely made it off campus till 2000. I then discovered what an amazing city Providence was in terms of participatory art making, performance and, let’s be honest, ridiculously fun and often quite beautifully weird parties. I met a boy, stuck around, left a few times for some more school and some work, but kept coming back and decided in my mid twenties to make a life here. I loved—and still love—the collaborative nature of Providence, how its scale helps you to quickly connect with people and keeps folks kind of top line decent to each other (You will see that person again, so try not to be a @#$!). I love the creative spirit here, and that the ocean is never far away. I love how often people come together to try to make things better.

Above: Self portrait, NYC, circa 1996

TW: What was your concentration at Brown. Were you engaged with the local creative community back then, too?

MKR: I studied Comparative Literature at Brown and wrote an entire thesis on Susan Sontag and Donald Barthelme (don't ask). I attended exactly zero college sporting events, played zero games of beer pong, and set foot inside a frat house exactly once—to steal some shampoo. I was the principal flute in the Brown University Orchestra and a Managing Editor at the Indy, the Brown/RISD paper, for which we would pull an all nighter every single Wednesday night to deliver the issue to the printer on time in the morning. Once the sun was up and the issue was complete, I would drive home, sleep most of the day, get up in late afternoon in time for orchestra rehearsal, and head straight from there to a standing weekly party at a friend's house. Regretfully, that party was called 40s Night, which is what I call every night now, but for very different reasons. Anyhow, I’d then go home and sleep some more, and then I'd be more or less human again by Friday morning. There were not a huge amount of opportunities for engagement with the broader community during my time at Brown. I think I was pretty self obsessed as someone in their early 20s who really enjoyed literary theory. It was not very practical. 

TW: After Brown...you were in Saas-Fee, Switzerland? 

MKR: This is correct. I went to the European Graduate School. It was an amazing experience because I got to study with a number of philosophers, artists, and theorists who I had been reading in college. I made a very strange and very silly video "art," taught yoga—which I had no business teaching—to my fellow students and, once, to Antony Gormley, who gamely attended my "session." I took a class with Baudrillard that he conducted entirely in French through a haze of chain smoked cigarettes. I do not speak French, but it was amazing.  

TW: That time you spent at The Indy...perhaps informed your role as publisher of Outpost Journal later on? What did you learn by working on that?

MKR: Outpost was an awesome project. I had a great co-editor Pete Oyler and a great designer Jay Peter Salvas. I think we’re all really proud of what we were able to accomplish over those years, and we loved making connections with like-minded folks working in other smaller cities. In terms of what I learned: I learned a lot about the cities we were featuring and about how sometimes our assumptions as outsiders were totally wrong. I learned how to manage a team, or in some cases, how to royally f-up managing a team. I learned that there is a museum entirely dedicated to works created from human hair; I’m still not sure if I should be beyond grossed out or utterly entranced by the ingenuity of our species. No new print projects on the horizon at the moment. But I don’t know, maybe I’ll start making zines again when I retire.

Above: Providence, circa 1998

TW: Outpost had a bit of an activist tint to it, in that you were highlighting then underrepresented cities and artists. With your current work, what feels new, challenging, and a bit radical?

MKR: I’m a bit obsessed with how agriculture and aquaculture can have positive impacts on climate, as well as with the idea that everyone’s birthright is access to the natural world with all its wonders and in all its deliciousness. There are a lot of amazing organizations doing work around this both locally and nationally. At ISCO, we’re committed to sourcing regeneratively or organically grown grains, sending our main waste product of spent grains back to local farms, and working with organizations such as the Billion Oyster Project (to whom we donate a portion of proceeds for every bottle of Ostreida Oyster Vodka sold), the American Farmland Trust, Fundación Tortilla, Greenwave, Eating with the Ecosystem, and lots of others who are helping create healthier lands, oceans and food systems while taking into account the actual humans who are involved along the way.

TW: Could you go into a bit more detail on agriculture and aquaculture? 

MKR: For many years, I’ve been borderline obsessed with the magic of plants and the people who know how to grow them, the deep restorative powers of the ocean and all it contains, the sense of well-being that can come from eating well-grown, nutritious foods, the joy of creative, adventurous cooking, the excitement of new flavor discoveries, and the generous, welcoming way that food and beverage can bring people together to bond and share stories.

The food, agriculture and land use sector is responsible for nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and solutions around reduced food waste, plant rich diets, perennial crops, regenerative animal cropping, and conservation agriculture are no small part of addressing the serious and increasing issues humans face around climate. For me it was a really beautiful moment when I realized that these all these things that were super important to my sense of joy and connection to both nature and to others were not just small “me” things, but were intimately bound up in these sectors where there is both much work to be done, but also so many wonderful organizations and people working very hard to make a dent and set us on a better path.

Most people don’t think about the idea that their spirits come from agricultural products that were grown by somebody, somewhere. They do not connect what is in their glass to the land and labor that have created it. ISCO’s mission is to make delicious things made from beautiful ingredients that we source in a responsible manner, but also to help spread stories about things like why oysters are so amazing. In addition to being incredibly tasty, oysters provide excellent ecosystem services such as filtering up to 50 gallons of water a day, cleaning waterways, providing habitat for other species, and creating natural hurricane barriers. ISCO wants to share how a perennial wheat like Kernza—that we malted and are aging in a whiskey—is an incredible advance. A perennial requires far fewer resources to grow and maintain than an annual crop, which must be planted each year anew.

Above: Martha Mucha (Manya’s Grandmother), Maine Coast (cropped), circa 1980s

TW: Related to that, we read in another interview that you’re a fan of Bren Smith's Eat Like a Fish. What other texts have been meaningful in your agricultural explorations?  

MKR: Here are some other good ones

Drawdown by Paul Hawken is an amazing text on climate solutions.

American Catch by Paul Greenberg provides an engaging deep dive into the state of America’s relationship to aquaculture and fishing, solutions on how the US might not have to import 90% of its seafood from other countries.

Never Out of Season by Rob Dunn asks us to consider why we only ever see one kind of banana. Nature made a huge variety of bananas. Humans chose one to propagate. Monocropping, e.g. growing just one kind of a thing in huge, industrial operations, instead of lots of types of things, has left agriculture extremely vulnerable.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer offers beautiful lessons in connection with nature. Favorite section is when she talks about how fresh soil produces oxytocin in the human brain, eg. our hormone system is engineered to help us bond with the land around us...like, woah.

Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson. Why do Americans use forks and knives and not chopsticks? What’s up with egg beaters? Why do we call food “rich”? A cultural history of eating and eating tools across many different countries and time periods. Have I mentioned I am a giant nerd yet? Am guessing by this point I don’t have to.  

Lastly, Cork Dork from Bianca Bosker. Speaking of dorks, this is a great book. Flavor is weird. We don’t really have words for it. All about how we can train our brains to become better at perceiving flavor, but also about how so much of flavor is created with senses other than taste and smell. Really fun.

Above: ISCO Seaflow Launch, Providence, RI, May 2024

TW: Anything coming up from ISCO we should be on the lookout for?

MKR: I’m really proud of ISCO’s latest release, our Seaflow Ocean Gin, made with both local oysters and seaweed, alongside light juniper and tons of bright citrus. It’s crazy delicious and we used peaflower to give it a natural light blue hue that calls up a lazy day near the sea. And I’m also super proud of our brand new collab vodka with Myrtle! Working with friends and respected peers on creative projects is just about my favorite happy place. The vodka tastes amazing and I’m obsessed with the packaging. I hope people love it.

TW: Ah yes, thank you for that moment of co-promotion! We’re biased but, yes the Seaflow Ocean is incredible. So how about when you’re not at ISCO—what’s keeping your own spirits up?

MKR: I’m trying to paint more. I’ve always loved to sketch and draw, especially when traveling, though mostly before being a parent and running a business, which leave me with pretty paltry amounts of time for other pursuits. I find it relaxing and peaceful. My grandmother was a talented watercolorist, and my mother had gone deep into her art practice in the decade before she died. So for me painting is a lovely way to call up both my connection to the present moment and my connections to those who are no longer present.

Last Q: What do you hope for Providence, ten years from now?

MKR: BETTER BIKE LANES. More trees! More gardens. Climate resiliency. A generally higher level of prosperity and wellness. I hope it is still arty and weird.

You Are Here, with Bill Galligan

When you deboard an airplane, how do you locate baggage claim? When visiting a new grocery store, how do you find the Cape Cod chips? William (Bill) Galligan is a husband, father, and small business owner who thinks about these problems, a lot. His East Providence-based company, Wayfinder Collaborative, handles the design and installation of all manors of signage. While you might not hear much from wayfinding signage designers at TED, their work is central to how we orient ourselves in increasingly complex built environments. Here’s Bill.

The Well (TW): Hey Bill, where ya from? 

Bill Galligan: Like many, I’m a transplant to R.I. I grew up in Massachusetts with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and a real lack of appreciation for lil’ Rhody. I relocated here when my wife started working in healthcare and over time, have fully embraced my home in Providence and Rhode Island. We’re raising our family here and have found a great community. I love the way we all cross paths; the interconnectedness here. Love the diversity and neighborhoods in and around Providence and East Providence. Hate the driving, though! 

TW: Why’d you pick East Providence as a place to set up shop?  

BG: Initially, proximity to my Jiu-Jitsu Academy. I was coming here for classes weekly and saw a sign for offices and studio spaces for rent. I called, got a tour, and it has totally worked out. I can just walk next door and take mid-day classes whenever I want. I guess I like convenience. It's in a great location for the work I do, job sites range from NYC to north of Boston. 

TW: And, what exactly are you doing over there? Designing, fabricating?

BG: I am basically a general contractor for signage. When a client has a specific need, such as interior signage for a residential development, I collaborate with them to determine all the necessary signs for code compliance and branding opportunities. I estimate all the costs and set a budget and once approved, we engage in an iterative design process to create custom signage for the project. After finalizing a design, we source the signage from our wholesale fabrication partners and supervise the installation with our own teams. We oversee the entire process. As an example, we recently completed a project involving a three-building residential development in Boston—former piano manufacturing buildings transformed into apartments. The signage there reflects the history of the buildings, while also matching the updated modern interiors.

TW: Got it. One of our favorite local signs was the Wayland Bakery one. RIP buddy. How about you—what are your favorite haunts; places you’d send a tourist friend. Besides Myrtle.

BG: Favorite bar right now is the Walnut Room; I love the vibe and cocktails there. I really like the burgers at There. My favorite pizza is Jeff’s (ig) in East Prov. right across from Myrtle.

Above: Lobby signage and sculpture for Olympus Surgical Technologies America

TW: And what are you listening to? In and out of the office.

BG: Right now, my regular rotation includes this folk artist, John Moreland. I saw him last year at The Sinclair in Cambridge and it was great! In the office, I have a running loop of 80’s new wave and 90’s alt rock. I have a functioning cassette tape player in my truck, so I've been listening to $.99 tapes I find. I recently came across The Cars album Candy-O, the B-52s self-titled album and the Miami Vice soundtrack, which is terrible, but Crockett’s Theme hits me right every time with the windows down and wind blowing. 

TW: Sunset. Waterfront Drive. We see it. OK so back to business. Why signage?

BG: No one goes to school dreaming of being a sign maker; you fall into this. I went to a trade high school for commercial art, and participated in a co-op program where I was placed at a sign shop every other week. I started doing drawing revisions, and they ended up hiring me over the summer, helping with installation and production. After college, this sign shop hired me as my first full-time job, and I spent a year there before being laid off. I went to another sign company and, after five years, worked my way from junior designer to senior designer. I then made a triumphant return to the original sign company that laid me off as a senior designer and account manager. In this role, I started to grow my network and an understanding of the operational side of the business. I stayed there for 16 years, reaching the role of Sales Leader with my own book of accounts and four salespeople reporting to me, and being part of the leadership team. The company was sold to an investment firm, and I was let go at that time. That's when I decided to go out on my own, starting Wayfinder Collaborative.

TW: You’re designing for an audience of all possible people, right? How do you think about the different ways humans orient themselves, locate information naturally, etc?   

BG: Everything we do is with accessibility and inclusion in mind. While The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates certain signage to meet specific standards, it's important to design with an even wider understanding of inclusion in mind. For a recent project, we researched colors that would be most visible to those with various forms of color blindness, to ensure that graphics like texts, maps, and directional information would be readable in any viewing condition. We collaborated with the City of Cambridge to refine the look and feel of these signs, making sure they were appealing to everyone and functional for the visually impaired. We included Braille messaging, which isn’t legally required for exterior wayfinding, but matters. When designing, we consider things like touch, feel, and sound. The more inclusive our design approach, the more successful the project becomes. 

TW: You mentioned I went to a trade school for commercial art—were you always a creative kid? What toys were your jam?

BG: I was obsessed with Matchbox cars as a kid. In addition to collecting them, what I really enjoyed was setting up cities and towns with roads and buildings to create scenarios for my cars. We had this old pool table in our basement which was the perfect blank canvas to create scenes for my cars to interact with. I would use all sorts of media from Legos and Lincoln Logs to found-objects and materials to build and set up these scenes. It was as if I were a city planner and I found hours of joy and entertainment creating these worlds.

Above: Fabricated aluminum signs wrapping in production at Mandeville Signs, Lincoln, RI.

TW: What was your own wider world like around then?

BG: The best way to describe growing up is being between two worlds. At a young age, we moved from New York to Massachusetts, and much of my childhood was spent traveling between NY and MA for family events and holidays. When not traveling I had a very rural life, growing up in a small town with a street that looks like it belongs on a postcard. Lots of neighborhood friends, summers outside, riding bikes, building jumps, playing in vacant lots, and exploring. Later, I left my hometown school system to go to a regional high school, which was the door that opened me up to a world beyond. It was the beginning of my creative journey and where I made lifelong friends who continually inspire and push me to be creative.

TW: Are you still building jumps in empty lots? Or, what are you doing for recreation and mental health as an adult?

BG: I am able to design, create, and manage my projects better as a result of my practice of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It has taught me how to be more present and creative in the moment; to let go of what is not working with optimism because something better will always present itself. I’ve learned to embrace the challenging journey ahead and feel that with perseverance and determination, all things are achievable. I try to train BJJ a minimum of 3x per week with at least two of those mid-day during the week. I stretch and work on flexibility regularly. I generally try to eat healthy and practice moderation for things like alcohol or sugary/starchy foods.

TW: Is there a “You gotta know when to fold ‘em!” joke here? Moving on...Where’s the biz right now? Are you in the black yet? 

BG: Doing great, I would say. I live a life of very little financial concern which for me is the goal. I don't need much to get by and I like to live below my means so as not to be working to live. I work because I love what I do and I have the means to enjoy life as I see fit.

Above: Bill with his wife, Leigh Hubbard, President of the American Nurses Association and Magnet Program Manager at Miriam Hospital.

TW: You’re pretty involved in your local church right? Give us a sense of who you are in the wider community. Or where Wayfinder meets the community.

BG: My company is a for-profit company. That is the goal, to make money. That said, I frequently work for non-profits where my bottom line is not the driving force. I like to work with groups I believe in. So when we did work for the ACLU of Boston, Helping Hands, SouthSide Community Land Trust, or Grace Episcopal Church, I found ways to offer my services at a discount and to work with these clients to ease the financial component of the job. Whether that is selling the product at cost to them or offering no charge for design I am willing to make certain cost cuts to help a good cause. I’ve also been a volunteer with Dorcas International for 3 years now through Grace Episcopal Church. There, I have been coordinating apartment clean-ups for arriving refugee families—this has been some of the most satisfying work I have ever participated in, and I love how owning my own business allows me to prioritize it. If a family of 6 is arriving from Afghanistan and needs an apartment clean and ready, that means part of my day is organizing teams to make it happen for them. The sign work can come later.

TW: Good stuff, Bill! We also want to hear a bit about SEGD and the meetups you’re working on in town.

BG: This was a fun experience. I am one of the three co-chairs for the SEGD Boston Chapter, that’s the Society of Experiential Graphic Designers. We usually organize about four events a year, most of which take place in and around Boston, but I’d been advocating for a Providence event for a long time. I wanted to invite people to come down here and see all the fun and creative work that's happening, all that inspired me to establish my own business here. The tour was called Handmade in Providence and it focused on three shops on the west side. 

TW: Any plans for future events?

BG: My SEGD co-chairs and I are working on a studio tour of SoSo, a digital firm focused on the merge of architecture, design, and technology with a specific focus on AI. We are targeting September, up in Boston.

TW: So for Handmade in Providence, where’d you visit?

BG: We started at Ogie's Trailer Park where we all met for drinks and appetizers, then made our way to Nightlight Neon. Here, we met with Nick McNight, the owner, who showed us the ins and outs of hand-bent neon and the art and science that goes into each piece. After that, we walked to Providence Painted Signs where Shawn Gillheneey talked about the history of hand-painted signage, his creative process, and some of the work he has done. Lastly, we headed over to DWRI Letterpress where Dan Wood walked us through the history of letterpress and many of the operational pieces he has in his shop. Each of us even got to create a custom print promoting the event. The response was great, with about seventeen people participating in the walking tour. My hope is that it sheds a little more light on the coolness of Providence.

TW: Quality names! Not so long ago, you transitioned from being a sole-operator to having staff. Can you speak on that transition a bit? 

BG: It was a big step to bring on staff. but I knew it was something I needed to do to grow and keep managing the projects I have. I have a great mentor who has helped me tremendously in these decisions; I cannot recommend more finding someone who has done the things you want to do, or some version of it, and ask them questions. Ask all the questions you have, as ridiculous or unthought out as they may seem. Keeping them in is not helping you. I talked to my mentor about when was the right time to bring on help, and they helped me come to the decision on my own as to when the right time for me was. It's a leap of faith to bring on help. I needed to first truly understand what I was capable of doing on my own, both output and financially, and to understand where I was spending time that was not specifically generating new work. What was left was the roles of the person or persons I needed. Once I identified that, it was easier to know who I was looking for, and it wasn't long before I found them. 

Above: Custom wall graphics produced during the initial masking phase of Covid 19

BG: What do you want for your employees? Beyond just their having a job.

BG: I believe in building and running a workplace that I would want to be a part of. One that understands we have lives outside of work and that it is a struggle sometimes to fit the life we want into busy schedules. I have a simple philosophy: I want to have a workplace that is fun and fulfilling for those that work for me. I mean, let's be serious, we make signs. There is no reason to be stressed. Any and all problems are solvable, and I am here to support and help. I don’t spend time counting the hours of the people that work for me. As long as the job gets done right, that we are doing our absolute best work for our clients, that we put ourselves in our clients' shoes to understand their needs as people, we are fulfilling the mission. I will support my employees to live the life they want, to craft the work schedule that works best for them, and to foster an environment that allows for growth and opportunity.

TW: You must get stressed sometimes, though? How do you deal?

BG: I find that honesty is your ally in business. The lesson I have learned that has helped me over and over again is not to be afraid to share bad news with your clients the moment you learn of it. It is always worse if you wait. I have made that mistake and it has never ended well. Anytime a problem arises, I am quick to share it with the client so that they are aware. From there I can work on solutions or alternatives but at least all parties are informed which always feels better on the other side of the problem.

TW: What do you think your best creative project to date’s been? 

BG: I mean, starting my business is what I am most proud of. We do lots of great work and have some amazing clients. Looking back five years—taking that initial step, believing that I could do this on my own, it’s an amazing feeling. I didn’t necessarily have the knowledge on how to do it all, but had the fortitude and determination to know I’d be able to figure it out. I look back at these last few years and see some of my most profound personal growth. I wouldn’t change anything.

Get it Together, Together, with Dailen Williams

Dailen Williams (she/they) is a lot of things: a self-taught musician, DJ, visual artist, and an educator. She is also an organizer experienced in starting arts organizations and community projects from scratch, with a special emphasis on designing and managing human-centered systems. Dailen’s latest big idea is Club:Club, a kind of experimental educational platform where anyone can learn the basics of DJing and music production in a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. 

The Well (TW): You’re pretty busy, Dailen. Give us four stories to set this up, super fast.

Dailen Williams (DW): There are many, but here’s four that come to mind. That time me and all my neighbors had a potluck and started chess boxing, complete with gloves. There’s the time I tracked down an illegal street racing crew in LA because I wanted to see them do donuts in the middle of traffic...and riding my bike through the mall during a Critical Mass—ten years ago? Almost got run over by an enraged security guard. In Alaska, my crew and I went on the water in a little skiff during a hurricane to try and keep one of the boats from sinking.

TW: And we’re off! What’s on your mind today? Lately?

DW: Space. Space to learn, space to share, space to celebrate and find each other. This is part of why I helped start Binch Press, why I helped organize Que Dulce, and part of why I insist on making music. Third spaces are in short supply locally, which is tragic because they are so crucial to individual growth and strongly interwoven communities. How are we to build supportive networks, share and celebrate moments of triumph, and learn new perspectives if we only ever make friends at work? Bars are okay, but I'm more interested in other kinds of spaces, places, and projects.

TW: Short supply is slightly better than non-existent so, what are some positive examples happening as we speak?

DW: Lost Bag and The Garden come to mind. I also advocate for other sources of community healing and neighborhood support, besides spaces and nonprofits. While nonprofits are incredible and instrumental, a lot of additional good can be done by smaller groups, open projects, and mutual aid initiatives that aren't bogged down by bureaucracy or competing for the same three or four restrictive grants. Projects like John Brown Mutual Aid, Trash City Medic Collective, and Red Ink.

Above: A seaplane near Bear Garden Fishery off Kodiak, Alaska. Photo by Dailen Williams.

TW: Can we get an example of a project you personally produced in an alternative or, third space, one that’s still with you today. Something temporary, fleeting, memorable…

DW: Years ago my friend Kit Paloma (formerly “cmov”) and I ran an experimental club night series, Approximate ≈, at Capitol Records—that’s the giant brick building at the intersection of Harris and Atwells. Details and memories are hazy, but we ran maybe 3 or 4 of them. This was probably 2015–2016. We focused on making space for Queer and Trans artists who struggled to fit the molds of what [dance] music was supposed to be. Paloma is a dear friend of mine and everyone should check out her work.

TW: For a bit you were also Booking Manager at AS220, which I think people might point to, correctly or not, as the kind of space you’re getting at. That only lasted a year, though—how come?

DW: When I first got hired, I think they and I were both really excited; I have a lot of experience building systems, connecting people, and creating spaces with others. As time progressed I realized that I was not receiving the resources I needed to create the kinds of positive change I thought I'd be able to. My time there followed the tired trope of kind and well-intentioned people burning themselves out to the point of not being able to hear the community around them nor support the workers within the organization itself. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the work they've done, and they're definitely a fixture in this city. I just couldn't hang.

TW: What message do you think wasn’t / isn’t being heard? Not just at AS220 during a specific year but, broadly.

DW: I think a lot about the word community and the idea of inclusivity. Community is often used vaguely, or as a marketing buzzword folks use to get grants. Or worse, it gets used by people to lump together (and feel closer to) groups they actually know very little about. Whose community are we actually talking about? Black people living on the South Side? Artists with degrees? Big program funders?

When people pretend that we all exist in the Great Big Circle in the exact same ways, we end up with values and policies so banal and undirected we mirror and recreate the inherent harms of capitalism wherever we go. Now, this isn't an indictment against efforts towards inclusivity. Rather, I think that inclusivity is something we should strive for within the context of clearly defined communities. That is to say, communities can center certain experiences without alienating or excluding others, thereby being inclusive to those willing to learn and grow.

There are, of course, many points of overlap in experience from person to person, but clearly defining a community is key to actually serving its needs. In my opinion, projects that try to serve everyone in the exact same ways generally fall flat and leave most participants, except maybe the most privileged, feeling disappointed.

TW: Want to propose a solution or, maybe a first step?

DW: When we create spaces we need to be specific, intentional, and at times protective of the specific culture(s) we’re trying to cultivate. Much of that process requires vetting and educating others to be certain that newcomers in a space can come to understand and respect that community's values—not its ethnicity, not its tax bracket, nor even its goals. It all comes back to sharing values. What do you believe in? What won’t you stand for? What do you protect? When people find that they have shared values they can finally let their guards down and begin to radically heal for real, even if they find that they exactly don't want the same things.

Above: Dailen performing as DJ Caloric. Photo courtesy of Dailen Williams.

TW: Not much to disagree with there. Thinking about your values and sense of self—do you have anything like an origin tale? Memories from youth that you can draw lines back to?

DW: Well, for the first 7 or 8 years of my life I was an only child, mostly left alone to watch TV, stare at bugs in the grass, or mix dangerous chemicals together. I loved drawing, Pokémon, and taking things apart. In second grade I made some money selling custom “tech decks” for a quarter—used popsicle sticks from the cafeteria I'd color and draw shapes and symbols on. Then, during class we'd all take out our counterfeit tech decks and pretend to snowboard instead of listening. I hid all my earnings in a water jug under the sink in the bathroom.

TW: Early with the hustle. When you got a sibling; how did that impact you? 

TW: By 15 I was the oldest of 10 kids! Well, not all at once. My family—immediate and extended—moved around a bit, and when my mom and multiple aunts weren’t actively fighting each other, they'd opt to live together in different configurations throughout the years to keep rent low. As a result, at any given time I was generally responsible for at least 5 other kids, my two siblings and many cousins, as all of our parents were either always working or asleep. Most every adult was a CNA working 3rd shift multiple nights a week.

TW: That’s a lot of responsibility. Fast forward to present day—you have all these varied projects...does life still feel like a balancing act? Or art pays the bills and you’re good? Where are you at?

DW: Actually, I’m not doing so hot! I don’t talk to my family, and when I did I was the one giving my money to them. I've never been a person with a lot of financial security in childhood, or adulthood, and since quitting my job in December I have been getting by on savings, gigs, and odd jobs. More recently, I started running CLUB:CLUB and, apart from being a public resource, it seems to be something that could actually yield a sustainable living wage! Needs a bit more figuring out to get it there, though. Wish me luck! :)

TW: Club-world seems like a place where you’re maintaining this role of “person who holds it together” and in return, perhaps, are offered more of a chosen family? 

DW: When I say that I don’t really talk to family, I mean that I am not in contact with any of the adults that had a hand in raising me. I do talk with the kids of those people from time to time, but we largely lead separate lives. After college I began living on my own, and though we all lived in the same city my mom never brought them to visit because she didn’t want my younger brothers meeting gay people. Everything was on her terms, and not being their actual parent there wasn't very much I could do. After I stopped talking to her I unfortunately had to stop talking to them as well.

Above: Dailen as DJ Caloric, in a bathtub. Photo by Julia C Liu.

DW: As for my chosen family I’ve been close to and relied on so many wonderful, kind, and complicated friends. Like with blood family I’ve found myself in pretty disastrous relationships with those I consider kin. Simply having a shared background or experience of the world is not enough. Communication and clear expectations are key to any family, blood or not, surviving and growing together in a healthy way.

TW: We want to revisit something from your first answer...Alaska?

DW: Kodiak, Alaska. I really needed money and I learned from some friends that you could make a bunch really quickly if you worked the salmon run for three months straight. This would only be partly true. When I got there I met some of the most conservative, ornery, self-reliant people I had ever known. The strangest thing was that they were so far right that they didn't even care that I was trans. They just wanted to know if I could kill a fish with my hands. I came back to Providence with a deeper and more profound appreciation for my community.

TW: Once your hands were deemed sufficiently deadly to fish, did people there get more interested in you; your history, background, queerness, etc?

DW: Not really! Mostly a “Kill fish and earn your keep” kind of energy, paired with a real lack of curiosity—the work and hours were far too grueling to confer much time for small talk. To be fair I didn’t really tell anyone about my queerness at first; my friend who also came to Alaska for similar reasons spilled the beans when they wished me a happy 25th birthday over ham radio. The wife of the captain was upset that I kept a “secret” from her, and not actually super interested in engaging with what the secret actually was or why I wouldn't be forthright in the first place. For how big a deal she made, she completely failed to make any effort to get my pronouns right after the fact.

Interestingly, I happened to be stationed with another transwoman a little older than me, a person the captain and his wife knew personally and watched grow up. It was nice to have a queer person to experience the ordeal with, even if I was the first Queer person, and Black person, that she had ever interacted with in real life. We later had quite a few conversations about how to take the theory she’d read (Audre Lorde, bell hooks) and implement them in ways that didn’t make me feel weird. I hope she’s doing well.

TW: And what’s your take on Rhode Island, generally. What comes to mind first when you close your eyes and whisper the word quahog. 

DW: Providence is this odd, left-leaning urban small town in an otherwise pretty red state. In 2014 it was crowned the least "bible-minded" place in the country, and it also happens to be where I spent some of my most formative years. I love this city, and even though it’s been making it more and more clear that it probably doesn’t love me back, I hope we can all work together to figure out a way to re-squish it into a weird zone for people to hang out, hold hands, and make art. To get a deeper understanding of my relationship with RI, read this NPR article, this Trip Advisor page on Splash at Jordan’s Furniture, and this bit on Resmini lore.

Above: Williams as DJ Caloric, during a residency at Black Sheep. Photo (cropped) by Rory Maynard-Dean.

TW: How about something you love. Besides Vegas-style attractions at furniture showrooms.

DW: Teaching! Teaching others really requires not only that you understand a subject thoroughly, but also that you’re in tune enough with your students and curious enough about the rest of the world to be able to notice and draw similarities between completely separate things. As a result of teaching others, I’ve really learned how to teach myself new things.

I also try to record moments, photographs, videos, and voice memos. I'm prone to taking notes during casual conversations, especially if it's with a new friend. It's so easy to forget small details, and at least for me it's those little things that spark sudden moments of inspiration. I'm trying to enjoy my life more and spend more time with people I care about. Also, whenever I bike by a mulberry tree in the summer months I make sure to pull over and stuff my face as penance for working so much.

TW: Can’t say we’ve ever just ripped into a mulberry bush. Will have to check that scene out. Actually…that banger jam All Around the Mulberry Bush, being a youth-tune, reminds us to ask you about your time with New Urban Arts.

DW: My time at New Urban Arts was generally positive, it’s where I made most of my oldest adult friends. I was pretty young then, and honestly, at the time I probably was not mature enough yet to be a supportive role model for teens, being only 20 or so and living under extremely unstable circumstances myself. As for my own comics, I tend to write stories about workers and working, and how capitalism dulls the imagination—even in fantastic settings.

TW: What kinds of fantastic settings; what are the storylines?

DW: There’s an anthropomorphic eggplant who raids tombs to pay off her art school loans, and an impoverished village using magic gardening techniques to fight off police knights. I’ve done comics about starving freelance banking wizards who had to spend their own money to cast spells and close deals, and militarized hospitals fighting over patients in armored ambulances. I don't draw so much anymore, instead choosing to work on music and group projects while silently working on my world-building and writing skills.

TW: On writing...We’re getting ready to hit the beach next month—what books should we have in the tote?

DW: In no particular order...Getting the Love You Want. I’m trying to get like Hellen and Harville, and you probably should too. Animal Land is a really beautiful story about community and perseverance that halfway through, becomes a bizarre action story that isn’t very good. For that reason I recommend quitting the series after you finish Vol 7. Finally, The Body Keeps the Score. The guy who wrote it kinda sucks and it comes out a bit in some sections, but the info is pretty good and it really recontextualized a lot of things for me. Be forewarned: it’s extremely dense and at times, disturbing.

TW: OK, so not exactly a Sue Grafton summer. That’s cool. What’s something coming up in the next couple of months? This is your end-of-interview promo moment.

DW: I’m doing an artist showcase with Joe Stopsign and Noizcode at Inspiria on August 2nd! I really like Creeps and Sam and what they're doing with that space for different communities. CLUB:CLUB’s social club is returning from hiatus on September 9, and finally, I'm co-planning a really big party for the end of the summer. But that's all I can say for now.

*

The cover photo for this interview, Dailen Williams in L.A., is by Maya Gutmann-McKenzie, 2023

Showing Up, with Craig Spencer

If you want to meet Craig Spencer, look for a local watering hole with a decent whiskey selection and some live bluegrass. If he’s not there…suit up and travel to the heart of an infectious disease outbreak in Forécariah. By day, Spencer serves as an Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at Brown, and he approaches all things in life—be it learning the banjo or providing emergency medical care—with curiosity, focus, and a true respect for craft.

The Well (TW): Hi Craig. What’s brought you to Rhode Island?

Craig Spencer (CS): I'm still pretty new here, I moved to Providence with my family just over a year ago. I'm originally from Detroit, a city I absolutely adore, and moved to New York in 2008 to finish medical training—I stayed there for 15 years. During the pandemic, I was doing a bunch of work with health leaders across the country, including a group of folks at Brown. At the end of one long phone call, someone at the public health school said "Hey Craig, you should come work here!” At that point, I don't even think I knew that Brown was in Providence. I’d only been to Providence once, 20 years before, but I remember liking it. So our family came up for a weekend visit, really liked it, and decided to give Lil Rhody a shot. We've really settled in here, and absolutely love it.

TW: We’re considering letting you stay, but first you must be tested. Name ye favorite pubs and houses of entertainment.

CS: I’m always down for a visit to Captain Seaweeds (ig). And as a beer guy, I love Moniker and Long Live in Providence, as well as Tilted Barn down in Exeter. I’ve been really impressed with the great shows I’ve seen at tiny venues like Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket all the way up to bigger productions at PPAC. Most of my favorite shows were upstairs at Columbus Theater, and the closure of that space is a huge loss. 

TW: The Clam Council has voted; you may stay. So back to Detroit, the early years. What was that all about? Family, music, life, etc?

CS: As a middle child and a Midwesterner, I spent most of my time watching, reading about, and playing hockey while simultaneously playing a negotiating role between my older brother and younger sister on all family matters. With music, I was in to whatever my older brother was listening to—I remember my first time hearing Eazy-E as if it were yesterday, and knew most of the words to every Beastie Boy album. I think my first cassette was the single of Bad English’s When I See You Smile, picked up from the Sam Goody at the mall. Later I got into Nirvana—who didn’t!?—and still recall my parents making me clean the garage for buying In Utero without their prior knowledge. Pretty standard stuff I guess.

Above: Craig running the Philadelphia Marathon in 2022.

TW: Not too long ago, we spotted you at an Etran de l'air gig at Machines. That’s a departure from Bad English—when’d you discover West African shredders?

CS: I spent most of the 2010s living abroad much of the year, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and was exposed to great music everywhere I went. Early on it was the titans of Ethio-jazz; their smooth soulful mashup of Amharic and ‘Western’ scales that really intrigued me. Later, I became obsessed with the kora, a massive stringed instrument from West Africa that sounds like the marriage of a lute and a harp. I have played banjo for a long time, and I was really intrigued by the history of that instrument and how it ties back to other stringed gourds like the kora.

At the same time, I heard a lot of music from the euphoric era of independence in many West African countries, and was struck by the energy and optimism, akin to what you’d hear in the stellar Bobo Yeye collection from Numero Group. A friend who spent years in Mali introduced me to the music of the Balani Shows and I fell in love with the electronic hyperfast rhythms, and after spending some time working amongst the Tauregs in northern Niger I was introduced to the driving rebel blues of the desert. I’ve just been lucky to end up in a few different places with incredible music and great people to share it with me.  

TW: Great stuff! What’s in regular rotation at home in 2024?

CS: Guy Lobe’s Mon Amie A Moi is a fantastic 1986 album from one of Cameroon’s greatest. My 5 year old’s favorite album is Lavender Days from Caamp, I think because it’s pink. Azymuth’s Outubro from 1980 Brazilian boogie vibes with banging bass lines that just makes me smile and groove every time. Bana’s Dor Di Nha Dor is a lively 1983 record from the Cape Verdean balladeer Adriano Gonçalves. [The Well adds: East Providence, take note, as this one’s on Discos Monte Cara, a label out of Portugal]. Lastly, Julie Byrne’s Not Even Happiness—the last track is my favorite thing to spin with my last sips of whiskey before bed.

TW: So you’re teaching the kids about some cool jams—good on you. What are they teaching you? 

CS: Honestly, what I take from my kids every day is their intense and insistent wonder and curiosity about the world. Trying to explain to a 3 year old how something works requires you to not only deeply understand it yourself, but in so doing, brings up other questions that maybe you’ve never considered. Just watching two kids talk to each other and see how they interpret the world really gives me perspective for what I see as important, and what is really important to them.

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Above: Craig in China, mid 2000s. On the left, he’s at the mini Mao museum in Moxi.

TW: In Africa, when not looking for Mdou Moctar concerts and the like, you were practicing emergency medicine and related field work. Why this particular focus?

CS: When I was around 10 years old, I realized I couldn't be a sharkologist. It was a pretty disappointing revelation. I was informed that I'd have to study things like plankton and algae, which was not at all interesting to a kid obsessed with learning everything about sharks. So in social studies class, I was looking under a microfiche and saw that a cardiothoracic surgeon [content warning, images of surgery] made more money than everything else. So I decided I was going to do that. That's the reason I went to med school. That was the goal, to make Scrooge McDuck money. But during med school, I went on a trip to the Dominican Republic to see how hospitals worked there, and came back convinced that the world probably needs fewer hyper-specialized heart surgeons and way more people that feel comfortable providing medical care in nearly any circumstance for anyone. That's when I shifted to emergency medicine, and I committed to spending as much time working abroad, helping to build capacity in places around the world. 

TW: And before Africa, you spent some time in China—way back in the Hu Jintao era What was it like over there? 

CS: It was absolutely wonderful and wild. I went there because I knew absolutely nothing about the country; this was in 2006 right before the Olympics in Beijing. I took a year off of med school and ostensibly went to do public health work with a team in Henan province. But when I got there, all the research team really wanted to do was hang out, drink, and go to the night market with their strange international guest. It took a while to learn enough Mandarin to have a conversation, but once I did, the conversations I had were absolutely fascinating. Taking long train rides and just chatting with people, or meeting people at the markets or outside of the Forbidden City and just spending hours hearing what their life is like was one of the coolest experiences I could've had at that point in my life. I also met my now wife on my first day in China. She was an American from Cincinnati, and we got to spend a lot of time traveling from one end of China to the other, seeing a country in transition, just as we were in our early 20s and learning a lot about the world.

TW: Note to self: hang with researchers in Henan. OK so back to Africa—you were just in South Sudan with Doctors Without Borders. Give us a snapshot—what it’s like on the ground.

CS: The reality is that the need is pretty limitless. As an organization, Doctors Without Borders is in dozens of countries and works with tens of thousands of local staff, helping provide really crucial medical care in humanitarian crises. Given the state of the world, including the numerous big and small conflicts all over, there are still and will always be people who need access to medical care. Thankfully, we've had a massive outpouring of support, the majority of it from individual donors, and that has allowed Doctors Without Borders to dramatically expand its operations in recent years. But any cataclysmic event—bigger conflict, huge outbreak of a deadly infectious disease, and climate-related crises—bring more and more needs. In South Sudan, a few of our projects were frustrating because of the desire to do more, but it was also really heartening to see all the incredible work our teams can do in really tough circumstances all around the world. Really incredible.

TW: This is a well covered story elsewhere, but while working with Doctors Without Borders you contracted Ebola and unknowingly brought it back to New York City. Ten years later, how do you reflect on that moment?

CS: A decade ago there were numerous ‘Fearbola’ stories all over the news. Can You Get Ebola from a Bowling Ball was the hard-hitting byline from the New York Times. Despite all the hoopla, rarely was it pointed out that getting Ebola is actually pretty damn hard. At its most basic, it's a disease of caregivers. It really mostly impacts people who try to take care of others, risking their lives by providing close contact in a loved ones last moments or after their death. This is why you saw big outbreaks in healthcare facilities where providers often didn't have enough of the equipment needed to keep them safe. But even if they did, just providing that care and being present in Ebola treatment centers remained a risky proposition. I still don't know exactly when I was infected, but it was undoubtedly sometime in the process of taking care of dozens and dozens of Ebola patients. I was lucky enough to survive. But so many of the providers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone who were also infected didn’t survive, a horribly cruel indictment of the quality of care we were able to provide to the providers themselves.

Above: Craig with some of his Guinean colleagues in Gueckedou, 2014.

TW: In these environments where transmission rates and risks are so high, how do you keep cool and focused?

CS: Honestly, there is no trick here. There is absolutely no way to keep cool and focused. But there is a way to contain it so that you can continue and struggle on. After a decade, I still find it impossible to truly explain to folks what it was like working inside a place of such sadness and death. Yes, there were definitely uplifting moments, like the day we were able to discharge one of the first pregnant women to ever survive Ebola. But most of the time, it was just tough. But I think everyone who was there, working in those treatment centers, knew that if they didn’t help out and show up, things would’ve been even worse. It’s strange what drives us, but I was really inspired by all the amazing Guinean providers I worked with that showed up day after day, even as they watched their own families and communities fall ill. Incredible people. 

TW: We read you also spent time on a MSF medical search and rescue boat.

CS: I worked as part of a team helping provide search and rescue and medical care to migrants crossing the Mediterranean, and the experience truly changed my life and how I sympathize with the struggles of others. Basically we would leave Sicily onboard a marine vessel—”Call it a ship, but never call it a boat,” I was told over and over—and head south to the Libyan coast. En route we would often find a completely unworthy boat overloaded with people from all around the world trying to safely cross the Mediterranean sea, with almost no realistic chance of survival or getting to the other side. We would then spend hours doing a really careful rescue, something that I learned from some of the only people in the world that can tell you how to get 150 people off a sinking vessel, and then we would go through all the people we brought on board to try to find the most urgent medical issues. It was always chaos. 

TW: What were the most urgent needs?

CS: People with gunshot wounds. People with nervous breakdowns. We even delivered a few babies, including one on a tiny little wooden boat right in the middle of the Mediterranean. And in our little clinic on board, we got to speak with people and hear about their journeys. It was absolutely incredible to hear what so many people had been through and the resolve and determination they carried to seek safety and a better life. There’s no way I could’ve done what so many of them had. I learned a lot from many of the folks I met onboard.

TW: Perhaps unexpectedly, your work’s led to you having an Emmy.

CS: Well, the first thing to know is that on the bottom of every Emmy, it says that “This is only being loaned out to you and remains the property in perpetuity of the Emmy Gods,” but I’m glad my home can serve as a temporary way station for one little statuette. Frankly, I only got that Emmy because an incredible team of people at AJ+ did an enormous amount of work to take some things I wrote on social media and turn them into a really compelling, powerful video. 

TW: What’d you post, exactly?

CS: During the early days of Covid, I was working as an emergency physician in New York City. At the end of every shift, I would pour a glass of whiskey and take to Twitter to share my experiences of what it was like inside the ER. I honestly didn't think anyone would read it or care, but it was cathartic for myself and other providers that were going through that. Then one day something I wrote was shared by President Obama, and AJ+ reached out about trying to help people better understand what it was actually like inside hospitals. They took a few things that I wrote, spliced them together, and over the span of a month or so we made an animation depicting what it was like in the emergency room when Covid was at its worst. Their team did all the lifting, I just drank whiskey and ranted on Twitter. That’s how you get an Emmy.

TW: Give us an update on where we’re at right now with COVID? On a global scale.

CS: Obviously we're past the worst, especially when you think about it like a lot of epidemiologists do in terms of excess mortality or how many more people are dying than should be. But there's still a lot that we don't understand about Covid, even though all of our attention was on this for such a long time. We still don't know why some people can get long-term and really debilitating symptoms after an infection. And although we should've learned in the past couple years about how inequitable access to certain treatments and vaccines can be, and how dramatic that impact is around the world, we've already forgotten that lesson and are setting ourselves up for failure in the future when the next Covid-like pandemic hits.

TW: From all this, do you have any big picture takeaways about public health; something you’d like everyone to understand?

CS: We continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. For most of us, we didn't see how our failures to statically prepare for scary disease outbreaks left us remarkably flat footed in 2020, but we all felt the impact of it once COVID hit. And now, in a period of pretty intense pandemic revisionism, we're seeing a pretty dramatic pushback against public health. That is despite the fact that the field is responsible for doubling life expectancy in the past century, probably one of the most incredible things we've done as a species. At the same time, and especially in the humanitarian health sector, some of this “forgetfulness” may even be intentional, allowing leaders and organizations to evade responsibility and accountability. 

TW: How can we combat this kind of revisionist history? 

CS: The fundamentals of how we keep ourselves safe haven't really changed. Understanding those foundations is critical to preventing the same mistakes again…again.

TW: What do you think motivates you to run towards crisis; to engage so directly with unknowns and—what’s gained in return?

CS: I'll be honest, I don't consider myself a big ideas person. I think what drives me is a big chunk of curiosity combined with an emergency physician’s commitment to efficiency. I really like doing new things, taking new routes, and meeting new people—but I also like to hone in on details and particulars, especially as a way to challenge myself. I love learning languages because it allows you to connect with different people in a different way, and I’ve seen what knowing even a little can do in communities in terms of building trust. And really at my core, I’m a middle-child from the Midwest—I aim to please, and in my efforts to make sure everyone feels comfortable and included, I hitch myself on to different ideas and projects, and learn an incredible amount in the process.

THERE and Back, with Stephen Mattos

Stephen Mattos is a born-and-raised Rhode Islander, experimental music maker, and librarian. When not cycling or working on photography, he cooks and gardens with his wife, artist Alicia Renadette. Since the late 2000s he’s been performing under the moniker Chrome Jackson, and he’s got a new band playing out, THERE. Previously, Stephen was a founding member of acts like Arab on Radar, Athletic Automaton, and Doomsday Student. 

TW: So you’re from here, originally?

SM: I grew up in Providence; a child in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s. My family moved to the East Side from Silver Lake when I was three.

TW: Do art and music run in the family?

TW: I am the youngest of four siblings, two sisters and one brother. My dad worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Boston, and my mom was mainly a stay at home mom. But her passion was theater and singing. She acted in community playhouses and dinner theater for many years, and sang in the church choir and in musicals. My dad was a jack of all trades—an avid antiques and books collector, book binder, minor antiques repair guy, and picture framer. I believe I got my interest and curiosity of the world from my dad, and the performing bug from watching my mom in plays.

TW: How’d the bug materialize for you; when did you start making things?

SM: I started showing an interest in music in elementary school. I really loved the clarinet as a kid—I think from seeing Benny Goodman on TV—and started taking lessons from the school teacher...playing in the school band. This extended into middle school where I played in the school and All City Band. I was a novice at best; never got better than playing second clarinet. 

Around 13 years old I started to play the guitar, after finding out about classic rock, hard rock and heavy metal. I took lessons from a guy named Rocco at Axelrod music downtown, and bought my first guitars there: a Yamaha acoustic and a generic electric. Started a band with high school friends; practicing hard rock and metal covers in the basement. We never played out, but did have one original! Around 17, I started branching out musically when I first heard Jane's Addiction. That was my gateway band. Then I started rediscovering my dad's record collection and got obsessed with his The Best of John Coltrane. That blew my mind! From there, the flood gates opened.

Above: Stephen circa 1987

TW: Do you still play the clarinet?  

SM: Kind of. I have played it at some Chrome Jackson shows over the years. More recently, I've created some loops with it for newer material.

TW: And this high school band—what was it called? Who did you cover?  

SM: Ha! Ok, so, we had three different names during high school: Persuader, Blank Stare, and Problem Child. We covered songs like I Don't Know by Ozzy, My Michelle by G'N'R, Master of Puppets by Metallica. Stuff like that.

TW: Metallica themselves are no stranger to covers. In 2018, they did a Xutos track live. So you’re Portuguese too, yeah? Do you have a strong connection to East Providence?

SM: While my relationship to, and understanding of Providence is fairly strong, my relationship to East Providence is purely geographic. I grew up on the East Side, and East Providence was right next door over the Seekonk River—but I will be honest, it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. There’s a heavy Portuguese population, and I am a quarter Portuguese, so there is a bit of a relationship to my Portuguese kin, I guess?

TW: Close enough! Unlike many, you’ve left Rhode Island at least once in your life. What’s the farthest you’ve traveled or, have what experiences have felt like you were very, very far from home?

SM: I have done my fair share of traveling as a musician. The farthest from home I've been was Budějovice, Czech Republic in 2017 with Doomsday Student. What I learned from playing in Budějovice was that sometimes sleeping at the venue you played that night can turn into one of the worst tour experiences of your life!

TW: We’ve got all day. Let’s hear it.

SM: We played this venue called Velbloud Music Bar, a dive with a small green room in the back where fans and band members were hanging out on dirty couches drinking Budvar (the local beer). People were getting very, very drunk pre-show. Very drunk. A harbinger of things to come. The show itself went really well; people were freaking out. At the end of the evening, we were unsure where we were supposed to sleep. Often in Europe the promoters are very accommodating. You usually end up with a nice place to stay, and this is usually already established beforehand between the booking agent and promoter. But there was either confusion on our part, or a lack of communication with the promoter—who was also getting shit-faced—which led us to believe we were sleeping right in the green room where we’d all been partying. The room had large bunk beds, so we assumed it was the right spot.

Above: Arab on Radar opening for Marilyn Manson in 1995 at Club Babyhead.
Photo by Lisa Gourley.

TW: Not the worst setup so far?

SM: People were still hanging around there after 2am; we were tired and wanting to sleep. So we proceeded to the bunk beds and closed the door. Not long after, drunk people from the venue started coming into the room to go to sleep, too, as if this was a normal thing for them to do. We were very confused by this; the language barrier wasn’t helping. This made things very uncomfortable. At some point, a really fucked up guy with a broken arm came in to go to sleep claiming he owned the venue; I still don't know if he actually did! We all had to try to deal with this by sleeping in the room with all these smelly, drunk people we didn't know. That morning, after no sleep, and leaving the room to try and sleep in the van, we saw one of the other bands coming out of a different building with sleeping bags. We were left thinking that we chose, by accident, to sleep in the gross room with the drunk people. It’s hilarious to think about it now, but it was a very rough night!

To cap things off, that morning, when we were loading our gear out of the venue, we found a guy sleeping in Craig's rolled up drum rug like a burrito! He was completely confused by what was going on. I learned a few things that night.

TW: Yikes! Good heads  up for current acts swinging by the Velbloud Music Bar, though? We don’t want to harp on bad times here but, you really have toured a lot—got any other notes? Lessons learned?

SM: Here’s another tour story. In 2000, Arab on Radar went on our very first European tour. At the time, we had a booking agent from Italy, but we didn't have a driver, so we did all of the driving throughout Western Europe ourselves. None of us had ever driven a car in Europe. This trip was obviously very exciting, but driving through customs checks, exchanging currencies (pre-Euro), language barriers— all very new to us. 

We were getting near the end of our tour, driving through Germany outside of Berlin, and stopped at a petrol station. I filled up the tank and we headed out. All of a sudden the van stalled out. It seemed like we had run out of gas, but that could not have been the case—I just filled the tank. It occurred to me I mistakenly filled up with unleaded gas in a diesel engine, not paying attention to the pump nozzles. It was a horrendous blunder! We stalled out on the side of the road in a very quintessential old German town, looking out at an old church, rolling hills and lots of sheep. 

Above: Stephen performing with Athletic Automaton at O’Brien’s Pub in Allson, MA in 2007. In the background from left to right: Dan Gonzales, Sarah Delorey, Matt Zaccarino, and Kevin Driscoll.

TW: Sounds scenic, at least. How’d you get out of there?

SM: Despite my fuck up, my bandmate Craig was nice enough to go out with me looking for help. Eric and Jeff stayed with the van. We must have looked insane walking around asking random people in rudimentary German, "Sprechen Sie Englisch?", "Auto kaputt!"  We knocked on people's doors with no luck, until finally, we met this very nice family and one of them just happened to teach ESL! We felt so lucky! They called a tow truck for us. Then the four of us, and this old German truck driver we didn’t speak to, had to sit together up front in his vehicle. Back at the rental place at the airport, all they had available was a minivan and, Important detail: the previous, larger van barely fit all of our stuff. Another predicament!

We ended up taking some of the seats out of the mini van and left them in the parking lot of the car rental facility; we didn't know what else to do. It was a very shitty thing to do, but we were desperate. For the last leg of the tour, we piled equipment and bags on top of us so we could fit everything in. This was our situation for about three or four more shows, on some of our longest drives. It was ridiculous! When I called our booking agent to tell him what happened, he broke out into a very impassioned cry. He said he was kidding, but I am convinced he was serious.

TW: Lesson number two: check those pump symbols! OK enough bad memories. We want to hear about what you’re psyched about! Give us a rundown of your favorite projects over the years.

SM: I am very proud of all of my musical projects: Arab on Radar, Athletic Automaton, Chrome Jackson, Doomsday Student, and THERE. In every one of these projects—with the exception of Chrome Jackson, which is a solo project—I have worked with a host of extremely talented people: Pat Crump, Eric Paul, Craig Kureck, Brent Frattini, Josh Kemp (Mahi Mahi), and Paul Vieira. In some instances, cross-pollination occurred: e.g. Eric Paul and Craig Kureck in Arab on Radar and Doomsday Student, and Pat Crump in Athletic Automaton and THERE.

THERE is my latest project, and I couldn't be more proud of it! All of the people in this band have been good friends of mine for years, and now I have the added joy of working with some of them for the first time. We've had our set of challenges over the last three years, with life setbacks, injuries, and COVID, but the quality time that we have spent together has been so worth it to me. It’s been my goal as a musician to never stop challenging myself; and I’ve always enjoyed creating challenging, experimental music.

Above: Stephen’s class photo, est. 3rd grade.

TW: A question about the Chrome Jackson moniker. We were reading an insane story Eric Paul wrote about AOR’s time opening for Marylin Manson; he mentions listening to the 70s San Fran rock band Chrome. I was wondering, is Chrome Jackson a kind of Marilyn Manson-esque name-play? Chrome plus...Janet?

SM: First off, I was initially going to answer one of your questions by mentioning this very article! Glad you read this, it's great! But no, it actually had nothing to do with Chrome, even though I am a huge fan of that band. The simple answer is, for many years I made my own Halloween costumes at the very last minute, putting random things together and calling it a costume. One year, I painted my face silver, put on a cowboy hat, and a suit jacket and just wore that for Halloween. I saw my friend Tony out at a party or something, and he said, "Hey, look, it's Chrome Jackson!" which I thought was funny. I pocketed that name away for years.

TW: Reading about that Manson show and thinking...You've been here long enough to see clubs like the aforementioned Babyhead, The Met Cafe, the original Lupos, the Living Room, and Fort Thunder all come and go. Could you give me a list of your top 5 venues from Providence history?

SM: You listed 4 of my favorite venues already. The (Old) Met Cafe, The (newish) Living Room, Club Babyhead, and Fort Thunder. I will also add a venue that didn't last many years, Aurora, which was a few years later. The old Met Cafe was right next to Lupo's downtown. They had a lot of great bands play there in the early to mid 90s; some of the earliest Arab on Radar shows were there. Club Babyhead was such a great raunchy place! I saw Jesus Lizard for the first time there. Great place. At the old Living Room, I saw some great shows there like Guns N' Roses, right when Appetite for Destruction came out. The new Living Room was in an old abandoned restaurant, that they barely did anything to when they opened it. It was a large, raunchy punk venue. Played a great Halloween show there with Lighting Bolt, Men's Recovery Project, Dropdead, Six Finger Satellite, and many more. It was insane. Aurora was on Westminster in the Down City area. I don't remember how many years they were active, but they were around when Doomsday Student was a band in the mid 2010s. We played a couple fun ones there, and I saw some great shows, too. I really miss that venue. 

TW: Memories! Besides the bands, what’s keeping you active?

SM: I love bike riding. So I try to do that as much as I can. It has probably been my most consistent physical exercise practice that I have stuck with over the years. I also try to eat as healthy as I can. Alicia and I like to cook a lot.

TW: Providence's DIY scene and cycling have always seemed to go hand in hand. I think of people like Peter Fuller, C.F., Ian Cozzens, etc—people who approach their work with a lot of intentionality; all super into bikes. 

SM: I think punks, artists, and underground music fans have always had a strong connection to, and love of bike riding. There's always lots of bikes outside of venues at noise shows, both here, and in lots of other cities. This could be out of financial necessity, and / or an environmental decision. But whatever it is, there is a kinship there.

Above: Chrome Jackson performing at Sonia in 2022. Photo by Becky DiGiglio.

TW: Being born here, and having been active in the music scene so long...how have you gotten by, generally over the years? 

SM: I am a very practical person; maybe due to a fear of being broke and out on the street, or something like that. Not sure why I have that fear, but because of this, I never really took a lot of chances in life aside from being a musician and going out on the road. I always felt the need to keep a steady job and for years, I worked at Bread & Circus (RIP), which became Whole Foods. I spent all of my years in Arab on Radar working there. This is actually where I met Jay Ryan from Six Finger Satellite and Eric Paul. If it wasn't for that job, Arab on Radar likely would have never existed, weirdly enough. But I spent many, many years at that job. Thankfully, I was able to go away for weeks at a time working there; they were very cool about it.  

TW: So this was in the 90s or so—did you keep that gig after bigger things like the OOPS tour happened, into the 2000s?

SM: Around 2002, after Arab on Radar broke up, I kind of had a pre mid-life crisis and didn't really know what I was going to do with my life, besides music. I never made enough money as a musician to even call it a part-time job; the kind of music I make...it never seemed like a lucrative career move. So, I decided to go to college and ended up getting a Bachelor's Degree in Art History and Studio Art with a focus on photography. Not long after I graduated, I landed a part-time job at a university and proceeded to work three jobs for a few years before landing a full-time job in the library at Providence College, where I’ve now been there 10 years. I guess I made it work by making sure I had a job that would help support my passions.  

TW: We like this approach, and appreciate all you’ve done for local music! As our thanks, we’re going to let you hype an upcoming gig taking place somewhere other than Myrtle.

SM: THERE has a show at the News Cafe in Pawtucket, RI on July 17th with Chaser (NYC), Dull Care (PVD), and solo country performer, Craig Wreck (Craig Kureck from Arab on Radar/Doomsday Student/Chinese Stars), that I am very excited about.

TW: Have a blast! We’ll be here in East Providence where the DB meter will run a bit less hot that night.

Above Average Inflation, with Matthew Muller

With the first debate of 2024 presidential contest taking place this evening, we felt it important to address local inflation. We spoke with local expert Matthew Muller (he/him), a designer, builder, and co-founder of Pneuhaus. Matt’s work balances adaptation, function, and lightness, and in our opinion, is radical in all senses of the term. Matt’s also a member of the Below and Above Collective, a group of 6 artists and a botanist that build floating wetland sculptures to clean small water bodies.

TW: Hey Matt, thanks for making some time for us. So, inflatables. For readers who want to dive right in, where should they look that’s a level past the Macy’s Day Parade?

Inflatocookbook by Antfarm is the perfect DIY inflatable intro (MIT, PDF). Thomas Herzog’s Pneumatic Structures (Internet Archive) is more technical, offering amazing examples of what is possible. Also, Thinking By Modeling by Frei Otto—the importance of model making in our [Pneuhaus] practice cannot be overstated, and much of that is inspired by Frei Otto.

TW: Since you mentioned Otto...do you have a list that’s like “Our favorite Expo-style Pavilions?” 

(MM): One of our favorite contemporary groups is Numen / For Use. Their recent work Net Milan is a masterpiece. Their work is such a great balance of playful exploration of space, innovation, and technical execution.

TW: And from PneuHaus—what’s your go-to intro piece; a work that sums up what your studio’s all about?

(MM): I think we all agree that Compound Camera is our favorite piece. It takes the simple camera obscura mechanism and applies it to a double membrane inflatable. The outcome is totally transformative. Watching visitors go through the process of wondering what the heck they are looking at to figuring it out is still satisfying 7 years later.

Above: Matt in the Pneuhaus studio

TW: Maybe a boring logistics Q but, when you’re shipping works like this out of state, are you present for installations? Or does the customer manage setup?

(MM): 90% of the time we install the work. Sometimes if it's a simple piece or the client is a museum with art handlers we can send instructions. The set up is usually a lot faster than you would think. We unpack the inflatable, find our power source, anchor it, and inflate.

TW: So the studio takes on ambitious, often experimental projects and you’ve managed to make it through the pandemic. Can you give some insight on the finances here—how’s it been possible?

(MM): Because inflatables pack up so small we are able to keep our sculptures, ship them cheaply around the country and world to install them over and over again. This is the only way we were able to get started a business. Now about half of our income is from custom fabrication since not many people (especially in the U.S.) can make high quality inflatables.

TW: But where did the initial investment come from? Side job savings, other client work?

(MM): All three founders graduated from college with zero debt. This is the foundation that made Pneuhaus possible. We didn't have any large investment, but not having debt looming over us gave us the flexibility to take risks and follow an uncertain path. The first year, we rented a small warehouse and six of us lived there while the three of us started building our first Pneuhaus pieces—these jobs came in after our day job hours. I had a truck that my parents gave me and I'm sure one of our parents helped us get the first sewing machine. The first few months our parents helped supplement our income, but we really kept things lean. Then we got a couple big jobs and stumbled into the financial model of building a piece for material cost, and renting it out over the years to pay off the labor and that has worked pretty well. It took three years to get to the point where we could afford to live somewhere other than in the studio.

Above: Matt working on Below and Above: A Floating Wetland Supports Life

TW: We imagine across those first three years, not everything you wanted to make got made? What’s on the horizon now ?

(MM): We have a huge stack of unaccepted proposals, some of which should never be made, but many of which we would make in a heartbeat. I am the practical problem solver in the group so I get overwhelmed by many of our more ambitious ideas. A lot of our ideas are complex climbing structures. Figuring out how to do them in a safe way without compromising the idea is a challenge, but we will do it soon. Also, we are finally making shade structures! They are giant leaf-like sculptures that will hopefully keep people cool and make them feel like ants!

TW: Does client work ever get in the way of more general discovery and research? Or how do you balance the agency side of the studio with the experimental?

Matthew Muller (MM): Every Friday at our studio is called "Fun Friday". We don't schedule meetings, we avoid client work, and we try to foster a sense of playful exploration to develop new ideas and techniques. When we started the studio we would do this after hours, but we burned out after several years. Then when our practice felt stagnant and like we were recycling old ideas we decided to commit our Fridays to fostering exploration. It is working great and has already led to a better practice and more fun work environment.

TW: The physical conditions in-studio, compared to where your works are most often installed, are a lot more controlled and predictable. What happens when nature’s involved?

(MM): In 2017 we had a 40ft dome made of beach balls blow apart like a dandelion during Aphex Twin’s first live performance in the U.S. in eight years. It was a difficult installation and we were so happy to celebrate by watching Aphex Twin's performance. A few minutes into the set the temperature dropped 15 degrees, shrinking the air in the beach balls. A hard rain started which made the beach balls slippery, and then 40+ mph winds came out of nowhere. The three of us (Augie, Levi, and myself) looked at each other with eyes as open as they could get; we knew this storm was trouble. As we scrambled to get to the dome we saw individual beach balls rolling over the crowd. By the time we got close we saw people were treating the former-dome as a ball pit, having the time of their lives punching beach balls and rolling around. Over the next hour or two we scrambled to get people away and come and get all the loose balls under a giant tarp. Luckily it was all soft and no one was hurt. We have a great respect for the power of wind these days and have never had an injury from it. I credit that traumatic evening for our clean record sense.

Above: Matt across the years, learning by doing

TW: There is a Bucephalus Bouncing Beach Ball joke here but, not sure how to land it. What have you learned about design and fabrication by observing how the public’s interacting with your work, Aphex-disaster aside. 

(MM): Well the main lesson learned from the Aphex disaster was structural. But generally the context of the event greatly changes the audience reaction. Family-orientated public art/music events in cities are amazing. We see the broadest mix of people confused and enthralled with our work. At music festivals there is usually a mix of intoxicated entitlement that is rough on our work. Pretty much anything that can happen will happen... so we have learned to limit what pieces we expose to that environment and how to design around it. 

TW: And how’d you get into making. Personally. Were you always a builder / tinkerer?

(MM): Looking back, it is definitely the 'forts' or 'huts' we would build at recess and in my backyard. Throughout my childhood I never saw how those experiences would play into a career since it was just fun and effortless. Throughout my high school years I thought I was a 2D artist until I got to RISD and met people who found 2D art as effortless as I found building.

TW: In your early fort-building years, did you have a lot of support around the arts? Good programs at school, etc? 

Matthew Muller (MM): I was terrible at [high] school and would get in a lot of trouble coming up with ways to entertain myself in the classroom and out. As the youngest in a family of high academic achievers my parents were bewildered, but incredibly supportive. Once they saw how much I loved to create they filled my schedule with extra art class, gave me materials and encouraged me to follow my interests. I still do not know if they understand the extent I cheated to graduate high school though.

Above: Matt wearing an inflatable watermelon in support of Palestine

TW: What made school so challenging, and how’d you overcome it to get into a leading arts college? 

(MM): I just don't learn well through abstraction. I'm very tactile, I learn best when I manipulate things and observe the results. Luckily, my elementary school was Montessori so I did thrive there, but my highschool was classical Latin and I didn't stand a chance. I had a C average and a decent SAT, but my portfolio is what got me into RISD. I credit my parents for all the art academy classes they put me in after school or in the summer. My dad, who is an architect, also had a hobby of painting so all that exposure helped me build a large body of work to pick from.

TW: With family, friends, or professionally—what’s the furthest from home you’ve traveled? What did it teach you? 

(MM): Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was a complicated decision to accept the job given the political situation there and I would not do it again, but I am grateful for what I learned there. It is the only time I have been to a predominantly Islamic country or Asia at all. Growing up in a post-9/11 America the Islamophobia baked into our media is so pervasive I found myself confronting subconscious Islamophobic thoughts. The best example of this is the first time I heard the call to prayer I realized I got anxious. The only times I heard that growing up was in films or tv shows about the "war on terror". I cannot think of a single show I watched growing up that depicted Islam without "terrorism". After a few days of hearing the entire city pause for it, I was able to rewire my brain and slow down to hear it for its beauty.

TW: In Riyadh—what was the actual project executed? 

(MM): Grove was installed at an art exhibit indoors for 3 months. We installed it and came back to pack it up at the end.

Above: Pneuhaus’ dome for Aphex Twin; the calm before the storm

TW: If Riyadh was a complicated decision politically, what works have felt more aligned with your own values? 

(MM): Inflatables are great for protests! We made an inflatable vulva for Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot) which they took to the Indiana state capitol. We have made inflatable abortion pills for women's rights activists, an inflatable Textron missile with blood to protest RISD's connection to the arms manufacturer, and an inflatable watermelon for pro Palestine protests. That one has been used many times in Providence, and was a staple at the Harvard encampment and commencement walk out. We made a couple dozen inflatable seats/shields that were sent to other student encampments around the country, too. When we see injustice in the world we often think what an inflatable could do to help. Usually the answer is nothing, but we do what we can to help.

TW: With all of these inflatables and their many uses...a constant is plastic. Any parting thoughts on that?

(MM): At Pneuhaus we work with plastic and I can't picture a way that could work without. Our view on sustainability is focused on lightness and striving to use specific polymers that have a lower impact. We use minimal material and energy to produce, transport, and install our work. Biology is always optimizing for these things and we find endless inspiration for our work in the living world. For now it is mostly structures, but someday we will figure out how to eat our sculptures when we are done with them. Until then, we will emulate biology in treating all our material as precious.

TW: Thanks, Matt, we appreciate your time and projects!

Readers: We didn’t have time to go deep on Matt’s work with Below and Above, but we really suggest following up to learn more. Eco RI News has a great piece on their entry to the Art on the Trails project.

Polyglot Adventure Time, with Keith McCurdy

Born and raised in North Providence, Keith McCurdy (he/they) is a songwriter and singer for the gothic folk ensemble Vudu Sister. Growing up in an artistic family, Keith spent time at Crescent Park and fairs around New England, picking up a wide range of interests along the way. They’re a French citizen, Romani, and a self-described Classicist who loves to dive deep into myth and lore. Get pulled in tomorrow night, Friday June 14th, as Vudu Sister plays Myrtle.

The Well (TW): Hey Keith! We wanna pick up on something you told Rhode Island Monthly about a year ago, that “The “Sister” part is important. I don’t really love the Vudu part.”  Can you elaborate on that; why not just switch it up all together? 

Keith McCurdy (KM:) The “Vudu” was something left over from a previous band I was very proud of, and there wasn’t much thought when that part of the name carried over. It’s difficult to build momentum in this business and maintain it. I have a long list of possible alternative names that I might consider when the timing is right, but it could be really tricky at this point—it would essentially be re-branding, which sounds really icky for most musicians, but you need to look at your band as your business if you’re at all serious about pursuing this as a career.

TW: And, for those new to your work, tell us about the Sister side.

KM: I often write from women's perspectives. I call it a creative androgyny, where I feel most comfortable exploring this part of myself. I don't feel masculine when I write and have related more to the feminine perspectives in the art that has inspired me, whether it be the music of PJ Harvey, the Riot Grrrl movement in the '90s, or the poetry of Emily Brontë. It always resonated with me when I was a lonely kid discovering my artistic voice. My collection of Latin and Greek songs, Burn Offerings, features songs from the perspectives of women and goddesses from classical mythology. I consider a lot of my writing to have feminist leanings, which isn't something I think is overtly apparent to people.

Vudu Sister trio: Diane O'Connor (front), Isabel Castellvi (left) and Keith (right)

TW: Can you speak a bit more on mythology and points of inspiration?

KM: From a young age, I loved fairy tales, Tolkien, medieval literature, mythology, and Dungeons and Dragons. This led to my study of classical languages and literature (Greek and Latin), culminating in Burnt Offerings. I am also a big fan of gothic literature, from Poe to Shelley to Lovecraft.

One of my other interests—not wholly unrelated to this literature is my fascination with religion and spirituality. I have been a longtime fan of Joseph Campbell and that branch of Jungian interpretation of myth and religion. I am much more interested in exploring these "big" concepts rather than themes that are too uncomfortably topical.

I write a lot of poetry and often consider myself someone who uses music as a vehicle to play with words in ways that interest or amuse me. Much of my writing is informed by the literature I have studied over the years rather than rock band lyricism.

TW: The way you approach lyrics—from classical literature, as prose—makes us think of Kate Bush, John Cale, Celtic Frost, etc. Who are some of your favorites? 

KM: Of course, early influences were grunge and alternative rock in the 1990s, people like Kurt Cobain, who had a knack for irony and expressive, poetic lines woven beautifully into his song melodies. I chisel away at my lyrics once I’ve been satisfied by the sounds of certain vowels, alliteration, assonance, etc. I’m a big fan of slant rhymes. I’ve borrowed approaches from Old English poetry like the Seafarer or The Wife’s Lament, I’ve lifted from Sappho (7th century archaic Greek poet), Ovid (late Augustan Roman poet), fairy tales, ghost stories, and medieval verse. 

Above: Keith age 7 with his dad (left); Keith shredding at 10 (right)

TW: This feels like a good point to ask for some recommended reading. Let’s talk summer beach reading, introspective goth-folk edition.

KM: Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) by Neil Postman is a great book examining some heavy epistemological problems that have become increasingly relevant today. He makes an excellent examination of the sort of vatic nature of books like 1984 by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It is nearly polemic insistence that Brave New World is a more accurate cautionary tale than Orwell, basing his arguments in the history of education, entertainment, and general epistemology.

I always recommend Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell for anyone searching for meaning in their own hero's journey. Once they've graduated from that, I strongly encourage reading his book Goddesses, which is highly indebted to one of Campbell's mentors, Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas was a famous archaeologist instrumental in many studies about the Great Goddess figure and the early cultures who still venerated her. The Language of the Goddess is one of her most notable works.

I recently picked Orlam by PJ Harvey. It's a long-form narrative poem in which she uses the West Dorset dialect. It has magic realism, folklore, linguistics, and Polly Jean Harvey.

TW: You mention having been a lonely kid. What was growing up like?

KM: My mother is a French national, and my father was half Sicilian, half Romanichal gypsy. They met and fell in love in the 1980s. My parents were both artists, and we made our living by traveling to fairs around New England to sell my mother's hand-made jewelry. My dad was a bass player, and music has always been a part of my life. I grew up very poor and deeply struggled socially and academically at school. Due to the pressures and anxieties from severe bullying, I dropped out of high school early sophomore year before eventually getting my GED. I started my first band around that time, which probably saved my life.

Keith performing live, age 17

TW: We don’t want to ask you to relive traumas here so feel free to pass, but with respect to bullying—with time, have you been able to empathize with or forgive people who brought negativity into your life? Or, any advice for young Well readers?

KM: My experiences in school were pretty horrific. I’d be reluctant to give advice, but I would encourage anyone to find healthy ways to channel their rage, fear, and pain. I was lucky to have music in my life, and books. I don’t spend much energy thinking about my former tormentors, but I don’t hold grudges. There is always some room for hope in your heart. 

TW: Cheers to that, Keith. Thank you. What was your first instrument?

KM: I grew up in the 90s, voraciously consuming the grunge and alternative rock music brought to you by Generation X. I watched my young father play in bands, and when I first held a guitar, I knew it was all I ever wanted to do. I began writing silly songs immediately after being comfortable enough to pluck a string.

TW: You recorded with your dad too, right? Later on.

KM: I have some fond memories of making our second album, Household Items, with my friends Damian Puerini, Alexander Garzone, and my father, who played bass on that album and has since passed away (in 2018). We spent a magical week in October getting stoned and playing the songs live. It was a fun, aggressive, punky/grungy album, and I’m glad I got to make something like that with my father and that there is a record of it. 

TW: Great record! We also wanted to ask about Mortis Nervosa, which you recorded over at the now defunct—but maybe coming back someday?—Columbus Theater.

KM: Mortis Nervosa represented a real shift in my songwriting and musical direction, I consider it a liminal album in that I was starting to change my attack in my singing and still coming out of this belting, aggressive approach but moving toward being gentler and allowing my tone to grow and become richer. It’s also a great representation of how I usually sound live, defined by the sound of Diane O’Connor’s violin playing and we were playing with our friend Amato Zinno on upright bass a lot in those years. I might have Amato return soon for our next record.

Francesca Caruso (The Infinity Ring) and Keith playing in Matera, Italy

TW: You also did something related to, or at URI? 

KM: My Latin and Greek songs, Burnt Offerings—it was a fulfilling challenge and a unique project that synthesized my academic work at URI (my alma mater) with all my work as a musician. I was lucky to have been awarded a small grant to help with some of the costs, and I was lucky to have the guidance of my good friend and mentor, Dr. Daniel Carpenter, who is head of the Classics dept. at URI.

TW: Where else are you finding community? 

KM: I have been a long time resident of AS220, the non-profit beacon of light in Providence. They have done much to help artists, especially young artists, have a safe place to practice, live, and perform. They have been a tremendously positive force in my life, and I greatly value their role and mission in our community.

TW: We also saw you pop up on The Public’s Radio recently—Rhode Island to the core! Ever make it out?

KM: I have traveled all over Europe. I started to make it overseas after my father passed away;. he had always encouraged me to travel. I formed friendships with fans overseas who had started reaching out to me over the years. This led to my first concerts in Sicily and Paris and, eventually, my first couple of European tours.

TW: Any good tales from your most recent tour?

KM: The most recent was when I was staying in Fiumicino, the city outside Rome that supports the airport there. I had toured for four weeks this spring and had one night to myself before flying to Paris for one last concert. I checked into the hotel and met some Māori Kiwis (indigenous people of New Zealand). They were there to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the WWII battle of Monte Cassino. We hit it off well (there was an increasingly larger group as the hours went on), and we passed guitars around all night over dinner, singing songs together (they all sang a few Maori tunes, and it was lovely). There were some older women covered in beautiful Tā moko, the traditional tattoos of their culture. It was an unexpected, magical evening.

Māori Kiwis performing in a candid setting in Rome.

TW: Staying in Europe for a minute, can you talk a bit about the Romani people?

KM: I am part Romani, the "gypsy" culture. They are an ethnic people without a country who came to Europe from India 800 to 1000 years ago. They continue to be persecuted to this day and often live in abject poverty. My grandfather was a dyed-in-the-wool Romanichal; he spoke the Romani chib (language), grew up in a vardo (wagon), and did blacktopping (asphalt paving, a common Romani profession) his whole life. At the same time, his sisters practiced dukkering (fortune-telling). It's a beautiful, unusual culture that continues to face discrimination, violence, poverty, and racism while at the same time is fetishized, romanticized, and appropriated by gadje (non-Romani).

TW: Thank you for that. So today, you’re not blacktopping. How are you getting by?

KM: I am a full-time, working musician. I play a lot of long, two and three-hour brewery and bar gigs to pay the bills. I occasionally supplement my income with part-time work here and there —on and off done private tutoring for children in subjects like English grammar and Latin. It is hard, and I make a very modest living; sometimes it's a real struggle. I used to work horrible full-time jobs, which left me utterly burnt out. I leaped into doing music full-time a few years after working in group homes for developmentally disabled people for a long time, a job I fell into after having only worked at places like gas stations and fast food joints. It was a soul-sucking, underpaid, miserable job that destroyed my psyche for a while. I am much happier and more fulfilled pursuing my art as a career and no longer pretending I don't want to do this for a living.

TW: How do you work through, or live with moments of struggle? 

KM: I prioritize rest. I try to stay more organized than I have in the past, and I am unapologetic about my ambitions. I try to surround myself with people who are optimistic about creating art, doing great work, and encouraging each other in all of our respective pursuits in this crazy realm. 

I also think it's important to collaborate with other artists. There is no single genius. You get better and do better work when you share ideas. I have been blessed to work with some great musicians, like Diane O'Connor (violinist), Isabel Castellvi (cellist), and most recently, Francesca Caruso, the violinist for The Infinity Ring, who accompanied me on my European tour this year.

TW: What’s something coming up in the next 2-3 months you’d like to have on peoples’ radars?

KM: I'm working on new songs using acoustic baritone guitar, a fresh and exciting new direction for me (I'm highly indebted to Emma Ruth Rundle). I hope to track some songs starting in July. We'll assemble some new releases this year as we work on the next album. In August, I'm heading back to Italy for a few concerts,, and in November, I may tour in France and Spain.

*

Vudu Sister plays Myrtle tomorrow night, Friday June 14, 2024

Soup’s On, with Kate McNamara

Kate McNamara (she/her) is a curator, educator, art administrator, and mother based in Rhode Island. Kate wears many hats: running the East Providence exhibition space ODD-KIN, acting as Executive Director for the nonprofit My Home Court, and teaching at RISD and Sotheby's Institute of Art. We chatted about her journey from the 90s all ages ska scene in Boston to helping issue Warhol Foundation-funded grants via Interlace. 

The Well (TW): Hey Kate! Do we have this right, that prior to founding ODD-KIN you were involved with the beloved Brooklyn gallery, Cleopatra’s (RIP)?

Kate McNamara (KM): Yes! I co-founded Cleopatra's in 2008 with Bridget Donahue, Bridget Finn, and Erin Somerville (ig). We were working in galleries and museums and felt like we were not seeing spaces supporting the work, ideas, and artists in our communities—so we all went in on a storefront in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. When I was a part of Cleopatra's, it functioned more as a curatorial hub: we hosted exhibitions, readings, talks, performances, film shoots and music shows in the early years. I then moved to Boston to run Boston University's Art Galleries and shifted out of my role at Cleo's. It was a formative experience and certainly one that has impacted a lot of the ways I have approached exhibition-making and community-building. 

TW: So Cleo’s formed right around the economic crash? How’d that work?

KM: It was a really exciting moment to be in the arts—many alternative art spaces that served a range of communities and practices were opening up and that carved out new ways of participating and engaging with artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians. I was working at Participant Inc and later [MoMA] PS1—which was less buttoned up than it is now under MoMA's partnership—and spending a lot of time in the gallery scene blowing up in the Lower East Side.

2008 is a year that really stands out to me. Yes, the economy crashed which was just awful, but it flipped the way access worked in the art world. You had museums who could no longer afford to take on high production exhibitions turning to the immediate communities around them, Blue-Chip galleries taking on museum-quality exhibitions (which you could see for free!), and then all of this commercial space was on pause and freed up—which is why we were able to start Cleopatra's. A slew of other projects and spaces opened up in these empty buildings. It was both a crisis moment, as well as one of momentum, care, and accessibility. 

Installation view of Jungil Hong's "The Time Being" at ODD-KIN. On view through July 21, 2024

TW: Having a foot in the door via MoMA PS1 likely helped, too? How did you end up with that gig? What was it like there 15 years ago?

KM: It was my first job out of grad school (The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard), and I was invited to interview to be a part of the curatorial team at PS1. I remember the interview with great clarity—the notorious founder of the museum was still there, Alanna Heiss, and she asked me inspiring questions like “Do you smoke cigarettes and drink?,” which were apparently qualifications for the gig! PS1 was still wild then—every inch of the building was an opportunity for exhibition-making, including the boiler room and bathrooms. There was not a formal curatorial structure (senior curator, assistant curator, etc), and instead Alanna would select a handful of folks involved in the arts from around the world who would meet once a year and everyone would pitch exhibitions. It was an alcohol-fueled all day affair with yelling, tears and cheers. It was a wonderful and insane place to work and exposed me to so many artists, curators, musicians and writers, but we were all overworked and severely underpaid. I took many odd jobs throughout to supplement my income, like writing press releases for galleries.

TW: This could become a whole other interview re: creative labor exploitation, but for now, let’s leave NYC. Let’s talk about East Providence! Why are you here?

KM: I grew up in Boston and found myself going to Rhode Island throughout my youth for music shows and museum exhibitions. It has always been a hub for creative endeavors and alternative/DIY spaces. My partner Jim Drain (who has moved to Providence 4x!) and I moved to Rhode Island almost 7 years ago from Los Angeles and it has been a welcoming home, community, and source of impactful cultural engagement. Rhode Island is a small but mighty state and through my work, I have had the privilege of getting to know many creative communities and stakeholders within the city at large. As someone who got into the curatorial field via alternative art spaces, Rhode Island has an incredible history of these kinds of spaces and platforms. It has been exciting to find ways to feed into and reimagine what new models of artist support look like today here in Rhode Island.

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Above: 2/4 of Cleopatra’s co-founders, Bridget Finn and Kate (left); an early gallery fundraiser flyer (right).

TW: As a music venue, we’re curious to know what shows were you checking out in Boston as a kid? 

KM: Boston also had an amazing all-ages scene and as a teen, I went to concerts almost every night of the week. I basically lived at the Middle East and TT the Bears and saw everything from Mr. Lif and Akrobatic, to Dinosaur Jr, Letters to Cleo, The Pixies, Big D and the Kids Table, The Allstonians, etc! I was so thankful to have these spaces as a teen and definitely feel like that this has inspired a lot of my practices today.

TW: Can’t believe you mentioned Mr. Lif and Big D in the same sentence. Proof positive you’re from the Bean. So you’re a curator; what’s an early memory of curating something?

KM: I remember having to present an inspirational figure in 5th grade, and I chose Andy Warhol, who was a household name in the McNamara home. The presentation planning became a collaboration with my mother, who was very invested, and we spent a lot of time buying cans of Campbell's tomato soup and figuring out which Velvet Underground album I should have playing in the background. I don't know if this was the "ah-ha" moment, but it is a formative memory for sure and tapped into early curatorial/context-making skills!

TW: Let’s stay in the McNamara home for a minute; your parents got you into the VU?

KM: I was very lucky to grow up in a household where art was championed. My parents are former New Yorkers and sought out art and culture throughout the city of Boston. They went out of their way to bring my sister and me to museums, dance performances, theater, and music shows. My mom would hold art shows of our childhood work in the kitchen and have "openings." It is no wonder I turned out the way I did! In high school, I took a lot of art classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and had my first taste of what art school might be like. I also grew up going to Maine where my extended family of artists, carpenters, and poets live, which further propelled me into the arts, with a deep consideration for "craft."

TW: And how about going far from home? A memorable trip.

KM: When working at MoMA PS1, I traveled for an exhibition I had worked on at The Garage, a contemporary museum in Moscow run by the wife [Dasha Zhukova] of an oligarch. It was a quick trip and I was mostly stuck inside overseeing the installation of the exhibition, however, I remember meeting a handful of performance artists who had been making work in the 60s and 70s who spoke of the great risks they took to create visibility for politics and advocacy. I do not think The Garage has held an exhibition since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and I can't imagine I will be visiting Russia again in my lifetime.

TW: Oligarch-related question: As someone involved in the capital A art market, how do you balance keeping the lights on and getting artists paid (revenue) with the reality that a lot of Blue-Chip galleries, fairs, and museums are funded by highly questionable cash (Sacklers, BlackRock / Geo Group, etc)?

KM: To be clear, ODD-KIN is a curatorial project, not a commercial endeavor. It is neither a commercial gallery—although I am happy to facilitate sales on behalf of the artist—nor is it a non-profit, which means I am unable to support the space through grants. It has been a self-funded project; a bit of an experiment. I have built in a fundraising edition which marks each exhibition and all the proceeds go directly back into the ODD-KIN pot to support programming, pay for installer fees, artist fees, shipping, and a gallery-sitter, etc. I am excited about reimagining a more hybrid model that will actually sustain ODD-KIN and will be spending the summer doing just that. 

Regarding questionable sources of income—I think there is a hopeful moment right now in which many museums are being asked to reevaluate how and who they receive funding from, mostly thanks to artist advocacy and protest. Nan Goldin is a prime example of this; her activism around the Sacklers has been powerful.

Above: Kate and family

TW: The concept of a “curatorial project” or “project space” isn’t one all readers might be familiar with. What’s that mean, respect to ODD-KIN?

KM: ODD-KIN focuses on supporting and featuring intergenerational contemporary artists and practices that bridge regional and national scopes. By providing opportunities to reimagine what art can be and do, ODD-KIN plays an important role in expanding the rich creative communities of East/Providence and beyond, nourishing space for critical conversation and community care. It serves as a site for convening and engagement, existing outside of a formal institutional model. As a project space, ODD-KIN is nimble and able to support artist-driven projects and ideas that may not fit within traditional museum or commercial gallery models. This model has allowed me to engage with artists I have been in conversation with for decades or just months, and I am excited about continually reimagining how ODD-KIN can evolve.

TW: OK, so no oligarchs here. More like Kate and Friends.

KM: ODD-KIN represents a culmination of efforts from the last 20 years working in the curatorial field. It has the potential to change, to meet a moment, it also can be a space for rest and mentorship. I love how O-K changes with every project that takes place, and is informed by every person who walks through the door. I am already hatching new programs that I hope will continue to push the idea of "oddkin" in an expansive way!

TW: You’re highly invested in access and equality, but Odd-Kin has pretty limited public hours.

KM: It’s basically a one-woman show, so at the moment Saturday's are the only day with open hours and I also open by appointment if someone cannot make it on a Saturday. If I win the lottery or ODD-KIN's model shifts to accommodate my being able to take off a hat and make more room to open the space, I will do so. At the moment Saturday's are the day I have off from work and my family doesn't mind :)

TW: Perhaps helpful here, there seems to be a rise in the number of grants, residencies, and opportunities available to parent-artists. Have you noticed this / experienced it? Or, how does being a parent impact your own approach?

KM: I have noticed and experienced it and also want more of them! I really appreciate the ways residencies have geared opportunities to families and caretakers—I do think there could be more for curators and writers. So many are long-term time commitments, it would be great to see curatorial residencies that follow a more family-friendly/caretaker model. It’s something I have been thinking a lot about. As a parent who runs a project space it has been really important that the space reflect my life, so openings have been major family affairs: food is available, chalk, bubbles, soccer balls take over the large parking lot. The idea is that intergenerational folks can come see an art show, but actually spend time and hang out. That has been an essential part of ODD-KIN from day one. We just had an opening the other week for Jungil Hong, who is also a parent, and we had over 300 people of all ages hanging out at the gallery for almost 5 hours, it was beautiful!

TW: When not curating, teaching, parenting, etc—what are you getting up to? Or is the plate full enough as is?

KM: Body practice! I have always struggled with "staying in the moment," and wearing many hats; being a parent means time is syrupy, swift, and strange, so intentional movement has always been an important grounding part of my life.

I have also taken up disposing of rat poison boxes found in public spaces thanks to my dear friend, Sheida Soleimani, an amazing artist and advocate for birds. Her incredible work at the Congress of the Birds in RI has shed light on some of the awful ways in which these pest prevention tactics really hurt birds and the larger animal ecosystem (not to mention the rats and mice they’re targeting). As someone who thinks deeply about interspecies relationships and oddkin, I see this as something that ties into some of the work and thinking I’m starting to put towards the project space.

Above: Polanco Courts made by Jordan Seaberry and Joiri Minaya for My Home Court

TW: You are called in many directions. This kinda freelance life can be highly rewarding, but unstable. How are you thinking about finances?   

KM: I wear many hats because I love it and I am a general yay-sayer, but also because I need to support myself and my family. All of my jobs contribute to and sustain both my projects and my family’s livelihood. I am acutely aware of financial disparities in the art world and make it a point to address this in all of my classes. I also prioritize equitable compensation for every artist I work within a range of contexts. I feel fortunate to be part of a rich community that values care, which is an invaluable resource in this wild world.

TW: Related to that philosophy is your work with Interlace. How did you get involved; what's been learned through doing this project?

KM: Thanks for asking about Interlace! For those who do not know, Interlace Grant Fund is a Warhol Foundation-funded regional regranting program for visual artists administered by Dirt Palace (shout out to Pippi, Xander, and Jori!). Interlace's Project Grant gives around 4–6k to 8–10 PVD-area artists annually. Artists apply and are then reviewed by an outside jury. Interlace also has a modest monthly Emergency Grant which is meant to respond to emergency needs such as medical expenses, utility shut-off, etc. Interlace also recently started a grant writing mentorship, which I am really excited about.

I got involved with Interlace at the very beginning as a co-administrator. It has been a remarkable project that has broadened opportunities to fund artists in the PVD area in a range of ways. I think it functions to do so many things: creating cohorts of creatives who may not know one another; offering greater visibility to artists who apply for the grant. The outside jury is a very considered group of folks with the idea that Interlace is getting PVD artists in front of curators, artists, and other art administrators nationally; as well as creating opportunities for really creative collaborative projects to take place and flourish in and around PVD. I highly recommend artists apply for a Project grant and I am always happy to support in any way! The project grant opens up this July and there are many info sessions in-person and online! Accessibility is a priority! 

TW: Speaking of opportunities and projects...the land area Odd-Kin's located is undergoing major reno. Do you have any insight on the city’s plans? 

KM: I don't really have the skinny. I have been in a few meetings with East Providence's Arts Council and it seems like they are enthusiastic about some of the shifts which are making way for more art access, which I see as a positive thing.

TW: You wouldn’t possibly have any free time to be reading, would you? If so, give us some of your must-reads.

KM: Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway; How to Install Art as a Feminist by Helen Molesworth (essay); Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; and also just read the amazing novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

TW: Thanks for all this, Kate. Let’s roll out the red carpet for you. This camera, that camera—tell the people what you have going on in your life. 

KM: I am super excited for the next ODD-KIN show with the RI/NY artists Ryan Cardoso and DJ Chappel (ig)! I first met Ryan and DJ through my work at Interlace, a few years ago when Ryan was an awardee. Ryan is a photographer and DJ is a fashion designer and they often collaborate on each other's projects. This exhibition will be an opportunity for a more intentional collaboration, which will transform the space of ODD-KIN into an installation. Opening September 29th!