AC Interview: Corson Androski & Sarah Hummel Jones

Recently, Amplify worked with MdW Atlas as guest editors on a series of posts running throughout the month of April. Artists and organizers Lydia Cheshewalla, Patrick Costello, and Alajia McKizia, all of whom have connections to Omaha, and the Midwest more broadly, through land, lineage, and kinships, contributed to the series. As a point of departure, we asked them to consider composting as a framework for transformation, renewal, and exchange and referenced Carolyn Goldsmith's Compost, A Cosmic View with Practical Suggestions, a now out of print volume published in 1973 that includes tips for composters, gestural drawings, and prompts that lend the text a lyrical quality, which follow: "Breaking down / is / Building up""Digesting is transforming""Plants emerge as a natural consequence of / all that is happening / inside the soil body.”"You / Can Stir the Great Mix"“Small energies / Acting on each other / Reacting to each other”Goldsmith's book anchors composting, in an expanded context, as a practical and theoretical tool for breaking down certain histories, or things we've inherited, to situate and carry forward ways of knowing rooted in relationship, understanding, and empathy. The three artists who made work in response share affinities across geography and discipline in their approaches to multi-species care and embracing ecological entanglements in their work, practices that hold particularly resonance in this moment when changes in the political sphere stand to affect how we move toward realizing a more ecologically just and balanced future. We sat down with them not too long ago to talk more about their contributions, and the small energies that continue to move us forward.

Artists and organizers Amanada Huckins, Alex Jochim, Joseph Orzal, Bilgesu Sisman, Marcey Yates, and Rachel Ziegler sat down to discuss how artists are experimenting with alternative models of economic organization and building resilience in the face of precarity and the uncertain future of arts funding. Listen here or read an abridged transcript on the Alternate Currents blog (https://www.amplifyarts.org/ac-blog).

We recently sat down curator, researcher, and cultural practitioner Rosela del Bosque to talk more about her collaborative project, The Family Archive of the Colorado River. She shares more about tracing the deep histories, political incongruities, and intensely personal memories circling the changing ecology of the Colorado River Basin in her creative research. Listen to the full conversation below or visit Amplify's website to read through the transcript for links to additional resources.

We recently sat down with artists Lydia Cheshewalla and Sarah Rowe to talk about GROUNDING, their highly collaborative exhibition at Amplify's Generator Space in Omaha, which explored reciprocal human and more-than-human kinship systems through acts of somatic co-regulation with place, land, and earth. Listen on here or visit Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to additional resources.

We recently sat down with John Cohorst and Holly Kranker, Amplify's 2019 Public Impact Grant recipients, to talk more about their project CAR>GO (Community Activated Resource on the GO), a shipping container they modified to accommodate anything from group meetings to creative studio and/or project space. Originally conceived as a gathering space to exchange ideas, have conversations, and collaborate on neighborhood based initiatives, John and Holly talk about the pandemic's impact on the project, adapting to the unexpected, and welcoming people into the space in 2022 with an open call for collaborators. Listen on here or visit Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to additional resources.

We recently sat down with Zedeka Poindexter, Amplify's 2022-23 Public Impact Grant recipient. Zedeka was awarded a Public Impact Grant by an external selection panel in the amount of $10,000 to develop new, public-facing work that interrogates the disparities Black women confront in the healthcare system. Over the course of her two-year grant term, Zedeka will conduct and transcribe interviews with Black women to gather stories that shine a light on how their lived experiences, bodies, and voices are often minimized, manipulated, and ignored when seeking medical care. Zedeka will transmute these stories into a layered choreopoem that uses sight, sound, touch, and feeling as tools to center empathy and understanding. The finished piece will have a local run and dedicated performances for audiences of Omaha-area medical practitioners specifically. As an integrated piece of her staged work, Zedeka will also make her process simple to replicate for other communities by developing an interview guide, transcript analysis toolkit, and production roadmap. Zedeka Poindexter is a North Omaha-born writer and performer. In her work, she builds a historical record through poems and essays that draw on all five physical senses to connect with readers and listeners. Raised in multi-generational homes by descendants of the Great Migration, she draws on issues of race, class, struggle, and joy to fuel her work. Zedeka has worked with the Nebraska Writers Collective for over ten years to provide writing and performance education in schools, community organizations, and correctional facilities. As Slam Master for the Omaha Poetry Slam, she guided local artists through generating new work, stage performances, and fundraising. She is the first woman, and the only woman of color, to be named Omaha City Poetry Slam champion. As a member of Omaha's poetry slam team, she qualified for semi-finals at the National Poetry Slam. Only one other team achieved this honor in its 18-year history.

We recently sat down with Jared Ledesma, Senior Curator at the Akron Art Museum, to follow up on ‘From the Margins to the Center: Inclusive Curatorial Practices and Cultural Institutions,' an Alternate Currents panel discussion hosted in August of 2021. We spoke more about methodological shifts in the curatorial field, institutional barriers to working inclusively, and what adopting more inclusive curatorial practices might mean for arts organizations committed to equity and justice. Listen here or visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify's website for a full transcript with links to additional resources.

Recently, Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson sat down with Sunshine Thomas-Bear, Director of the Angel DeCora Museum and Research Center and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, to talk about the history of the Ho-Chunk People and tribal museums' essential role in reinvigorating cultural lifeways. Stream the full conversation here and visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify's website for the the transcript with links to additional resources.

We recently sat down with artist, organizer, and member of the Osage Nation, Lydia Cheshewalla to talk about the ways in which relationships, rooted in reciprocity and care, shape her highly collaborative practice, their potential to influence the future of cultural institutions, and what it means to opt out. Listen below or, visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to more resources.

We recently sat down with artist and organizer, Alajia McKizia to talk about charity, solidarity, and self-determination. The conversation trained its focus on white supremacist ideologies embedded within philanthropy and emergent networks of mutual support that posit community-centric fundraising as a viable response. Listen here and visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify Arts' website for links to additional resources and more great conversation.

Recently, writer and art historian, Jonathan Orozco sat down with artist, organizer, and member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, Nathaniel Ruleaux to unpack some of the complications raised by land acknowledgements within cultural institutions and their ability (or lack thereof) to affect change outside the sphere of performative activism. Listen here or on Amplify's website: https://www.amplifyarts.org/alternate-currents.

Recently, we sat down with musician, artist, and city planner Rynn Kerkhove to talk about some of the connections between ecologically reproductive labor, environmental planning, and building reciprocal relationships with local ecosystems. Listen to the conversation below or on Amplify’s website, if you’re on the go, and share your thoughts in the comments section.

Recently, Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Marisa Cummings sat down to talk about some of the complexities surrounding sovereignty, Federal Indian Law, and recent landmark court cases that underscore the undeniable connections between Indigenous peoples' rights, climate action, and social justice. Listen to the conversation here or on Amplify Arts' website and share your thoughts in the comments section.

We recently asked Amplify’s 2020 Indigenous American Artist Support Grant recipient, Steve Tamayo, if he would share some of his thoughts about what it means to cultivate creative practices in rural spaces and how those practices connect revitalizing and preserving indigenous cultural knowledge to ecological justice. Steve Tamayo draws upon his family history as a member of the Sicangu Lakota tribe. His fine arts education (BFA from Singe Gleska University), along with his cultural upbringing, have shaped him as an artist, historian, storyteller and dancer. Steve provides activities during his residencies that include art and regalia making, drumming, powwow dance demonstrations and lectures on the history, symbolism and meaning behind the Native customs and traditions. Steve has considerable experience developing curricula and teaching both youth and adults, including work with the Native American Advocacy Program of South Dakota, Omaha Public Schools, Minnesota Humanities Council and Metropolitan Community College of Omaha. He also leads groups of students and teachers on cultural excursions on the Rosebud reservation, introducing them to the rich culture and way of life that is slowly being revived among native communities. He is a past Governor’s Heritage Art Award recipient, an honor bestowed for his contributions in the arts and Native American culture. Tamayo has had work exhibited at The National Museum of the American Indian, in Washington, DC, The Kaneko in Omaha, NE, The Great Plains Museum in Lincoln, NE, RNG Gallery in Council Bluffs, IA. His most recent work included painting buffalo robes and set design for Willie Nelson and Neil Young on the occasion of their concert for Bold Nebraska in Neligh, NE.

Indigenous communities, particularly those located in rural areas where ways of knowing and being are rooted in interdependencies with the environment, are on the frontlines of confronting the climate crisis and often the hardest hit. Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson and Director of Native American Student Services at the University of South Dakota, Marisa Cummings recently sat down to talk about connections between resiliency, Indigenous cultural practices, and Nation building. Listen to the conversation here, or on Amplify’s website, and share your thoughts in the comments section.

We sat down recently with Paige Reitz, Deputy Director at the Union for Contemporary Art and Joey Lynch, the Union’s Director of Facilities and Sustainability to talk about the organization’s move to zero waste, the intersections of social justice and ecological justice, and collectively moving the goalpost toward carbon neutrality. Listen to the conversation below or on Amplify’s Alternate Currents blog page and share your thoughts in the comments section.

We sat down recently with Erin Foley, Finance Manager at Film Streams, to talk about the relationship between art and labor and working toward more financial stability in cultural fields. The wide-ranging conversation unpacks ideas around wage disparity, transparency, and collective organizing.

We sat down with 2019 Artist Support Grant recipients Sarah Hummel Jones and Corson Androski to find out more about the content that drives their work, their respective creative practices, and how they situate those practices within the greater economy.