Reflections on the TSA Symposium
I want to start this reflection with a conversation I recently came across between Lisa Stevenson, Aaron Levy and Sheila Shankar, in the book On listening as a form of care (2020). In it, they talk about the type of care that can be encountered in institutions or regulated spaces and specifically the contradictions this type of anonymized or “bureaucratized” care holds. In the complex, toxic, strange, regulated relationships they found in that specific space, they also asked what could be done to find room for what they define as genuine caring: “how do I, in the daily grind of life, make myself open to the flash of another person… [by being] open to the singularity of the other” (46). I turn to this passage, because that is how I felt throughout this whole experience related to participating in the Shifts and Strands Symposium. Very easily, large organizations and large conferences can feel like bureaucratically caring or obligatory relational spaces, however this was not my experience with this past Symposium.
A different kind of care could be seen from the careful wording I encountered related to equity, care and access that was interwoven into the call for participation; the gentle and carefully worded feedback given to me on my proposal; the way that the digital conference platform was used to forefront accessibility and human interactions; and finally to the way that the panel I participated on was moderated with deep interest and felt like a friendly yet critical conversation. This speaks as much to the connections of our own stories that we as panelists brought to our session as it does to the care that Elizabeth Okeyele-Olatunji took to moderate and connect our work through their kind introductions and well thought out questions for each of us after our presentations.
The panel I participated on was called “Artist Projects, Practices of Care” and it felt like a small community, connected to a larger community. It was nice to hear other people so clearly thinking about similar things I have been and continue to work through in my own making, teaching and writing. Hearing Anna Boutin-Cooper and John Fifield-Perez each talk about the relationships that they see materialize through objects was exciting and validating, in that it felt like they were on parallel searches for stories through materiality, yet had new perspectives. It became clear to me that we all agreed, through our own making and respect to material, that objects hold stories. And that we all were thinking about how our own work with materials reveals a method of care.
Anna Boutin-Cooper’s focus on the simultaneous interplay between their own memories of an object and the memories that the objects (like their grandmother’s placemats) hold was a great reminder of how our own stories linked to objects both shape and are re-shaped by the objects themselves. This beautiful interplay was made visible through their own actions of weaving their own placemats: the time spent weaving brought clarity, allowing them to sit with and untangle their own stories and the family histories held in the original objects. Likewise, fiber was a way of understanding the story of yearning and physical distance for John Fifield-Perez. I have a note that I wrote down from their talk: “this cloth is the distance from me to you.” Again, I began thinking about how sitting and weaving or making cloth is a process of time, a process of focusing. Their weaving became something substantial that could span a large room or be used to line the perimeter of a space. In making this long woven object, it felt like a haptic archive of space and comforting at the same time.
I focus on these two moments, because it gave me space to think about my own practice as an artist and an educator. My own material practice is rooted in quilting, and for me, quilting provides a metaphorical way to understand or fold together relationships: myself, artmaking, being with others, teaching, learning. A quilt exists in pieces, and exists by the way these pieces are intentionally brought together. No matter the planning, a quilt is a surprise. It is an invitation to think together. We are a quilt.
I am glad you are here.
Tim Abel (he/they) is a collage: practicing visual artist, educator, co-parent, spouse, part of and in the world. In navigating this practice of conceptual collage, their artmaking, teaching, and art-sharing spans into, around and beyond art museum spaces, higher education spaces, elementary school outreach spaces. They are currently finishing their Phd in Art Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and they will be starting as an Assistant Professor of Art Teacher Education at Illinois State University in the fall.
