I put up with the mosquitos and the winters for these. Love them.
This comic was first found in the Life Next Door zine, edited and created by Karine Rupp-Stanko. It is based on a true story.
I feel most creative when making things in physical handmade books. Accidental things can happen and when I know I don’t have to make something sleek and perfect, it seems to turn out more fun. So when these words popped into my head, I decided to go back to the book format, which I hadn’t been doing as much lately.
I seem to be having the “When are they coming back?” conversation over and over and over again lately in every social context, so I had to poke fun at it a bit. I hate and I love this conversation at the same time.
A few years ago I made a Minnesota-shaped book about how everyone seems to move away from Minnesota, so this is the sequel!
After coming across social media posts (from news outlets across the world!) and news articles suggesting a recent Minnesota Supreme Court case was doing something it very much wasn’t, I felt compelled to try to explain what was actually going on in the opinion. What follows is more of less a sketchbook attempt to infuse the nuance missing in all the click bait. Imperfect, but the bones are there.
“Opting for Health”
This summer, I saw that the University of Minnesota Women’s Center was seeking proposals for a zine they were creating about “Re-Imagining Feminist Futures.” I was intrigued but also disappointed with myself because I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t just “not [current state of affairs in US].” That kind of approach is hardly reimagining anything. It would not have worked. So I asked some friends to think through it with me one weekend over a zoom call. It was late August when it seemed like the entire West was on fire, and the friends I was talking to were in Oregon and Colorado, all of them holed up in their houses hiding from the smoky, caustic air. As we talked about this and other injustices that felt especially salient at that moment, a friend noticed that it all kept coming back to health. And there it was. What if we weren’t making all our decisions based on “more money” but “more healthy”? I know it feels lofty, but what if that were our inherent metric behind everything? It’s at least worth imagining even if it’s not currently possible.
The MN Women’s Center released their Re-Imagining Feminist Futures Zine today and I’m very glad to say it includes this piece (albeit a vertical version)! You can go to their page and order one or download one if you want. There’s a variety of writing and art in there, all by folks affiliated with UMN. Can’t wait to get mine in the mail next month!
Last week, I was scanning the headlines and found myself completely unfazed by the announcement of that day’s “61 deaths due to COVID-19” in Minnesota. Ugh! I don’t want to be numb to the number of people we are losing due to this pandemic and our country’s lack of leadership and accountability for allowing it to reach exponential levels. I don’t want to gloss over the way it’s been exacerbated by the outdated “rugged individualism” and “American dream” philosophy in our society, politics, and economic system. Each one of these dots is, was, a person in my state. Even if they would hate my commentary two sentences ago, even if they were 102, even if they had other risk factors, I don’t want to gloss over their death as I scan the headlines. So I have started keeping a daily log of the people we are losing in Minnesota. It is mostly to keep myself aware, you don’t have to love it, but you’re welcome to join me in this one little attempt to avoid being numb to the loss we are experiencing.
From December 5-12, 2020, 575 people died of complications of COVID-19, as reported by the Minnesota Department of Health.
I have been listening to CIDRAP’s Osterholm Update podcast regularly throughout the pandemic. I often do so while working on art projects. It was only a matter of time, then that it would make its way into one of these projects. “We will get through this” is an often repeated phrase on the podcast. We will get through this, but it’s crucial we work together, acknowledge this is our “COVID year” and “stop swapping air.”
Each of these is made with about 100 little blobs. A few weeks before I made these, I had cut out 545 little pieces of paper to make a visual marker of the 545 children who remain separated from their families due to the current administration’s actions at the border. I grouped them in groups of 100 (and then 45) to keep track. I wanted to turn them into something else, but wasn’t sure what. As I was playing around with 100 of them on a sheet of paper, this concept popped into my head. So, in many ways, from something hopeless comes something hopeful.
We will get through this.
Hey look at that! The lake that was in limbo is now officially Bde Maka Ska! Or, as written in the Minnesota Supreme Court’s opinion, “Under Minnesota law, the body of water that was Lake Calhoun is now Bde Maka Ska.”
It’s fun to see where my analysis in Lake in Limbo overlaps with the court’s opinion. It definitely has some differences. For example, I see no “soothing blobs” in the opinion…
What exactly is the law behind the Bde Maka Ska name litigation? This post explores the background and the law, which the Minnesota Supreme Court will consider in its 2019-2020 term.
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