Reception and artist talk October 12, 5-8 PM

Art installation WAKE in the Annex at the Bush Barn Art Center in Salem, OR.
Please join me on Saturday, October 12 from 5 – 8 PM for an artist talk and reception. 
The show is up through October 30, 2019.

Gallery hours: 
Tuesday – Friday 10 AM – 5 PM 
Saturday & Sunday 12 – 5 PM

Here are detail images from my iPhone before lighting has been perfected to pique your interest.

WAKE

We are ripe for transformation—

time is running out. Thoughts explored while creating this installation were informed by reading On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by DeRay Mckesson and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Both of these leaders shape the activist paradigm and speak to the importance of creating relationships that will have lasting effects.  

I think about capitalist greed as a root cause of our dire future, how this value system is embedded in our violent history, and how the ideology of Manifest Destiny—the doctrine used to justify the taking of land from indigenous people—is a legacy of white supremacy.  The brutality of warfare by the US military and white settlers against indigenous peoples was no less than a plan for genocide.

I see this country polarized and moving from a place of fear. I am drawing connections between all living things; women’s rights as human rights; white privilege part of every discussion; the climate crisis and people’s relationship to place; the Second Amendment and epidemic of mass shootings; land as home; the intangible and the spirit. I am utilizing intimacy, humor, imagination, the heart, irony, material, urgency, and agency. As Mckesson states so clearly, “To recognize the original harm [of white privilege] is not the same as repairing it, though repair is, of course, impossible without recognition. The point is that active theft isn’t required for people to participate in and perpetuate the harm.”

Learning and listening has to take place to be a partner in the work for positive change—“accomplice” rather than ally.                                                                                                                                                                   —diane jacobs

I will have better images in the weeks to come and hopefully a video walk through. If you are in the area it would mean the world to me if you saw it in person. Let me know and maybe we can meet there. Please write me if you have questions, comments or feedback.

 The youth-led Climate Strike in Portland was bigger than it’s been but we need so much more. The youth are powerful!! IF you haven’t seen Greta Thunberg’s short youtube video check it out and pass it on. Here is the link to her powerful U.N. speech as well. Greta is a passionate speaker. There are many more young environmentalists that need attention. Last year Autumn Pettier at age 13 addressed the UN speaking for the protection of water. This summer, the Yurok Tribe declared rights of personhood for the Klamath River — likely the first to do so for a river in North America. Helena Gualing, 17 from the Ecuadorian Amazon is fighting climate issues especially against big oil companies. Isra Hirsi, 16 and Bruno Rodriguez of Buenos Aires also spoke at the U.N.

Protect Restore Fund

love,
diane