February 1, 2025

Super Bowls, Snow, and Joy Division

Feb 01, 2025

Brian Jungen, *The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night,* 250-year-old French colonial oak table from Baton Rouge, wood arrows, carbon steel points, feathers, artificial sinew at Ogden

Hi.

On my second visit to Arturo Kameya’s installation at Alone Time Gallery, I noticed the bowls. I’ve been wondering what they signify to the artist.

It snowed last week in New Orleans. I’m from the north where snow falls every winter. Once, in Syracuse, it snowed on Mother’s Day, May 6th I think. I watched it through the big front window at Cosmos where I was waitressing on Marshall Street. Here, last week on the news, someone said “Only in New Orleans.” Which is funny because it snowed the winter we moved here and that night on the news, someone said, “Only in New Orleans.”

I ventured out in the snow for a walk but it was so cold. I went back inside and watched my boys make a snowman from the window. I was preoccupied, worried the pipes would freeze, concerned for the feral cats, the furnace running 24 hours a day and the coming energy bill. People were posting videos of themselves playing in the snow and it gave me a strange feeling like FOMO, even though it was right outside. But like Football or Mardi Gras, the joy was not my joy.

Yesterday, Paul Maziar–a writer I met on Instagram–and I spoke about publishing books and the necessity of joy in times of darkness.

Out in Waveland, where I went last weekend to finish writing my book for the sixth time, I realized I’d been like flat soda, missing–joy is the word I settled on, something I used to feel each morning waking up. I want it back, I thought not sure when it went missing, sometime last year maybe.

Later, I was at the convenience store, looking for popcorn and–for a fraction of a second, it seemed like everything–the shelf without popcorn, the man behind the counter, the cup of crappy coffee in my hand, everything–shimmered, lit up from within. And something within me, small as a Christmas light or a light across aa lake, blinked in response. I think that was joy. In the span of a second, the size of a molecule.

I’ve been thinking that joy is like a radio station. You tune in and if it’s dead air, you stay tuned, receptive. When it comes, it’s like music from elsewhere filling the room where you are. This is my lifetime, I think, to remind myself.

I sent a video of the snow to Kyle in California. He returned it with a song he wrote and played on a toy guitar, an instrument small enough to take with him on the road, working nights.

The Super Bowl is coming and Carnival, so I’Il be lying low, probably seeing less art. I love Ash Wednesday in New Orleans.

e.

Luba Zygarewicz at Good Children

Fortunately, the artist was there to say we could touch the house, which sways. Nails, bent and rusty, hanging from the bottom of the house make a tinkling sound like wind chimes on the cement floor. The Chilean-Ukrainian artist’s father removed the nails as he renovated the house he bought for his family in America.

Raina Benoit at the Front

Arturo Kameya’s Bowls at Alone Time Gallery, Prospect 6

Blas Isasi at Ford Motor Assembly Plant, Prospect 6

These are stranger each time I seen them. Good strange. Alien strange with Earth material.

Amanda Williams at Xavier, Prospect 6

Amanda Williams, *In Her Rich Deposits of (Blue)*, 2024, Carver Innovation Blue Casein Paint

I’ve complained about the excess of words accompanying the works in Prospect 6. Here is an exception because the explanation is part of the work, necessary to understand it (the explanation could also be embedded in a list of materials, making it one of the properties of the work and not an explanation about it.)

From the plaque: