Tinka Harvard, Tamika Rivera, Lea DeCosta and I finished yesterday’s zoom presentation, When Artists Go To Work, a community offering and gathering we’d been planning for months, with an unexpected feeling of elation and lightness. I’ve gotten really soulful responses from the community who joined and it did this heart good is all I know. I left ready for so many things. Ready and steeled and also softer.
A lot of people are scared and tired already.
We’re watching fires engulf and break the hearts of our friends and human families in LA and up and down its coast. We’re seeing firsthand that it isn’t corporations or insurance companies that are helping us its our own grassroots communities digging us out and finding ways to keep going and helping. We have always known that real community is everything.
We were glad to welcome others who needed a place to turn and happy to be fostering deeper relationships with one another in these hard to navigate surreal yet too real moments.
We came out with another kind of knowing in our hearts, akin to roots holding us in place as we each, my guests and I, tried in some small way to discuss what we’ve learned from the work each of us have done, alone and together.
Last night I texted a friend in San Clemente to see how she was holding up as I watched footage of the fires. I could feel the heaviness and the fed-upness in her voice, even through text. I asked how her day went and she wrote: “have raised about $900 for world central kitchen, dropped off donations at a local business, and started a substack. Im in the backyard drawing and and ready for a nap.” That’s the insanely talented and big-hearted Sharon Nullmeyer, folks know as Nulls who also started the group Artists for Kamala this summer and now started a substack. She knows the power of community and the power of herself too.
It’s what yesterdays gathering was also about but also something else, a gathering for the losses we’re seeing across America and the world, victims to political, cultural and natural disasters, all of them man-made failings. We’re here watching, witnessing.
An unpacking of Yesterday’s workshop: The Conversing
“No Place for Self-Pity, No Time for Fear” by Toni Morrison, was an unpacking of her essay for troubled times followed by prompts and portals based on the power of voice, the practice of focus and the role of rest and play. People joined from all over the world and as we discussed ways to take very seriously the ways in which America will change we agreed that our strongest powers will be to hold our communities dear, take care of one another and move our despair and hopes into action.
“This is precisely the time artists go to work” -Toni Morrison
We began by saying that we can be patient with ourselves, despite the demands from the outside. That there is much learning and unlearning to do in this world and its the work of the artist to do this.
“The role of the artist, in part, is to develop the conversations, the stories, the drawings,, the films, the music—the expressions of awe and wonder and mystery—that remind us, especially in our worst times, of what is still possible, of what we haven’t yet imagined.” - Barry Lopez
We discussed artist as “shadow cabinet”, inspired by Timothy Snyder’s posts from the last few days. he explains a shadow cabinet is one which bear(s) witness and follows the administrations every move and then remind the public that other policies and approaches are possible. It takes a positive (but not toxically positive) position.
“..we will need new ideas, new voices, and new forms of action: such as a people’s cabinet.” Timothy Snyder
We asked how this might show up in your everyday life and I think our exploration landed here: whether your witness comes from your direct action in life or critique in your work, make the work. Whether you make art to recognize there is still joy, an art that “refuses to succumb to its malevolence” as Morrison tells us or whether you’re an essayist or a picture book artist, make art driven by identity, the body, the landscape, make the work. Get to the table when and how you are ready but let yourself get there.
How might your work strengthen during this time? What is the story of the story you are speaking? The way forward is to know oneself more, make more meaningful connections to what we create—to work with intention.
Portals
Tinka Harvard, poet, essayist and theologian, reminded of us to hold our mentors and models dear and let them serve as protectors—that there are many who came before us to move us in our work and have faith that it means something. She mentioned Toni Morrison, Dr Martin Luther King, bell hooks, Thomas Merton, Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin.
“I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense but not irrational or naive. Art invites is to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs, into bearing witness to the work as it is and as it should be. Art invites to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here. And if we serve, we last/. My faith in art rivals my admiration for any other discourse. Its conversation with the public and among its various genres is critical to the understanding of what it means to care deeply and be human completely.” -James Baldwin
Lea DeCosta, artist writer and workshop leader, encouraged us to keep asking ourselves the more beautiful question. What do others need your work to do right now? What do you need your work to do right now? How can you embody both and make thew work your true self is meant to do?
Tamika Rivera, artist, activist and reiki practitioner of 22 years led us in a meditation to remind us to stay present with our breath and our bodies when we are feeling stress.
Each of my guests yesterday are teachers of the first degree. You can learn more about them below. I’m so so tired of marketing but we all need to work and my communities are what sets me free. I have one more winter offering: The Saturday Sessions open now for sign-ups here.
Yesterday we closed in a way I always like to do, to close with an opening. It was an idea shared from Sophie Blackall’s talk last month with Maria Popova at the Morgan Library in NYC. She said:
“I want to foster a curiosity in children, so that they will feel confident that they can read any book that they might want to pick up….If a child is encouraged to be curious, I believe that they will continue to read and they will become a more empathetic human being and I think we need that more than ever.” -Sophie Blackall
I love the idea that we can begin with the belief that our work gives a dark world its light and I will always believe that can only happen through support of one another. Sometimes the work of support results in failures, (ask any parent) but we can keep trying and asking for what we need.
“…Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge-even wisdom—like art.” Toni Morrison
Tinka Harvard is an author and theologian from Brooklyn, New York, whose gifts of interweaving Eastern and Western teachings and theologies with poetry and art help and supports those she works with to usher in the peace and well-being of our natural state. Tinka is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University with a Master's in Divinity, and most recently, a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Programme in Theology at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Her research project of centering the silenced and unseen voices of women was transdisciplinary, welcoming dialogue and encounters between different epistemological practices and cosmologies. Tinka's writing has been included in StepAway Magazine, Adelaide, Adelaide Voices Anthology 2018, and Polychrome Ink. She is the author of Lush Life, a collection of short stories newly released by Adelaide books and in 2025, a forthcoming article on Women and Joy to be published in Lilith: A Feminist History Journal..
Tamika Rivera is a multi-disciplanry artist/healer based on Lenape territory in NYC. She creates art that evokes ancestral memories in sculpture, painting, installation and performance with a concentration on fiber arts. Through powerful exploration of her Afro-Boricua and nomadic mixed-European roots she creates pathways of play and acceptance through themes of mixed identity, decolonization, gender equality and spiritual activation. Some of her most recent accomplishments include selection for Hella Feminist: Museoexclusión, at The Oakland Museum of Art curated by Tanya Aguiñiga and By a Thread, a group show the Shirley Fiterman Arts Center, Tribeca NYC. Tamika is also a curator and founder of HERE Projects, an activist and community builder, an advocate for indigenous rights and a spiritual coach and Reiki practitioner of 22 years, divining creative ways of activating joy through art and play.
Lea DeCosta is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer and transformational workshop leader, using what she calls The Quiet Arts: image-making, writing and conversation as tools for self-discovery to build a more well-lived, connected life. She follows the concept of Numah: the vital spirit, soul or creative force of a person to guide her work and life. With a BA in Art History, and Master’s in Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management from Rutgers University, Lea’s past work and path to self-acceptance through her practice have led her to share her healing work with others and is currently working toward her Transformational Leader Certification. Her art and writing has appeared in the book Art Journal Kickstarter, and the journal The Rose in the World.
For those also watching from afar, wondering how to support LA communities, a short list below.
I can’t believe I was too overwhelmed to go , and it’s the one place I should have gone . Printing this out , writing down quotes , following your friends
I can’t believe I was too overwhelmed to go , and it’s the one place I should have gone . Printing this out , writing down quotes , following your friends
Thank you for hosting such a beautiful and inspiring gathering, Deborah! xo