Radical Hope Blooms
It was at least 2 years ago when I digitized a loose collection of my botanical abstract paintings in all kinds of traditional media, and used them for training an artificial intelligence model in Playform. I’ve worked with these images off and on, never really clear on what their outcome would be. Recently, I selected some generations from Playform and blended them in Midjourney, loved what was happening, and then finished them up.
Radical Hope works this way - a trust that a future goodness will exist, despite not knowing how we get to it. 🖤✨
I selected the options available to print these on with a few things in mind - my favorite papers, the acrylic blocks and prints that I’m obsessed with, and some other prints that are more affordable. If you like this series and want to get a print or a few (they look so so good in a grouping!) let me know if I can help you pick out the best options for you.
Considering Radical Hope
Radical Hope
Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
by Jonathan Lear
Jonathan Lear considers the role of Radical Hope in the context of the Crow and the cultural devastation that the white man brought upon them. I read this to better understand how to clearly portray what radical hope is.
While this discusses how Radical Hope enabled the survival of the Crow, there are many parallels to our current existence.
When I say, "Radical Hope is a belief in some goodness we can not yet understand", I feel the need to tack on that it is also not "toxic positivity". Radical Hope does not forego acceptance but embraces it. Lear explains that Crow tribe member and eventual leader, Plenty Coups, understands that the way of life is coming to an end. He does not know what is beyond it but is able to commit to the idea that goodness exists for him and his people, beyond his current understanding. Through accepting the unknown, he is able to come up with creative ways to re-interpret cultural ideals. Lear is clear to note that this commitment on the part of Plenty Coups does not mean that there is divine or historical correctness here.
Lear brings forth the virtue of courage as a means through which one is able to make such a commitment to something they can not yet understand. The points coming from Aristotle:
1) a courageous person has a proper orientation toward what is shameful and what is fearful
2) courage aims towards what is fine
3) a courageous person must grasp the situation he or she is in and, through experience, exercise good judgement
4) courage paradigmatically involves the risk of serious loss and enduring certain pains
This part was particularly helpful to me in explaining why radical hope is NOT toxic positivity. The difference is this definition of courage. There is an awareness present in radical hope, that is willful ignorance in toxic positivity. "Bold acts that derive merely from optimism are not courageous".
To have radical hope, a person must know what is good and aim towards that. They must be able to accept the current circumstance, and act upon sound judgement. They must be able to be vulnerable.
Lear goes on to discuss this dream that Plenty Coups had, and how it was a manifestation of radical hope (thus courage) , and that "radical hope can not just be psychologically advantageous, but a legitimate response even to a world catastrophe". This brings me to think about how, given current world circumstances, we, if nothing else, have this resource of radical hope. We can be the "poets" of our time, using this resource to imagine new ways of being, of processing, of bringing ourselves into the future good.
In being a psychological resource, radical hope creates the capacity to respond well to reality. If we lack this resource, if we fall into despair, or toxic positivity/ wishful optimism. If we lack this capacity, we lack the flexibility required to travel through devastation.
Lear considers the cultural ego-ideal, which informs the way one strives to live a rewarding life. Without this ideal, it is hard to understand what one lives for. Loss of this ego-ideal is devastation in itself. Radical hope holds a space in which this ego-ideal can be in flux. What the Crow tribe went through did not allow them to pass on traditional ideals, which is why it became a necessary resource to hold the ideal of being in flux. This allowed the Crow to "endure a loss of concepts".
When one does not know how to live a good life, despair seems inevitable. The concepts for what should equal happiness are gone, so how would one even continue to strive for that or experience that state of being?
Our lives are full of changes, not so constantly large as total cultural devastation, but how might the idea of radical hope enable us to adapt to those changes? How might it give us necessary resources to address current cultural failings and envision new ways of being that are infinitely more "fine"? How can we be vulnerable to allow this process? How must we embrace our sense of yearning for the good, so that we are clear-eyed and mindful of the current reality?
I believe that ideas like defunding the police, effective climate crisis action, and giving land back to native peoples come from the space held by radical hope. These ideas are courageous, mindful, aware, and strive to create a new culturally informed ego-ideal.
When I ask how some people can see, and some people can't, I largely end up back on the fact that some people can not accept - the history, the truth of current circumstance, the shift of ego-ideal. They are still living in magical optimism space, where something Jesus-like (or Trump-like) will come and save them (their way of living and believing). There are alternately those who have chosen despair. They are also unable to see, because the space they exist in is another sort of extreme, where nothing matters. It is interesting to me that they create these spaces too, unwittingly, and how important mindfulness is to the concept of radical hope.
I’m going to continue my reading and writing about this concept, and I would love to hear your thoughts too.
21 for 2021
As if I needed another thing to want to do - I just discovered this: https://thepeoplesinauguration.org Which is rad, and of course it sounds like something I would totally love to facilitate within a women’s group. So maybe I will? I have a day-ish.
In the spirit of doing a ridiculous number of things - I couldn’t quite fit my 21 things for 2021 into one list, so I made two lists!
I’m going to borrow a page from a dear friend’s book and be a bit of a tease about this - I’m not sharing a few of my items this year until they’re crossed off!
First up - here’s my personal 2021 goal list of 21 things:
1) Get Vaccinated (I’m on the list!)
2) TOP SECRET INFO
3) ALSO NOT TELLING YET
4) walk more
5) write more (Started going through The Artist’s Way with my friend Jess = morning pages with accountability!)
6) organize my addresses
7) buy more art with my husband
8) get a great quality long necklace chain
9) learn about shipping options (this could go on my other list, but it didn’t)
10) use curable (bought it for the year, have done some meditation and writing exercises so far)
11) unsubscribe (I get too many emails, and it overwhelms me)
12) take my vitamins
13) stay hydrated (found DripDrop - tried it, it helps, and I ordered more!)
14) Protein (I’m supposed to eat as much protein as a young male athlete - and have it every 2-3 hours - it’s difficult to remember to get this into my body)
15) EMDR (continue weekly sessions)
16) Check up - check in with Dr. about Fibro-status/treatment/support (had my appt. last week. Update in 6 mos)
17) Get Eye Exam (figure out if Dr. is seeing people yet? RE: COVID)
18) Get new glasses!
19) Dance more - I’m so missing all the time with my family and our spontaneous dance parties.
20) have more mom/sister/friend/family dates
21) Plan something fun for our 40ths! (yes, the hubs and I both turn 40 this year - GASP!)
Artist 21 for 2021:
1) Write about my art
2) Update statements
3) Send a newsletter every month
4) Grow my email list (See Above!)
5) make a 2021 + beyond vision board (a physical one to put up where I can see it every day - it’s currently digital)
6) make a visual resonance vision board (a physical one to put up… it’s currently digital)
7) Do a digital portrait series (I have my first few people in mind, and have these divided up to do 1/month)
8) Learn more about using Adobe Fresco on my iPad
9) Learn more about using Adobe Illustrator on my iPad
10) Learn more about using Procreate on my iPad
11) Make stickers (sigils)
12) Make photographs
13) Explore digital collage
14) Use Pinterest to promote my art and interact
15) Get artist photos done (headshots and styled)
16) Participate in THRIVE
17) Participate in YAH Women In Art
18) Update my VIDA shop at least quarterly with new designs
19) Do projects with materials from Oh, Scrap!
20) Meet most of my quarterly goals
21) Collaborate
My word of the year this year is Resilient - and in that spirit, I’m choosing these things as part of my growth and flexibility. It’s been insightful to note my lists over the past few years, and my word/phrase of the year. I can see how I’ve progressed and how things have grown and changed. I often think about the practice of gratitude and our culture that teaches us to desire so much. There’s a quote somewhere about remembering, what you have today is what you wished for in the past. I find it worth remembering that, reflecting on what those things were, and remembering all that you have and have done… I’m driving again. I found community. I’ve dedicated myself to doing the work of healing. …I love goal setting when it’s from the heart and for the highest good. I love when my friends and family share their goals with me so I know how I can support them. I enjoy when we are vulnerable enough to share our dreams with each other, and support each other in achieving them, even the silly ones - especially the silly ones.
If you want to join me this year, I’d love to hear your goals!
Being sensitive, holding space, and radical hope.
For a long time, I would be disappointed by people for their actions. I couldn’t understand it and I always felt let down by their behavior, as incongruous to how I saw them. Not all that many years ago, I realized that this is because how I saw them was incongruous with how they actually were - and that my mistake is inherent in how I use what I see. How to put it? I’m sensitive. Not just in the way that got me made fun of growing up, but also in the way that I have access to other pieces of information that aren’t exactly within the “normal” range of experience. Some of these things are categorized as psychic and/or empathic abilities, like being able to actually feel what someone else is feeling, in my body. And all of this information can be really confusing and overwhelming - especially when it’s all tangled up with trauma and unhealthy dynamics. But back to what I came to understand about my experience of other people, I realized that I am able to tune in to who a person really is, and I experience this knowledge at a feeling level.
There are ways of knowing that are intuitive, and the more we learn to use them, the more we come to understand about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. I think that artists are in tune with these abilities in different ways. Learning that I have a strength when it comes to claircognizance (knowing) and clairsentience (feeling), has been very helpful to me. Now, when I meet people, I know that the sense I get of them has more to do with their greatest potential than the level they actually operate on. I’m able to stay out of situations where I, because of my empathy, obliger tendency, and familial relationship templates, would be blindsided and taken advantage of. I know more of a difference between who I am, what I’m feeling, and who someone else is. That might sound crazy, but if you’re able to pick up on all kinds of information and don’t know how to/ can’t process it, it can be VERY confusing.
To parse out all of this info that’s coming in, I needed to put boundaries in place. I needed to have help and support creating a practice. It has to remain in place this way for me to just feel semi-ok. Lately, it’s hard. I want to hit pause on everything and just paint and process. Just staying grounded and mindful is much of my self-care.
The idea of radical hope has been getting me through. It’s been so important to me at the core, and the more I contemplate, the more I realize that radical hope is at the very foundation of who I am. It is tied to the reason that I sense people’s potential state, not just the current one. It’s the reason that I can know, absolutely, in my bones that something is righteous. (Not that I am right, but that a concept has a righteous feeling, I think about it, and my body just knows). It’s like having a sense of direction, knowing which way is North. I’m just orientated to a different set of parameters that is intuitively defined, and the concept of radical hope is a compass.
Radical hope is essentially having hope in situations that have absolutely no hope. Radical hope is wise hope, not toxic positivity. It is a hope that doesn’t deny the reality of our suffering, but chooses to see it all, and take action.
Writings by Joan Halifax, Rebecca Solnit, and Jonathan Lear explore this subject further. I find the concept of radical hope to be in alignment with Catholic social justice teachings, and present in the punk rock community. It’s active. It’s defiant. It’s also very present in post traumatic growth, where there is space, often uncomfortable space, between what happened, what is, and what will be. It is in this space that we may act. This is what my work is all about. Holding space for the truth and the capacity to transform it. Radical hope.
What a great realization to have.
I have known that the work I do is about holding space - for people in portraits, in installation work of shrines and imitation relics. There is repetition of information, movement, shifting of forms. These constants have existed, and I can only see them now that I look backwards through time and media and a plethora of projects. I’ve focused on the beauty of an individual, seeing what makes them true. I’ve created experiences - literal spaces to be in, and prompted an ignition of radical hope in the face of systemic injustice. I’ve made bowls filled with intention and set them on fire. I’ve sought community through my work, connection to others to create a shift. I’ve tried time and time and time again to capture visually, something that I know in my bones, that I feel and experience, that is completely invisible and goes back to the concept of space. It is wild how filled with radical hope it always was, and how I lacked the descriptive words to say it. I have them now.
My work is about radical hope, and I want to share that with you.
goals + growth mindset.
One of my goals has been to write a good artist statement. I’ve been trying to do so for like the past year, and haven’t been able to get it out. After trying to force it for months, I realized, I can’t just sit down and write this statement. I had to change the goal. So now instead of trying to master craft this statement, I’m just writing about my work, ideally every day, and seeing where that takes me.
Even though my current work ties back to things I was making in the early 2000’s, it’s not a clear path. I reminded myself that to come to my previous artist statement, I went through grad school, I defended that work with those words and came out on the other side. This is not the same. I’m doing something slower, more kind, and rewriting scripts that have been with me for at least a lifetime. This art work is about the work I’m doing. This process is internal and external, and incredibly difficult. My art process is part of it, inextricably, and I’m learning how to be my authentic self and share that.
Having a growth mindset helps me acknowledge that attaining the goal isn’t always the, umm, goal. I’m going to write more on that soon, as I’m really excited about reflecting on the year and planning for the new one - but for now, it’s back to my private art ponderings.
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