cesspool
art in and on process
cesspool
art in and on process
Embedded Files
art in and on process
a free occasional gathering to share, learn, and create together ...
a free occasional gathering to share, learn, and create together ...
rooted in the spirit of show-n-tell, these intimate daytime share sessions aim to build nourishing arts community by providing space to celebrate our mess -- unfinished works, co-dives into the weeds of "how" we make our art, and reflections on our embodied experiences of creating.
rooted in the spirit of show-n-tell, these intimate daytime share sessions aim to build nourishing arts community by providing space to celebrate our mess -- unfinished works, co-dives into the weeds of "how" we make our art, and reflections on our embodied experiences of creating.
each iteration of cesspool includes one or two featured sharers who have ~20-40 mins to gush about their works in process and/or the process of their work. there is also ~30 mins dedicated to open sharing divided evenly between anyone else who wants to share [~5 mins each to gush].
each iteration of cesspool includes one or two featured sharers who have ~20-40 mins to gush about their works in process and/or the process of their work. there is also ~30 mins dedicated to open sharing divided evenly between anyone else who wants to share [~5 mins each to gush].
cesspool is a project in process and we're excited to see how it will shift and morph. that said, we are sure of a few things:
cesspool is a project in process and we're excited to see how it will shift and morph. that said, we are sure of a few things:
-cesspool hopes to avoid falling into the pre-determined rigidity, professionalization, and pretention of many artist talks, lectures, and readings. instead, we aim toward collective curiosity, celebration, and encouragement. our goal is mutual nourishment and relation.
-cesspool hopes to avoid falling into the pre-determined rigidity, professionalization, and pretention of many artist talks, lectures, and readings. instead, we aim toward collective curiosity, celebration, and encouragement. our goal is mutual nourishment and relation.
-there will always be free snacks and art supplies -- nibbling and fidgeting are more than welcome!
-there will always be free snacks and art supplies -- nibbling and fidgeting are more than welcome!
-featured sharers will always be paid. currently we can offer $50 to each featured sharer. we hope for this amount to increase as the project continues.
-featured sharers will always be paid. currently we can offer $50 to each featured sharer. we hope for this amount to increase as the project continues.
details about upcoming and past gatherings of cesspool are included below. wanna reach out with questions, encouragements, or just to say hey? feel free to write to us here.
details about upcoming and past gatherings of cesspool are included below. wanna reach out with questions, encouragements, or just to say hey? feel free to write to us here.
cesspools coming down the pipe ...
cesspools coming down the pipe ...
stay tuned -- more info soon :)
stay tuned -- more info soon :)
plumb the cesspool archive ...
plumb the cesspool archive ...
CESSPOOL NO.4
thurs. jan 2nd, 2025
6pm-8pm
@ PAPER JAM + PRINT
[parking across the street at North Kenilworth Veterinary Care]
featuring:
JD Pluecker
flyer here
CESSPOOL NO.4
thurs. jan 2nd, 2025
6pm-8pm
@ PAPER JAM + PRINT
[parking across the street at North Kenilworth Veterinary Care]
featuring:
JD Pluecker
flyer here
photo by JD Pluecker
jd pluecker
jd pluecker
gush glimpse
JD gushed about how poetry and performance has become a strategy for digestion, processing, in process-ness, return. How the poetic adventure makes unexpectedness occur and recur. How mad desire can push us through the weeds and occasion an arrival to a shore. How a book can be a shore. A book as a touchstone, a set of words to return to as source for improvisation, becoming, performing in real time. How we orient to books as touchstones. JD gushed about the process to arrive to her two new books in the world and about how she continues to move with them and in relation to them in the world. Books not as ends or fixed/final entities, but as moments in a project or a constellation of thinkings. Touchstones, generative and continually (re)opening.
gush glimpse
JD gushed about how poetry and performance has become a strategy for digestion, processing, in process-ness, return. How the poetic adventure makes unexpectedness occur and recur. How mad desire can push us through the weeds and occasion an arrival to a shore. How a book can be a shore. A book as a touchstone, a set of words to return to as source for improvisation, becoming, performing in real time. How we orient to books as touchstones. JD gushed about the process to arrive to her two new books in the world and about how she continues to move with them and in relation to them in the world. Books not as ends or fixed/final entities, but as moments in a project or a constellation of thinkings. Touchstones, generative and continually (re)opening.
some "who" context
JD Pluecker works with language, that is, a material thing, a thing of life and history. Her undisciplinary work inhabits the intersections of writing, performance, history, translation, art, interpreting, bookmaking, queer/trans aesthetics, non-normative poetics, language justice, and cross-border cultural production. She has translated numerous books from the Spanish, including most recently In Defense of Common Life: The Political Thought of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (Common Notions, 2024). JD has published three books of poetry: The Every Wild (Mouthfeel Press, 2024), Grin Go Home / Las provincias internas (Editorial Ultramarina, 2024), and Ford Over (Noemi Press, 2016). From 2010-2020, she worked as part of the transdisciplinary collaborative Antena Aire.
// website
some "who" context
JD Pluecker works with language, that is, a material thing, a thing of life and history. Her undisciplinary work inhabits the intersections of writing, performance, history, translation, art, interpreting, bookmaking, queer/trans aesthetics, non-normative poetics, language justice, and cross-border cultural production. She has translated numerous books from the Spanish, including most recently In Defense of Common Life: The Political Thought of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (Common Notions, 2024). JD has published three books of poetry: The Every Wild (Mouthfeel Press, 2024), Grin Go Home / Las provincias internas (Editorial Ultramarina, 2024), and Ford Over (Noemi Press, 2016). From 2010-2020, she worked as part of the transdisciplinary collaborative Antena Aire.
// website
CESSPOOL NO.4 REFLECTIONS
CESSPOOL NO.4 REFLECTIONS
"i don't know what i'm doing, and yet i'm doing it."
"i don't know what i'm doing, and yet i'm doing it."
here now, over a month later. somehow hard to sit and simply write it back. in the fractal midst of yet more hate, yet more grief, a night of connection. jd, our first out-of-town sharer, on her way from the west coast back home to the gulf coast. passing through our urbanized desert for a thursday evening cesspool at, yet again, paper jam + print. an opening into the year. at the gush's center, two new books jd ushered into the world -- both emerging from years-long writing/living -- The Every Wild (Mouthfeel Press, 2024) and Grin Go Home / Las provincias internas (Editorial Ultramarina, 2024). she shared from the books as living projects, alive still and generative. we talked about zines and pressures toward professionalization. about attending events we didn't coordinate. about projects transitioning. about community and messiness. about shifting, co-created, over-the-phone narratives. about doubt as an engine/motor. about land, family, and re-drawn borders. all the while snacking. some of us fidget-crafting. a night of togetherness, listening, and sharing. here, to end, a commemorative ultratranslated offering from mhwl:
here now, over a month later. somehow hard to sit and simply write it back. in the fractal midst of yet more hate, yet more grief, a night of connection. jd, our first out-of-town sharer, on her way from the west coast back home to the gulf coast. passing through our urbanized desert for a thursday evening cesspool at, yet again, paper jam + print. an opening into the year. at the gush's center, two new books jd ushered into the world -- both emerging from years-long writing/living -- The Every Wild (Mouthfeel Press, 2024) and Grin Go Home / Las provincias internas (Editorial Ultramarina, 2024). she shared from the books as living projects, alive still and generative. we talked about zines and pressures toward professionalization. about attending events we didn't coordinate. about projects transitioning. about community and messiness. about shifting, co-created, over-the-phone narratives. about doubt as an engine/motor. about land, family, and re-drawn borders. all the while snacking. some of us fidget-crafting. a night of togetherness, listening, and sharing. here, to end, a commemorative ultratranslated offering from mhwl:
-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-
a riff on the every wild
(for j.d. pluecker)
a riff on the every wild
(for j.d. pluecker)
the[ir]
every
wild
the[ir]
every
wild
there
ever
wildly
there
ever
wildly
wildly
they
were
reviled
wildly
they
were
reviled
they
were
ever
wild
they
were
ever
wild
re-wilded
re-wilded
ever
wildly
ever
wildly
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
post-share reflection
mid-share doodle-nest
CESSPOOL NO.3
sun. september 29th, 2024
11am - 1pm
@ PAPER JAM + PRINT
[parking across the street at North Kenilworth Veterinary Care]
featuring:
June Powers
flyer here
CESSPOOL NO.3
sun. september 29th, 2024
11am - 1pm
@ PAPER JAM + PRINT
[parking across the street at North Kenilworth Veterinary Care]
featuring:
June Powers
flyer here
photo by June Powers
june powers
june powers
gush glimpse
June read from her chapbook HEART/poems of love, from one of the anthologies she's been involved with, and from new pieces she is working on about trauma, human nature, and the environment.
gush glimpse
June read from her chapbook HEART/poems of love, from one of the anthologies she's been involved with, and from new pieces she is working on about trauma, human nature, and the environment.
some "who" context
Poet June Powers is the creator of three chapbooks of narrative poetry - CHILD/poems of consciousness, SOUTH/poems of passing through, and HEART/poems of love. She is a contest winner of the 2023 Tucson Arts Poetry Series Ekphrastic Poetry Contest. She enjoys writing about social issues, global cultures, art, nature, love, and how our emotions and spirits are connected to these subjects. Currently, she is working on a collection of poetry that intersects environmental concerns with the human condition. Originally from Bucks County, PA, she now resides in Phoenix, AZ.
// instagram
some "who" context
Poet June Powers is the creator of three chapbooks of narrative poetry - CHILD/poems of consciousness, SOUTH/poems of passing through, and HEART/poems of love. She is a contest winner of the 2023 Tucson Arts Poetry Series Ekphrastic Poetry Contest. She enjoys writing about social issues, global cultures, art, nature, love, and how our emotions and spirits are connected to these subjects. Currently, she is working on a collection of poetry that intersects environmental concerns with the human condition. Originally from Bucks County, PA, she now resides in Phoenix, AZ.
CESSPOOL NO.3 REFLECTIONS
CESSPOOL NO.3 REFLECTIONS
the end of another month. in the city, heat relief centers extending their operations to meet the lingering swelter. in the world, bombardment persisting, expanding. and here, in the smallness of a sunday morning, a third cesspool experiment [our second at the lovely paper jam + print]. this iteration with a single featured sharer, june, who wowed us with her hand-dyed textiles and her swirl of poems. importantly, her voice invited other voices. in addition to reading some of her published work, she [with claudia as a quick volunteer] tried out an "echo poem" with her and claudia's voices interlacing. at the close of june's forty minutes, she also offered a small box passed around with "eyes closed" stanzas cut up and waiting to be picked. we each were delighted with the lines we'd chosen [or, perhaps, which had chosen us]. then, collectively, we brought the poem into the room through our mouths. after the chills subsided, we moved to open sharing, with in-the-works poems and test-stripped photos finding welcome in encouraging ears and eyes. soon, without realizing it, we were all chatting, talking, nibbling, laughing. in community. together.
the end of another month. in the city, heat relief centers extending their operations to meet the lingering swelter. in the world, bombardment persisting, expanding. and here, in the smallness of a sunday morning, a third cesspool experiment [our second at the lovely paper jam + print]. this iteration with a single featured sharer, june, who wowed us with her hand-dyed textiles and her swirl of poems. importantly, her voice invited other voices. in addition to reading some of her published work, she [with claudia as a quick volunteer] tried out an "echo poem" with her and claudia's voices interlacing. at the close of june's forty minutes, she also offered a small box passed around with "eyes closed" stanzas cut up and waiting to be picked. we each were delighted with the lines we'd chosen [or, perhaps, which had chosen us]. then, collectively, we brought the poem into the room through our mouths. after the chills subsided, we moved to open sharing, with in-the-works poems and test-stripped photos finding welcome in encouraging ears and eyes. soon, without realizing it, we were all chatting, talking, nibbling, laughing. in community. together.
echo poem in action
doodle vision
June with her textile [photo: Claudia]
CESSPOOL NO.2
sun. june 23rd, 2024
11am-1pm
@ PAPER JAM + PRINT
[parking across the street at North Kenilworth Veterinary Care]
featuring:
Shantia Elise + Angie Dell
flyer here
CESSPOOL NO.2
sun. june 23rd, 2024
11am-1pm
@ PAPER JAM + PRINT
[parking across the street at North Kenilworth Veterinary Care]
featuring:
Shantia Elise + Angie Dell
flyer here
photo by Shantia Elise
shantia elise
shantia elise
gush glimpse
Shantia shared some songs that are in-process, and engaged in conversation with those present about their relationships to food, cooking and lineage.
gush glimpse
Shantia shared some songs that are in-process, and engaged in conversation with those present about their relationships to food, cooking and lineage.
some "who" context
Shantia Elise is a Black Queer multifaceted child of Southern land. A 4th Generation Black Arizonan educator, activist and creative here to learn with and heal her bloodline one conversation at a time.
// instagram
some "who" context
Shantia Elise is a Black Queer multifaceted child of Southern land. A 4th Generation Black Arizonan educator, activist and creative here to learn with and heal her bloodline one conversation at a time.
photo by Brian Bender
angie dell
angie dell
gush glimpse
Angie shared their interest in scent memory and efforts to make multi-sensory books. With an option to get “nose-on”, we explored smell and its intersection with pleasure and play, as well as with loss and forgetting.
gush glimpse
Angie shared their interest in scent memory and efforts to make multi-sensory books. With an option to get “nose-on”, we explored smell and its intersection with pleasure and play, as well as with loss and forgetting.
some "who" context
Angie is a queer and nonbinary book artist and writer who makes zines, artists’ books, prints, and other literary objects through Shut Eye Press, part of Phoenix’s Paper Jam + Print collaborative print studio. They also teach classes in creative writing, visual storytelling, and book-making techniques to people of all ages. From the Midwest by way of the East Coast, they are interested in false memories and the ways we choose our stories, and in making this desert and this body home.
// website + instagram
some "who" context
Angie is a queer and nonbinary book artist and writer who makes zines, artists’ books, prints, and other literary objects through Shut Eye Press, part of Phoenix’s Paper Jam + Print collaborative print studio. They also teach classes in creative writing, visual storytelling, and book-making techniques to people of all ages. From the Midwest by way of the East Coast, they are interested in false memories and the ways we choose our stories, and in making this desert and this body home.
// website + instagram
CESSPOOL NO.2 REFLECTIONS
CESSPOOL NO.2 REFLECTIONS
a second gathering. some faces again, some faces new. hosted generously in the life-filled paper jam + print space. now full-blown summer. still full-blown destruction in gaza and beyond. on this sunday, here, in "phoenix," we held space for sense memory. the joys, the nostalgias, the complications, the strategies. we heard of kitchen recollections, chickpeas turned to dolls, and the smell [or not!] of chitlins and menudo. we learned how a freegan eyes the stray cheese on the platter and about pouring hot water over banana peels. there was talk of imitator sauces and food journeys both personal and collective. then, to our ears' delight, a guitar connected to an amp for the first time and songlight emerged. adjacent to taste, we next entered smell [or vice versa]. our nose, we agreed, could be a portal. one swift wiff then "wait, where am i?" as one of us said, "it's all very swirly." we talked scent journals and then used carefully cut scrap paper to sniff bottled potions calling to mind blackberry pie, fresh-cut wood, and the ET ride at universal studios. did our nostrils read the labels? or did they make scent-sense on their own terms? while smelling, we began sharing a new slew of projected projects and burbling ideas. here's just a glimpse: anagramatic heat-hate/hated-death masks, echo poems, multivoiced ensemble novels, and web-mediated collage poems, etc. and to remind us, as always, of the earth, there was shared tree wisdom, calm rooting, and lavender clouds. finally, to create a physical memory of our time together, we combined thin foam doodles we'd made to create a collective print on angie's 100-plus-year-old chandler & price press. prints in hand, we said our goodbyes and went back to the rest of our lives.
in the words of featured sharer, shantia, "I am truly so grateful for the space and what everyone brought into it, I'm excited for the next one!!"
same. can't wait!
a second gathering. some faces again, some faces new. hosted generously in the life-filled paper jam + print space. now full-blown summer. still full-blown destruction in gaza and beyond. on this sunday, here, in "phoenix," we held space for sense memory. the joys, the nostalgias, the complications, the strategies. we heard of kitchen recollections, chickpeas turned to dolls, and the smell [or not!] of chitlins and menudo. we learned how a freegan eyes the stray cheese on the platter and about pouring hot water over banana peels. there was talk of imitator sauces and food journeys both personal and collective. then, to our ears' delight, a guitar connected to an amp for the first time and songlight emerged. adjacent to taste, we next entered smell [or vice versa]. our nose, we agreed, could be a portal. one swift wiff then "wait, where am i?" as one of us said, "it's all very swirly." we talked scent journals and then used carefully cut scrap paper to sniff bottled potions calling to mind blackberry pie, fresh-cut wood, and the ET ride at universal studios. did our nostrils read the labels? or did they make scent-sense on their own terms? while smelling, we began sharing a new slew of projected projects and burbling ideas. here's just a glimpse: anagramatic heat-hate/hated-death masks, echo poems, multivoiced ensemble novels, and web-mediated collage poems, etc. and to remind us, as always, of the earth, there was shared tree wisdom, calm rooting, and lavender clouds. finally, to create a physical memory of our time together, we combined thin foam doodles we'd made to create a collective print on angie's 100-plus-year-old chandler & price press. prints in hand, we said our goodbyes and went back to the rest of our lives.
in the words of featured sharer, shantia, "I am truly so grateful for the space and what everyone brought into it, I'm excited for the next one!!"
same. can't wait!
CESSPOOL NO.1
sat. may 18th, 2024
11am-1pm
@ THE BACKTIRE
[aka RG's home]
CESSPOOL NO.1
sat. may 18th, 2024
11am-1pm
@ THE BACKTIRE
[aka RG's home]
mural by Jeff Slim
maryhope|whitehead|lee
maryhope|whitehead|lee
gush glimpse
maryhope shared from an in-the-works book review of Tránsito/Transit, a collection by the Mexico City-based poet Claudina Domingo.
gush glimpse
maryhope shared from an in-the-works book review of Tránsito/Transit, a collection by the Mexico City-based poet Claudina Domingo.
some "who" context
maryhope|whitehead|lee is an unexpected denizen of the northern sonoran desert. whether writing a poem, creating a collage, designing a zine, assembling a handmade book, stitching a pañuelo, or beading a canvas, it is her desire to create arresting and compelling images, both aesthetically and emotionally. a descendant of the ship, she resides in the weather of the wake. look for her work on Instagram @mhwlee_collage.
some "who" context
maryhope|whitehead|lee is an unexpected denizen of the northern sonoran desert. whether writing a poem, creating a collage, designing a zine, assembling a handmade book, stitching a pañuelo, or beading a canvas, it is her desire to create arresting and compelling images, both aesthetically and emotionally. a descendant of the ship, she resides in the weather of the wake. look for her work on Instagram @mhwlee_collage.
photo by Rod Ibieta
claudia nuñez de ibieta
claudia nuñez de ibieta
gush glimpse
Claudia shared some thoughts about the role of *nature* in her ongoing process of finding her own voice. She brought some ceramic work, writing, and translation for show and tell.
gush glimpse
Claudia shared some thoughts about the role of *nature* in her ongoing process of finding her own voice. She brought some ceramic work, writing, and translation for show and tell.
some "who" context
Claudia is someone who prefers a slow life. An introverted homebody, she likes to be around books, plants, other creatures, and open spaces. She enjoys the garden, family and friends, reading, music, yoga, and playing with clay. A former bookseller at Changing Hands in Tempe and a kids’ Spanish teacher at a couple of local schools, she’s presently a member of the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective in Phoenix and in slow pursuit of her own poetic and literary translation dreams. She’s a first generation gringa chilena and has lived in Tempe, AZ since 1991.
some "who" context
Claudia is someone who prefers a slow life. An introverted homebody, she likes to be around books, plants, other creatures, and open spaces. She enjoys the garden, family and friends, reading, music, yoga, and playing with clay. A former bookseller at Changing Hands in Tempe and a kids’ Spanish teacher at a couple of local schools, she’s presently a member of the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective in Phoenix and in slow pursuit of her own poetic and literary translation dreams. She’s a first generation gringa chilena and has lived in Tempe, AZ since 1991.
CESSPOOL NO.1 REFLECTIONS
CESSPOOL NO.1 REFLECTIONS
here, a time of yellow blooms. skirting 100°F. the city bracing for another dive into summer. a time, also, of roiling energy and grief and determination in the name of life in gaza. and here, on a saturday morning, in the smallness of an invitation, a few chairs, and some snacks on the counter, a time of beginning for cesspool. a time of meeting one another "in the midst of." together, we shared and listened and wondered and [hopefully] found mutual nourishment. here, some glimmers from our conversation[s]:
- rabbit-moon rabbit-holes
- reading a recognized city
- earthquake after-images
- creating as food
- the power of the micro-review
- nesting in new ecologies
- remembered august winter-light
- ceramic garden imprints
- reading as listening, as reverence
- index-carded natural memories
- unsmoothing to recover grooves
- cloud-hopping trout in the making
- a search for an unknown home-word
- disciplinary darting
- first shirts and first translations
- a mid-mend keffiyeh
- airbrush bag embroidery
- me? an artist?
- catching the book bug
- [re-]generative waste
- belief in the scraps
all told, this first cesspool was a lovely swirl. echoing back are some additional reflections by those who joined:
"these kinds of gatherings help me keep my gravitational balance" -- "thanks to the prismatic reflections swirling in cesspool no.1, i think i may construct my review of Tránsito/Transit as a poem" [maryhope].
and in the words of claudia, "the cesspool is full of life-giving atoms." may they continue to blend and burble until the next one <3
here, a time of yellow blooms. skirting 100°F. the city bracing for another dive into summer. a time, also, of roiling energy and grief and determination in the name of life in gaza. and here, on a saturday morning, in the smallness of an invitation, a few chairs, and some snacks on the counter, a time of beginning for cesspool. a time of meeting one another "in the midst of." together, we shared and listened and wondered and [hopefully] found mutual nourishment. here, some glimmers from our conversation[s]:
- rabbit-moon rabbit-holes
- reading a recognized city
- earthquake after-images
- creating as food
- the power of the micro-review
- nesting in new ecologies
- remembered august winter-light
- ceramic garden imprints
- reading as listening, as reverence
- index-carded natural memories
- unsmoothing to recover grooves
- cloud-hopping trout in the making
- a search for an unknown home-word
- disciplinary darting
- first shirts and first translations
- a mid-mend keffiyeh
- airbrush bag embroidery
- me? an artist?
- catching the book bug
- [re-]generative waste
- belief in the scraps
all told, this first cesspool was a lovely swirl. echoing back are some additional reflections by those who joined:
"these kinds of gatherings help me keep my gravitational balance" -- "thanks to the prismatic reflections swirling in cesspool no.1, i think i may construct my review of Tránsito/Transit as a poem" [maryhope].
and in the words of claudia, "the cesspool is full of life-giving atoms." may they continue to blend and burble until the next one <3
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