BIMA is excited to announce a new partnership with Hiatus Magazine, an online compilation of quarantined teenagers’ most creative works. On BIMA’s social media, we will be featuring pieces from Hiatus’ spring 2020 issue featuring works by their teenage contributors created and imagined while sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Any written works will appear here on BIMA’s blog for you to read in its entirety! You can also see all the works from Hiatus’ most recent issue on their website here.

Hiatus is currently looking for contributions for their next fall issue focusing on DEMOCRACY!  Are you a teenage creator? Or do you know someone who is? Submissions are due by November 1. Learn how to submit your work here!

Now on to today’s featured work!

——

six hundred and fifty by Audrey Nelson

Six hundred and fifty words; six hundred

Six hundred and fifty words; six hundred
and fifty, and not one more. I don’t quibble with limits
when I set them, but it’s different when you write to fill them—
or rather, cut to fill them—especially
when you write about yourself,
when you cut yourself away.

You cannot start an essay like a letter.
You cannot acknowledge the absurdity of the task you have been set.
You cannot start an essay like a poem,
like the shape your hand makes
when you are bored and too hot and lying on your back
watching your fist open and close.
You cannot start an essay like an email
to the editors of your magazine; you
cannot start an essay
with a question, a quote, a sound.

Even though from the beginning of your life
questions and quotes have tailed you; even though
you always write with sounds. That’s
the rhythm of your writing and the way it speeds up, slows down,
lives in you like a heartbeat, spills out at times, unleashed.

But the way you write—your hands
too fast to follow, the words falling in
and out, away—has no place in
extracurriculars and boiling-down; no place
in the you that you must make.
You aren’t prepared for reduction because
you aren’t reduced and never will be and
if they want you to be that small and cramped then why
do they want you at all?

You don’t remember stories or the living of them. You don’t remember
fitting a structure, fleshing yourself out,
flashing qualities for a board to comment on.
You write emails. Poems. Sometimes letters
to people you love. You play basketball and
sleep in the car. But you can’t just say that, can you? You can’t just say,
I am exactly like everyone else and yet I am the one you want.

Even though that’s what you mean. Even though
you are secure in your superiority. Even though
you sit in yourself, love yourself,
your rough edges, soft lines. Your heart full and
broken in your chest. Your
mosquito-bite scars. You are aware of the ways in which
you occupy the world; in which your boundaries are defined
and impermanent; in which you are someone
never seen before. Sometimes you even write that down.
But with this you cannot begin
how you’ve always begun—the screen is too small
and beyond it the world is too large.

What do they want? What pieces of you?
Do they want to know that you walk
to the end of your neighborhood at night
when you are useless with that distant static feeling
that accompanies quarantine? Do they want to know that it helps?
Do they want to know that you cry at the piano? And that
you’re Jewish, technically, but distrust all kinds of gods?

Do they want to know that you read at mealtimes or
that you interned on a congressional campaign,
started a newsletter, hung cranes
from the bottom of your bed?
Maybe they don’t want to know that you’re sometimes
so happy that you run around the house, like you’re five instead of seventeen. Maybe
they don’t want to know that.

But cut away the extra and you
are not whole. Or true.
You are someone else and your fit
is forced, like Cinderella’s stepsisters without the blood and gore. Only part
of you is present on that page.

If only you could open yourself
up, words with no end. Not nonfiction captions and chapters but
an inefficient spiraling of you. You the way you know yourself to be.
You going head-to-head with the boys in sixth grade;
you standing shoulders-squared onstage.
You writing poetry about Parkland. You
in homeless shelters terrified.
You a quantity of self, which fills and brims over
and so often refuses to fall.

That skim you lose in six hundred and fifty words—
you know that you’ll miss it
when it’s gone.

——

Be sure to follow Hiatus Magazine at their Instagram and check out all the work on their website here.

BIMA is excited to announce a new partnership with Hiatus Magazine, an online compilation of quarantined teenagers’ most creative works. On BIMA’s social media, we will be featuring pieces from Hiatus’ spring 2020 issue featuring works by their teenage contributors created and imagined while sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Any written works will appear here on BIMA’s blog for you to read in its entirety! You can also see all the works from Hiatus’ most recent issue on their website here.

Hiatus is currently looking for contributions for their next fall issue focusing on DEMOCRACY!  Are you a teenage creator? Or do you know someone who is? Submissions are due by November 1. Learn how to submit your work here!

Now on to today’s featured work!

Content warning: This work references anxiety and depression and contains vivid imagery.

——

disjointed by Natalie Kinkead

My neighbor was born at age eleven. They took the abyss that I’d always lived in, so I had to crawl out of it using the ribs as a ladder and burrow in the chest, where nobody else was living. 

Where the abyss was quiet, the chest was loud. The lungs took up so much space, expanding and deflating, the heart made so much noise wringing the blood out of itself. Sometimes, when the organs angered me, I’d hit the heart to control the endless drumming or squeeze the lungs to make them smaller. Living in the chest ended quickly. 

It took me a year, but I eventually got over the abyss thing. I moved from the chest to the hands, which were quieter, and rocked back and forth. 

After around three years, my neighbor started to drag themselves out of the abyss to keep me company. We played this game where they took one eye and I took the other. We could peer out and admire the world from inside, but it made the body lose its balance and run into things. The body nearly tipped over one time, and I got scared, but it was the first time I’d seen my neighbor smile. They wanted to do it again, but I was afraid enough for both of us and they crawled back into the abyss and didn’t come out or talk to me for weeks. 

So I get along okay with my neighbor now. 

It’s easier for me to stay in one place at one time, but my neighbor likes to settle 

throughout the entire body when they need to stretch. Occasionally they sit in the head and stay there for days, watching for any stray neurons they can squash -I wonder if the head to my neighbor is the chest to me. Everything moves slower those days, so I go to the legs and the twitching toes, just to get some entertainment. 

When my neighbor is in the abyss and the rest of the body is too loud, I explore the bones. It’s pretty nice, but dusty. I started to shake the bones from the inside, just to see what would happen. It terrifies me to do it, but I’m almost addicted to hearing them cracking -sometimes I wonder if I’d feel relief if everything just broke open. 

The other day, the head was too noisy when my neighbor wanted to sleep, so I ran on top of the skull, over and over again to keep it quiet. Just months ago it had made my neighbor pleased, but that day they thought I was only adding to the noise. 

I think I used to like my neighbor more, but I don’t know if we’ve really been getting along as well as I’d thought. Sometimes I want them to stay inside of the abyss forever, but sometimes I wish they were laying inside of the hollow bones with me. 

If they wanted to tip the body over again, I wonder if I’d help them break things open. 

——

Be sure to follow Hiatus Magazine at their Instagram and check out all the work on their website here.

BIMA is excited to announce a new partnership with Hiatus Magazine, an online compilation of quarantined teenagers’ most creative works. On BIMA’s social media, we will be featuring pieces from Hiatus’ spring 2020 issue featuring works by their teenage contributors created and imagined while sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Any written works will appear here on BIMA’s blog for you to read in its entirety! You can also see all the works from Hiatus’ most recent issue on their website here.

Hiatus is currently looking for contributions for their next fall issue focusing on DEMOCRACY!  Are you a teenage creator? Or do you know someone who is? Submissions are due by November 1. Learn how to submit your work here!

Now on to today’s featured work!

Content warning: This work contains vivid imagery

——

Quarantine Dreamscapes by Red Sheets

i.

We are running through a glitched treescape. Segments of the universe keep falling out of place behind my feet. She’s behind us, faceless, claws outstretched, surfing on oblivion. We reach a stump, freshly severed at the hands of a name I cannot place. The rings expand and contract. I stand there, mesmerized, and he begins to count them as they breathe. He keeps losing track. I can feel her getting closer. I am crying streams of pollen, rusty and dry. The ground starts to unravel like threadbare cosmic fabric. He grabs my hand and presses my palm into the center of the stump. I am falling.

ii.

I land in a shower, wearing only frilly socks and Mary Janes. The water is running and dirt slides into portraits of unknown figures on the floor. My hair sags, pulling against my scalp, snakes straining to be free. I shake my hair furiously. Sleeping wasps fall out, one by one, swirling with the dirt. The first begins to stir, and I crush it under my velvet heel. In seconds, I’m maneuvering in frantic zigzags to stomp on them where they land. 

An uncontrollable buzzing beats against my eardrums as one rises alive from under the steam and hurls itself into my mouth. I catch it between my teeth and declare it mine. The others levitate up from the floor and lifelessly follow their kin. Swaths of wasps on my tongue congeal into chewing gum. It expands in a viscous bubble, forcing itself down my throat. I start to suffocate. 

iii.

I am breathing again, my head stuck out the window of a train. It’s running towards a building with millions of lights, dancing in the buttery slog of the dense night air. There are ten other women, dressed in glittering suits of deep indigo. They are chattering with a champagne buzz simmering in their throats. I glance down and see we are crossing a black lake, thick with oil. The train rolls to a stop and we jump from the car, running eagerly to the building. Inside sliding translucent doors, a man with no face asks for identification from us. I shove past him and through another set of doors into a grand hall. Tables bursting with people span for miles until the horizon peters off. I hear laughing, crying, screaming. 

There is a boy sitting in a vortex of silence, eyes boring straight through my skull. I blink and I am sitting next to him. 

“It’s been a while,” he says. 

“Too long,” I reply.

“Did you miss me?”

“I didn’t know you.”

He reaches out to my cheek and suddenly we are suspended high in the obsidian sky, below furious stars. There is deafening, roaring silence, and then I am being kissed. The stars spit on my skin and leave sizzling pockmarks. He tastes of a profound emptiness. They always do. Pyretic fever engulfs my body and I dissolve into the great nothingness.

iv.

I reform in a room filled with mannequins. Thin and petite, they display white silk dresses with decadent, colorful hats. They regard me with an aloof stare. In the corner, a boy is playing a piano, but no sound flows from its keys. 

A finger taps on my shoulder. I turn around and a girl with deep brown eyes smiles without her teeth. She pulls me past the mannequins into a grand ballroom. Above us, the ceiling swims with angels whose eyes remain fixed on us as they groom their wings. An orchestra of ghosts picks up their instruments and crafts a concerto that fills my ears with the smell of saffron and poppies. The girl takes my hand and spins me into an intricate dance that my limbs seem to have a memory of. 

“Who are you?” I ask.

She just laughs.

We move together, intertwined and godly, until our feet lift off the floor and we are bathed in golden light. After orbiting for hours in harmony, I grow a boundless joy, followed by the shattering clarity that we cannot stay like this forever. 

The instruments clatter to the ground, exploding in a cacophony that shocks us from our reverie. I begin to weep at the loss of beauty, and the girl wipes my tears before they hit my cheekbones. She lifts up my chin and regards me curiously before stepping away and tearing off through a gilded door frame that appears just as she runs through it. I stand up and sprint after her. Our shoes barely touch the ground as I chase her through a thousand different hallways. She runs wildly, knotting through this labyrinthine mansion of specters. Rooms shutter by in my peripheral vision, snippets of distinct enclaves filled with distorted mirrors, marble statues, and vague, human-like shapes and whispers. She stops in front of a dark wooden archway carved with runes. I catch up and she leads me into a vast room, walls lined with innumerable books. We settle down together on the frigid, glossy floor and she holds my head in her hands. 

Her form takes on a glassy transparence. I clench my fists, nails digging deep into my palms, willing her to stay. She wraps her arms around my neck and sobs into my chest. Waves of torment and fear crash from her into me, and in that storm, she whispers her name to me. She lifts her head up and begs me to remember, but I have already forgotten. I can feel my body beginning to rot.

I try to tell her I love her, but my tongue falls out of my mouth onto the floor. 

v.

The aroma of stale exhaust fills my lungs, and I open my fresh eyes to a glittery smog. Someone familiar stumbles out of the haze. His long fingers are mindlessly playing a small toy harp, emitting chords containing secrets that bind themselves into my spine. I recognize his jagged smile, always drunk on eternity. His pupils are star-shaped and his nose is sharper than I remember.

“Come in,” he says, and we collapse into each other, tumbling down to the ground. Our arms extend into thick vines and they twine around one another sadly. 

“Where have you been?” I ask. Smoke billows from my mouth.

“I am always everywhere,” he responds. His teeth jump from between his lips and dance above us in the air. I watch in a muted awe as betraying words find their way up my ragged throat.

“I need to let you go.” My skull cracks open and my brain crawls out, scuttling onto the floor. I reach for it, but it slides away before my fingertips touch it.

I settle into a new fuzziness, muddled and serene. Warmth spreads through my body and I settle into the safety, if only for a little longer. He laughs and stretches his vine-hands toward the sky, pressing through the ceiling and wandering into infinity.

——

Be sure to follow Hiatus Magazine at their Instagram and check out all the work on their website here.

Micaela Green, BIMA’s Membership and Museum Events Associate, got the opportunity to chat with exhibiting artist Betty Pasco recently to hear more about her and her fascinating work featured in BIMA’s current exhibition Fiber 2020. Betty Pasco is a Suquamish Tribal Elder, who works in Salish-style wool weaving, often using natural dyes made from local plants and lichens. The headdress on display is in collaboration with her husband Duane Pasco, a local artist and wood-carver. Check out the full interview below!

Betty, what can you tell us about you and your work?
My husband is an artist of Northwest Native art, studying mainly by visiting museums in Canada and the U.S. There were no books or galleries back in the time of his research. There were few people, mostly Native, seeking knowledge at that same time and the few became fast friends, together seeking artifacts in museums for this was their only way of learning, as there were no old teachers left to teach.

The art I do is to honor the ancestral weavers whose works are left in museums. Having a basic bit of knowledge of spinning, wool dying and the Salish style of weaving has me in awe of the weavers of the past. Do their designs have meaning, are songs sung while weaving, who is the weaving made for, what do the vibrant colors represent and what natural materials were used to achieve the dye? My message is that my weavings are a glimpse of the past and there is so much knowledge in the ancestor’s weavings that we will never know.

From whom have you learned most about art-making… and storytelling?
My grandmother wove cedar and spun wool to knit but never offered to teach her children or grandchildren. There was no storytelling in our quiet house.

I met my husband when I was the age of sixty two. He was creating art, interested in the culture of the many peoples of the world, spoke many languages, knew the history of all cultures of the Pacific Northwest and the world. He is constantly relating information about everything. He encouraged me in weaving and I signed up to take a two day class from Susan Pavel in natural dying and used the dyed wool to weave a twelve inch square Salish weaving. I was hooked and Duane encouraged me to weave. He already had books on every kind of weaving. He built me looms of every size. My husband is my inspiration and I have never considered myself a storyteller.

The headdress on display at BIMA is a collaboration with your husband, Duane. Can you speak to the collaborative process between you two during the creation of this piece? Can you also to speak the inspiration of this piece?
Not learning the traditional ways of gathering materials and preparing them, my sister and I went to a place grandma gathered sweetgrass. We were told we could gather enough to fill a plastic garbage bag full. When we arrived at the gathering place there were other weavers there gathering. We saw how they took the reeds from the plant and we copied what they did, filled our bag and headed home. I remember how grandma washed her grass and using an old wringer washer, ran the reeds between the rollers to press the water out of the reeds. Alone the next morning I set about to wash the reeds with a water hose. Having no wringer washer I used a rolling pin to press the water out of the reeds. My sister’s yard is surrounded by tall cedar trees. The crows landed in the trees where I was working. They started “cawing” at me as I worked. I thought of grandma, who had long passed. I smiled and said out loud “OK grandma, I’m doing the best I can”. I felt all my weaver ancestors were up there taunting and laughing at me. When I told this story to my husband, he said, “They are your “Spirit Helpers”. Well, he decided to carve me a canoe that would be mine and name it “Flock of Crows” in the Lushootseed language. When he finished the canoe, he said I needed a frontlet to wear in the canoe. Duane said he would carve the crow frontlet and would I weave the headband that the carving would be attached to. So I did weave the headband, lined it with felt and sewed a calico cloth liner which makes it comfortable to wear. So that’s the story of the frontlet headband. It really goes with the canoe but we couldn’t get the canoe in the elevator or up the stairs for the exhibit.(kidding)

What aspects of your artistic process are critical to you, from which you never deviate?
I do not deviate from an old pattern such as the Skokomish “dog” design, the “unfolding fern”, the “connecting spirits” designs and other named designs i would not change but there are designs that have no interpretation that I have used for my own interpretation, such as my “pawning salmon” robe that is on display at the Suquamish Museum. I don’t think there is an aspect of my art that I wouldn’t consider deviating from. How would one progress or improve any effort or skill we embark on?

You have talked about recreating patterns from weavers 200 years ago or so, but also not knowing the specific stories. Where is your heart and mind while working with these patterns? Why is it important to work with these older patterns?
Looking through books of older weavings, there were two that I was especially drawn to. The colors used, the flowing pattern designs and the composition of the whole along with the fine weaving technique made me want to put my hands to her work. I wanted the connection. I believe every artist takes inspiration from another artist and learns from replicating the piece and/or the other artist’s style.

You lived away from the Puget Sound area for more than thirty years before returning—have any of these places had any influence on your work?
While married to my Navy career husband took me to many places on the East Coast and Midwest, I never felt compelled to search out cultures or art of the regions. I was too busy raising my children. I wasn’t doing much of any art. I was sewing clothing for my school-aged children. I have not related my travels in the weavings I do today.

Describe a perfect day for you.
A perfect day for me and I would hope for any artist, would to be surrounded by children wanting to learn. My sister and I mentored a girls group, teaching them some of what we learned from our grandmother. (Remember, our grandmother never offered to teach us anything. As a grandma, I wanted to share whatever I knew.) The girls were from the ages of ten to sixteen. This was for Indian girls, “coming of age”. We cooked fry bread, dug clams on the beach, made clam chowder, wove cedar bark strips into little baskets, quilted baby blankets for the Tribal foster care babies, wove wool regalia and their own dresses to wear to the” Gathering of Nations” in Albuquerque. The girls organized fundraisers through yard sales and one fundraising salmon dinner with performers to sing and dance to raise funds for the trip to N.M.They loved the canoe my husband had carved. They practiced two or three times a week in all weathers and practiced “cold water training” by tipping the canoe over and righting it, bailing it out and being under way in less than 15 minutes. They paddled it (native style) kneeling on the bottom of the canoe the whole 31 mile “Paddle to Tulalip” as the first all girl’s canoe, the youngest crew and wearing the Salish woven dresses and headbands they wove themselves. Needless to say they were a hit. One girl, a 14 year-old was dancing in the bow, arms outstretched sprinkling eagle down on the water (to calm the waters) as they paddled before the viewing stand.The swell of the ovation they received as they came into view brought tears to our eyes as Duane and I watched from the support boat out on the water.

Eager to learn is the hook for me. These girls (all young ladies today)were great then and are all role models in our tribal community today.

My second “perfect day” would be to sit at the knee of the weavers of the past.

What are you working on next?
I am at this time working on a project for a gallery in Seattle. The theme of the show is “Salish Sea.” My weaving won’t be anything like the one at BIMA.

Lastly, as an artist, why is it important for members to continue to support arts organizations such as BIMA?
The importance of BIMA is much more than a history lesson. BIMA opens your mind to worlds of imagination. Each exhibitor in the Fiber Art show has a story to tell. I would think it would make a fascinating book or video, made for a child to awaken his imagination. Just as I wonder about the weaver who wove the robes I so admire from three hundred years ago, I wonder about the mind of the fellow who saw all those life forms in the feathers and then cut them out so precisely to set them free to their own possibility. I love the mind of an artist.

Micaela Green, BIMA’s Membership and Museum Events Associate, got the opportunity to chat with exhibiting artist Ko Kirk Yamahira recently to hear more about him and his fascinating work featured in BIMA’s current exhibition Fiber 2020.

Ko Kirk’s work is a unique approach to minimalism through deconstruction– he painstakingly unweaves threads of lightly painted canvas until he has transformed the surface into a draping, dimensional form. Check out the full interview below! 

Could you please introduce yourself to our audience?
My name is Ko Kirk Yamahira, and I’m a painter who lives in Seattle. What I’m showing in Fiber 2020 is work I’ve made specifically for the show. With fiber spun from the past into the present, grasping cultural, technical and artistic aspects from a range of different viewpoints, with a multitude of points that connect to form lines, I imagined the ways they would interweave to form a plane along with the range of work being shown in the exhibition as I made the work.

I’m very happy to have the opportunity to take part in such a fascinating exhibition.

What do you want people to know about your work?
I would hope they might get a sense of intersecting movement between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional.

You’ve lived in a variety of places– has that influenced your work?
I think it has. I mean that objectively. And at the same time, I mean it subjectively too. I feel like, for instance, there could be some pretty subtle factors involved with that. Like, for example, the floaty sensation that seems to encompass you the moment you take a seat on a comfortable stool of aromatic wood.

Deconstruction is a key piece of your process, how did you arrive at that? What does it mean to you?
I think it’s close to being something like a perspective on approaches to grasping or considering things. It links to a process where points connect to form lines, lines form planes and take on three dimensions; the three-dimensional form becomes a point once more, the points connect to form lines… It’s like, everything is connected, and it’s a matter of whether you take a subjective, objective, or relative approach in your view.

How do you know when a piece is finished?
Partly it’s just getting a sense of it, but it can also involve physical limitations, like running out of threads to unweave.

Who are some artists that you admire?
There are many, including some from mediums other than painting.

Describe a perfect day for you.
I’d hope to be able to say any day.

Where is the best place you’ve ever been?
There are still so many places I haven’t been yet, it’s hard to say, but it would be hard to choose even from among the places I am currently familiar with.

As an established artist, why is it important for members to support arts organizations such as BIMA?
I feel that there is something associated with the continued interaction between the many different people involved, with the links that form between people.

To bring up what the meaning is might lead to the expectation of a concrete answer, but I’ve dared to think of it as something. Answers are forever fluid.

But that could maybe be seen as stemming from the fact that we ourselves are fluid. And I’ll add that by something, I mean something really charming.

See more from Ko Kirk Yamahira at their website and on Instagram.

In celebration of the Art Speaks online festival, we asked our currently exhibiting artists what they’ve been reading while at home for the past few months. Check out the long list of titles BIMA artists has been enjoying below!

Looking to get a copy of one of the books? We recommend ordering through our friends at Eagle Harbor Books or Bookshop.org to support local independent bookstores!

Carolyn Terry, All Sorts (No Licorice!)
The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larson
The Olive Grove at the Edge of the World by Jared Gulian
Flat Broke With Two Goats by Jennifer Mcgaha
Cover Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl
Infinite Stars edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
The Not So Big Life by Sarah Susanka

Denise Harris, Works from the Permanent Art Collection
This is Happiness by Niall Williams

Dinah Satterwhite, Bainbridge Island Studio Tour Artists
A Museum of Extraordinary Thing by Alice Hoffman
Chocolate for a Woman’s Heart by Kay Allenbaugh

Sophie Frieda, Bainbridge Island Studio Tour Artists
The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where you Want to Be by Jack Canfield

Passiko True, Bainbridge Island Studio Tour Artists
Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic by Michael McCleary

Michelle Johnson (Laughing Cloud Studio), Bainbridge Island Studio Tour Artists
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer series) by Karen Chance

Eileen Sorg, Bainbridge Island Studio Tour Artists
The Art of the Still Life by Todd Casey
Aesop’s Kiwi Fables by Ray Ching

Haden Starbuck, Bainbridge Island Studio Tour Artists
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
What to Remember When Walking by David Whyte
The Body by Bill Bryson
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Gail Grinell, Fiber 2020
The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg
The Curfew and Census by Jesse Ball
The Fixer and The Apprentice by Bernard Malamud
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Plume by Kathleen Flenniken
MTrain  by Patti Smith

Maura Donegan, Fiber 2020
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Ulysses by James Joyce

Zia Gipson, Fiber 2020
Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson
The Art of Twentieth Century Zen: Paintings and Calligraphy by Japanese Masters by Audrey Yoshiko Seo and Stephen Aldiss
The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

Michael Milano, Fiber 2020
This Life by Martin Hägglund

Kathy Dwyer, Fiber 2020
The Bookshop, Offshore, Gate of Angels, and At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald

Lou Cabeen, Fiber 2020
Landfill by Tim Dee
Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
Wheesht by Kate Davies
The End of October by Lawrence Wright
Shelter by Laura Jensen

Margaret Chodos Irvine, Fiber 2020
Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey
Faithful Place and Broken Harbour by Tana French

Jacki Moseley, Fiber 2020
The One in a Million Boy by Monica Wood
The Last Girl by Nadia Murad
Elephant Company by Vicki Constantine Croke
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Kristin L. Tollefson, Fiber 2020
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
Land of Love and Ruins by Oddny Eir

Helga Winter, Fiber 2020
A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

In celebration of the Art Speaks online festival, we asked our staff what they’ve been reading while at home for the past few months. Check out the long list of titles the BIMA crew has been enjoying below!

Looking to get a copy of one of the books? We recommend ordering through our friends at Eagle Harbor Books or Bookshop.org to support local independent bookstores!

Jesse Ziebart, Cultural Programs Manager:
Provinces of Night by William Gay
Icelandic Poetry by Joe Allard (Editor), Sigrún Á. Eiríksdóttir (Editor), Bernard Scudder (Translator)

Kim Seigel, Gallery & Volunteer Manager:
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living the Good Life by Mark Manson

Amy Sawyer, Associate Curator:
How To Do Nothing by Jenny O’Dell
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

Korum Bischoff, Director of Communications & Visitor Experience:
This is Chance! by Jon Mooallem
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Emma Cantrell, School & Youth Programs Manager:
Writers and Lovers by Lily King
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

Sheila Hughes, Executive Director:
Sidetracked by Henning Mankell
Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin by Calvin Trillin
A Higher Loyalty by James Comie

Tricia Pearson O’Neill, Donor Relations Associate:
Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
The Starless Sea Erin Morgenstern

Kristin Lane, Museum Store Manager:
Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris

Stephanie Knutson, Bistro Restaurant Lead:
Words Under the Words &  What Have You Lost? by Naomi Shihab Nye
The Potlikker Papers a Food History of the Modern South by John T. Edge
Educated by Tara Westover

Shawn Baker Gibson, Marketing Manager:
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey

Andrea Williams, Finance Director:
The Name of the Wind & The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle) by Patrick Rothfuss
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Jessica Miller, Senior Development Manager:
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton, Lara Love Hardin
As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

Amy Goldthwaite, Curatorial Associate:
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalani

Micaela Green, Membership & Museum Events Associate:
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and The Wisdom of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Jessica Kehoe, CRM Administrator
The Nighingale by Kristin Hannah
The Last Kingdom of Bernard Cornwell

Laurie Rose, Museum Store Sales Associate:
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
Eat To Live by Joel Fuhrman
The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time saga) by Robert Jordan

Kristin Tollefson, Director of Education and DEI Development:
One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Normal People by Sally Rooney

Scott Farwell, Facilities & Operations Manager:
CDC Guidelines and Washington State Guidelines for Covid-19 volume March, April, May, June by Jay Inslee! 🤣

A diverse collection of spoken word pieces and musical interludes from emerging artists and legends of today and days past, curated by DJ Sidecar (Gary Bedell).

About DJ Sidecar

Gary Bedell is a graphic designer, silk screener, and vinyl DJ residing and creating on Bainbridge Island, Washington. In 2016 he got back into spinning records after taking a 30 year break from stints being a DJ at Skate King and KBCS 91.3 community radio. He spins an enticing collection of classic and neo funk ‘n soul, hip hop, early rock and roll, 80’s wave, jazz, surf, dub, and global grooves.

As a curator, I have always had the impulse to combine music inspirations with an artwork to add another layer of experiencing and connecting to the translation of an art exhibition. Anna Teiche’s solo exhibition Fragments transmits a language of music through immersive colors and patterns counterbalanced with the human figure. Anna describes much of her painting practice as inspired through her community of music and dancing. From this knowledge, I created a playlist that lends itself to the aesthetic of Anna’s idea of home on Bainbridge Island and her artist-in-residence travels in Iceland, Lithuania, and Hungary.

Learn more about Anna Teiche: Fragments here!

Some of the jazz enthusiasts on staff here at BIMA have been really hurting for a jazz fix and we figured you might be too!

While we can’t get together to enjoy some swingin’ music together, we thought we’d put together a playlist of some of our jazz favorites to get your weekend hoppin’!

We hope you’re staying safe at home and we can’t wait to have you back at the museum for a great concert sometime in the future!

Listen to the entire playlist here!