MMXX Technical Distinction

“MMXX” was born out of a casual comment I made as I contemplated the year that was. I was thinking that amidst the chaos of a global pandemic and a tumultuous year in the United States, good things still happened. Babies were born, weddings went on, a lot of us found moments of joy and personal achievement; we got things done against the greatest of odds. Surrounded by a great deal of loss, either personal or global, and needing to think about and consider the consequences of history, racial injustice, capitalism, equality, and colonialism, among others, “You really had to dig to find the bright spots,” I said. I was unmotivated to decorate for the holidays, and wrapping presents that I would not deliver personally was difficult. But there they were, little bits of festive color, while everything felt dark and the sense of loss weighed heavily as the numbers climbed to unthinkable heights. And then the inspiration came to make a mosaic where you really have to look for the bright spots.

“MMXX” uses variations in andamento, the way to make lines in mosaic, to give voice to those feelings and ideas. Hiding the color in pockets only seen from the sides, the otherwise all-black mosaic has only one line which goes all the way across the work, uninterrupted. For some that will be the pandemic, for others political turmoil; for some, personal hardship, and for others the constant thread of a history much longer than a movement. Every other line is short, truncated, or otherwise interrupted, to represent the daily onslaught of news, the lives cut short, the void so many of us still feel, the unexpected turns when something even more shocking would happen.

I knew some things, like the global pandemic, called for some large bold pieces. I knew some of the materials needed to shine a little brighter, to stand in for the salient points in a year full of urgent news; that the killing of black people, simply for being black, needed to stand out in the work, perhaps as elements going entirely against the current; and I knew that the steady stream of terrible news, chaos, and escalating nonsense would just have to fill the rest of my “canvas." I needed to speak with some slang, some formal prose, some loud words, and some whispers, and the occasional, or perhaps frequent, frustrated swear, punctuated by the occasional silence.

Yet, through it all, there was the strength of the human spirit, the support of loved ones (often from afar), the grace and strength of so many, the unexpected bits of joy, keeping most of us going. The fluid lines of the work aim to represent not just the roller-coaster we all have been through, but our ability to adapt, re-invent and somehow make it to the other side, honoring those we lost and hoping and working for a gentler, kinder future.