This past Saturday, I was originally planning to check out the Japanese prints exhibition in Toledo. I’ve studies for my exam ahead. I’ve found a car and a friend who could drive me there. And I’ve informed everybody around me how excited I was to finally be able to see this exhibit…but, wait, Helicon was gonna present a student art exhibit on the same day! And I definitely should help out to set up! Fortunately, my benign friend promised me that he would drive me there during Thanksgiving break, so sorry to disappoint you guys, but let’s just put those Japanese prints aside for one more week. And, here comes the coolest art show, presented by Helicon: Incognito!

Different from the one we held last year at the Warren Robbins Gallery in Art & Design Building, this year’s exhibition took place in a lovely house. This little compromise in location (cuz it was too late for us to reserve any campus gallery spaces) turned out to be a huge success. Artworks, music, a constant stream of visitors, and a more relaxing atmosphere—that’s all we could expect for a remarkable night.

One of the most eye-catching and interesting pieces of the exhibition—trust me, all of them are just fantastic!—5/13, is a installation featuring a collection of jars. Each jar contains certain liquid that represents the artist’s mood of a certain day in May 2013, which is indicated by the date on the label on the cap. It impressed me at first glance because I’ve seen an awesome installation which also featured a series of jars in MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Arts, Detroit) last year during a field trip with Helicon kids. The artist was Kristen Pieroth, and what she did was putting the residual liquids of boiled books into jars. All books that were boiled were the big names like Huckleberry Finn’s Adventure and Pride and Prejudice (I remember? Not sure…).

Anyway, let’s look at these “diary jars”. Jasmine tea. Chips immersed in water. A paper calla lily. It’s enjoyable to see how the artist’s subtle feelings are embodied by liquids of different colors and transparency. And since he/she doesn’t tell us the actual emotions, we could only guess or try to interpret the meanings of the liquids by our own cognition, and there are no correct answers. Moreover, some of them got opaque or volatilized over the past several months, and the objects inside either shrank or corroded. To be honest, this straightforward and candid presentation of the passage of time thrilled me.

 

Sitting on my favorite circle, I am bent

And dangling over a square, with holes

On the sides, a lateral plane in white space, built

With white bricks and white pipes, I sit

Under white lights, listen to white fans

Breathing white air onto my white hands, my

White face. I’ve been throwing white paint

 

At triangles for hours, dripping

And flowing, there are pockets of air for one moment when

I splash at them and snuff

Them out. They go without one word, not

One wet plea, a last will, a sore thumb

Against their fate, a full blink, it must be so fulfilling

To be globular; made of light and true float, lucid

Beads of soap in an iron sink

A glowing ring on the end of a wand

in a child’s hand, pockets

Buried underwater, motion stirring them from

Sleep. I want to effervesce and fill myself

And claim one square inch of air, it’s mine

And I will disperse it amongst my form

And I will become spherical. I will be even

And luminous and brimming like

A perfect white, like an even coat

Thrown on canvas or panel, wall

Or window? I am standing in a field

Of white grass before the frontier, I hold color

In one hand, light in the other.

 

I muse on the Creator (standing on the far side

Of the field) making his first circle, discoid

Enough that he surprised himself, and saw that it was good so

Drawing in the deepest breath of all time and curling

His forefinger and thumb into a loop he blew

The most triumphant breeze of all time and all the planets

Went forth expanding into spheres, some landing near

Others of the same charge

And they began to sway, orbit and dancing,

Sonorous all the while expanding

In an everlasting exchange of force

And swelling verve! I like to think of the Creator

As the first Abstract Expressionist, who’s just

Trying to find the true nature

Of his medium, this time on spheres because

Flat surfaces had grown dull. I like to think

He was on a roll and surprising himself and planning

For his spherical masterpiece when he

Looked closely at the green and blue one and it

Was moving. And the Creator

Was so bemused with the little moving things that he

Forgot about his masterpiece.

An open letter, to my former co-worker, who once told me on a rainy day, beside an empty pool, that he would never want to attend my high school. When prompted for a reason, he replied “The Ghettoness of it.”

An open letter, to a sheltered moron.

Dear Moron,

You know nothing of “Ghettoness,” know nothing of the lines between white and black; the juxtaposition of segregated and integrated, of knife fights and rumors of drive-by’s; of cafeterias split almost entirely by race, almost perfectly down to the person.

You do not know, for example, what it is like to form friendships in a homeroom where you are among only a handful of white students, where the first smiling face– one of the most charismatic, kindhearted and unforgettable people you know– tells you, upon first introduction, that at age 15, he is the father of a beautiful baby girl, Tatiana.

You do not know, for example, what it is like to see news reports showing pictures of your friend’s face, with the caption: “Body found in river, died at age 19.”

Most especially, you do not understand the differences between you and I; the subtle contrasts between being exposed to “The Ghettoness” and being isolated from it.

You’ve never realized that coming from a largely black high school does not make you less white. That your understanding of urban public schools and exposure to youth poverty does not make you any less privileged.

You wouldn’t understand that my proximity to “The Ghettoness,” in actuality, makes me farther from it than you will ever be. You wouldn’t understand my non “Ghettoness,” when placed directly alongside real “Ghettoness” removes me entirely from the “Ghettoness.”

You do not know of the lines between the two.

If you did, you would not have said that. You would not have used the word “Ghettoness” to describe a school with a large population of black students. You would not have been afraid to learn in that school, to sit in that segregated cafeteria, to average your friends’ estimates of how many guns are in that school at any given time and land on a number larger than five. You would understand that this estimate, while probably exaggerated, could illuminate in some small way, the issues some of your classmates face. It could reveal the realities of facing discrimination, teen violence, unsafe neighborhoods and assumptions made about the color of your skin. You would realize, that instead of hiding from these problems, witnessing them will actually allow you to live your life in a more enlightened, guided manner.

You may also have to realize that you are taking pride in knowing people who are directly affected by discrimination and teen violence and unsafe neighborhoods and racist assumptions. You may have to realize that you are taking pride at their expense. You may have to be aware of that pride.

The complexities of my school cannot be articulated in a word like “Ghettoness.” They cannot be worked out until we start acknowledging them, understanding them, and realizing when they are misrepresented. You misrepresented my school, you assumed things because of the student body’s skin color, and years later, I’m acknowledging your ignorance.

Please never use the word “Ghettoness” again. You know nothing of the complexities– of the lines between, of the distances from– you and I to the word.

You know nothing of “Ghettoness.”

Your former co-worker.