A publicAtion of the old furnAce Artist residency

Vol. 1, issue 3

Aubrey LongLey-Cookspoolspectrum.blogspot.com

bLACk rAinbow CoLLeCtiveblack-rainbow.com

CAtron bookerfreeandfunky.tumblr.com

deborAh wheeLerdeborahalmawheeler.com

george t. gregory Jr.georgetgregoryjr.com

hermeLindA Cortéshermelinda@southernersonnewground.org

JAred dAwsonjaredddawson@gmail.com

ron geibeLrongeibel.com

Featured artists

slAG MAG, Vol. 1, issue 3© 2014 | published by Jon henry – Guest edited by herMAlindA cortés – desiGned by elizAbeth yGArtuA

A production of the old furnAce Artist residency

The Old Furnace Artist Residency is an ongoing artist project curated by Jon Henry. The residency is located in Harrisonburg, Virginia. It is open to all forms of artistry: sculpture, painting, video, sound, conceptual, poetry, fiction writers, critical theorists etc. Special attention is given to practices which are focused on social justice and being socially engaged. Emerging artists are especially encouraged to apply. O.F.A.R. is accepting

residents through 2015. Visit oldfurnace.tumblr.com for more information and to apply.

iNtrOduCtiONJon henry, artist and creator of sLAg mAg & o.F.A.r.

This edition of SLAG MAG is my darling, as it explores the intersections that are foremost in my mind. I might be cheating to I use this edition of SLAG MAG to help tackle the tough intersections of queerness and Southernism. Many have written and exhibited work that examines these individual subjects, yet finding work that examines their interwoven relationship can be harder than finding a needle in a haystack. The lack of knowledge and research on this subject has not gone unnoticed, as recently highlighted in Southerners On New Ground’s recent Small Town Cross Roads publication. I reached out to their Rural & Communications Organizer, Hermelinda Cortés, about this topic. Our conversations resulted in this collaborative edition of SLAG MAG.

I hope this edition adds more to the Southern queer narrative and provides new insights, inspirations, intersections, and investigations. Too often, us Southern queers encounter metanarratives focused on migration to Northern cities or else ones about lifetimes of structural and/or internalized homophobia coupled with severe isolation. While these issues and experiences are important, they are not limited to the us, but exist across the sexual and geographic spectrum. The independent, tenacious, and resilient artists in this edition seem aware of this and their role in making cultural history.

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CAtron booker

Performance Still, 2014Zenda, Longs Chapel, built 1870-1871, at a settlement formed

after the Civil War by newly freed slaves; Harrisonburg, Va.10. 02 X 5.64 inches

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slAG MAG 3Dearest,

Remember the summer I accidentally bit my tongue in half? We were drunk and fought and I jumped out of the truck in the middle of the intersection and fell run-ning across the street,

I hid in the park, curled in an empty retention pond. I spit my blood in a circle around me in case you tried to find me. I could hear the rattle of your engine as you drove back and forth along the street, waiting for me to emerge from the trees. I’ll never forget the tick of your engine, the particular pump of your pistons.

How many times did I run?

You never understood what it was that caused my need to flee. Your anger that I could see unfurling itself from some dark recess and bristling out to each strand of hair, each fingertip, each glance, each breath, each move, each touch, til I felt afloat in a white sea of static that would carry me out the door and down the steps without a coat or shoes on the wrong feet.

The ground would carry the sound of your engine to me – warning that I turn down a side street – hide behind a tree – take the form of a shadow falling from the branches overhead.

My tongue grew back that night I slept in the tall grasses. I came home. I made breakfast. I left the doors open and watched the static puddled on the kitchen floor burn away in the morning light.

I tasted blood in everything that summer.

Dearest,

Your seasons are changing. I always have difficulty in these liminal spaces, the strip of moulding between the linoleum

and hardwood.

Do you remember how Mother cleaned the kitchen floor on hands and knees? Her old, faded, purple kneepads

scuttling as she crawled crab like from corner to corner. The smell of ammonia. The smell of ammonia she would scrub

the floor with reminds me of her. And the smell of onions sweating in butter on the stove. There is a clumsiness of

practicality I’ve inherited from her – a need to lay my hands on the bones of a thing and look its form in the eye.

This space between seasons is all formless and flux. All give. All swerve. Too much possibility doesn’t open doors,

it paralyzes.

I know you’ve had the same dreams as i. there are a thou-sand different introductions, a thousand different varia-

tions, but they all end the same way – you find yourself at a height with the ground rushing towards you. You watch

from a space just off to the side. There is always an anticipa-tion, a waiting, a desire, and then the body meets the earth and a shock travels out along the arms. Out along the legs.

There is a hovering between sleep and awake, a standing in the threshold of your consciousness.

You sense the body safe in bed.

JAred dAwson2014

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Aubrey LongLey-Cook

Brigitte Bidet, Cayenne Rouge & Ellisorous Rex2013

Needlepoint12 x 16 inches

slAG MAG 5

deborAh wheeLer

Mirror, mirror on the wall who is fairest of them all?, 2009, mirror & dildoPrivilege, 2012, water fountain & signageNothing runs like a Deere, from the Womankinn series, 2009, fiberglass, enamel, leather, & a tractorDimensions variable

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ron geibeL

A Fanciful Notion (Installation View), & Everything is Perfect, from the Topiary Series, 2014Porcelain, Wood, Acrylic Finish

Everything is Perfect, 9 x 5 x 5 inches

slAG MAG 7

bLACk rAinbow CoLLeCtive

Jeff Sessions & Elisa Chan, from the Love Letters postcard series, 2014Printed cardstock6.25 x 4.5 inches

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george t. gregory Jr.

Pillow Talk, 2012Yarn, latch hook canvas, & wood paneling

2 x 4 inches , 48 x 72 inches

slAG MAG 9Mañana Voy a Correr

What if we make the biggest mistake?

Except it only seems like a mistake in the moment.

Thirty days later and you’re good as oro. You almost forgot that it happened at all.

That’s what you kept trying to tell them, kept trying to explain.

It’s not them it’s your life.

It’s the bill collectors and the hustling to make a living and the fucked up doctors and the car tires that you can’t afford

and the new baby and the everything.

This is your life you say. You say it with desperation

You know that they don’t reallyhear itsee it

feel it, because they can’t.

That is the biggest mistake of all.

Who Will take us?What if I’m queer and Latin@ and SouthernIs that shit allowed?Because I don’t live in a world of Chicanos or of movementI live in a world of my peopleWho judge meFor my femininity and masculinity all at onceWho judge meFor the men and women that I love to love and that I love to hateAre we allowed?To identify?When so many of our people are here?But they’ve left too…To go to places that they say they belong toI wonder where we belong?The queer the half- brown the Southern the working poor

WHO WILL TAKE US?

CueritosPig skin friedbut just for some of us.

hermeLindA Cortés2014

oldfurnace.tumblr.com