6/18/26 - 6/23/26: It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.
6/18/26
What would it feel like to be an active volcano?
They’re famous for their dramatic expressions that cause death and destruction. But it’s natural and they don’t need to be on mellow-out medication or see a therapist to manage their volcanic emotions.
Everyone pays attention to volcanoes because of the power they possess. They’re famous because they’re dangerous. A serial killer might get famous, too because they’re dangerous, but a volcano also possesses that which a serial killer does not: a majestic beauty like no other.
The volcano spews, and changes landscapes permanently. If volcanoes had their own public relations spin team they’d reframe it as reinventing landscapes. The volcano is dangerous but everyone is fascinated by them and they travel far and wide to study them and take their picture. I would love to see an art show with every picture of a volcano in existence. I wonder how big of an exhibit it would be. I'd title it Volcano Cinema.
6/19/26
I randomly started making two large vases tonight. I worked on them side by side at my table. I was thinking about volcanoes, and my life, and cancer. And they kept getting taller and taller. I used the rest of a bag of recycled clay I still had from my old studio. It was still moist as hell. They’re the biggest vessels I’ve made out of clay so far. I really hope they survive the kiln fully intact.
The more I was working on them, the more they started reminding me of the spouts of a volcano. I like thinking of vases as representing a volcano’s most expressive body part.
6/21/2026
“There isn’t a moment better than right now” says suddenly-chill-as-fuck Samantha. My head is on the pillow and I’m listening to ocean waves from a phone and the whirring of two fans, and the cars outside going to wherever they may be going to. I don’t tend toward chill-as-fuck mode, especially nowadays. The anxiety of cancer killing my mom weighs too heavy. Finding time now for anything that relaxes me is akin to sifting my way out of wet cement: the pressure is on, time is limited, and peaceful decompression is nowhere to be found, except for maybe a split second brought on by pure delusion. The pressure feels heaviest right now, and I sometimes feel like I can’t breathe.
6/23/2026
I just finished my first essay review in response to the first lecture of the online class I’m currently taking on African American art history. I got it in an hour before it was due tonight.
To relax before bed I plan on watching Werner Herzog’s volcano documentary and either drawing, or embroidering on a mixed-media painting I’ve been wanting to finish.
My mom’s next immunotherapy treatment starts next week. My brother is moving back to California in order to help and I’m scared as fuck because the side effects will likely be similar to the first time she had immunotherapy, and that was the most excruciatingly frightening time.
Herein lies my first imperfect, likely long-winded, essay response for my class:
Lecture #1 - Review/Essential Things I Learned
The history of African American art cannot be fully understood or discussed without understanding the long, non-Eurocentric history of the Americas deeply rooted in the subjugation of the African people, first brought against their will to the U.S. by a Dutch ship in the seventeenth century. The full scope of the African people’s interaction with the Americas, though, occurs long before their enslavement, and long before the chaos of Columbus. The fact that African American art has long been left out of educational textbooks in the U.S. is testament to the far-reaching, malevolent, powerfully long-lasting effects of colonialism.
Notably, the deeply deleterious enslavement of the African people limited their ability to express any true creative freedom, with some limited exceptions. Instead, artistic skillsets including metalwork, woodcarving, weaving, carpentry, blacksmithing, and later on, portraiture, were used solely in the advancement of the United State’s Eurocentric focus toward self-sufficiency and homogeneous self-aggrandizement. Later on, African American art was used toward the goal of freedom, helping propel forward the crucial abolitionist movement.
Slavery has a long history prior to its existence in the United States, beloved among a myriad of cultures, including the Ancient Greek and Roman Empires back in the 1st century A.D., and Islamic Africa from 1400-1800. The Portuguese got involved in the slave trade as well, in the 1500’s but then lost control to the Dutch. In 1619 a Dutch ship brought twenty West Africans to the British colony of Jamestown, and thus began slavery in North America, largely thought to be the most degrading expression of it by far.
There is cogent metallurgical, etymological, and a myriad of physical evidence, including the Olmec heads carved by the highly influential ancient Olmec civilization, that shows people from Africa traveled to the Americas long before Columbus ever did, living in symbiosis with the indigenous population. In reality, all Columbus did was bring chaos to America, ravaging an entire population by way of disease and murder, and then laying claim to its discovery. And so sets the stage for the beginnings of America, and its insalubrious obsession with subjugation in the name of progress.
Growth of the early colonies in America was almost entirely reliant on the intelligence, skillset, creativity, and laborious physical effort of enslaved African people. Many of the early and most notable architectural feats of America were built by African American slaves, including the White House. They also built most of the plantation structures, service buildings, churches, etc. Though the African American slaves’ creative freedom was deeply stifled by the creative prison of European aesthetic appeasement, there were various ways they were still able to, sometimes ubiquitously, express their artistic Western African heritage. One of the most widespread examples of this expression is through their ironwork, not just at the White House, but all over the United States in the form of gates. The repeated motif in this ironwork is called sankofa. It is a West African Adinkra symbol from the Akan people of Ghana. It translates as “to go back and fetch it”. It speaks to understanding the wisdom of the past in order to understand the present and build the future. A free one, not an enslaved one. It is a deeply profound motif.
All artistic skillsets that were considered useful, and even lauded, during colonial times were done by African American slaves with no outside competition until the nineteenth century. Examples of some of the most revered artistic skillsets of the time were metalwork, woodcarving, weaving, carpentry, and blacksmithing. Pottery at the time, also called colonoware, was additionally an important skillset the enslaved community was adept at. They made it for themselves since tableware was not provided for them, and it was another way they were able to express their West African artistic identity within such excessive repression.
Any continuation of ignoring the full scope of U.S. history, including it’s long, excessively detrimental history of enslavement and how that complexly effected African American art, only serves to perpetuate antiquated colonialism, pushing America back toward the detestable and harmful past. Any sort of societal progress is not true progress if it comes from the hateful, damaging, long-lasting subjugation of a group of people. Sankofa says it all so simply: look to the past to learn, and then move forward to build a better, loving future. As the Akan phrase states, “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”
