Just Imagine

Everything we have ever created comes from our imagination. Art has always been deeply ingrained in our culture and it has the power to move people to feel which can spark thinking, connection, innovation, and can be a guide to healing. While we face many interconnected crises, we must imagine what a just transition looks like.  

Just Imagine is an ongoing public art exhibit that showcases a variety of pieces imagining a just transition to a better tomorrow. Cooperation Humboldt's Arts and Cultural team is debuting this art show during the Arts Dismantling Capitalism Symposium to bring together our local community and beyond to collectively create a more just, regenerative economy and society.  

Participants in this art show were prompted to submit work inspired by or fitted within the context of the following prompt:  

Imagine a just transition to the next world-

What are the values you want to take with you into a new economy?
What does a solidarity economy based on compassion and caring look like to you?
What does a creative, regenerative, and inspirational future look like to you?

In addition to an artist’s statement for each piece, we have created an inclusive space to uplift social change work being done by participants and have included ways for individuals or groups to get involved. 

We believe everyone is an artist and has a role to play in creating an economy that works for all. With future plans to expand Just Imagine outside of this virtual space, we hope you will join us for this ongoing envisioning of a more just world.

To stay in the loop about the future Just Imagine exhibition and how to be part of it, sign up for Cooperation Humboldt's newsletter here.  

-CH’s Arts and Cultural Team  

Artists:

Alejandro Escudero
Caroline Holmes
Casey Cruikshank + Claire Esselstrom
Daniel Nickerson
Hayley Connors-Keith
Hunter Jones
James Davis
James Woglom
Janelle Marie Brown
Jasdeep Kang
Jennifer Zackin
Jessica Lebert
Lora Jost
Marjorie Feldman
Maryann
Megan Chin
Meghan Hodge
Melanie Schauwecker
Melika Dave
Nich Graham
Paige Rinehart
Rising Up
Ryan Archambault
Sheala Dunlap
Soo Young
Stacey Becker and Richard Register
Teagan Bevins
Winchi De Jesus

Alejandro Escudero

I am a keeper of sacred Native Knowledge, A link in a long chain of creative positive life affirming people. A mestizo born of the violent and brutal attempted extermination of the ancient pre-cristian perspective on how to live as responsible human beings in this sacred garden that belongs to all of us and is not the property of any one person, nation, ideology, religion, creed or what ever other justification the predators want to label themselves with. Everything is for everyone and belongs to no one. Gota de agua means drop of water. That is our world a tiny drop of water floating in space, we are responsible for its well being, not just human rights and equity, but everything else here: human, animal, plant, mineral, seen and unseen a truly inclusive relationship to ALL of creation-not this pathetic sham of so called civilization and greed. Aloha!

Caroline Holmes

Ecofeminist, multi-discilpinary artist envisioning solutions for social, environmental and personal healing with reverence for the Feminine.

Casey Cruikshank + Claire Esselstrom

This piece was inspired by the shapes and colors of plastic debris found on Humboldt County beaches. All of the pieces making up the wave consist of marine debris found in Humboldt County. This was a collaboration between Claire Esselstrom and Casey Cruikshank on behalf of the NorCalBeachClean and the Northcoast Environmental Center.

You can participate in beach cleanups by visiting the Northcoast Environmental Center's website at yournec.org. You can find more information about NorCalBeachClean on Instagram at @norcalbeachclean.

Daniel Nickerson

The earth is wise, and it came first. I believe in the earth's communal nature, because a cow told me all about it once. Thank you for taking a look, hope you are well out there, take care everybody...

Hayley Connors-Keith

As creators of our life we have the power to create our own reality. To create an equitable and healthy future that works for all, we must collectively imagine new systems and ways of being in our society.

I imagine a future that is anchored in love, solidarity, and resilience. Humans are created from the very soil that gives us life- we continue to grow what we nurture. We are a part of an ecosystem that needs to be restored to balance. My piece uses some of 350.org's principles of a Just Recovery; such as putting people over profit and polluters, stopping fossil fuel infrastructure and building back with renewables, protecting workers and providing healthcare for all, and striving towards a Green New Deal.

What do you imagine?

To learn more about 350.org’s Just Recovery principles you can watch We Demand A Just Recovery at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS9-fqMa5Uo. If you’re passionate about wanting to take action on climate solutions, consider getting involved with 350.org and becoming a member of the local 350 Humboldt chapter at https://world.350.org/humboldt/.

Hunter Jones

My name is Hunter and I was born and raised in the DMV. My art is a reflection of my personal experience as a black queer femme in the US today and also seeks to inspire radical structural change. My art ranges from small ink drawings to massive painted murals, to digital pieces created with software. Most of my pieces depict black women in fantastical settings demanding the destruction of oppressive institutional systems and promoting the message of love for people and the environment. ive had my art featured in shows, galleries, virtual exhibits, public exhibits, and key visual pieces in protests. Through my art i hope to create a beautiful and accepting place not just for myself but for everyone who believes that we can create a better world.

James Davis

Using the natural shape of the redwood roots , see egrets, fish ,and eagles etc.

James Woglom

Portrait of Senator Bernard Sanders

Janelle Marie Brown
 

Imagining a New World by Janelle Brown

Imagine a world where we could trust our government to look out for us. Imagine a world where we didn't need to worry when there was a crisis, because we knew they would take care of us. That they had our best interests and wellbeing at heart.
Imagine a world where we no longer divided and conquered this earth and all her of precious gifts. Where we honored each one and took only what was offered, only what we needed. Because we understood that nothing belongs to us, but that we belong to the earth, and one another.
Imagine a world where we weren't expected to work ourselves to the bone, day in and day out, just to have a place to live. Where the land was not dominion but shelter for all. Where we helped each other in the hard times and the good ones, and lifted each other up without the need for competition and the greed it creates.
Imagine a world overflowing with fresh, vibrant healthful food and clean water. Gifts that were not considered resources for acquisition and hoarding, but natural human rights. Imagine a world where we didn't need to sanitize everything because we were so in balance with natural flow, and so pure of heart, that we no longer knew the stress of overpopulation.
Imagine a world where we could marvel at the beauty of nature, without having to protect her from human greed and destruction. Where medicines came from the plants around us and the wisdom in our souls. Where we could gather in community for ritual and ceremony to celebrate the sacredness of all that is life.
Imagine a world where we worked together, cooperatively, for the benefit of all beings, life, and the earth alike. Where we honored the sacred in every-thing, both within and without us. Where separation was no longer the foundation of society, but cooperation and loving kindness became the rule.
During these times of reflection and pause, I find that I can imagine such a world. A world where we could start afresh and go back to some of the old customs and ways of this land. Before our ancestors came to divide and destroy her until global pandemics and environmental crises reigned with a looming vengeance.
She is waiting for you in your wildest imaginings, beckoning you to call her forth into being with the infinite power inherent in your soul. She is ready to reemerge from the ashes of a western civilization that is anything but. The question is, can you even imagine such a world? Or has the collective grind of day to day life denied you such visions and taught you they were but fantasies?
Personally, I'd rather imagine such a world than face the collapsing one I find myself in. I hold both truths in my heart, regardless, and choose to believe that such a world is still possible, if we would all only stop and let ourselves imagine. And surely, it cannot be created until be begin to let ourselves imagine such a world.

Janelle Brown is an artist, author, and guide dedicated to helping survivors of trauma heal their wounds and tap into their creative life force to pursue the lives of their wildest imaginings.

I took down my vast amount of published essays last year as, I was being exploited by my publisher. This was one of them. Happy to share it. I will be re launching myself on YouTube soon. As a re-invisioned new ‘spoken word’ project. So, no links just yet!

Jasdeep Kang
 

Jasdeep Kang is a multidisciplinary queer artist based in NY, born & raised in Yuba City, CA focusing on film, photo, music and fantasy. She highlights expressions of care through her work whether it's care for self, care for community, or care for a cause.

I've been offering free video editing workshops through an organization called Public Fruit, in hopes of sharing skills and creative resources with emerging artists. Additionally I've been organizing with a group in creating space for Queer Sikh Artists to share their artistic practices.

Jennifer Zackin

In 2016, Jennifer Zackin initiated Re:Seed Saugerties an art and soil building social sculpture. With this opportunity we built a community around a 70’ x 100’ corner lot in the village of Saugerties. On this piece of land we built soil, an earth tattoo, shared food, built seed sculptures and participated in Chickenarama performances. We hosted over a dozen public gatherings from sheet mulching and planting nitrogen fixing plants with the Boys and Girls Club, Seed and Food Shares with the Long Spoon Collective, Seed Sculpture Labs with Adam Zaretsky, Oath of Growth, I am the Keeper of Smallest Plant action with Carrie Dashow, Chicken Dancing with Linda Mary Montano, and two community offering ceremonies at the beginning at end of the growing season with Adolfo Ibáñez Ayerve. In 2016 Re Seed Saugerties was supported by an Artist grant from Arts Mid Hudson.

In 2017, after the initial year of soil building the Underground Center continued my concept and use the garden as a teaching garden with The Boys & Girls Club and local youth. A local church who cooks meals for the Boys & Girls Club uses the food from the garden for those meals. https://www.jenniferzackin.com/re-seed-saugerties

For the last 20 years Jennifer Zackin has been integrating public art, sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, ceremony, photography, video, collage and drawing into acts of reverence and reciprocity. Whether wrapping trees in patterns of brightly colored rope, growing medicinal herbs in a public garden for public use, offering large masses of rose petals to oceans and lakes, creating absorbent tentacles ("hair booms") out of salvaged materials to aid in the clean-up efforts of toxic spills, Zackin seeks to engage and create community in her process, bringing art and ritual into everyday life. Every act is an exploration of exchange, communion, performance, skill-sharing and mark-making.
https://www.jenniferzackin.com/public-art

Jessica Lebert

Open PDF

A value I would like to take with me into a new economy is time. Time is so much more valuable than a monetary income. Time to connect, build relationships, spend time with family, watching our children grow, time in nature, time on hobbies and inspirations is so much more valuable than a paycheck, that is often received in exchange for forfeiting these very necessary freedoms. I create my art in order not to afford luxuries but to create beauty, to create more space and time in my life so I can experience this sense of freedom. A solidarity economy I envision includes stable living environments, where we can gather in community in order to beautify, build, grow food and be integrated with nature. An existence where art is encouraged. A place that nurtures all of our inner artists so that we can birth a generation that is not afraid to share its innate gifts. The future I see, is in the belief that we all have something beautiful to offer wether it be our sense of service, duty, care or our creations. This is the most inspirational of all! The thought of a future where we are all in the realization of our personal power, freedom, expression and sharing that personal offering is ABUNDANCE!!! This means that as long as we are all giving, we are simultaneously ALL RECEIVING.

Lora Jost

some values towards a new economy: time, listening, and connection

Marjorie Feldman

I painted this portrait of George Floyd as a Tikkun Nefesh, healing of the soul an essential Jewish teaching. Surrounded by marigolds whose aroma can entice the spirit to a resting place this piece also celebrates Los Dias de los Muertos.
My hope is that as we witness grave racial injustice we can find courage to open our hearts to deep change.

Maryann

Peace & love. Things we desperately need now.

Megan Chin

As a multi-racial artist, I've always been fascinated by how individuals are drawn to group themselves together despite differences. Fulfilling a sense of community is more challenging than ever during the pandemic while the path forward seemingly demands unity. What if unity isn't the answer but instead compassion? My creative practice envisions the balancing act of connecting to others with care while also taking care of oneself.

Meghan Hodge

The images that serve as the blueprint for our future rely on our ability to speculate, and when my mind seeks to curate the symbols for a place beyond our current reality, I see the natural world opening to us and through us, as spaces to be explored thoughtfully. There are so many intricate and remarkable natural systems around us that can teach us how to live in solidarity with our ecosystems. Opening doors that lead us to relationships of rhizomatic connections can guide our ethics and feed our imagination. I believe in confidently following the pendulum swing of creation and destruction, reality and fantasy, mind and body, life that grows around us and the life that we grow within ourselves. If we are interested in something new, we must peep through keyholes of different perceptions and bring our observations back to earth to service our shared dreams.

Melanie Schauwecker
 

The beginning is simply the cosmos in a seed: a connection to the self, listening to the breath, to the sensations in the body. The root that grows is a connection to the land, listening, listening, and moving forward from there. A moving mandala, radiating with joy from seed to fruition in a circular pattern, a reflection of the cycles of seasons, growth and decay, life and death, activity and rest; as well as the interconnectedness of all things. And all the while, the sound of the ocean waves, continuous, ceaselessly ebbing and flowing.

Melika Dave

Melika Dave is a NY born and based multi media artist largely interested in the overlap of the abstract and representational. She combines color, symbols and shape to create poetic stories that capture vibrant and reflective moments.

I've been organizing artists workshops through zoom that have been proven to be affirming and encouraging space for artists, writers and musicians and aims to operative within the spheres of solidarity and community.

Nich Graham

Letting old habits decompose so I may tend the soil with regenerative practices. I am not the sum of my parts, I am whole.

Paige Rinehart

"Cult of the Individual" is a piece I imagine as the armor of a warrior who is dismantling the capitalist system and wants to send a message as they do it. A message that highlights the mistakes of greed and individualism that used to run rampant while building a world based in community and care.
*Photography credited to Mark Mckenna
LOUD Platform has an ongoing textbook drive, to donate visit their website: loudplatform.org

Rising Up

During this pivotal moment, let’s not forget history that lead us to this point. Equality arises out of equal opportunities and equality opportunities bring forth a community that will thrive through diversity.

I work as a Center Director for Headstart. We work to address the basic needs of families. You can get involved helping families and working with children through Headstart by contacting Northcoast Children’s Services.

Ryan Archambault

During this pivotal moment, let’s not forget history that lead us to this point. Equality arises out of equal opportunities and equality opportunities bring forth a community that will thrive through diversity.

Sheala Dunlap

I make lost wax bronze cast sculptures by following a series of methodical processes. I start by taking wax molds of myself, toys, nature, and repurposed items that I assemble to make a full composition. This new wax motif undergoes a series of alchemical processes that include other elements such as drywall, sand, silica, and fire! As I go through the cathartic motions of fabrication (cutting, merging, fusing, submerging, sprinkling, firing, melting, pouring, shattering, grinding, and sandblasting), I am experiencing the allegorical cycles of creative transformation. By deconstructing and reconstructing I am keeping what is sacred and tossing out the tainted. I do this to break down the subservient ideologies that are oppressive to women by incorporating animal symbolism that is fierce, powerful, and strengthening. With the immortalizing quality of bronze being the final product, a new eternal mythos is born.

Keeping spaces clean through organized trash bash sessions, reconstructing with upcycled materials to support a positive community function such as using scrap metal to create a bench for a park.

Soo Young
 

Stacey Becker and Richard Register

Two Views of the Arcata Plaza – Stacy Becker and Richard Register - 2021

A local shining example of a community dismantling capitalism is the Arcata Farmer’s Market on the Plaza.

Local produce and goods, with free music, in a chain reaction with surrounding local businesses, neighborhoods, campus and plenty of surrounding forest, marsh and environ.What better local place to start with a vision of what could be?

On larger, more conceptual scales, ecocity design can inspire alternative economies and equitable ways of living in balance with nature by creating solutions to some of capitalism’s greatest downfalls: waste, plundering of natural and community resources for private gain, inefficient land use, fossil fuel/car dependency… Ecocities should: “Employ economic and management structures which embody principles of social justice and equity. Ensure equal rights and access to essential services, facilities and information. Alleviate poverty and create work opportunities.”
[*Urbanecology.org]

Stacy Becker. Arcata Farmer’s Market, 2008

Arcata sets such a wonderful example of a city working hard to build sustainably, both environmentally and socially/economically, and they’ve been doing it for many years.

I painted this scene to share one of the joys of this area…

Find out more:
https://www.cityofarcata.org/
https://www.equityarcata.com/
https://www.northcoastgrowersassociation.org/
The Food Chain Reaction from a Farmer’s Market (designed by Shayla Bailey)

Richard Register. Arcata, California - Future Plaza, View to Hills, 1994

This drawing was commissioned by the late petroleum analyst turned anti-oil activist Jan Lundberg, who lived in Arcata at the time.

I’ve added a diverted creek, pond, birds and fish and widened the view up to the hills by removing a few buildings on the northeast corner. I’ve added a second row of buildings (above the pink line) that rise two to four stories above the existing front row of two to three story buildings, to show a lively density. The idea is to add very substantially to the in-town central population so people don’t have to drive cars, have paved parking and all the other problems of cars, but can simply walk a short distance to town facilities and conviviality.

The bird on the President McKinley statue actually landed there while I was sketching; the statue, now gone, has birds and that spot awaiting a new concept…

Find out more about Ecocities:
https://www.ecocityworld.org/
https://ecocitystandards.org/ecocity/
https://www.urbanecology.org.au/eco-cities/what-is-an-ecocity/
 



Teagan Bevins

I am a multi-media artist who incorporates nature elements in whatever way fits to the art. In my jewelry work, I take natural found objects and cast them in sterling silver to create wearable work that capture moments in time. The delicacy of nature with the durability of metal encompasses an ethereal, yet powerful story behind each piece.

Winchi De Jesus

Winchi is a Filipino-American multimedia artist who's work is based off exploring love and other complex emotions. They are fascinated by art processes as it parallels the patience needed to reach a certain mental peace.

About the piece: Titled: Flower Flames. A photogram gives a space for flowers to last forever instead of just a few moments of time. By creating, I'm leaving a part of me and the identities or ideas I hold close to my heart on this Earth.

My work can be found on my website winchilovesyou.com

I've recently made it a goal of mine to release zines every month of this year and want to collaborate with more artists as the year progresses :). If people are interested in joining this endeavor they can email me at winchidejesus2@gmail.com. I also respond to personal messages on instagram: @winchilovesyou. I'm active about my art process on there as well if people are interested in following that journey. I would also love to host little writing circles on zoom in the near future.