Libations to Joyful Community in Tragedy

On the morning of Saturday, July 25th, in Madison, Wisconsin, I look at the upcoming weather, the impending return of a heat dome, and the weather app is prompting me with a hook question about whether the wildfire smoke will return.

My mind wanders as I drink my coffee, windows open as the humidity of a soon-to-be hot day drifts into my apartment, reflecting on a whirlwind of a week. It’s been a combination of joy, sorrow, hope, and despair. Last Thursday I was preparing for an art show at the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, with an amazing group of fellow artists from across Wisconsin, creating a lived environment for our art to be experienced. Coming home on Sunday evening, preparing for my work week and to partake in another art endeavor with a group of community-based artists in Madison, Wisconsin.

Monday was a harbinger of the week to come. In my check-in meeting with my boss, I learned the funders of Wisconsin’s new chapter of the Youth Civic Accelerator preferred to outsource narrative communications to a contractor, shifting priorities, and my position was being eliminated. I pondered if I was going to participate in this fellowship with an artist community we built here in Madison. Yet, through the disconnect of a cell-phone screen, they opened up their warmth to me, and made sure to know I still had space. In doing so, I chose to participate, kicking off a week-long residency named after a friend who helped shape this community and who recently moved.

I moved into the space on Tuesday, tired and anxious but present. It was already filled with evidence of life; 14 other people had already set up their workstations on Monday. Trinkets, art, photos, comfort, and food were abundant. It was still early; three other people were there- friends and chosen family, and they welcomed me in. They helped me find a space for my temporary studio. Something peeked past my vision: a crafted crown atop a fake skeleton for anatomy study/drawing. I rolled across the floor on my studio stool, my vehicle for the week, and wore it in irony, yet it became a source of strength and community found in whimsy. I rolled to a fresh pot of coffee, poured us cups, raised them high to our sleepy selves, and cheered libations. The day became one of naps, art, and community over food.

As Wednesday came, I rode my bike to the neighborhood grocery store, the Willy Street Coop, and picked up some spicy cheesy bread for others, along with snacks and lunch. Within an hour of my arrival at the gallery from the store, Corey Ruiz, a Black man who was homeless, was shot in the street as he was taken to the ground by the Madison Police Department. A block away from the killing of Tony Robinson, on a cold March evening in 2015. Memories of helping lead the organizing efforts; the pain, the unresolved trauma, flooded back. A wound that never healed for many of us, ripped open once again.

A space of joy grew in sadness. The gallery was a short walk away; friends and fellow artists came and went, joining the growing protests and following the vigil. We created in pain, but also found warmth in each other, finding good news in food and community.

We sat in silence, disconnected from one another; feet away felt like miles as Thursday afternoon came. The air was stale; sorrow sat like a thick fog. Something needed to shift, so I went hunting for something. I came across a spare cut canvas; it had two squares, and a black stencil like trees painted on it. Grabbing some red and green paint, I wrote “Everything is Fucked, But, We’re Here,” and grabbed everyone’s attention, telling them we have to acknowledge what we’re feeling, the pain, the hurt, all of it. We have to get it moving, but we’re here with one another. I asked that it become a space for us to write, draw, paint, whatever we’re feeling.

As the day moved, artists came in to paint, and community members came in and out during our open studio hours. The canvas began to fill with words, and a warming glow of a winter fire grew, transforming the sorrow. Yet we each individually came and went to the growing memorial location, protests, and vigils. Coming back to the good news of community and food.

Friday, Friday was our last day together in the space called Commonwealth Gallery. We cleaned up our areas and prepared for the closing reception to showcase art created that week, art created long before, and art in progress. The community was invited to add to the canvas. We also had a painting we created as a group and community that night; we are raffling off and donating the money raised to Voces, an immigration organization. A night of music, food, joy, art, hugs, warmth, community, and libations.

The people dwindled; the night slowly came to a close as we gave hugs and shared love. Flowers were given and accepted. As we trickled out, some individually, others in small groups, we paused at the vigil, the flowers given and accepted were laid to rest; the canvas was placed at an altar of grief, where a wider community was embracing one another in the streets of Madison. Libations.

Corey Ruiz, a homeless Black man who had a daughter, family, and friends who cared about him— he breathed in the wildfire smoke many of us could escape indoors. He had to fight to find cool air as a dome of heat sat on top of the city. He had to find shelter from car-destroying hail. His life was already disposable to our society, deemed to suffer for our global sins of decadence, burning away the habitat that granted us the ability to flourish. His fate was sealed before three shots rang off in broad daylight, half a second after an officer yelled taser, taser, taser. What is another vagrant gone, one less panhandler, one less person we have to avert our eyes from for fear of seeing the inhumanity in ourselves, exposing the lie that is the veneer of civilization.

The same structures and social dogmas that filled our lungs, that Corey could not hide from, are the same that took his life in a different kind of fire. Yet, we’re here. We, those who aren’t scared to look at the veneer of civilization, those of us who chose to see the humanity in our inhumanity, those of us who chose to embrace life in the face of death, finding the good news in one another, are here. We’re here, in the light of community, casting aside the darkness like our ancestors used fire to keep predators at bay.

It is these seemingly little moments, of reclaiming our humanity, our belonging to each other, to nature, to our planet and home, that we find our path forward. The commonality of fear, hope, grief, and love. While it is impossible to escape the sorrows of life, together, though, we can forge a new direction, where our air is filled with our faith in humanity, where the hand reaching out isn’t there to push you down before a hail of fire, but a hand lifting you out of smoke-filled pits, and into a hug’s life-affirming embrace. And with the crown still on, I say Libations.