“Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.” —Maya Angelou (1928–2014)
How can we expand opportunities for each other while changing harmful systems?
All of us leave a mark on the world in our own way. Possibilities may seem intangible when we work alone, like many of us did during the pandemic. Working in community unlocks unexpected potential in our work. Being in solidarity with a shared sense of accountability and a vision for a brighter future put my skills to work for the greater good.
Gone, Not Forgotten, 2023 video collaboration with Michael Hart and Ren Davidson Seward as a metaphor that describes an interior landscape of loss and transcendence.
Graphic video evidence for the brutal slaying in broad daylight of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23, 2020 was covered up by local law enforcement and prosecutors for 74 days, while they argued that the shooting was “justifiable homicide” due to an alleged and unsubstantiated robbery. Sifting through the media bias to find the facts of the lynching triggered an outrage in me that led to synthesizing the facts of Ahmaud’s murder down to a few words. I began examining the facts of other fatal police encounters and found 8-13 words was enough to expose the pattern of unspeakable injustice.
Martha Swan, director of John Brown Lives!, the official friends group of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid, invited me to install 17 signs adjacent to John Brown’s Adirondack home on Juneteenth 2020 as a public statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter. I did not expect to continue writing narratives for the next four years. A Memorial Field into a shattering look at the history of racially-motivated violence in policing that some described as: “emotionally-stirring,” “a reverential space for remembering and reflecting.” For A Memorial Field to “bring contemporary relevance to the John and Mary Brown farm”—a hallowed place where the abolitionist is buried alongside the remains of eleven of his foot soldiers who died fighting against slavery at Harper’s Ferry—was motivational. “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” said journalist, suffragist and civil rights activist, Ida B. Wells, 200 years before Ahmaud’s tragic murder. Her way proved to be my way not to carry the weight of such hate crimes on my spirit.
I am indebted to Martha and Commissioner Kulleseid’s team at the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation—Alane Ball Chinian, Cordell Reaves, and Yolanda Bostic Williams—endorsed the installation during a time of international outrage, understanding that the history of violent assaults on Black bodies is enough to motivate us all to join the ongoing struggle for civil rights in America, not write our truth out of American history. To that end, I created a second installation, “Spiraling ‘Round the Promise of the Right to Vote.” It demonstrated how police violence and voting rights are inextricably entwined in America’s systems of oppression to prevent people of color from full participation in the franchise, another subject pivotal to the John Brown story in the Adirondacks.
A long list of friends, collaborators, facilitators, and accountability partners follows in quasi chronological order of the moment their support fed into a steadfast commitment to the work. For each of you, I have boundless gratitude.
—Ren Davidson Seward, artist
Peter Seward
Jerilea Zempel
Nancy Sinkoff & Gary Dreiblatt
Nell Painter & Glenn Shafer
Martha Swan, John Brown Lives!
Benita Law-Diao
Alice Paden Green
Linda Friedman Ramirez
Amy Godine
Brendan Mills, Cheryl Craft, John O’Neill, and the staff
and volunteers at John Brown Farm State Historic Site
Cordell Reaves
Yolanda Bostic Williams
Charlie Burnham and Fred Cash
Kathy & Arthur Morey
Eleanor Stein and Jeff Jones
Tiffany Rea-Fisher, artistic director, EMERGE125
Erica Blunt, composer, Twelve45
Daesha Devón Harris
Ellen Driscoll
Steven Manning
Jane Haugh
Betsey Thomas-Train
Archie Shire
Tom Morello
Stephanie Ratcliffe, Director, The Wild Center
Ellen Bettmann
Curt Stager and Kary Johnson
Paul Hai, Timbuctoo Institute
Anna Forsman
Aaron Mair
David Goodman
Nancie Battaglia, photographer
Fred Balzac
Dr. Louis J. DeCaro
Dr. Martin T. Tyler and Mignon Tyler
Peter Neill
Marie Campbell, Blooms by Marie
Bear Fox, singer, songwriter
Russell Banks
Raoul Peck
Bella Desai and Christopher Mulè, Creatives Rebuild New York
Kathy Bonavist
Shawndel N. Fraser
Mike Bishop
Michael Hart, filmmaker
Mark Hofschneider, Counterpoint Media
This project is made possible with funds from John Brown Lives!, Dr. Alice Green’s Center for Law and Justice in Albany, and Creatives Rebuild New York. Additional support was received from the Statewide Community Regrants program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts.
