because because

Senga Nengudi’s performance-based sculptures and installations explore aspects of the human body in relation to ritual, philosophy, and spirituality. 

Nengudi coaxes form out of ordinary nylon stockings by pulling, twisting, and knotting them to create pendulous sacks or tautly outstretched limbs. These bulging, flesh-toned, anthropomorphized abstractions suggest the resilience of the human body. Like molted snakeskins, they retain the “residue” of the body and the “energy” of the wearer, suggesting the fragility and sensuality of flesh itself.

Günther Uecker, Sculpture, Paint, nails, canvas, and wood

“Maybe it’s that we think of a request for help as a single ask, a moment of taking advantage of someone else’s goodwill,” she writes. “But this isn’t the only way to think about it. The other way, the more interesting way, is that a request for help is a step toward community, a way of tramping down the brush and the brambles. But you have to trust that others will also step toward you.”

That’s where it’s tricky sometimes. It’s not easy to trust that people, especially casual acquaintances, will step toward you when you’ve practiced the impossible art of being fine on your own your whole life.

The problem is we need each other.I’m still learning how to do this. I don’t always know what I need or even how to ask those closest to me for help sometimes. But the “small care” in my life is an excellent teacher. It’s a daily ethic of connection, with quiet and pauses that make for an ongoing exchange, not a one-for-one trade. It’s a slow, instructive build towards something great and enduring.

An Apple a Day is a ballpoint-pen drawing made on a paper plate by African-Nova Scotian artist Harold Cromwell (1919–2008). This piece depicts everyday life in rural Nova Scotia, as drawn from the artist’s memory.Cromwell is the most widely recognized African-Nova Scotian folk artist in Canada.His art documented life in rural Nova Scotia for more than 50 years. Cromwell used simple materials around him to create his drawings: he drew on plain white paper, paper plates and even the furniture in his home.