Headspace of Picatso

Discourse about "violence" and "nonviolence" is attractive because it offers an easy way to claim legitimacy. But as long as the authorities are the ones who define what counts as legitimate, this discourse functions to legitimize police violence while delegitimizing anyone who resists it.

For example, throwing tear gas canisters back to the police who shot them protects people from harm. Denouncing those who throw them back as “violent” gives police a free hand to do worse.

This week, we'll be adding our zine "The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy" to mail orders.

Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) observation by eleggua

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

LOCK IN NOW!!💥

Kerry Guinan

Artists, 2019

Series of six blank canvases (70x70cm) signed by the factory workers that made them in Daler Rowney, Free Industrial Zone, La Romana, the Dominican Republic.

Images: Photograph of 3 canvases from the series in the solo exhibition 'Our Celestial Sphere' at Pallas Projects, Dublin, 2019.

Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick Institute of Technology, and Fingal County Council. Images: Pallas Projects/Studios & Kerry Guinan.

(Original caption from artist’s website)

And after contacting the Irish Museum of Modern Art and being referred to a curator (!), they provided me with the caption information that was used when displaying the work for the Staying With The Trouble exhibition in 2025 (thank you so much IMMA staff!!)

Artists is a series of blank, square canvases, each signed by a staff member in the manufacturing facility that produced the canvases in the La Romana Free Trade Zone, the Dominican Republic. The manufacturer, Daler Rowney, is a popular supplier of art materials in Ireland. The artist coordinated the project remotely by contacting the facility manager. The signatories volunteered to take part in the project upon invitation. They are Johan Rivera, Carlos Roa, Aneury Rondon, and Orlando Saldivar.

One category I've been exploring is lace, because I always seem to revert to lace. Knitted lace often has lines of decreases, which distort the vertical columns of stitches into emphasized diagonals. Here is a small swatch of a lace diamond pattern, fairly bog-standard except for the cable crosses at the points of the diamonds. The top half of each diamond shape is framed by its decrease lines, while the bottom half grows vertically out of the YO increases.

By using some False Decreases, it's possible to add diagonal framing lines to the lower edges of the diamonds as well. Now they look more symmetrical, and have a nice kind of crispy-edges effect.

Here are charts for both stitch patterns: