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Calendar Drawing July 24

Found metal, porcelain shard, and snail shell

2025

Prompt #5: Dérive

Tennessee’s green has rubbed off on me. I go on walks in North Chattanooga, eyeing a lot of black-eyed susans, maples, tulip poplars, and sycamores. Maybe I turn left or right, and the glint of crushed aluminum enters the corner of my eye. I stop to visit with it a while. Maybe I pocket it for later.

For this prompt, go on a walk. Several years ago, I met the artist and professor Leticia R. Bajuyo at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg. She was teaching a workshop titled Collecting Landscapes. The workshop was highly informed by material studies and creating dimensional objects. We would gather items on walks, even bringing materials from our own practices to share with the class.

Leticia taught us the term dérive which is one of the situationist practices advocated by Guy Debord. It’s an unplanned journey through a rural or urban setting in which the surroundings provide information to consider. Dérive is all about playful-construction and awareness.

Here is a Calendar Drawing I made in situ from a brief exploration at the foot of Lookout Mountain in Saint Elmo. It is the result of dérive.

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Echinacea from Tennessee to Texas by Emily Rice

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Echinacea from Tennessee to Texas by Emily Rice

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Echinacea from Tennessee to Texas

Wax crayon, colored pencil, Texas soil, and paper on found metal and brick

47” x 30” x 18”

2025

Echinacea from Tennessee to Texas tells a story that begins with flowers in a former partner’s garden. The frottage elements are from a gate outside of an upscale hotel right on the border in Laredo. Across the street is the town square where many folks from Mexico are waiting with their suitcases to take the bus, find work, be with family, and provide for loved ones.

Echinacea from Tennessee to Texas is an ode to queer relationships, laboring migrants, and fellow scrap collectors who find value in these metal parts for different reasons. It is an odyssey as a sculptural drawing.

I recently had the pleasure of sharing this piece again in my hometown during a Pride month exhibition titled We Were Always Here. Thank you Carlynn, Destin, CQEC, and ClearStory for providing the space for us.

The ClearStory Press Release: We Were Always Here honors the struggles and triumphs of queer artists residing in the Tennessee Valley Area—past and present—while drawing inspiration from queerness in nature and the radical possibility of a liberated future. Through work that is at once intimate and expansive, this exhibition highlights the complexity of life in an LGBTQIA+ body and joyfully envisions a more inclusive tomorrow.

Intended as a bold celebration of LGBTQIA+ identities and experiences, the show features pieces that push boundaries, defy convention, and weave a rich, diverse tapestry of queer life. In declaring that we have always been here, the exhibition is a vibrant act of both resistance and celebration.

Curated by Carlynn Rhodes & Destin Padgett of the Chattanooga Queer Empowerment Collective.

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Detail of Echinacea from Tennessee to Texas 

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Prompt #4: Personalized Time Unit

While the summer pushes on, I again feel as if June has ended before it began. This happens every year for me.

This prompt is a two-parter. The first part of the prompt is to create your own unit to measure and track time. How do you track your days in cups of tea, pages read, doorways passed through, hairs gathered in your hairbrush, etc.? Consider a measurable unit of your own, and stick with it for the course of two weeks.

I often measure my days with patterns gathered, textures I’ve touched or handled, and land I’ve traversed.

Part two of this prompt is to then create a piece inspired by your personal unit. Please document the work and share it here in a new post. Select “+” to upload anything you would like to contribute.

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My aunt Mel sent me my abu's full lentil soup recipe. It looks like she was also playing around with a Chez Lulu recipe she had cut out from the newspaper.

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We have a family cookbook that my mom put together. This is my abu's recipe and handwriting with my mom titling it at the top. I imagine you are meant to simmer lentils in a skillet, but as per my family's recipes, measurements and the complete order of operations are not always indicated. When I simmer lentils now, I add in some spices with oil in the skillet first to let them soak up the flavor. Maybe this is only half of the recipe and one of my aunts has the rest. I will keep you updated.

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Prompt #3: Family Recipes

Between moving from Texas to Tennessee for the summer, I lost track of the time. Now we are in pride month, but there really isn't liberation until all queer folks are free. I have been learning about Elias Rischmawi and their practice this morning. Here is an article from Hyperallergic that you might enjoy.

On Rischmawi's website, I was engaging with their series A Memory of Love & Loyalty. Through this series they are sharing family photos, recipes, documents, and recordings to preserve family history through storytelling. The archive shares their family's homeland of Palestine as well as places they have emigrated.

For prompt #3, share a recipe from your loved ones (this might be your chosen or biological family). If you would like to recreate the dish, please do so, and share the photographs, sketches, or visual documentation in a post. Writers, perhaps you add a poetic component to this prompt. Looking forward to seeing what you share.

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For Lee (La ladrillera)
Found metal and colored pencil on paper

31" x 22" x 6"
2025

For Lee (La ladrillera) is a letter to Lee Lozano. Thank you for investigating the body, gender, and tools. Thank you for your energetic marks and obsessive writing. Darius Hill once told me that obsession is where the art is, and I think there is something to that. This desire to make a thing over and over, and exhausting it fully through visual exploration can become a life’s work.

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Lee Lozano, No title , 1969. Ink on paper, 11 x 8 1/2 inches. © The Estate of Lee Lozano, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

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Prompt #2: Lists Inspired by Lee

As I will be traveling this week, I wanted to go ahead and release the next prompt. Lee Lozano is an artist whose work was introduced to me while in graduate school by my professor, Jered Sprecher. I appreciate Jered's visual tenderness with my practice, especially since those years were particularly emotional for me (moving away from friends/home, the early pandemic, starting an academic jaunt again, big critiques, wrongly diagnosed medical issues, coming into my nonbinary identity, navigating my pansexuality in a long-distance relationship, etc.). His list of references is something I return to with frequency, and I am enormously grateful for those times spent in conversation.

I am a huge list-maker. This prompt is to make a list of five different ideas you want to explore or have explored within your practice. Maybe they are pieces you have made (refer to image), or perhaps they are more future oriented. I tend to over prepare ideas with my lists, trimming away what doesn’t suit me in the moment. Give this a go, and please share your lists or the pieces themselves.

Note: Some folks are participating in these prompts in other formats like Instagram posts or text messages, but be brave. Share them here. Get more eyes and input from makers you might not know. There is value in community.

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If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

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Prompt #1: Write a short poem about the land and provide a visual component (photograph, video, painting, drawing, etc.).

Remember, give feedback to your peers. This is a digital cohort.

-Emily