Our second collection, Southern Spirit, finds its geographies, inner and outer, in the American South, a place of beauty and decay, deliverance and devastation, faith and fossil fuels. These myriad contradictions and confluences are on full display in this selection of visionary books and prints.
Featured Artists
Adrianna Ault
Dawoud Bey
Harlan Bozeman
Colby Deal
Phyllis B. Dooney
Matt Eich
Rahim Fortune
Gregory Halpern
Curran Hatleberg
Nabil Harb
Baldwin Lee
Harrison Miller
Kristine Potter
Julie Rae Powers
Shane Rochleau
RaMell Ross
Mark Steinmetz
Will Warasila
To be an image that regards the historic South’s impression. To be an index, a document, a testament, a moment, a facsimile, a reference, a distillation, a memory . . . of that physical and nonphysical region. To feel of the South, and southern, like an accent can. To ring the southern bell. Gonggg. To be like infrared, resonating below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Perception: To be a picture of the American south. To be extrajudicial, and lean southern. . . .
To be all the South can be. Or not be, what the South is not. To be portable like the South, the mythology’s international railroad. To be southern bound, directionally speaking. . . .
RaMell Ross, excerpted from “Slangless,” Southern Cultures
Termite moved to Maryland. Jeremy didn’t make it past 20. I left and came back. Sometimes I take an empty lard bucket to sit on and my rod and reel and dig worms in the dirt right there by the river. Ripple from my floater hitting the water the splash of our belly flops off the bridge. Jumping was dangerous, caution said the sign, but nothing back then was safe. We didn’t know nor care what we were risking. One Sunday late afternoon the three of us wet-backed wearing cut-offs hanging out on the steps leading down to the water. Termite talking all grades of his trash and Jeremy off somewhere in his head like always. Sunday leaking slowly away. Quiet coming in and the river to ourselves. Climb up on the trestle for a few more back flips. Somersaulting. I love that word. Bank just a green and brown blur as we waited in the air for the water to swallow us. We all saw the same things. Was it the force of our fall that put us asunder? I like to think no way. I left and came back. I drive down to the river when the sun says, I’m settling. I carry along a couple beers and Roscoe who plays at the water’s edge and muddies the cab with his wet paws. Where you headed now, says Wanda as I’m leaving. We can hear the ghost train on the tracks headed toward the trestle. The river in the last light of late Sunday. School closing in hard, our final bit of freedom. Try as I might now to find it. I hear downstream a branch falling into the water. Us tumbling backwards in pure air. Don’t you wonder what your life would be like had your parents put down somewhere else? And us so close to the river which flows in us still, even Jeremy in the grave. What for the water of a Sunday afternoon in September. Sun turning us the same shade of brown. Tuck your head in and hold your knees up to your ribcage. Time stops for the turning. Not but a single splash.
Michael Parker, in response to UNTITLED, MCMINNVILLE, TN by Ian Edward White
Maybe she would slide pass on her way home from school and see the balloon and me behind it. But first an hours long parade: people yelling out words that turned into wavy noise like when I used to lie on the floor in the hallway and holler down the heat register. Ike and the woman he married who calls herself my mother stepped right over me. Still stepping right over so here I am in the weeds so close to the road that semi’s rattle the chain around my neck. She gave it to me and it was us, our love, and then she left and it was a constant choking so I put the lock on it hoping she’d see how she was taking away my very breath. What little air I had left pushed into the balloon, my rising visible lungs. And the air let out and the balloon shrinking and more honking horns and fuck you loser! and here came a thing of French fries. What did I care? She’d be along in a minute and see me sitting there on the shoulder behind the balloon rising with all that was left of me. Drivers and riders all jeering. They think they can read my thoughts. I’m not thinking anything at all. It’s only love that swells the sweet-tasting rubber and waiting makes it droop. I’m not moving. She’ll come along directly and she’ll see the white world rising my breath heated by the fire burning my body. Car traffic backing up behind her and oncoming cars pulling onto the shoulder look up there at the old boy floating she’d feel my breath turning to wind blowing her hair back baby I’m breathing love into you come aloose no more cars or roads to carry us we make our own way across ponds and pines aiming straight for cloud.
Michael Parker, in response to OFF HIGHWAY 441, GEORGIA/NORTH CAROLINA STATE LINE by Mark Steinmetz
Closing Reception
Saturday, February 1
5–7pm
Join us for the closing of Strata‘s second collection. Drinks from our buds Rick and Jona @yarrow.in.luck.
Strata Editions
18 Business Park Road
Unit 1C
Livingston, MT 59047
Opening Reception
Saturday, October 26, 2024
4–8pm
Join us for our next exhibition, Southern Spirit, at our new home in Livingston, MT.
Strata Editions
18 Business Park Road
Unit 1C
Livingston, MT 59047