Writing, etc.
wassaicproject.org
I’ve led a redesign/build of the Wassaic Project website twice. Once on Squarespace, which was a mess, and again on Webflow, which is much less of a mess. It’s a passion project that I’m proud doesn’t scream passion project. It’s just a normal website that runs fast and asks you to donate a lot. Designed by Studio Bueno, as always. Take a look.
Wassaic Project Fundraising
I write most of WP’s main fundraising materials, including our Annual Appeal, Annual Report, donor solicitation letters, and benefit invitations. I work closely with our designers on all these—filling in their lorem ipsum, managing edit rounds with WP staff, selecting images, fact-checking numbers, etc.
Jack Arthur Wood Jr.
Artist Interviews
From 2018–2021, I interviewed artists for the Wassaic Project. For each one, I researched everything I could, wrote a few questions, conducted a ~60-minute interview (and sometimes a ~30-minute follow-up), edited the transcript down to ~2,000 words, worked on final edits with the artist, laid out pages with photography, and published them on WP’s site, or sometimes in a print publication.
A selection:
Jack Arthur Wood Jr.
Phoebe Wang
Liz Nielsen
Aisha Tandiwe Bell
Yi Hsuan Lai
Dana Robinson
Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw in Hamburger Heaven (Waiting for god(ot)), 2021
Exhibition Texts
I’ve written the introductions to our exhibitions for the past few years. We give our artists a lot of free rein, so I try to establish a mood with these intros rather than cram everyone into a curatorial box.
I also edit artist statements for use throughout our shows. Artists are usually a lot, lot better at talking about their work than they are at writing about it, so usually a phone call or two can cut through the art lingo grab bag to get to what they really want to say.
Decks
I do a lot of behind-the-scenes work on intro decks for donors and granting organizations, sales decks for art buyers, board reports, all that.
I’ve run the Wassaic Project’s Instagram for 4+ years. We’ve never had a social media firestorm during my tenure and I am good at saying no to all the post ideas you need to say no to to keep an organizational account from nosediving into engagement hell. I’ve also done freelance Instagram management work for an ELLE 100 architecture/design firm.
Publications
Secret of the Friendly Woods
In the spirit of Rex Brasher, painter of birds and Wassaic local, this is the second annual publication I edited for the Wassaic Project. Designed by Studio Bueno and printed by Small Editions, this limited edition softcover book features an embossed wood grain cover, gatefolds for larger works, interviews with artists, and a few secrets: coloring book pages, a fortune teller, a cut-out paper rabbit, a map of Wassaic. There are 41 birds hiding in there, too.
Now, more than ever.
When the pandemic hit, we took a show that was originally curated for our gallery and turned it into our first book. It features more than 150 works by 67 artists alongside interviews, essays, and poetry. Designed by Studio Bueno and printed at Small Editions, this limited edition hardcover volume includes gatefolds for larger works, a debossed cover, textured paper, and a fabric bookmark.
I finished editing it while scream-singing the same Stevie Wonder song on loop alone in my house in a 48-hour trance state.
All Out / All In Newsprint
During the pandemic winter I decided to stop mainlining Deep Space Nine episodes and put together a newsprint catalog for our winter show, All Out / All In. It consists of nine interviews with each of the artists in the show alongside photos of their work.
Art at Home: A Workbook
Throughout the pandemic, I worked with our education team to create free online art lessons with former WP artists-in-residence. This workbook features versions of some of those lessons alongside several new, print-only lessons. We’ve distributed thousands of free copies to local schools, and a Spanish version is on the way.
wrkxfmly Handbooks
Working Assumptions’ wrkxfmly program supports students in making photographs and writing captions that explore the interplay of work and family in their lives. I worked with WA’s Education Director to write/edit spiral-bound handbooks that guide students through the program, plus special teacher and teaching artist versions that offer extra advice for facilitating the program. I did a lot of UX writing for the wrkxfmly photo submission web app, too. Since launching, the program been used in 62 schools and community organizations around the country.
Misc.
Danielle Klebes, Disco Summer Camp (2020)
Solstice Potluck
Every year, my friend Danielle Klebes and I throw a big summer solstice potluck in a field to celebrate maximum sun, peak glow, big light, hot damn. I treat this like the olive oil cake Olympics.
Rutherford and Shanks: Ghost Detectives
I put together a ghost detective agency with Catie Dillon and Danielle Klebes for Wassaic Project’s 2021 Haunted Hamlet. I recorded kids’ ghost stories and will be maybe putting them in a ghost story hotline eventually.
Party Invitations
There’s other stuff I could put here, but this is more fun. Below is an invitation I wrote for the Dr. Dr. Bernard J. Brommel Coming-Out Extravaganza in 2021 (flyer by Danielle Klebes). I do all my best writing in the dumbest contexts.
Grandpa Bernie probably considered cremation, having over the last (at least) 15 years of his life developed a casual acquaintance with the pageantry of his own death, but rightly concluded that gay Iowan farmboys with six children, two ph.Ds, and an Emmy stolen from Oprah’s assistant do not fit into urns. No, the soil of St. Mary’s, Iowa for him, into which he was lowered at the end of a carefully orchestrated two-day affair and where he will remain stubbornly corporeal until such time as the Sun at last the Earth swallows and at last To Dust returns him. (As for me, I wear sunscreen every day so that my children might upcycle my skin into supple leather goods to be sold in the black markets of the coming climate apocalypse.)
Bernie's partner of 21 years once told me that his biography should be called Tales from the Glass Closet. For most of my life Bernie was not “my gay Grandpa” but “my Grandpa who is very good friends with Carl, I guess.” He formally came out, yes, in the last year of his life, but this was mostly an event because he wanted it to be. I remember telling him at the time that 86-year-old men have better things to worry about than the opinions of whichever village dullards remained convinced that a 60-year-old man would bear the caregiving burden of an entire family because, by golly, they were just really good roommates. Which is to say, yeah, at that point Bernie was probably afraid of a raised eyebrow at most, but oh well. Him and Carl did a lot of work on the ground during the AIDS crisis in Chicago, being dramatic is fun, he wrote a biography of Eugene V. Debs (i.e. America's last best hope for a socialist utopia), and importing a priest from another state for your funeral and making the homophobic local pastor sit and pout in the back gets you a one-way ticket to Gay Heaven.
So! This will be the coming-out party Bernie deserved. Steal something from your more successful friends. Lie gratuitously. Nobody cares what your job is. People care who you are when you're in front of them at the Schoolhouse from ~9pm to ~2am (or idk, however late you want), on Saturday, June 26th, Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand Twenty-One. Be whoever you want to be, especially if you want to be one of my uncles. Bring friends and then pretend you don't know them or make out with them, there is no in-between. This can be your coming-out party too, if you want. Dance yourself clean or dance yourself dirty, whatever you need. There will be karaoke again, obviously. Reply all to RSVP again, obviously.
jOe
