Here But Not Here | poetry and artist book with Cecilia Mignon

“Here but Not Here” is a book length poem written between Cecilia Mignon & I.
Handmade, hand bound, and made out of a back and forth conversation.

As part of the duo art show "Here But Not Here" at MRKT Gallery, San Francisco, in 2024.

The book features poems we wrote using an exquisite corpse format. It was October, and I was spending the month with my mom in Quebec. That's a place where I really feel the veil thinning in the fall. The lake gets cold, the sky is grey, and the forest turns fiery red and yellow. Cecil was in Oakland, where the sky was also grey.
Sharing poems via text felt like speaking into an old toilet paper roll that you're using as a play telephone. They would text me the last line of their previous poem, and I would write use that to begin mine.

It also features images from the show and our process of making the work in it. That looked like many conversations by the ocean and bay, pulling at nylons in a cold damp garage, and meeting up for weekly coffee. Having an art show with your good friend is a great excuse to hang out with them all the time, and to live in an intimate strange world together. People see that world when they come to the show, and it lives on in the work you make. But it's hard to articulate it really, like it's hard to tell anyone what it feels like to be close to another person. What does friendship mean? Doesn't every friendship create its own world, where the two of you are changed?

Limited edition of 40

Images by Julia Fairbrother