July 2026

With the country’s impending 250th birthday, I am taking my time to decide how to celebrate. 

I know a piano professor who plans to recognize the 250 years by arranging a week-long program with music written by immigrant composers. Another concert boasts classical music by all American composers. Could they perform the same pieces? 

A small community on the Olympic Peninsula prepares for their 15th annual Interdependence Day to celebrate the interconnectedness that sustains their region. 

Oregon Humanities offers Beyond 250: Conversations About Democracy and Community throughout Oregon to provide space to reflect on our country’s past 250 years and contemplate where we aspire to be in the future. These facilitated discussions have weighty titles such as: Talking About Values Across Political Divides, To What do we Pledge? and Who are We the People?

I sign up for one of their discussions. When I walk into the Corvallis Library, I realize it is not a program where I can comfortably sit in the back and take notes. Nine of us seat ourselves in a circle of chairs to tackle the question: What does it mean to be American?

Our facilitator, Chisao Hata, is a performance artist, educator, arts integration specialist, and third-generation Japanese American living in Portland. Before leading us through activities, she gives us three rules to follow: speak from your own perspective, listen without judgement, and realize that different truths exist simultaneously.

We introduce ourselves with body gestures and feelings. Collectively, we are curious, open, present, thirsty, hungry, fatigued, interested, and alive. We walk through the room with a notecard and pen in hand to answer Hata’s question: When did you first realize you were American? Her words roll around in my mind; I increase my pace hoping to conjure an answer. 

The difficulty of this query surprises me. I don’t have a specific memory when I know I am American. As a child, I identified as being Alaskan – though not Alaska Native – which felt distinct from being American. 

When everyone stops walking to indicate they have an answer, Hata reminds us, “There is no right or wrong response.” We share stories of dads wearing military uniforms, an immigrant getting his American citizenship, and the youngest participant being temporarily separated from her mom to get through customs. I start to feel that my memory of being Alaskan has merit, though I still long for a defining moment that illustrates a greater awareness of others’ perspectives.

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Speak from your own perspective.

Before going to this discussion, I tried to answer, What does it mean to be American? Every idea I thought could define an American also did not. An American could wear red, white and blue and be patriotic, or not. An American could be born or live on American soil, or not. Similarly, Americans could vote or pay taxes in the United States, or not. 

For our next activity, we write one American value on each of three slips of paper, then work in groups to write a single sentence that incorporates all of the values. My group struggles with this and ends up excluding the words ownership and uniform. We write: Americans value a welcoming, free, protective, and open society; however division, selfishness, and greed seem closer to our current practices. 

Listen without judgement.

Hata invites us to a mock cafe for our final activity. Half of us casually converse about the afternoon while the other half listen. Comments include: a struggle to assemble because of different values; a hope for a future that values the richness of our diversity; a need for balance with individual experience; a sadness for lofty values that don’t align with deportations; and a statement that if it was really bad, the country would be emptying out of people. We listen without responding, allowing everyone’s perspective to exist in this shared space, all true.

Different truths exist simultaneously.

We end the discussion with gestures and feelings. As a group, we are grateful, open, present, unsure, contemplative, worried, interested, and compassionate. Wrestling with these topics and hearing the opinions of others feels important. It helps me to decentralize my perspective, a worthy practice that acknowledges our need for one another, accepts multiple truths, and aids in discovering the diverse ways to celebrate 250 years.  

In the spirit of collective perspectives and interdependence, in my studio this month I will exchange altered paper, textiles, or other media with artists to make art that reflects mutual reliance. Outside of my studio, I will explore two upcoming events (see below) to expand my awareness of Latinx culture and representation through monuments.

Happy celebrating!

Sabra

On July 10, Oregon Humanities and the Corvallis Museum will host Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. in presenting Monuments and Memorials: Who, What, Where, When, and Why? 

Oregon Humanities Beyond 250 Conversations: Monuments and Memorials

On July 16, Unspoken / Unseen opens at TAC. This exhibition showcases work by Latinx artists who have selected art they feel is urgent to be seen now. 

Unspoken / Unseen at TAC

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June 2026

The Campus Ramble always surprises me.  I race to OSU on my bike filled with looping thoughts of deadlines, a loved one’s pending surgery, and backyard weeds aspiring to reach the sun.  Upon arrival, my time-lapsed morning is sud…den…ly paused. 

Pause.

Twice a year, photographer Cub Kahn and writer Jill Sisson lead a themed walk to visit some lesser-known pockets on campus, and then host a follow-up gathering to share reflections and images.  Open to everyone, the Campus Ramble, sponsored by OSU’s Spring Creek Project, invites participants to make connections with each other and place.

Feeling disoriented on pause, I inch along like a caterpillar among strangers.  Someone reads a quote drawn from Jill’s magic bag while we stand around a circular patch of grass surrounded by a ring of pavers.  The walk’s theme is circles.  A metal totem-like sculpture stands to the south.  We quietly observe the space, some of us being mindful to capture circles in our photos, writing, and sketches.

At a later stop, I lie along a log and close my eyes absorbing the sound of lesser goldfinches, the touch of a breeze across my face, and the scent of warming Douglas-fir trees.  Feeling my shoulders settle against the bark, I resist the urge to sit up and document.  I’ll need something to share at the follow-up meeting, I tell myself, an image or a couple of sentences to give meaning to the moment.     

When it’s my turn to draw from the magic bag, I read from Margaret J. Wheatley, “Circles create soothing space.”  The ensuing silence buoys us into exploration.  I take more pictures than I normally do despite concerns that the overuse of cameras adds to feelings of isolation.  

In a time when people are struggling to connect, I love coming together for a Campus Ramble.  We witness the data-inspired sculpture titled Willamette Streamflow, a conifer grown from a seed that flew in the Apollo 14 moon landing mission, the curving architecture at the Women’s Building, and a peace tree grown from a seed of a persimmon tree that survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima.

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The feeling of togetherness that easily forms during the Ramble reminds me of an African philosophy I started reading about called ubuntu.  Best represented by an African Bantu proverb, ubuntu is a way of being based on the concept that a person is a person through other persons.  

Ubuntu emphasizes interactions with other people and a global perspective rather than individual interests.  It exists when people unite for a common good, such as offering relief to those who are in need after a natural disaster.  I wonder how our world would shift if we embraced this philosophy.  I am because we are.     

Returning to the Campus Ramble sites alone feels different.  I am self-conscious of veering off path and crunching over rhododendron leaves next to classroom windows.  I am not compelled to lie down (as I did before) to see patterns of interlocking limbs and leaves against the blue sky.  I miss my Ramble team and wonder if any of them might be exploring on their own.  

After glancing around to see who might be within sight, I Iie down again along my Ramble log.  I close my eyes and feel freckles surfacing on my face.  Listening for bumblebees and feeling the log’s support beneath me, my senses intertwine with this speck of a forest in an otherwise urban landscape.  Welcoming the pause this time, I weave it into my being, even as its value slips in and out of view like the swaying tree tops above me.

Walking home I am surprised at the ease in my steps.  I expect things of value to carry weight, but this pause has lightened my load by peeling back my urgency to produce and inviting my racing mind to rest.  And when I again doubt the value of being still in our overly productive culture, I can borrow from ubuntu and remind myself that I ramble because we ramble.   

In my studio this month, I’m adopting a community-oriented writing practice shared by Susan Piver.  The steps sound simple – meditate, journal, designate time, and write – but the practice needs to be done in community.  This will challenge my belief that writing is a solitary act, which is perhaps just what I need to invite more ubuntu into my life.  

Happy being!

Sabra

Explore the OSU Campus Arboretum map and learn more about the natural spaces woven throughout campus.

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May 2026

Set in motion by the upcoming installation, The Frimpong Case, I teeter-totter between accumulating and purging.  With my arms full and an empty donation bag at my feet, I find myself clutching a sweatshirt I haven’t worn in years.  I move from room to room in my house, wanting to cull the unused, yet I am unable to dislodge coffee mugs, art stored in boxes, and old running shoes from dusty cupboards and corners.  Am I hard-wired to accumulate?

Vincent Frimpong is a Ghanaian living in the United States who considers how history, culture, and contemporary issues influence what we see before us.  He is a ceramicist and mixed media artist creating work that utilizes elements of his native culture and “the human hand as tool to explore what it means to be an African.”

Frimpong’s exhibition features a large quilted piece made from clothing donated to Ghana from the western world.  Initially I enjoyed imagining Frimpong and his textile medium crossing paths somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.  Now I see this piece titled A Common Hope for Tomorrow accomplishing one of Frimpong’s goals: “To make viewers recognize that what people think they know is not always the whole truth.”

An estimated 15 million articles of used and new clothing arrive in Ghana every week.  These garments come in compressed bundles that people buy in hopes that they contain something sellable.  Many articles are ripped and stained and require cleaning, tailoring, and repurposing in order to be sold.  About one-third are not salvageable.  

To get a sense of the size of 15 million, I applied it to the task of sorting textiles.  At the rate of moving one article of clothing per second, it would take me nearly six months to sort one week’s worth of Ghana’s received donations. 

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This surplus of clothing overflows landfills, spreads along beaches and streets, and perpetuates a lifestyle of low wages and unsafe working conditions.  Long-reaching fibrous networks along the coast contribute to flooding and eventually end up on the ocean floor.  Researchers looking at the effects of this litter refer to these textile tangles as “tentacles.”  I imagine long grasping arms weaving a tightening hold and strangling a shoreline, a culture.

While reading about this system, I recalled the cradle-to-grave legislation I learned in graduate school.  Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, this legislation requires a record be kept of hazardous waste from the beginning of its life until its end.  While I support the reduction of pollutants in the environment, I was appalled by one allowable disposal method: getting another country to take the pollutant.  When waste crossed the border, one’s accountability for managing it ended regardless of how lax the disposal practices were in that country.

While it’s easier for me to see the underlying greed that drives certain practices today, I still fail to see how we as people allow them to continue to exist.  When challenged to understand a system like this, I sometimes switch the roles of involved players.  What if Oregon received 15 million articles of clothing from Ghana per week?  It is hard to imagine an influx that would top off our landfills and spill over into streets, parks, and beaches.  Maybe we’d build large mounds with names like Donation Peak or Mt. Enough!  Perhaps, we’d strew the unwanted hoodies and jeans along highways in medians and ditches changing our landscape and wildlife pathways. 

As I mentally wrestle with this fibrous mess, I realize that waste management is rooted in a larger problem of consumerism.  Donating my sweatshirt and other discards doesn’t lessen my consumption, but it gives me pause to consider my practice of accumulation and feel the freshly emptied space in my dresser.  A space I could refill experientially by mending with a friend or simply feeling the lightness of having one less thing to wash.   

In honor of the Ghanaians experiencing the burdens of this clothing surplus, my monthly studio project is to extend the life of my wardrobe by mending instead of purchasing.  Following the Japanese style of sewing called sashiko, literally meaning “little stabs,” I will repair clothing with colorful, visible stitching.  I have one pair of pants and two button shirts already lined up for this!  To attend a fiber jam or take a mending, upcycling, or sewing class check out Tarweed Folk School and TAC’s Arts Adventures where opportunities abound to mend and make in community.  A better way to stay dressed!

Happy mending!

Sabra

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April 2026

When a black-capped chickadee flew into view wearing a white cap, I knew my sensory data collection needed replenishing.  I strained to see the white head flitting in and out of the hydrangea.  Was the light’s reflection masking the familiar black cap?  

It’s not surprising at this time of year that my reservoir of sounds, sights, and emotions from being outside is low.  As nature bursts into spring and warming days invite longer moments of stillness outside, my senses are on high alert.

I watched for the chickadee’s white cap to turn black as it hopped about changing its orientation to the sun.  Instead, more white appeared on its back, cloaking the bird in a white cape.  Could it be some kind of superhero chickadee?  

I am intrigued by the influence of perspective as I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, The Serviceberry.  I love how she describes the deliciousness of the berries and gift economies.  She considers an economic model for the serviceberry that is based on reciprocity rather than accumulation, a system where “all flourishing is mutual.”  In times of abundance, the tree saves what it needs to grow and then gives resources to pollinators who in turn pollinate, and later to birds who distribute berry seeds.  This reciprocal exchange is vital to the serviceberry’s survival.   

Imagining a gift economy in nature – where there’s no money – is easier than in our corporate economy.  We don’t expect beavers at Bald Hill to thank us for installing a specially designed fence that allows them to build in their chosen location; it just feels like the right thing to do. 

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“To name the world as gift is to feel your membership in the web of reciprocity.  It makes you happy – and it makes you accountable,” Kimmerer says.  I want to live in a web of reciprocity, too.  The chickadee’s visit feels like a gift bringing the reminder of summer’s imminence and a cheery call of chick-a-dee-dee-dee.  I also relish the spark of curiosity I feel when I pause to observe.

Seeing vibrant feathers on the western bluebird also feels like a gift.  It is hard to believe that blue feathers are not truly blue, but instead an optical illusion.  We see blue feathers as blue because of structural aspects in the barbs of feathers that scatter blue light.  This phenomenon is lost with back-lighting because light is no longer being reflected back and the pigment color, brown, shows up.  Grinding up a blue feather will leave a brown powder while grinding up a red feather, which is colored by pigment, will yield a red powder.

I feel a responsibility in receiving these songbird gifts and I immediately want to repay them.  Planting a serviceberry could be a gift to a chickadee, but the elusive gift pathway of joy and wonder is hard to follow among recipients.  When I’m attentive, I can catch some of these emotions and awe, and feel propelled along a kinder path.

When I exhale, I don’t consider how my breath mingles with a serviceberry, bluebird, or steam rising from a river.  In fact, I don’t usually think of it at all as it ventures out along its way.  Perhaps, this is the best way to consider the movement of joy as it mingles with and among all living beings and entities of earth and plays a vital role not easily defined.    

Art works this way, too, and often has an invisible, untraceable influence on viewers.  When artwork elicits a sigh, chuckle, or tear, how does that gift circulate?  With a superhero chickadee nearby and Kimmerer’s words of “all flourishing is mutual,” I feel a shift in myself that acknowledges a showering of gifts from nature and art.

In building my web of reciprocity, I look forward to the upcoming gifts of hearing authors read of their entanglements with nature at Spring Creek Project’s Earth Words; of masquerading as an animal for the Procession of the Species Nature Parade at Planet Palooza; and of discovering where pockets full of delight from the buzzing of bumble bees will lead me. 

Inspired by blue feathers and gift economy notions, my studio project invitation this month is to make an ephemeral piece of art after recognizing three gifts I’ve received.  These gifts may be as simple as a smile from a stranger, the warmth of sunshine on my face, or the fluttering of a passing butterfly.  With these gifts in mind, I’ll make an orb with last year’s plant growth – one for each gift I received – and place them outside to see how they shift over time.  I wonder how they might become a gift or optical illusion to another.

In Reciprocity,

Sabra

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March 2026

Dear 700 SW Madison,

When I first walked through your red doors and stood beneath your arcing beams, I felt held.  Not by art or people or even architecture, but by something less tangible.  When I later rolled out my mat for yoga in the gallery, I looked around asking myself, am I really allowed to be in here?

Similar to humans, spaces are influenced by their past.  It’s easy to see physical changes like fresh paint or moved walls, but what lingers after a reception is over?  What remains from the people who gathered years ago when you were a church?  Even the bat who slipped in instead of out during a crowded reception contributes a story.

Sometimes I long to have your capacity to hold.  The way you allow hesitation to transform, or not, within your space.  Do you remember my first time visiting you?  Of course you do, and of course you don’t.  

I imagine the collective of people who pause under your roof to explore both their internal and external landscapes.  Your walls and beams somehow soak up whispers and gasps of surprise.  I imagine a golden wooden paddle in your rafters churning experiences as people and art and even the odd bat flow in and out over time.  

I recently heard an interview with author Imani Perry on the radio.  When asked how to be connected during difficult times, she answered, Be present with each other and join something you can get behind.  When we continue to show up, we build trust.  

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I wish the two of you could spend time together.  People are brave with you, from expressing secrets to silently being present.  Perry seems to live from a place of unbelievable empathy.  Perhaps I will sneak in some evening to read excerpts of hers to you by candlelight, and the flame’s heat will loft her words high so that you can blend them with what has come and what is yet to be. 

Speaking of what is yet to be, you must be thrilled with Kim Smith Claudel’s upcoming installation!  Like a long-lost friend, she returns for a solo exhibition that will be in direct communication with you.  Have you thought of what you will say?  I wonder what she will hear.  

I am eager to see what work that resists completion looks like.  I’m hoping you can garner some insight on this for me while she’s here.  How does she know when a piece is done if it is in deliberate flux?  Or maybe that’s part of its beauty, to both never be done and always be done.  I wonder how Smith Claudel might apply her process-oriented practice to everyday life.  

I am mindful of the challenge of being present in life, especially now as the spring equinox – a balanced time of daylight and darkness – nears.  Is my past buoying me along into the future or does it dominate?  Does my mind step back, so my heart and hands can hold me present?  Before I race toward the daylight of summer, I consider these and other pushes and pulls in my life.  I look forward to the playfulness of the changing sunlight as it filters through your high windows.  Maybe you’re eager to enjoy the chatter from the returning rufous hummingbird. 

To keep myself balanced and to add to the story building beneath your roof, I am offering a creative whisper invitation.  Each month, I will share an activity from my studio that I invite others to do on their own.  Acknowledging that intention and small acts matter, I envision each creative whisper – regardless of where it is made or how finished it may be – will get churned in your rafters, adding to the essence of your space. 

In honor of spring, my March creative whisper is to make a piece of art with only green media.  Using paints, pencils, felt, beads, ink, and a variety of painted paper that I have on hand, I’m creating a two-page book.  It may look more like a notecard on stilts when finished, but any artwork with any green medium will work.  After all, you welcome whispers of all kinds.

Happy Spring 700!

Sabra

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