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It has been an infuriating, dangerous, and emotionally draining few weeks in the Cities. My family and I have been busy supporting each other, our community and neighbors, while keeping an eye out for icy roads. Please, stay safe and carry deicer.
I’m in love with a malicious intent
You’ve been taken but you don’t know it yet
A truer love has never yet to be found
I see the sunset through the eyes of a clown
I have a difficult time throwing things away. I like old things full of history, the things that someone else also used and loved. I see value where others see trash. I see memory where others see garbage. I like the odor of vintage magazines left in the basement, the feel of yellowed paper with scribbled words or faded print, the smell of a torn out page from a forgotten book: these bits of ephemera were once important to someone else, and I hold a kind of reverence toward that previous life. I cannot help but save them to give them new life in a future work.
The same is true for old battered metal, wood objects that tell stories through gouges and gashes, tools that have worked hard and bear the scars of use, and bits of broken glass rounded by nature and time. I see the beauty in wear and age because experience matters and is important to me. It has a history of where it’s been and how it lived. These things were built to last and more importantly they were built to be used, repaired, and kept alive. They were not meant to be replaced at the first sign of wear. They were meant to be cared for.
I recently bought an old power planer. No label, no name… just a machine with a little rust and a lot of life left. It needs cleaning, rust removal, oiled bearings, and blade sharpening and the motor is close to 70 years old but still runs and hums. Someone built this planer believing it would be worth maintaining. Someone else relied on it day after day. The rust on it is not failure. It is neglect layered over quality. When I remove that rust I am not erasing history. I am revealing intention.
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Repair and recycling are, to me, acts of resistance. They push back against waste and planned obsolescence, against the idea that things are disposable and worth nothing once they stop being new or useful. There is an ethic in fixing that stretches into every part of life: care for what you have, learn how it works, give it more life.
Rust is not the metal.
Filth is not the object.
Dirt is not the structure.
They are accumulations of neglect and abuse. They spread like a cancer when left unchallenged. They weaken what could otherwise endure.
Neon lights, Nobel Prize
When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
Fascism is the rust of society. Christian Nationalism is the filth, and racism is the dirt. Those evils eat away at strength, dignity, and usefulness. They destroy both from the surface inward and the structure from underneath upward. They are corrosions. You do not preserve rust out of respect for history. You remove it because you care about what lies beneath. I realise that racism in all its forms was a foundational material in which the United States was built, but it wasn’t needed then and it isn’t needed now because unlike pieces of paper and old wood and metal scraps, racism and fascism and nationalism are not things worth preserving. These are not artifacts to be collected. These are poisons to be eradicated.
Presidents with precedence and
Principled interest, return on investments
The horrifying consequence of tacit privilege,
Spilling out from every pore,
Filling up the swamp you’ve been looking for
I believe in saving things that were built with care. I believe in fixing what can be fixed. I believe in recycling materials, ideas, and effort into something that serves life rather than harms it. Kindness, creativity, integrity, honesty, and community are values worth fixing, recycling, and preserving. As much as I love to photograph the phoenix of natural decay, I do not believe in making space for ideologies whose only function is domination and exclusion. There is nothing noble about corrosion of culture. There is nothing sacred about decay that feeds on others.
I will keep saving the paper, rebuilding the tools, sawing the wood, shaping the metal. I will keep fixing what was built to last. And I will keep removing the rust wherever I see it. Because care is not passive. It is active. It is discerning. It knows the difference between what should be preserved and what must be stripped away so something better can live.
However, here we are, once again… battling the Christian Nationalist values of oppression, bigotry, and brutality; begging for justice for centuries of unpunished racism. I don’t treat injustice as though it were equivalent to the beauty and histories contained in the old paper and scraps I save.
There is a moral distinction between cherishing objects that tell stories of human life, and cherishing systems that perpetuate harm.
You justify those that died
By wearin’ the badge, they’re the chosen whites
Old things of quality deserve love and space to exist.
People deserve dignity and safety.
Craft deserves time. Repair deserves respect.
Hate deserves none of it.
Remember, Nazis are not people.
Lately, it’s been icy and deadly in Minnesota and
I will never mourn a dead Nazi.
Now, let’s go into the studio build something truly great.
