 Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. Neil Romanosky, Dean of University Libraries, and it is my pleasure to welcome all of you this afternoon to our final fall semester installment of our Authors at Alden Series. Today we will have a conversation between Jenny Klein, who's a professor of art history, and co-curators Carol Genshaft and Deirdre Hamlar from the Columbus Museum of Art, talking about the book and upcoming exhibit Ragnon, the art of Amina Brenda Lynn Robinson's House and Journals. So the book, which is a catalog of the artist's work, was published and distributed by the Ohio University Press. So it is now my pleasure to welcome Beth Pratt, Interim Director and Production Manager at the Press to introduce today's speakers. Thank you, Neil. Hi, everyone, and thanks for coming to Authors at Alden. As Neil said, we have two guests and our own Jenny Klein that will be leading the conversation. Carol Genshaft is our first guest. She is curator at large at the Columbus Museum of Art. She enjoyed a close relationship with Amina Robinson, who is the topic of today's book Ragnon. And she enjoyed this relationship beginning in the late 1980s. Since Robinson's death in 2015, she has supervised the organization and documentation of the artist's estate, which was left to the Columbus Museum of Art. She has curated many exhibitions about the life and the work of Robinson, including Symphonic Poem, a retrospective of the artist's work that traveled nationally in 2006. In 2018, she organized Kindred Spirits, an exhibition about the relationship of Robinson and her friend and mentor, the folk artist Elijah Pierce. In addition to contributing articles about Robinson to many publications, Genshaft has written Amina's World, a children's book about the life and art of Robinson, which was published by the Columbus Museum of Art in 2017 and is also distributed by Ohio University Press. Carol Genshaft has an undergraduate degree in art history from Syracuse University, a master in library of science from Case Western Reserve University, and a doctorate in art education from the Ohio State University. In addition to her work with the art of Amina Robinson, she has organized Eyes by Adventures in Art, which was a groundbreaking interactive exhibition in 1998. She has also curated other exhibitions, including Wonders and Miracles, Art of the Passover Haggadah in 2004, Marvelous Menashari, an ancient Roman mosaic from Load Israel in 2012, and Shine On, Nurses in Art in 2015, along with Glass Magic then and now, also in 2015. Deidra Hamlar, Columbus Near East Side Native, is a lawyer, arts administrator, artist representative, and independent curator. She holds a BA in sociology from UCLA and a JD from Howard University Law School. Following law practices with the National Labor Relations Board and Legal Services Corporation, her passion for arts, social justice, equity and inclusion, and community empowerment led her to found Peaceworks Gallery to support under represented artists in central Ohio. She served respectively as multicultural educator for the Columbus Museum of Art and Walker Art Center, as director of diversity at the Columbus Academy, as community engagement facilitator and co-curator of the Point Extra Legacy Project, an exhibition, and various community focused efforts to preserve and dignify African American heritage in Columbus, Ohio. She co-authored Rhodes Diverge, William L. Hawkins and Elijah Pearson Columbus in the book William Hawkins and Imaginative Geography, and she has worked with the Columbus Museum of Art since 2018 to archive and curate Robinson's art in preparation for the Reganon exhibition, catalog, and the launch of a residency program in the Robinson home studio. So we welcome you to Authors at Alden, Carol and Deidre. Today's conversation is going to be led by our own Jenny Klein. Jenny is an art historian who writes on contemporary art, performance art, and the intersection of gender and visual culture. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California. She co-edited with Natalie Loveless responding to site, which is an edited collection on the work of the artist Marilyn Arsum. It is being released by Intellect Press this fall. She is currently completing, assuming the echo sexual position, a compilation of the work and writing of Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stevens, which is under contract with the University of Minnesota Press and scheduled for release in the spring. Dr. Klein has published in PHA, Frontiers, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Feminist Studies, and Paradoxa, Art Pulse, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, Genders, and After Image. Dr. Klein also has a blog writing on performance. She is a professor of art history here at OU and teaches courses on contemporary art and theory, performance art and theory, and the intersection of gender and art. She also serves as the director of studies for the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University. So welcome all and thank you for attending Authors at Alden. Pull up my screen so you can see me, so you can see the slides. Yeah, and I'll just start talking a little bit about our project of which this book ragon on the art of Amina Brindolin Robinson's House and Journals is a part. So it's part of a bigger Amina Robinson legacy project. The museum, and I'll show you when we get to the slides, kind of some of the background of the museum's relationship with this Columbus artist. But when she passed away in 2015, she left her entire estate to the museum, including her dog. And we've been working ever since to really document and photograph and deal with all the material that was in the house. And this catalog and the exhibition which opens on Thursday is a part of that project, as is the establishment of an artist's residence in Amina's house here in Columbus. And that's been quite a project that has kept Deidre and I and many, many others very busy over the past two years. So going back in time, at least to the late 1980s, Amina Robinson, who is really a beloved artist in Columbus, has had many exhibitions and had a very strong relationship with the Columbus Museum of Art. Amina is an artist whose work is all about connections, making connections between the past and the present, between Africa and Columbus, Ohio, between the material of this world and the spiritual. And so for the last at least 25 years, we have been so for work, which have included work about Columbus, work about really all the places she's visited. And in 2006, we or 2002, then it traveled in 2006, we did a retrospective called Symphonic Pwn. So much of what the new book is, the ragged on book, really builds on that earlier research and presentation. Next slide please, Deidre. So when Amina passed away in 2015, leaving her estate, I always laugh because I think she knew what we were getting into, but I don't think the museum knew what they were getting into. It was just a massive project. Every room in her house was filled with art and art making materials, collections of all kinds of dolls and buttons and canes, art she traded with other artists. She loved going to antique stores and garage sales, so there were lots of projects that had been awaited. We're awaiting to be taken care of. It was a massive undertaking. And so we knew right away that we wanted to really document this whole process and that is a result of that is the book. And we're going to go through just the kind of major essays in the book so you get a sense of it. And the first one is really, it's more than an introduction, it's by our executive director, Nanette Macy-Junes, but Nanette is a scholar in her own right. She's very well known for her scholarship on the work of Charles Birchfield, but she wrote, I think, a very insightful explanation of Amina's relationship with the museum. And in fact, talked a lot about Elijah Pierce. Amina was kind of mentored by the folk artist Elijah Pierce and she was very much inspired by him. The piece you see in the upper left-hand corner is a raggonon that Amina did about Mr. Pierce and about his barbershop, which was around the corner from the museum. A raggonon is a type of art that Amina does that is quite massive, very complex, mixed media, has lots of layers of meaning, and in her mind really rags on and on when other people see it. The pieces right below that are two that Amina owned and gave to the museum actually in memory of her son, Sydney. And then in the upper, the other pictures are some from other exhibitions at the museum. One is I Spy Adventures in Art, which featured Amina's book, A Street Called Home. And then the wonderful picture of Amina's back on the right is a dress she created out of ties. And she even made a pouch for her dog, her little chihuahua named Boo-Boo at the time and brought him to the opening, much to my kid's pleasure. Next slide, please. And now we're going to tell us a little bit about the house. Yes, so Amina Brindolin Robinson's house, her life, her artistic purpose, all kind of culminated in her home studio. And so we were so pleased when we were able to go through the home and really kind of bring to life what her like the holistic vision that she had sort of lived within her house. And we wanted to make sure we brought her house to the public to see. As you see on this image, there are two images to the left and to the right. And those are the doors that are the entrance doors, excuse me, to her home. Amina purchased her home in the Shepherd neighborhood of Columbus in 1974. When she moved to Shepherd, she took with her the ancestral knowledge and also the family traditions of planting a bottle garden. The image that you see in the middle, upper middle to the left is an illustration of a drawing that she did for a friend's book. Her friend Michael Rosen did a book on gardens and she depicted in the illustration the importance of bottle gardens to her family and to the ancestral stories of the meaning of bottle gardens, which is when bottle gardens are planted in your yard, they can trap evil spirits and also collect the good spirits that will surround your home. The image in the middle is the Sankofa. It's an icon, a dinkra symbol that symbolizes looking back to retrieve knowledge in order to go forward. That was a concept that Amina used throughout her work, throughout her life, and it will be repetitive in the stories that we tell from now on in terms of how she told her stories through art. The image to the right of that is a come-in. It's a textile piece that she had in her, if you see underneath the Amina Sanctuary. That is a space that she created on the first floor when she won her MacArthur Fellowship. She built a space onto her home and she called it an Amina Sanctuary. It was a very private space where she did work a lot of different media she created in that space, but in that space she had on her wall the image that's up above called come in. Let me go to the next slide. When you enter the space, when you enter her house, once you come in you're able to, we thankfully were able to go into other spaces that she had not invited other people into. If you see to the upper right there is a collection of rocks. Amina tended to collect rocks, as many of us do. I know I do, Carol said she does, and it reminds you of spaces of places that she has been. She tended to create curated spaces throughout her home. Every single spot in her home had a meaning and a purpose. If you look at the images on this page, she arranged her irons very specifically. The irons were there. They looked like a piece of art. They were also utilitarian to help her hold down pieces and adhere the artwork of multimedia pieces. To the left you see to the bottom there is a shelf of different lovely rocks, shells. She has in that shelf a chicken bone. She has different peach core seeds. She has other things that are meaningful to her, which it's in the book, but also this particular piece is also in the show, the exhibition. If you look to the left, this is just a symbol of what we encountered when we went into the house. Amina was a researcher. She studied everything from languages. As you see the stack of books is about languages. Wherever she traveled she studied the language of her place that she visited, but she also studied all the history of the things that she wrote about and that she painted. The piece in the middle, upper middle, is an upstairs, no I'm sorry, this is a downstairs studio. Every single room in Amina's house became a place for art storage as well as art making. This is a perfect example of her using a space for art storage and art making. This is the room as we found it. There are storage, if you see the file cabinets to the left, they were full of her archives. She was a perfect archivist for the work that she did. She named and dated and signed every piece of work that she did and she created her own personal numbered archive of the work that she did. And finally to the bottom right, this is an image that Amina created. As you see here, it says Amina Brindolin Robinson, the going home memory of my son, Sydney. Unfortunately her son who was born in 1967 passed away in 1994 by suicide. It took her a very difficult time of at least a year or more to just function through the passing of her son. If you look to the left, this is a room, the writing room, is a space that she used to contemplate her writing to think about her memoirs and to write and to keep space to herself. This room in the middle, she did not share with other people. This was a room that she did not allow other people into. This might have been a space where she thought about how she was to depict the passing of her son, which she then honored with the work that you see to the bottom right. So in the book, we also have wonderful authors that have spoken to Amina's legacy, one of which is Deborah Priestly, who was one of Amina's very, very dear friends. In fact, she called her an adoptive daughter. Deborah Priestly is from Ohio, so they share that in common. As you see the image with Amina's hand on her shoulder, it's very indicative of the relationship that they had. Deborah looked up to Amina and was inspired by Amina. The image to the left of the picture of them in the middle is a piece that was inspired by Amina. Amina always again in the Sankofa tradition looked to the past to inform the future. And Deborah also has a tendency, and I think inspired by Amina, to recollect the past. This image of hers depicts her looking at her family history and understanding that history in order to inform the future. If you look at the top left image, that is a piece of leather that Deborah Priestly speaks about in the essay that she wrote, where Amina would find work through any media. She would collect tiles from the floor that were leather tiles from the floor and create art out of them. They met in Ohio, but also they had a relationship in New York where they were both blessed with a fellowship with a printmaker. And they worked through this printmaking fellowship or this printmaking opportunity and they got to know each other pretty well. So they spent a full summer in New York together where Amina lived in Queens. And Deborah says that they would gather often. And in one of these gatherings, when Amina talked to her, she said, you're not going to believe what happened to me today. And if you look at the upper right hand corner, Amina spoke to Deborah and said, you know, I was on the subway and there was a birth. There was a birth on the subway train. And so as you see in the upper right hand corner, Amina created a piece based on the birth on the sea train. Deborah speaks about how she talked about the piece and how she created the piece and she remembered every detail in her mind. And then she went home and she painted this beautiful painting that depicted the work of the vision or the actual experience that she had on the sea train. The bottom right image is just indicative of the many conversations that Deborah and Amina sat on this couch. And if you look at the books in the back, it's very indicative of the work. Amina was an historian. She was a researcher. Every single book on that shelf she read. She dog eared. She studied and Deborah speaks about how she sat on that couch with Amina and they talked endlessly about life, about the stories in those books and about the stories that they would have in the future together. Oh, and I'm going to talk a little bit about some of Amina's journals. What I wanted to say about Deborah's piece in the book is that I think she expresses Amina's sense of humor, which was very present and was a lot of fun. And they had a lot of fun together as did many people. Amina really, really appreciated her solitude and loved to work in her home by herself. But she also liked people and she liked to have fun and tell stories. And Deborah has some of those in the book. But as I might have mentioned, when we were going through all the objects in Amina's house, what became apparent is that in addition to being a visual artist, Amina was a literary artist. The journals that she left, more than 150 of them, are really, some of them are just exquisite, have fabulous illustrations. They have poetry, they have very eloquent prose. And so we really wanted to share those with a greater public. And that's why there is an essay that I wrote in the book about these journals and a number of illustrations. And in our exhibition, we actually have monitors that you don't have to touch because of COVID, but will give you a chance to kind of go through about 11 or 12 of these journals. The one you see here on the left was a very early one that Amina had when she was 10 years old. From the time she was very young, she would carry a sketchbook with her. And she also liked listening to the stories of her elders and she would take notes about those. And then there's some other examples from a little later on 2001, where she recorded lots of these stories and memories about the vendors on Mount Vernon Avenue, which was Amina grew up in an apartment complex called Point Dexter Village, which was one of the first federally funded complexes in the United States. And she was, it opened the year she was born in 1940. And so she actually experienced a lot of these people that were selling their wares on the street or would even come over to their apartment complex in the nearby commercial area called Mount Vernon Avenue. And so Amina really brought these to life in many different media. She actually, there's a published book called A Street Called Home, which is a wonderful accordion book that talks about these folks, all the people and all the places on that neighborhood. Next slide, please. So two really important events in her life that are captured in these journals. One was that she participated in the march on Washington in 1963. And what you see on the screen is a letter she wrote to her family. She actually copied the letter and sent it to various people, but it was about her excitement. It was really the first time she left Columbus and left her family. She was 23 years old. She went on a church bus. It was a very hot day and eventually she fainted. And they took her to the restroom and after she left the restroom, they were escorted to what turned out to be a dignitary section. And so she was able to actually meet James and David Baldwin, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, and actually have conversations with them. And she writes about that. But even prior to the trip to Washington, she had become very active in the Congress for Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She made a lot of posters, went to a lot of protests. And that theme followed her throughout all of the years of her work. And what seems to ring so true today in the light of kind of current events and the protests that we've seen is the same kind of anger and rage, but at the same time a great amount of hope in that change would actually be coming. So it's really, her work is very timely in that way. And then the journal on the right is called African Pilgrimage, The Extended Family. In 1979, a group of folks in Columbus raised some money so that she was able to join a study group from Cleveland, who went to five countries in Africa. And it was a pivotal moment in Amina's life. She, again, she studied before she went. She read a lot. And she said she had to go all the way to Africa to find Pointextor Village. In other words, the people she saw, the colors she saw, the art, the marketplaces, were all so reminiscent of her life in Columbus. And she saw great connections. And so that journal preserves that. And you can see that this particular journal had a leather cover that she created for it. But many of the themes that she wrote about and illustrated in this journal reoccur in work throughout her life. So another author that's in the, in the catalog is Lisa Gale Collins. And Lisa Gale Collins visited, she had not been to Columbus. And we, when she agreed to do an essay in the book, we wanted to make sure we took her into the house, as we did with all the essays. And when she visited, when she visited Amina, Amina's home studio, she felt like she was entering a temple. And I mean, I think that many people, and in the exhibition we have a section called conversations where people speak about their experience of going into the house. And for most of them, they tend to lean towards the word sanctuary or spiritual place. Or there was something happening when you walked in that you felt, but you may not have been able to describe. And she described it as entering a temple. She speaks in her essay about where she was surrounded by art books and words. And there are words inscribed by friends on the walls, which you can see if you enter the home. And she recognizes that Amina wove all these stories from past to present into the artwork that she was sharing with the world. And she describes her work as lush, as layered, life-affirming creations, which I love that. And she says that she tenderly draws us close to her and so that she can pass on what she's been told. And that is actually Amina's goal, was to pass on the knowledge and so that people would grasp the history and the importance of the ancestral history that she knew. She honors Amina's parents in her work as people who were artistic in Amina's life. But she also describes how Amina's classical training at the Columbus College of Art and Design and also her self-taught work. She was classically trained. She was familial trained. And she also had a personal rigor that Lisa Gale Collins speaks about, a discipline that Lisa Gale Collins speaks about. But more important, she compares her work to other artists. And if you see on this page, a street called home is at the top. And then we have Faith Ringgold and Romare Bearden pieces at the bottom. Alisa puts Amina squarely in conversation with these other artists, particularly with Romare Bearden as one who does collage and Amina who who does layered work with multimedia. But but and also Faith Ringgold who speaks to street scenes. And you speak to the quality of a community and how the community enlivens the whole time period. Amina's piece, Amina, a street called home speaks back to the 1940s. Whereas Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold might be speaking more to the time period that they were they were actually creating in. However, the assemblage of all the of the stories and the colors and the and the energy and the importance of the community is what unites all of these pieces. Let me go to the next slide. And similarly, she looked at what may bring in conversation again with other artists of the time. Amina Robinson, if you were to look on her bookshelves, if you walk into her home, you will see a umbridge to artists such as Jacob Lawrence. I mean, she had a number of catalogs, a number of books about Jacob Lawrence on her shelves. She definitely appreciated what he brought to the genre. And Amina Robinson too. If you look at the two of them together, Lisa Gale Collins compares the two and says, you know, not only do they both appreciate use of tools, which we'll talk about a little bit later, but they also appreciated the the imagery, the symbolism of hands, the nurturing of hands, the working of hands. And as you see in this image, this is very clear that she recalls, Amina recalls in the work as Jacob Lawrence recalls that the hands not only celebrate the usefulness of hands, but also draw you in to invite you in to to experience sort of a passing on of of this importance of looking at people as as useful and as nurturing. And she definitely continues this throughout. If you were to see the entire exhibition and you know her work, she uses the symbolism of hands throughout her work. This is another essayist in the catalog. And I'm going to actually kind of skip over this because I think we're taking too long and we're not going to get to the discussion part. So Lisa Farrington is a art historian. And she sees Amina, she places her in the light of other contemporary artists and talks a lot about civil rights, about slavery, and about feminism. Next slide please, Deidre. And I think we need to go a little faster. Okay. And these are just some more of the comparisons that Lisa Farrington made with Amina's work, which is on up above, after it was on that trip to Africa that Amina visited Goree Island, which is a deportation site for thousands, if not millions, millions of enslaved Africans. And she just compares this with some very contemporary artists that are really using very different means of confronting slavery, both Carol Walker on the the left, Alison Tsar in the middle, and Faith Ringel on the right. Next slide. I think this is about the music, but maybe we want to gloss over that too. I know that we want to get to the questions. Exactly. And this is, again, just another way that Amina represented her art form. I mean, she appreciated all different levels of art, from writing to music to performance. And this is one piece of it. And Dr. Ted McDaniel speaks to it in an essay in the book, and I think he speaks to it in a really unconventional way. So it's attractive and it's beautiful to look at, but it's also interesting to think about. And the final essay in the book I think is quite interesting. Ramona Austin is an art historian who really has focused on African-American art and African art. And she poses some questions. And this is, I think, Deidre and mine and the museum's help is that this book and the exhibition will open Amina's work to a much greater audience and that we see lots of opportunity for scholars to take a close look at it. Ramona Austin talks about the power of healing in art, like Amina's, for artists like Amina, and many contemporary African-American artists. And I think the other thing that Ramona Austin brings out that for Amina, there was no end to creativity. Amina was really very inspired by the work of Leonardo DaVinci. She went to a traditional art school, the Columbus College of Art and Design here in Columbus, but she also made her own sculptural materials like hogmog and kind of developed her own artistic vocabulary. I like to think that she thought the world was just one big art supply store. And she would just find things everywhere, things that other people would throw away, and so forth. And I wanted to just end what we had to say as an opening here with a quote from Amina. And it's in the exhibition and in the book. She said, for 61 years, I have given my life to celebrating African people throughout the world. But in celebrating African people, I also disclose the racial and discriminatory practices that have haunted Black people to this day. Not far have we come. The injustices, even today as I pen this memoir, are still present in our daily life. So she wrote that in 2000, around 2006. And I think her work is just this amazing combination of that, which celebrates Black life and culture. But it's also this cautionary tale that seems really so timely right now here in the United States. It's true. So I think you might have some questions for us. I hope we didn't go on too long. First, we're going to have some interview questions from Jenny Klein. And then we will open it up to the audience for questions. So be thinking about that as we go on. Deidra, you can certainly stop sharing your screen now if you'd like, so that we can see a larger video as during your conversation. All right. Can you see me now? Yes. Okay. Now we see Carol. I think you're still sharing your screen. Okay. Yep. The rectangle in the middle there. Okay. Jen, could you give me an idea of how much time we have for this interview? I would say let's do 15, 20 minutes and then we can run a little bit longer. I think we'll be all right. But I would guess if people are really eager to ask some questions. So try and keep it to 15 minutes and maybe just a little bit over, but we'll go for 15 minutes. So my first question for Carol and Deidra, Deidra, I would like to begin by asking you to discuss the genesis of the exhibition. I know Carol already talked about, you both already talked about how you came to know Amina Brendolin Robinson, but what I'm really interested is why do you think a retrospective of Robinson's work is so timely at this point and can you situate it in relationship to its importance with the events of the past six months or even of the past several years and the genesis of the movement Black Lives Matter? So that's my first question. Sure. Well, I'll let Deidra weigh in too, but you know, this exhibition and the catalogue are really not a retrospective because Amina was so prolific that I don't know if there's a space big enough for full retrospective. So we really did focus on what we found in the house and what was so telling about that. There was a lot of this early work from when she was really a teenager even. She worked in oil paints that she never worked in again. Amazing amount of material. And then there were, there's lots of stuff in between, but we were fascinated by the work she was doing for the last 10 years of her life. And she, I think, really wanted to use her art in a very subtle but political way. As I mentioned, she celebrated African American life, but she was very aware of all the things that I think we've begun to discuss of late since the protest this summer. I'm just floored about how timely the entries in her journal are and the work too. So the last work that she did was the STEMBA series, which I call, she kind of created this mythic figure that was based on her great aunt Cornelia, also known as Big Annie. And she told these ancestral stories of the family's roots in Africa and their enslavement and ultimately their emancipation and then their migration north. And I think Amina created that, that was just so important to her to tell this story, to tell both the horror of it with, you know, the enslavement and people actually killing themselves during the middle passage rather than be part of slavery. But then she also really honored those who made it and who she believed were the reason she was able to survive and flourish in Columbus, Ohio. So I think the work is so extremely timely. I'll let Deidre comment too. We've had these conversations. We're just, sometimes we're just amazed at how much sense it makes. You know, I agree with Carol. Her work is timely. But I would add that Amina was also very aware of her surroundings and her audience. And while it's timely now, she was creating this work then. And I think she knew that there were going to be people attracted to the buttons and beads, but not attracted to the racial issues that she put forward. And what's good about it is that she was so thoughtful in terms of her Sankofa thinking that you look back to look forward, that she saw the entire spectrum. There was something about her that she saw this progression and she was okay with the fact that 20 years ago, people were not really grasping the imperative nature of the pieces that she was doing. She was okay with that. But I think she understood that this time would be now. And I think that's pretty powerful that her work is timeless in a sense. And so while we were going through it, we were like, oh my goodness, yes, you're right. Wow, look at this. Look how we could speak to our current socio-political situation with this work that was created 30 years ago. It was like, oh, okay, that's pretty powerful. That's a smart artist. Thank you. That was that was really a terrific answer from both of you. And I'm personally very excited to see this exhibition and also to use the work to kind of weave into the history of Ohio a presence that hasn't been acknowledged as much as it should have been and certainly too. I think Robinson makes that possible for us. My next question is actually related to her travel. She gained the name Amina when she was in Egypt and she traveled to many, many countries. You both referenced the fact that in 1979, she went to Africa and she went to five countries. But I think her reverse travel was also very important for a number of other reasons, including, as both of you noted, her rediscovery of the meaning of Pointexter Street. So can you talk about how the name Amina came to be and also why those travels were so important for her understanding of Pointexter Street? I was really, really struck by Carol's opening in your essay regarding the quotation that Amina Robinson had written regarding Pointexter Street and the kind of deep, deep history that was invoked by that quotation. Yeah, I think and Pointexter was really important. It was a very safe and secure neighborhood for, have I, uh-oh, can you not hear me? We can hear you. Oh, you can hear me? I can hear you. Because everybody else is frozen up. Now, Pointexter was the safe, secure neighborhood, but it was really a result of segregation and Amina really grew up feeling very, very protected and very safe. It was only, she said, when she went to college, actually, that she really learned about discrimination in a firsthand kind of way. But going to Africa, she just made these connections. She, the people she saw there, the way they walked, the way they took care of their families, the way they were engaged in meaningful occupations. And of course the art, she went to a factory where they made mudcloth and she was just so taken by so many connections. And of course her family, the ancestral stories were through Georgia, Saplow Island, Georgia, where a lot of West Africans ended up and they, because they were isolated from the larger populations, were able to keep a lot of African kinds of traditions, be it basket making and rice making and many things that Amina then saw firsthand in Africa. And I think those connections she made were very powerful. And just again, throughout her career, she just celebrated Africa. In fact, that last series of work, Themba, that I was talking about, every single piece, and they're really quite striking, has some reference to Africa. So there's African masks, there's African cloth. That just became, it had been part of who she was, but I think it was even enhanced from that trip and the connections that she made. Deidre, you might want to add to that. Did you have another question, follow-up question? I actually did, I had asked, I actually did have a question about the house, which is your area, if you'd like, because I do see that our time is rapidly, rapidly running out. This seems to be the theme of this at some point. One of us points out, oh no, we're running out of time. And then I had one more question after that. So I did want to mention that at Ohio University at Baker Center on the floor, based on Point Dexter Village, I'm sorry, I incorrectly called it Point Dexter Street, was Point Dexter Village and then Mount Vernon Avenue where a lot of the salespeople came that Robinson chronicled in her images. With the house, I'm particularly struck by its resemblance to houses by artists who might have a similar kind of background to Robinson. The one that really struck me is Vergey, I hope I'm pronouncing this last name correctly, is Zelle in Cleveland and who turns her house into an art center called Let It Be Arc and her daughter recreated that for the front triennial. And then I was also thinking about Joe Minter. I do want to say that I think Robinson's work is such that it's wonderful to compare her to a lot of African-American artists, but I also worry about the kind of ghettoization of doing that. She's just a good artist and a very smart person and I think we can compare this to a lot of artists who've done this kind of work. But I am interested in the importance of home and making the home into basically a work of art as well. You know, I actually discovered that as I was writing the essay. I didn't think of that initially. Going into the home, to be honest, Carol had been in the home five years. Well, as soon as Amina passed away, I didn't come in until three years later. But I was struck initially by just the, I was awestruck by the amount of books. I mean, I don't think I was ready to see what informed her as much as the books that she researched and dog-eared and she knew every single book on a shelf. And she, she, I mean, and I mean books in every single room. I don't mean just in the living room. There were books all over the house. And this was a person who dedicated her entire life to research and history and ancestral knowledge and travel and everything to the end of creating art. I've never witnessed anybody so committed to anything in my entire life. So when I walked in the house, I saw that all at once. What got me about, I think it finally, when you started going in deeper and seeing every single piece of the house was curated. Like there was nothing in the house that wasn't touched by her hand intentionally. So once you spend time doing that, you recognize that this was a person whose whole life was consumed by intention. And you're right. I think there are other artists just like her. I don't think she's the only one. And she could have had that house in Dublin. It doesn't matter. It's where she chose to live. And that neighborhood was where her parents lived before she moved there. So she was comfortable with that neighborhood. Her, her mother lived in the shepherd neighborhood. She lived with her mother in the shepherd neighborhood before that. So it's, it's a, you know, it's about comfort. It's about familiarity. Point extra village was just a few miles, maybe a mile away, not that far away. So she, that was a place of comfort. But yes, she created an amazing space that was her studio and her home. And they were intertwined. There was, it was at once a studio and a home. There was nothing separate about it. Right. Yeah, I'm also interested in how she really politicized the home. I, I mean, not in a, I use that term, not in a course way, but in a way that every single aspect of that home spoke to who she was, to what her background was, to the importance of that forced diaspora that had brought her there, which I think is, is really kind of amazing, particularly in Columbus. We think of Columbus as, as the city where all the chain restaurants try out their new chain restaurant, because if they don't like it in Columbus, they won't like it in any place else. I hope Carol can still hear me because I want to, either one of you might want to answer my last question, which is the significance of the title Raging On. I know you talked about these large tapestries that she called Raging On. They're actually spelled that the word is spelled as two words, well, it's two words on the title, but it's Ranganon, it looks like it would be, with the N capitalized. And I just wonder about that, the significance of using that as the title of the exhibition and the catalog, which is absolutely beautiful, by the way, I would urge all of you to get your own copy. Well, the title of the book and the idea of a Ranganon are certainly related. As I mentioned, you know, I think part of Amina's aesthetic is that she thought of art a little differently than maybe more traditional artists. She always laughed when we put on gloves to handle her work. So she really believed that art has this immediate-ness and this, it needs to be seen and discussed and touched probably too, but we don't let people do that in the museum setting. And so the Ranganon seemed like just the right word because if you notice, and Amina has this habit of giving us a lot of information on her works of art, she often includes kind of titles and then subtitles. And whenever she has an ING, it becomes an IN apostrophe. And the Ranganon is that she really believed these works don't end. In fact, I laughed when we did one exhibition and she was supposedly finishing up a work and I called to say, you know, Amina, we really need to install this. It opens tomorrow or whatever. And she said, well, if you need it, come and get it. If not, I'll keep working on it. So that was how she operated. Many of those works in this exhibition are done over a period of years, sometimes decades. So she had, and maybe that is more in line with some African aesthetics of art not being quite so finished and so precious. Precious, yes, but not, you know, like it needs to be touched and talked about. And that's where the Ranganon comes from is this idea that you, the viewer, whoever sees this exhibition, whoever looks at the book, will bring their own sense sensibilities to it and broaden it. And that was her hope that this work would kind of have a life of its own and that would be just would be really enriched by all those readers and people that got to view her work in person. So that's why we picked that title. Do you want to add anything, Deidra? Oh, you're muted. Sorry. I said Carol said it perfectly. It's perfect. Yeah, she is exactly right. Ranganon is, you know, we wondered about that title because it could be seen so many different ways. And frankly, it's perfect for Amina because she did want something to rag on and on and on. And we tend to use that term a lot now when people are talking on and on too. And we can go on and on and on. And I tend to do that. So I told Carol to just stop me when I'm talking too much. So I'm going to stop myself. Because I could go on too. I do have to say that I love the fact that visually it also looks like raging on, which I like because she wasn't a particularly angry artist in terms of her presentation. But it still is such important work. And I also think it's very important that you had a woman making this art because a lot of the art, a lot of the artists she's compared to are men or they're artists that are sort of in the post-black category, which of course, like Carol Walker's work I love, but which of course makes a different, it really comes across very differently and not that they are post-black. And we certainly discovered that recently, but it's certainly different in the art world. So I'm going to stop myself and I turn this over to Jen Harvey, who's going to be moderating the questions. So thank you so much. It's been wonderful. And I can't wait to see the exhibition. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. So I'm going to open it up at this point to questions from the audience. To start us off, I'm going to put in the chat a link to the museum's exhibition. If you have any questions for Carol Diedra, you can either raise your hand or put it in the chat. Sherry Saines, would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question? I don't think we have chat, Jen. Do other people have chat? There is some. Some people have chat. Okay. And I don't. That's okay. That happens. I can send you the link specifically to you, Sherry, so that you have it, if that's what you're looking for. Or can anyone else confirm if they can see the chat? Maybe in the chat? I can see it, but I think that the invited guest can't see it. I couldn't see it when I first joined, and I just left the meeting and came back and it appeared. Okay. That is so strange. Technology. Oh, yeah. All right. So I do speak about the really long piece that I think one of the Ragonons that she worked on for years. You want to talk about the Femba piece, Carol? I didn't hear that. Would you tell me the question? I didn't hear it. Can you hear me? It said, could you speak about the really long piece she worked on for years? She did a few of those, but yeah. Actually, she really told me on many occasions that those were her most important works. One she did is called Dad's Journey, and it is in the exhibition. It's in the book, and it's, I'm going to say it's 20 feet long. It's about her dad, but it's really about the African-American story from a cultured time before slavery in Africa, the enslavement, the middle passage, the whole story. And she even has a little segment in it about her son growing up with his dog. So that kind of, and it's layered. It's just encrusted with buttons and beads and found objects. She loved music boxes, so it has several music boxes that are embedded into the fabric. And she would make pockets in these raganons that would hold other books. So it was just layered. And in fact, we've just installed it today, and I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It is just, it's pretty magnificent. And she talked about having these little spirit pieces in these raganons that look like little puffy balls, and they often have cowrie cowrie shells for eyes, and how these represent the spirits of people, you know, be it in Africa, or be it her ancestors, or be it people in Pointexter Village. So they're just these very complex layered kinds of pieces that she would come back to. There was usually one ongoing in her living room. In the pictures you see of her living room, there's always one on the table. And she never saw those herself until once in a while she'd roll them out in the driveway. But after she, we had this relationship with her, we would bring them over on a Monday when the museum was closed and unroll them. And it would be the first time she saw them as well. A huge one went to the African American Museum, the National Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati. And it actually fills their atrium. It's probably, you know, a couple stories tall. She would sell different things together so that, again, it has a lot of history, a lot of kind of current events at the time over these years that she worked on it. So it really, again, they're just these, it's the way she thought about her work and about life that, you know, there wasn't an end, there wasn't like a stopping and starting point. It would just keep going. And so she did the one about dad's journey, her father, she did one called Precious Memories about her mother, and a wonderful tribute to her son, Sydney as well. And they're probably about 20 all together of these raganons. Yeah, they're very, they're very special. I think you'll see what I mean. And she also, when she moved into the house, again, this is in the book in this show, she didn't have any furniture. So she built a chair. And it's just this fabulous chair that she gave to the museum when the retrospective in 2002 occurred, but we've brought it back because it's so central to the house. And she called that a raganon too. So it isn't just cloth pieces, that was made of wood and leather, and hogmog, the sculptural materials she used. So a raganon, I think most importantly was the subject matter. And that's what happens to be about family and community. So, and again, she added to it over the years. And it got so big that we couldn't get it out of the house. So we had to have a contractor come and make bigger doors to transport it. But that's another story. Do we have any other questions from the audience? Kelly has asked me, I saw that the house has a virtual tour online after the pandemic. Will the house be able to be toured? So what, you know, the house is now has become an artist's residence. And our first artist was, it was, we did a national competition. And he was supposed to actually start his residency this last summer. But because of COVID, he's coming in June. So the house really was not ever intended to be kind of a museum. It was meant to be a living working space for an artist. And there is in fact an artist living there now who's kind of just our house manager. So no, people can't just drop in. There will be special occasions when we take special groups. Deidre and I did do this tour. We did a tour on site and with our own museum technology, it was not that terrific. So we more recently had one done professionally. I don't think it's up yet, but it will be very soon. And that's a really good tour. That really tells a lot about the house. So keep looking for that. It'll be on YouTube and on our website. Really, it's all done. So it should be there soon. But that's so that we can give people the feel of the house. Same with the book and the exhibition. But no, it's not going to be open to the public. Thank you for that. Do we have any other questions? Or I think maybe we should probably wrap up. We're about 15 minutes over time, which is, it's been wonderful to listen to you both. I really, really, really enjoyed it. I appreciate so much you spending time with us this afternoon. I am going to put in the chat a link to survey. If folks wouldn't mind just giving us a little bit of feedback about the event. And I think that's had a couple closing words. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to thank you again for coming. Carolyn Deidre to share with us about Amina Robinson. Good luck with the exhibit. I hope that as many people as possible are able to come from down here. And I wanted to remind the folks from down here that the next time you're in Baker Center to look down and see the mural, the amazing mural that Amina Robinson painted in 2007, Point Extra Village. I am putting in the chat, I'm going to put a link to the book. And of course, I encourage people to purchase the book as well. And thank you all for coming to Authors at Alden. And have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you.