Textiles and Tea, youth art

Friday is a rich day this week. First I caught up with Textiles and Tea, with Veronica Perez, which I missed on Tuesday, what with one thing and another.

She's a sculptor working in the medium of braided hair, nowadays plant based, from abaca fiber, eco-friendly. She's of the Puerto Rican diaspora, interested in the significance of hair in marginalized communities including her own LatinX (I'm using her term here).

Her pieces are huge, dealing with big ideas of time, oppression, at the same time of comfort and acceptance. 

In her large wall pieces she incorporates audio of the teams helping braid the hair used in the piece. They talk about their own experience of acceptance and rejection based on hair type and styles, and the viewer has to get close to the piece to experience the sound. It's personal and inclusive.

She's been a social worker too and all her experience there folds into how she works with the braiding workshop people and respects their stories. They're compensated for their time, though some decline payment.

Anyway here's a few of these amazing works 

This one is silk tubes stuffed with hair, to make a kind of close-up effect 

Here's a braiding workshop in session 

She loves to use her hands as the main tools 

This is about the hidden past flowing into present and future, emphasis on future.

Here's a large piece, the detail showing the opening to hear the sound 

 

This, sugar arms, is about the historic connection of Puerto Rico and Portland Maine, where she works.  It's ephemeral, the sugar being dissolved in minutes with the incoming tide, leaving only the hair core behind. They're not gone, only transformed.

This is another sugar piece about being trapped, dissolved and gone.

She's fine with months of work lasting so briefly, with only a video to see now.  It's a wonderful piece, saying so much about the sugar trade and what it did, and does, to people.  And how their stories live on when their bodies are gone.

Hair is a big thought, so much emotion and judgment around it, particularly around the dark hair of indigenous and Black and Brown people.

I may write more about this, but today's so full already.

Then, the cleaners being here this morning, great, a clean house to come home to, particularly after Bionic Helen, I am officially in the library where there's this 

There's a section for younger students, too, like these terrific entries, above.

Happy day everyone. Home to crunchy tofu sticks and a roughy for lunch. Coda to the tofu story: I'm home and reheated tofu sticks by toasting them, worked fine, lovely and crunchy. 

Today's sand in the gears: I entered a comment at Homeland Security docket objecting to the proposed Alien Registration regulation, clearly  designed to trap.  

Either the immigrant registers, putting their identity there, high risk to them and family, or they don't, now risking additional charges in support of deportation if they're picked up. 

This is the last day to comment. DHS docket USCIS-2025-0004. Include 1615 NEW in the body of the comment or it won't be valid.

I hope your day's as rich as mine.