Loam Listen

This transporting episode will take you to haunted homes and shifting coasts with our two Scorpios—Loam Listen host Amirio Freeman and art critic Jessica Lynne—at the helm. "What are the ghosts that have been following me?" Jessica asks in this potent excavation of family, sites of silence, homespace, and community.

Guest:

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Art in America, The Believer, BOMB Magazine, The Nation, Frieze, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2020 Graham Foundation Research and Development award and is currently at work on a collection of essays about love, faith, art, and the U.S. South. Jessica lives and works in coastal Virginia.

Recommended Resources:

In this conversation with Amirio Freeman, holistic design strategist Denise Shanté Brown asks: "How can we design flows, spaces, time together, in a way that involves us leaning into our whole selves to show up? Making space for black womxn to show up fully? And that includes the rage, the fear, the anxiety, our sense of imagination and possibility [...] and all of that without the burden of needing to wonder how comfortable or uncomfortable someone in that space is..." From reflecting on liberation to exploring wellbeing, Denise offers us a beautiful blueprint for seeding new futures in this powerful podcast episode.

Guest:

Recommended Resources:

Meet Black Womxn Flourish, Shades Collective Artist Highlight

on self-recovery, bell hooks

If We Want Design to be a Tool for Liberation, We’ll Need More Than Good Intentions, Design Justice Network

Design Justice: Community-Led Practice to Build the Worlds We Need, Sasha Constanza-Chock

Designing Futures with Care: Finding Our Way to Different Worlds Together, Tara Campbell + Ariana Luutterman

To Work and to Love, dorothee solle

Poetry is Not a Luxury, audre lorde

Vibe Watch & Life Is a Flow of Love (spotify playlists by Denise)

Tibetan Singing Bowl Sound Meditation by Nicole Windle

Meet our new Loam Listen host, Amirio Freeman! In this transitional episode, Loam Creative Director Kate and Amirio explore a fresh vision for this podcast that is responsive to this moment.

Amirio is a Black, queer Southerner and a food systems advocate and artist. Amirio is the founder of Being Green While Black, a “visual archive of the constellations of greenness within the vast cosmos of blackness” that ultimately serves as a “digital spell to conjure socially, politically, economically, and ecologically just futures where blackness isn’t marginalized.”

Currently based in Washington, D.C., Amirio is an advocacy specialist for a domestic hunger-relief organization; there, they use policy, art, and community to envision and manifest a healthier and more equitable food system in the U.S. Amirio’s life and work are propelled by the belief that “[w]hen we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully.” (bell hooks)

In the last episode in our Weaving New Worlds listening series, we connect with Milla Prince of The Woman Who Married A Bear to explore the intersections of herbalism, community care, and political activism. In the midst of wildfire season and political crisis, Milla's meditations on reweaving relationship to Earth and reframing "expertise" are truly a balm for the soul.

Follow @thewomanwhomarriedabear for ancestral animist herbalism, remembrance medicine, and reflections on resilience.

How do we (re)member ourselves back into reciprocal relationship in the Anthropocene? Sam Edmondson and Lauren Hage of Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education reflect on the ideological migration that this moment we're living through is asking of us in this conversation for our Weaving New Worlds listening series.

Dive deeper into the work of Weaving Earth through their programs.

Citation note from Lauren:

brontë velez is an educator and board member at Weaving Earth and creative director for Lead to Life."

In this special episode—part of our Weaving New Worlds listening series—geographer and poet Teju Adisa-Farrar shares an excerpt from her immersive essay, We Are the Weavers: Black Mermaids, Geography As Intervention, Roots of Imagining. By braiding together poetry and praxis, Teju connects readers with the resources to recognize that "we are the weavers of the new world. It is we who conceptualize it, who build it, who make it real, who map it."

Dig deeper into Teju's work online for powerful poetry and engaging essays.

After taking the space as a team to grieve, rest, and organize, we are returning to our Weaving New Worlds listening series to share some of the incredible voices from this year's annual magazine. In this episode, wild food forager Sunny Savage offers insight into emergent ecosystems as well as how to make space for multiplicity in our relationship to "invasive" species.

Follow @sunnysavageofficial for reflections on wild food foraging and access to the inspiring Savage Kitchen app.

In celebration of the launch of Weaving New Worlds comes a conversation with writer and chef Zuri Camille de Souza on sensual ecology, the art of attention, and foraging for wild foods. This episode is the first in our upcoming series devoted to connecting our readers to the many incredible artists, activists, and educators whose stories fill the pages of our annual print publication.

Follow Zuri @sensualecology for inspiring writing & snapshots of toothsome suppers.

During these strange and surreal times, coming home to craft can be a balm for the soul. Natural dye artist and educator Sasha Duerr shares tools for growing where you are planted thru plant-based color & place-based recipes in this joyful conversation with Loam Creative Director Kate Weiner.

Follow @sashaduerr for artful studies in natural dye.