HOOP DREAMS / FACEBOOK ARTIST IN RESIDENCE (CAMBRIDGE, MA)

I happen to be a Libra, an air sign, and I think about how important the element of air is for my creative and conceptual flow. Air is also a key idea in basketball culture. People talk about “Getting Air”, “Air Balls” and of course “Air Jordan” (who happens to be an Aquarius). They also talk about The Dream, Living the Dream, the Dream Team, and Hoop Dreams, when they talk about the game, but a lot of what we see in professional sports is kind of a nightmare- racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia and limits placed on the expression of players as their true selves. We have to realize that the Dream is inside of us. We can work to realize these dreams in waking life. Basketball is for everyone. Play is for everyone. Art is for everyone. We all dream each night. There is a sensitivity and a vibrance to the everyday that is more than just competition and flexing and definitely more than spectatorship. The New Craft Artists in Action talk a lot about the idea of participation vs spectatorship in the work we with communities of young people

This work “Hoop Dreams” also looks playfully at Lucid Dreaming as an active state of rest, the space where we work out inner and external conflict. There are techniques you can use to practice lucid dreaming- or the state where one begins to take the wheel and navigate through their own subconscious. Some people stare at their hands just before bed, then try to find and direct them again in the dream. Any focused visualization can work. There are also certain herbs, like Mugwort, which is literally found in cracks in the sidewalk near our public bball courts, that can aid in this process. So I incorporate imagery from some of those plants

This work asks- how can we be healthy and active in our minds and our bodies? Certainly not just by sitting on the couch watching the TV and eating crap. We have to find ways to plug in and wake up. That’s what this piece, and most of my work, is about- pulling together seemingly polarized ideas like athletics and art or Waking life and Dreaming.