we write for you
The first part of this newsletter is a BULLETIN BOARD with upcoming and current shows, projects, book releases and events, that I hope you will come to and share with your communities.
And the second part is ROOTS, WEBS, NETS, and BRANCHES. A written offering, sharing of work, expansion & footnotes of what’s going on in my studio, practice and brain. This part is usually paid but today it is free.
ROOTS WEBS NETS BRANCHES BULLETIN BOARDS is my practice, is labor, is my work.
BULLETIN BOARD
A very long awaited winter newsletter…. sent out on a day that feels like Spring….I have a busy season ahead and hope you will join me in getting the word out about a workshop I am teaching in the Hudson Valley, NY at the end of March (or maybe sign up yourself), attend a group show ready to be seen, experienced and learned from in Northampton, MA, purchase or get your library to order a forthcoming exhibition catalog and come celebrate a very long awaited solo show in early May! Hope to see you around!
Broadcast Now: publishing as a tool of survival during fascism and genocide
March 28 & 29, 2026, 10am-4pm daily
Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY
$50-$300 sliding scale
Broadcast Now: publishing as a tool of survival during fascism and genocide is a two-day workshop hosted by artist, abolitionist, and storyteller Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo. We will start by grounding our making in the role of the printed multiple, publishing, and broadcasting throughout liberatory history. We’ll learn about the use of leaflets as a dissemination tactic during the dictatorship in Chile, the Black Panther newspaper printed in Oakland, CA and mailed nationally, the Detroit Printing Co-op’s role in making printshops a space for collective use, and the ways letters and postcards have enabled close dialogue with our incarcerated community. We will then investigate our own relationships to publishing, and explore how we can collectively incorporate broadcasting into the struggles, fights, and work of 2026. Inspired by the long legacy of the printed multiple shaping liberation movements, participants will craft collective and individual banners, posters, and a class newspaper using screenprinting, creative writing, xerox, and risograph printing. This workshop does not require previous printmaking experience.
Participants should bring a sketchbook and artwork of their own they might want to work with. This class requires all participants to wear KN95 masks for the duration of the workshop. Masks will be provided.
January 30- June 28, 2026
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
Public opening reception: Thursday, March 26, 6:30-8:30pm*
Finnegan Shannon is an artist whose mischievous works challenge traditional museum practices and etiquette. For Don’t mind if I do, Shannon brings alive their longtime fantasy for an exhibition that meets their access needs. “I’m disabled,” they say, “and I need to sit. I’ve been dreaming about an exhibition where instead of having to move from artwork to artwork, I could sit somewhere comfortable and have the artwork come to me.”
Don’t mind if I do is a collaborative experiment demonstrating how temporary changes in power structures create pathways of access for visitors, artists, and staff. Anchored by a conveyor belt that brings artworks to visitors who are invited to sit around comfortable furniture and engage with the objects, the exhibition features artworks by a selection of artists who have influenced Shannon’s practice. The paraded objects, including plastic pill bottles, tissue box covers, and gender-affirming packers, signify illness, systems of support, and play within everyday life.
Embraced for its efficiency and mechanized transport of goods, the conveyor belt is reappropriated as a vehicle for cultivating a more relaxed museum-going experience. It welcomes informality, messiness, and unsettling the hierarchy of objects.
This text was written by Denny Mwaura for Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago based on texts by Finnegan Shannon and Lauren Leving and is used with permission.
Artists in the show: Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Pelenakeke Brown, Sky Cubacub, Emilie L. Gossiaux, Felicia Griffin, Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Jeff Kasper and Finnegan Shannon.
As well as, Rooted, drawings from architect Phyllis Birkby’s archives.
*If you are free on Thursday, March 26, I invite you to join me and the other featured artists for a lecture by Finnegan Shannon (at 5:00pm, learn more here), followed by the public opening reception for the show at the museum from 6:30-8:30pm.
Dear Mazie,: Sanctuary, Speculation, and Sky
Edited by Amber Esseiva
Published by CARA and Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University
Coming out in April 2026, pre-order it here
Dear Mazie,: Sanctuary, Speculation, and Sky is an experimental reader that explores the work and legacy of Amaza Lee Meredith (1895–1984), a trailblazing artist and educator who became the first known Black queer woman to practice as an architect in the United States.
The publication accompanies the eponymous exhibition at ICA VCU, which takes Meredith’s expansive letter-writing practice as a conceptual framework for epistolary responses in the present. Dear Mazie, plots Meredith’s life and work within themes of placemaking, gender, sexuality, and Black love, with a special focus on the ways she built sanctuaries (from homes to institutions to communities) for herself and other people of color to foster rigorous artistic pursuit, free of persecution.
The fully illustrated publication features previously unpublished photos, blueprints, letters, and scrapbooks from Meredith’s archives and an annotated timeline of her life and work. Newly commissioned essays from architectural scholars, and oral histories with former students, colleagues, and friends explore her significant legacy in public education, the arts, modernist architecture, and the built environment in the context of school desegregation, civil rights, and land and property rights. Contributions from a diverse group of contemporary artists respond to Meredith’s legacy, offering a note to the past from the present.
Featuring new works by Jessica Bell Brown, Amber Esseiva, Mario Gooden, Mabel Wilson, Colson Whitehead, Charisse Pearlina Weston, and Craig Wilkins, Interviews by AD-WO (Emanuel Admassu, Jen Wood), Regenia Perry, Reverend Grady Powell, Steve Williams, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Artwork by Lukaza Branfman Verissimo, Abigail Lucien, Tschabalala Self, Cauleen Smith, The Black School (Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters), Kapwani Kiwanga
SAVE THE DATE: Steadfast Study
May 2- June 28, 2026
September Gallery, Kinderhook, NY
Public opening reception: Saturday, May 2, 2026, evening
More on this soon! But for now, please save the date for my upcoming solo show at September Gallery and release of an accompanying publication, designed and published by Cripple!
I would love to have you there!
2. ROOTS WEBS NETS BRANCHES
Today the sun shines for you
We write for you, Tosha Stimage
We light our candles, put the most beautiful flowers out on the altar and shower our people in love
Ashe
And some Lucille Clifton, for all those who are transitioning to new forms, from turtle island to Palestine to Iran to Lebanon to Ecuador
May your memory be a blessing
Blessing the boats
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
