What is Beautiful?

What is beautiful?

I have experienced creative overwhelm throughout the last year and a half and it often zaps my focus when deciding where to center my next body of work. Sometimes, my mind pings from idea to idea and then settles on an empty space that seems devoid of the inspiration that was just lighting me up on the front end of my thought process.

For the last few months I have shifted my focus from asking, “what can I make?” and, “what do I have time to make?”, to, “what is beautiful?” The answers that have come back to me after asking this question has informed my work and it strengthens the trust I have in myself. When I focus on what is available to me in the here and now I move back to my center and anxiety fades away. 

Intentionally looking for beauty allows me to see gorgeous textures and colors on seemingly average objects like bricks, wet city sidewalk gas caps, and ornamental cloth chandeliers. I easily lose track of time on my walks as I jump from one beautiful pattern to the next that is painted across all of the green and growing things. And as the time slips away I start to feel like I’m at an age when it felt like magic to be in my body. Where I didn’t stress about not having enough time and the minutes of my day were reserved for the exploration of my immediate space. It has been a choice of faith to move away from worry and from the mental logistics that come from feeding and housing myself as a creative in this society. Asking what is beautiful has been grounding and the beauty I see has become a wellspring of inspiration for my work and its enthusiasm is growing.

The question has led me back to one of my favorite spots on the Northside of Chicago, Rosehill Cemetery. Since 2015 some of my favorite walks have been through the grounds of this 350 acre garden cemetery where the beauty of human made ponds, abundant trees, rolling hills of green grasses and winding paved roads juxtaposing limestone and marble headstones, mausoleums, Civil War and Chicago firefighter monuments is enough to feast your eyes on for hours. 

It’s a place where your senses soak are soaked in the dense fog of mineral-ed soil and where the orchestras of red winged blackbird songs, goose calls and the winds’ whistle through tall, feathered reed grasses surrounding the pond push back the curtain of discordant sounds birthed by whirling tires and blaring car horns. This reserved space that means something to the living and nothing to the dead is brimming with life. Families of deer, ducks, turtles, rodents and frogs feed off of its rich grounds and the coyote feeds on them. Nourishment is found in the pounding heartbeat of a woodpecker's beak against a decaying shade tree while moss, lichen, algae, mold and mildew paint masterpieces across markers and headstones as they breed. 

This is a place where I found the inspiration for The Rosehill Cannons series encircling the Bridges Battery, Illinois Light Artillery Civil War, Equality Monument in Section D of the cemetery. I have had a 7 year relationship with Rosehill Cemetery and it wasn’t until this February that these weathered and highly textured lot posts caught my eye. I didn’t know what they were at first and several times a week I walked back to them with a strong desire to know who put them there, what they were, and why/how everything came together to create complexity of textures and colors that range from light blue and green to black. 

I was blown away to learn that what I thought were human made sculptural posts were actually 7 Napoleon cannons from the Civil War that were captured from the Confederate Army and loaned to the monument and to the cemetery by Congress. I had no idea that these posts were cannons and that they weighed 1,230 pounds and that they were actually 5.5” in total length. With a little under half of its body showing above ground it became clear why some of these cannons were titled and I was delighted to learn that it was the weight of these cannons pressing against the soil that pushed some of them off of their center, positioning them in a way that gives more complexity and life to their bodies. 

I marveled at nature when I learned that these beauties were made out of bronze and that the colors and patterns that I had been obsessing over resulted from the natural process of oxidation. It was oxygen marrying bronze that created complex and captivating layers of light blues, greens, dark blues grays and blacks. It was extreme corrosion from this process and their practical application during the Civil War that created lines and deep cracks upon its surface.

I knew I had to make these sculptural posts before I learned of its story and I was delighted to make these discoveries throughout the process. The inspiration for these pieces is multifaceted and ever-growing- it comes from my desire to recreate beauty and to abstractly replicate the process of oxidation that has been ongoing with these cannons since the 1800’s. Alongside this is the desire to honor and share my connection to the grounds at Rosehill Cemetery. 

I have been in my joy playing with acrylic paint again and replicating the sculptural posts that I fell for at first sight in Section D of the cemetery. My interest in these canons created a new set of circumstances in my process where paint was introduced into my woodworking practice. Learning what paint to use and how to play with it was exhilarating and it was just that, play. I was lost in these pieces for hours and days and I trusted myself to explore this project without a guarantee of a favorable outcome. As I have grown in my understanding of this project I become increasingly excited to continue to explore varying techniques and applications to render the cannons likeness in my pieces. Making these sculptural columns has opened new doors for me, impacting what I think is possible in my work and I am grateful for Rosehill and how it has informed my practice.

I have found many answers on the grounds of this 350 acre garden cemetery. This is a place where I find silence to grapple with some of my life’s largest transitions, especially during the deepening winter months. Rosehill Cemetery is a place that I leaned on and found reprieve while I was recovering from my top surgery (a gender affirming surgery) performed on February 1st of 2017. A week prior to my surgery, on January 25th, 2017 I lost my beloved, 17 year old, lab husky mix, Jameson. The shock of the surgery and of the loss of my pup left me numb and in need of isolation. I walked the cemetery five to ten minutes at first and as much as my fatigued and healing body granted, and eventually, as my stamina increased I spent hours in Rosehill clearing my mind. Solace came to me in the silence that came from the names atop those markers that didn’t try to erase my grief.

Far removed now, at the age of 43, from the creepy urban legend stories of weird and evil people hanging out in cemeteries that I heard as a kid, walking this cemetery has never felt odd to me and in 2017 Rosehill helped me to process and honor my body, both pre and post surgery, and the passing of a life that was dear to me. Being in movement and reflection is what I needed to celebrate my loss and the brave decision I made to live authentically in my body. 

Walking through the grounds of Rosehill throughout the years has surrounded me in stillness and allowed me the space to reflect on the existential questions that have kept me company since I was a child and on the sureness of my wholeness as it was before I entered into this life. 

It’s a space that makes it easy for me to ruminate on the beauty of death as much as the beauty of birth and on my belief that both are brimming with endless potential for growth.

I am calm when I allow death and nature to be close in proximity. I see the certainty of my passing as an energetic redirection and proof that I am nature and that I am not separated from it. It brings me a sense of purpose knowing that my body could provide the same nourishment to the earth as that of a fallen tree that feeds a forest floor with its humus, providing fertile grounds to new life for decades. I don’t know what happens on the other side of my life, but I do know that I feel beautiful about the possibility of it. The magic of seeing my likeness reflected in the systems and lives of nature whisper familiar, almost forgotten tunes that I am never alone and I won’t be even in my final moments. This gives me the sense that I exist inside and outside of my body, simultaneously. I’m sure on the other side of things I won’t care, be worried or have the ability to worry about these things at all. My stream of consciousness on my walks through natural spaces make clear that the loss of this life is not something that I want to run from and by staying in conversation with myself about the cycle of life, my minutes, hours and days are recalibrated and it seems easier to move forward, step by step while trying to find the beauty that surrounds me and that is sometimes hidden by my fear.

Rosehill Cemetery is a place where I can be in walking meditation and where I access the lessons of nature. Seeing myself reflected in nature gives me the resolve to reframe internalized hate and bigotry that I see and hear on the grandest of political stages to the smallest of microaggressions from a friend, family or community member. I recognize the internalization as something I do not have to hold and I settle back into the value that has always been brimming inside of me. It is in periods of walking stillness, it is in this cemetery, it is in nature and liminal spaces where birth and death are so close to my awareness that I understand that life and energy are genderless. The energy that exists before me and the energy that exists after me is without body and without form. And it is from this understanding that I know trans and gender non-conforming folks exist in every class and culture are the people that best exemplify the spirit and the spiritual energy of this life on earth and beyond. Folks who think outside of gender are the closest to and have an ear to the source of all things whether we identify that source point as energy, god, the divine, science, source or no source at all.  

Moments like the ones I have experienced in Rosehill Cemetery brings me closer to understanding that my life is more than just my body and that by decreasing the over-identification to my body while simultaneously honoring it creates expansiveness and the ability to respect all bodies regardless of species. I have no idea what this life is all about but the space in-between life and death seems to be an invitation for celebration and to create endless pallets of colors, textures, expressions and joy. Science and nature has made it clear that there is not one thing that exists on this earth that is cellularly the same as it was coming into this world at its birth. And the way I see it is, if there are some among us who sanctify and immortalize the form that they came into this life with and use that ideology to harm and control other people and their bodies then they would have to return the clothes, shoes, makeup, jewelry, cars, and money that adorn their bodies and their lives and reverse any surgeries in order to not be a hypocrite. In these spaces of thought and walking mediation I find myself emboldened to celebrate my body as I see fit and some folks would do best by keeping their laws and judgement off of the bodies of the trans and non-binary community and allow us to express our identities in any and all shades of color we choose. It’s in the question, “what is beautiful?” I see my face and the faces of the trans and non-binary community and the face of anyone who is brave enough to live their truth.

It’s not surprising to me that when I am intentional about finding beauty I have found my way back to Rosehill Cemetery. Rosehill is a space I have trusted to clear my mind. It is a place that gives no escape from the certainty of life and death and it mutes my ability to avoid these truths through the preoccupation of tasks, concern over social status and in the over identification of who I am in this life.  It reminds me that nature has its own clock and it has no use for the concerns of my timeline. I see myself reflected in the various species that hang out in this cemetery who are just eating, drinking, pooping, sleeping, having sex, having fun, fighting for land and food and taking care of their own while they make their way through this life just like I am. It is easy to see life in all of its grandeur and grotesqueness. It is easy for me to be silenced in this place while being inspired by all of the beautiful pieces of art that nature and the passage of time have created. 

When once again asking the question, “what is beautiful?” the answer comes to me in bricks and city gas caps on wet sidewalks. It’s the geometric patterns on green and growing things. It is the birdsongs, the winds, the sun, the grasses and the coyote. The answer is contemplating life and death and the endless births and deaths my relationships have experienced. The answer is loss and joy.  It is fear and love. It is the bizarre oxidation of the Napoleon cannons at The Equality Monument in Rosehill Cemetery. The answer is in form and movement. And ultimately the answer to my question, what is beautiful is me. I am beautiful in the body I was born into. I am beautiful in the body I have now. I am beautiful in the body I will die with. I am beautiful in the energy I was before this life just as I will be beautiful in the energy I will return to after this life. My identity is one of a magnificent trans-masculine and non-binary body of energy. I articulate beauty, magic, joy and art in everything I do. Inside of me there is an entire universe of complex simplicity. And if I am all of these things and I am a reflection of the world and it is a reflection of me then it becomes simple for me to see beauty somewhere in everything and everybody within my sightline.