Influences & Acknowledgements

The Coping Calendar 2021

Writing this note is consistently the most difficult part of the creative process every year. There’s so much to say: I’m so aware that this creation is the combination of so many people’s magic, generosity, ideas, support,  expression, labor, and love.

Since its first season six years ago, The Coping Calendar has always been about grief. But this year’s cycle found new layers and depth in that relationship, emerging from such a well of collective grief and rage. 2020 has profoundly rewritten my relationship to loss, interdependence, uncertainty, purpose, loneliness, connection, and care.

First and foremost I want to acknowledge the staggering number of lives that have been senselessly lost this year — to Covid-19, of which have been disproportionately Black and Brown, Disabled, elder, and essential workers. Lives lost to police violence, to the intersections of racism, ableism, classism, transphobia, and other systems of oppression. Lives lost to medical neglect, to the prison industrial complex, to the climate crisis, to the ongoing violence of settler-colonialism. And I also want to honor everyone who is still here: I see you. I see you grieving, fighting, organizing, dreaming. That feels like the first and most important acknowledgement, in general and about this year and about this year’s work. 

However imperfectly, it’s always important to me to take some space here to name what I was thinking about during the creation of this work, and to trace my influences as best as I can. I started working on these images this June, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement hugely impacted my ways of thinking and working. I’m grateful for the work of Layla F. Saad, Imani Barbarin, Adrienne Maree Brown, Leesa Reneé Hall, Alexis Pauline Gumbs (and everyone included in the Black Feminist Breathing Choir), Trisha Hersey, and countless other Black writers, thinkers, leaders, artists, and activists. Starting with the first lockdown in March, I couldn’t get enough of writer and scholar Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés (thank you Ayanna for introducing me!), and her work — particularly The Dangerous Old Woman and how she talks about the collective dreamworld — had a big influence on the this year’s calendar, giving me permission to connect with a much older part of myself. Speaking of mythology and fairytales, reading Amanda Leduc’s Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space had a similar influence in opening me to that particular kind of inspiration. This work is always influenced by my Disability identity, and the brilliant and bold Disabled artists, activists, and advocates now and throught history who have continuously fought to make a place for us. The portal times of Covid and isolation have also cracked open online connections for which I am lucky to have learned from during the creative process of this calendar: the virtual sessions I attended of Crip Camp this summer (thank you to the fierce and radical organizers of that space), the wellness meeting that the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band— stewards of the land I live on here in so-called Santa Cruz—generously and courageously opened to non-tribal members this fall (thank you for that and for your ongoing work), Teacher’s Perspective (via the Clown Farm — John Turner and classmates, thank you), The Now & Then Herbal Apprenticeship (Renée Camilla, Samantha Ray Roberts, and my wonderful peers in that journey), Queens Theatre’s Theatre for All training, Gregory Reinaur and the MMSA crew, and all of the other workshops and webinars I’ve had the privilege of attending recently — I know these have found their way into this work!

As I’m sure you will see and feel in these images, I’ve been thinking a lot about death, endings, and the apocalypse. I’ve also been thinking a lot about spirits, ancestors, rebirth, resilience, infinities, transformation, restoration, justice, and magic! I see and hear all of that in so many places that it can be hard to track my influences in a very specific way. A few images I can clearly trace though— Resist Urgency was influenced by Kim Kranz’ The Wild Unknown Tarot, and Enough For Everyone was influenced by Tomie DiPaola’s picture book, Strega Nona, my friend Wendy who seasoned that pot for me, my Italian family AND the song Salem by Mamuse. Stay Tender is a response to the wildfires that raged through the mountains of my hometown (and across the state of California and beyond) this summer, and carries in it my thoughts and tenderness for the people, land, and creatures affected directly and indirectly by that experience. Regenerate (and the cover for this year’s calendar) reminds me of astrologer Chani Nicholas’ collages (and her horoscopes also guide me through my months and creative projects). My studio is full of art — my own and other people’s— and I’m sure those pieces have also influenced this year’s work: thank you Lex Nonscripta, Sonia and Nina Montenegro, Amina Mucciolo, Molly Costello, Kah Yangni, Danny Fernandez, Nikki McClure, Whitney Kitty, Sage Duran, and many others for creating art that lives in my homespace. 

This year’s calendar took longer than ever to make — nearly six months. And just before sending it to print, I went on a magical camping trip (thank you Allie, Chanelle, Jay, and Eva) only twenty minutes away from where I live. I got to lay under new-moon stars and feel the expanse of magic and life that is always around me, even when I am not paying attention to it. Chanelle and I were talking about all art as relationship, and I am thinking about that today as I write this note. Every aspect of this work is about relationship. Thank you to my dear friends and family for supporting me and getting me through some really rough patches this year. The folks in my hometown and beyond who have shown up for me in countless ways. Those of you who have supported this project since 2015 and those of you new to the fold (welcome!). The friends who have scooped me off the floor and made sure I ate, who check in over text and audio message and video calls— from people I connect with daily, to folks I have infrequent but deep connections with. Thank you Lilly, lily, Ayanna, YT and Sham, Carmen, Miyuki, Cynthia, Allie, Jack, Vania, Hayden, Anna, Angus, Amelia and Connor (Conner has been fielding emergency art/technology questions from me so patiently since year one!), Charlie, Barak, Sara, to name a few of you. Thank you kids and babies in my life, thank you Tara, Hal, Ruby, and Hazel. Thank you family— my sweet parents, siblings, Grandma, and extended relations. Thank you Ross and Julianne. Thank you Patrons. Thank you old friends and new friends, exes and faraway folks, thank you everyone I had a conversation with this year. To everybody who wrote me a note in their order, or who emailed or messaged me or told me in person that this work means something to you: hearing from you shifted something big in me this year, truly. It made a real difference. You are all in here and I love you all (I wish I could name every single one of you individually!).

The human beings who contributed to this work that I may not know personally but whose presence I always feel and appreciate: from all healthcare and frontline workers to the people who grew the food I ate today, from everyone at Community Printers where this calendar is made to the friends and strangers who saved mailers for me, from the postal worker who delivered this to you to the hundreds of other people who will join you in turning the page each month for the next year. So many interconnected human beings. Thank you all. 

There are also many more-than-human relationships important to this work: my beloved cat, Juniper, has grown into such a guardian and protector (in addition to bringing playful mischief and humor to my days). The juniper tree outside my window, the moss growing up out of the cracks in the sidewalk, the oak-trees at the edges of the empty parking lots I sing in. All of the plant-beings featured in this work! The San Lorenzo river, who contributed a lot to the dreaming phase of this year’s calendar. Experiencing a lot more isolation than I’m used to this year has had me deeply lonely, and leaning into the company of these and other non-human beings has been a profound gift.

This year I thought a lot about the phrase BETWEEN WORLDS. May we find strength and resilience to cope and care for eachother amidst a world crumbling, and just as importantly, may we nurture fierce courage, creativity, imagination, and love as we call in the next one!

With infinite love,

haley brown 

November 2020