Astri Snodgrass

I’m honored to be a part of the House on Fire Artist Residency at The Common Well this summer. I’m working alongside five other artist-activists to find meaningful ways to connect activism to art practice. One guest speaker’s talk was titled: “how to burn brighter than the dumpster fire” 🔥

I’m sure for a lot of my fellow artists, we’re wondering what our role is right now. Everything is changing, faster than we can keep up with. But art — song, especially — can bring people together in a powerful way. Song can turn poetry and narrative into something memorable and communal.

He hesitated before agreeing to that performance, unsure of whether it was his place. The terrorist had named the song as everything he hated.

I keep thinking of the line “you can’t kill all the unbelievers / there’s no shortcut to freedom”.

I’m thinking about the importance of song, particularly comfort songs. Lillebjørn Nilsen led 40,000 people in singing «Barna av Regnbuen», his translation of Pete Seeger’s “My Rainbow Race” a year after the terrorist attack of July 22, 2011.

A red, white, blue, and lavender hand painted scroll unfurls to reveal text in Spanish, English, and Norwegian

Every translation is a transformation. This scroll has the lyrics to Lillebjørn Nilsen’s «danse, ikke gråte nå» in Spanish, English, and the original Norwegian. I remember listening to this song on cassette as a kid. It was one of the first songs I could understand in full as I learned the language.

Just finished deinstalling at the Boise Art Museum. A bittersweet end of the most significant show of my career. Here’s a vid that shows the internal armature.

I already have more paper pillars in the works, repurposing some of the PVC armatures for the next show.

A scroll of white paper with red writing stands on end on a desk with both sides curled and a big swoop unfurled between them. Behind is a loom and more scrolls.

Ancient history need not be a mystery.

I don’t like the process because it is hard to remember and time consuming. It requires more patience and attention than the act of weaving. I know I’ll get better the more I do it, but I don’t want to do it frequently. I need to struggle through the difficulty and commit to doing it more often.

Dark and light blue threads are chained and wrapped around the front beam of a floor loom. The ends have been threaded through the comb-like part of the loom, called the reed.

Warping is the hardest part because I do it only about once or twice a year. Weaving is tricky when you have so many interests!

A white woman with short blonde hair, glasses, and red lipstick smiles in front of painted paper scroll towers

Getting some help from one of my fellow artists-in-residence, Janell Strouse, today, to get my Boise Art Museum show professionally photographed. This is my unprofessional iPhone selfie as she’s hard at work doing her thing shooting the work 📸

The show is up through July 13th.
#contemporaryart

Light shines through a window. It is morning. Baby carrots that didn’t grow very big because I forgot to thin them are backlit. They look like drips of ink spilling down into the roots. I notice the roots have little hairs coming off of them and this strikes me as very cute. The carrots’ little feet dip their toes in water. A cup is backlit and turned on its side. It reminds me of a moon.

Cosecha. Harvest. Ekphrastic alt text on carrots I forgot to thin.

In Norwegian,
carrots are gulerøtter.
Gule + røtter.
Yellow roots.
Vegetables? Grønnsaker.
Grønn + saker.
Green things.

#vegetablegarden #poemdiary #norsk #multilingual #freeassociation

Thank you for all that you do. Your writing over the years has been a beacon of hope.

What’s the beforelight book in this picture? The cover looks like a cyanotype by Anna Atkins

Breaking language is what poets do. As does AI. Signs of life? Signs of consciousness? Is consciousness just stupidity? Is consciousness being conscious of one’s own stupidity? Stupid thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Reminds me of Magritte and de Chirico. Also Morandi in a way. And Edward Hopper.

My studio wall detail shot: a weaving in mostly greens with yellow-white fringe hangs on a dowel. Pinned to the side like a brooch on its chest is a drawing on a grid. The drawing in red ink white negative space and graphite is both graphic and textual: MEWE reads the compass, offset and weighed down (smooshed). A calligraphic script reads “moral compass”. Around the weaving hand other text-drawings concrete poems and hanks of green handspun wool yarn.

Moral compass
Oral comfort
Comfort food
Moral courage
choral cordage
choir twined together
wire binds up ties in pyres
fire burns
smoke signals
to point the way
north.

Three strawberries in a hand that wears diamonds. Table linens in happy colors. Fuzzy bathrobed arm. Bare foot of a human animal with pedicure on kitchen floor, grounded. Life is good.

Cosecha. Harvest. So much life happens in a bathrobe.

#multilingual #superpower #growingstrawberries #diarypoem #dagfordag

Ohh, thank you for sharing! Looking forward to learning more about your process. I crochet a lot too and I’m always looking for ways to use the scraps.

A Trojan horse!

These are amazingly beautiful. What fibers are you using? How are you preparing them for spinning?

Who makes the clothes? I’ve never thought much about how important clothing and materials are for world building but of course it makes total sense. Textiles make the world.

Lovely colors

A corner of a studio with weavings and text-based drawings (concrete poetry?) on the walls. Books are stacked on top of the short wall and on a cart. On a wooden loom bench sit four cards of my artworks.

Summer studio themes: translation, transliteration, poetry, musicality, community, comfort, thread. All things that touch me.

#studionotes #artstudio #drawings #poetry #weaving #fiberarts #translation

A photograph shot on an iPhone in June. Succulent succulents capture water on the air of a spiderweb. A single stone stands out to me, though there are several pictured.

Isn’t all water holy?

#poemdiary #photodiary #díaadía #daybyday #dayafterday #yesterday

First Friday Art & Studio Stroll - Google My Maps 5:30pm - 8:30pm June 6 August 1 October 3 December 5 A celebration of the arts with multiple venues and dozens of artists. You are encouraged to walk and ride your bike. Parking available at the Rive...

www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...

Want to see what I’m making this summer? Stop by the Common Well tonight from 5:30-8:30 for First Friday. Surel’s Place put together a map of what’s happening so you can gallery hop to take in as much as you like.

110 West 31st Street, Garden City

Two framed works on paper hang on a teal blue wall above a vitrine. The vitrine contains open sketchbooks and organic shaped crochet “drawings” (psychedelic doilies, if you will)

“Here We Have Idaho: Material Matters, S.A. Jones and Astri Snodgrass” continues through July 13 at the Boise Art Museum.

Join me Thursday for an artist talk in the galleries, or hit me up for a private tour between now and the end of the show.

#contemporarydrawing #worksonpaper #contemporaryart

Framed drawings hang on a divider wall in a white cube gallery. The wall is painted a teal blue. In front of the wall is a vitrine with sketchbooks and other small works.

Don’t miss my First Thursday gallery talk @ the Boise Art Museum this week, 5:30pm!

A white box gallery shot from the back of the room. “Spindles” of paper scrolls are suspended from the ceiling are spread throughout the space. Repeated forms of paper rolls spiral upwards and unspool a bit on two white pedestals low to the ground.

Thank you, Houston! What a lovely welcome at the reception last night.

BOX13 ArtSpace— y’all are some lovely humans. I’m happy this work gets to call your gallery home through June 28th.

There are gallery hours today and Saturdays moving forward from 1-5pm.

#contemporaryart #worksonpaper

Painted scrolls of paper shot from above on a wide white pedestal. One is laid on its side and is split into fringe, with the ends spun into yarn.

The show is up — thanks to all who came out for the reception tonight! I am beat. Heading back home tomorrow, but the work will stay here for several more weeks.