sara j grossman

"Earth Mending" is the title of this course, depicted by a cyanotype of by Ellen Barrett. white light refracted and scattered across a blue background. summary of course: "Living at the brink of death is still a form of living. And the life that flourishes there deserves not only elaboration and study, but also a deep attention to strategic application and use within the climate crisis. Rooted in case studies from disability history, wildfire and Pyrophytel plant life, plastic-eating worms, and repair culture, this course surveys what it means to live with and through the mending practices that inform types of living that lay close to apparent death. Earth Mending asks what recuperative practices—such as care work, mending, stewardship, and reparation—have to offer (to our individual lives, to the persistence of communities, to the soil, air, and water) during times of ecological and humanistic crisis."

excited to teach a new course at Princeton this fall. we really need all the tools for living in this world, and i hope this course will offer at least a few:

16.08.2025 12:52 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

thank you!

03.03.2024 18:07 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

part of the idea here is to find other ways of relating to the weather that are not based on numericity. we realized how every cyanotype is already a record the sun, and that the most intense renderings are usually capturing extreme weather (extreme sun, rain, or wind).

03.03.2024 12:51 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

last week, i held a workshop at Rutgers on non-numerical weather recording. i love numbers--and need them--but we need some other ways, too, and so we tried some cyanotype recording of the rain.

left: 45 minutes of rain on plexiglass; right: 10 minutes of rain on plexiglass coated w/ soil.

03.03.2024 12:48 — 👍 16    🔁 4    💬 2    📌 0

aw, thank you! it has been really rewarding to teach.

01.03.2024 23:56 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

we've expanded our dye collection. here are some of the colors we are working with lately. the thing that we are really thinking on is how we can learn different laws of change and transformation from plants, and especially how they teach us about change in situations of duress and stasis:

01.03.2024 16:27 — 👍 12    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0

super excited for this event at Rutgers-Camden tomorrow. join us if you're around ⛅

28.02.2024 00:59 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

alkanet root cooking on high.

one of the more surprising developments when we were making the dye was how some of the roots really wanted the water, rather than really wanting to release pigment (which is what we thought would happen when heated). here's the alkanet:

16.02.2024 15:40 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

it was rewarding, and an extremely fragrant experience. here's the wheel of color we have so far. all plant-based. the lighter blackberry is the vine, and the darker is the berry.

16.02.2024 00:54 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

in class today, we cooked down dockroot, alkanet, and blackberry vine, which produced a variety of golden, brown, and somewhat redish dyes.

16.02.2024 00:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

both poems and plants have the capacity to teach us about slow, transformative color and movement. i'm super pleased that i am able to do this work with students--to be slow and deliberative about processes of transformation.

02.02.2024 15:20 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

i'm teaching a class on hues in poems and plants this semester. yesterday, we experimented with a variety of purples/blues alongside H.D.'s poem about sea-violets.

02.02.2024 15:16 — 👍 10    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 1

Ink print of fall leaves on white paper, pressed after silkscreen.

Silkscreen of two fall leaves, which appear white on a black background.

yesterday we learned about riso and silkscreen in one of my #environmentalhumanities classes. it was really fun!

29.11.2023 15:23 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Image of roller coaster on beach, with title of book IMMEASURABLE WEATHER in white ink. Author’s name displayed across the side.

Image of cyanotype flowers with green hue and title LET THE HOUSE OF BODY FALL in white ink. Author’s name displayed at bottom.

on research and visioning, i am the author of two books:

04.10.2023 14:28 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

i am still here listening and learning about the world that way. i am also a researcher, writer, and wild dreamer re: environment, computation, datafication, disability, care, creative visioning on what worlds we can make together from the refuse of this one. that’s what i’ll try to share here.

04.10.2023 14:22 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

hello! still finding my way on here. i had not felt compelled to say much of anything on <thesitethatshallnotbenamed> over the last few years. the influx of things there tended to compel me into a quietness. that’s been my vibe since early 2020–just lots of listening and witnessing.

04.10.2023 14:18 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0