"Macho B" billboard and "Tombs Letter" booklet finished

Here's a little preview of the billboard I built/painted as part of the large Justseeds installation we're putting the final touches on for the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University (opens September 16). Participating Justseeds artists created billboards dealing with themes of immigration and borders, and Bec Young, Mary Tremonte and myself managed the project while out-of-town Justseeds folks came in to work on their contributions over the course of the summer. I took quite a few photos of the installation you can check out here, and I'll post the final photos when I've got them. In the downtime around organizing the installation I was able to work on my own billboard, a circus-poster-themed eulogy to Macho B, the last (and oldest) jaguar known to roam wild in the United States. Macho B was a male jaguar whose range extended North into Arizona - this drove him to cross the U.S.-Mexico border freely for about 13 years until he was captured and subsequently euthanized at the Phoenix Zoo under shady circumstances in 2009. (Clicking on either of these images will give you a larger version...)

Earlier in the Spring I wrote a short article called "Canonizing Emma" for a booklet recently published by the new, Philadelphia-based literary press Thread Makes Blanket. The booklet is a republishing of a letter Alexander Berkman wrote to Emma Goldman while he was imprisoned in the Tombs Prison in Manhattan in 1917, and includes some creative and contextual essays. We've got the booklet for sale over at Justseeds, more info here. Thanks to Marissa and Kane for including my essay in their burgeoning project!

Also, I just finished two new prints which I'll post here next week...