Deteriorating, Building, 2024.
Pen on Paper. Purchase
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Art by Lydia Collins
Poem by Tarnynon Onumonu
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Circling
treading cycles
whittling wood whilst wilting
we deteriorate while building
then comes the collapse
an abominable sand trap
and they say at once
there was life here
home here
all reduced to dust
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Tarnynon (Ty-yuh-nuh) Onumonu is an emerging artist born and raised in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood on the southeast side of Chicago and is extremely proud of and humbled by her Southside citizenship and West African lineage. She draws from this to produce work, that is both specific in its autobiographical nature as well as global in its subject matter of love, trauma, and disorientation over the span of time and reach of Western colonization and global Black Femme cultural experience. In 2017, she took second place in the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards and represented Chicago on the Lethal Poetry Team at the 2018 National Poetry Slam. She has featured at literary spaces and competitions throughout the Midwest and has performed locally everywhere from nightclubs to bookstores to The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She has been a Poet in Residence at the Chicago Poetry Center since January 2019 and has been featured in Newcity Magazine, South Side Weekly, and the Chicago Reader. Her “Darker Girl Manifesto” broadside was on exhibition with the Center for Book Arts in the summer of 2021 and in April 2022, she was commissioned by the environmental justice organization, the NRDC for National Poetry Month 2022. In 2023, she featured alongside Chicago’s inaugural poet laureate in the Chicago Public Library’s National Poetry Month Kick-Off and was interviewed by Vocalo Radio for their Chi Sounds Like segment.
Lydia Collins is an illustrator, urban planner, and educator whose renderings translate emotional experience onto everyday architectural sites. Her work bridges the connection between the social experience of space with by exploding static physical realities and using the elements that emerge to rebuild alternative futures.
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1000 Words | Home Not Home Artists + Writers
Noa Alemán + Tamar Brooks • Jacqueline Almaguer + Alanis Castillo Caref • Lexi Alvarado + Isabela Ortega • Danielle Arend + Janina Gatilao • Sofia Brunwin + Spencer Hutchinson • Andrea Cole + Rocio Franco • Lydia Collins + Tarnynon Onumonu • Gregory Diaz + Irvin Ibarra • Danielle Dykerhouse + Betsy Van Die • Jonathan Espinoza + ben-aki • Jaymes Fedor + Maria Requena • Samantha Franco + Angeles Rangel • Ines Gardea + Angelica Davila • Frank Geiser + Penny Mann • Evelyn Hernandez + Valeria Osornio • Stephanie Hererra + Neha Chawla • Ivana Jarmon + Theo Sullivan • Vivian Jones + Luz Silva • Lewis Lain + Thulasi Seshan • Cesar Luna + benedicta m badia • Marie Magnetic + Jasmine Rodriguez • Delisha Mckinney + Paloma Velasco • Diana Noh + Juj-Lepe • Andrew Rehs + Corbett Berger • Clau Rocha + Maria Jose Ramos Villagra • Amyia Ross Brittanii Batts (Tanae b) • Fawaz Sakaw + Arianna Maggio • Lucero Sanchez + Clay-Cofre • Ramin Takloo-Bighash + Yiwen-Lyu • TEEL ONE + Melody Contreras • Pamela Trejo + Kim Yeoh • Cindy Uriostegui + Scum Drop • Ami Vasilopoulos + Stephanie Cruz Rincon • Ivy Waegel + Aryn Hills • Emily Schroeder Willis + Angelica Flores • Raine Yung + Micaela Petkus