“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

-Winston Churchill

We have arrived at a new threshold. The year stretching out before us is perhaps no less certain than any other, although it feels rife with the unknown. Gingerly we step, careful to keep our expectations managed, exhausted from a year of isolation, of fear, of loss. We allow ourselves moments of cautious optimism, we think we see a light, distant but growing, at the end of the tunnel. Waking up every day is a feat of courage. We face a world over which we have absolutely no control, meet each new day with the resolve to step forward, again and again, never allowing discomfort to knock us from the path entirely.

Tamy Ben-Tor lives and works in Brooklyn. When we spoke in early December during what, at the time, was the peak of the pandemic, she was working on videos while performance is on hiatus. She is also working on a collaborative artist book to be published soon. In fact, this strange time when things are on pause has been beneficial for the continued creation of this project. There will ultimately be two books, one titled Archive which will be a collection of projects over the last 12 years between Tamy, who is a performance artist, and her collaborator who is a painter. To hear more about this project, as well as the role of the publisher in this project which is quite a bit more in-depth than just publishing, and to hear more about Tamy’s videos and find links to view them, listen to the complete interview.

Jenny Roesel Ustick is a muralist in Cincinnati. She explained that while 2019 was a banner year for her work, 2020 has been rather a different story. She was able to complete a mural project in July at a festival called Walls for Women celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage, but otherwise, her work as a muralist has largely been on hold. In the absence of active projects, she has poured a great deal of energy into planning future work. Her work for the festival honored women who have been marginalized and erased throughout history. This was a challenge within her medium which typically depicts uplifting material. To hear more about this project and more, including insights about Confederate monuments, listen to the complete interview.