paper baby thoughts

hi -- it's me (ryan greene). thanks for checking out my show, PAPER BABY -- whatever brought you here, i'm glad you made it!

PAPER BABY is a gathering of text and texture. it's felt like a way to invite you into my home. into my mess.

at a material level, much of the stuff is made from found or salvaged materials -- aka trash and scraps and things that caught my eye while walking around the neighborhood (i live just down the street).

at a thematic level, i was interested in thinking (publicly) about translation, uncertainty, insomnia, and alongsideness. i also wanted to experiment with ways to make my artmaking process visible.

importantly, this is a show that will change and morph during the time it's up. i'll be adding, removing, and re-arranging things periodically. i'll also be writing reflections about the pieces and the process at sites.google.com/view/paperbaby/thoughts -- check it out!

finally, a deep thank you to the casa caracol family for stewarding such a slow, nourishing space in this fast, harsh world. thank you also to all of the friends and collaborators who have helped to make this show possible. i'm beyond lucky.

biglove,

ryan

REFLECTIONS:

[05.06.26]

last night (or, actually, veeeery early this morning) i finished installing the first iteration of PAPER BABY at Raíz Gallery. i sensed a physical release in the moment i finally felt "done." looking around the room, each piece of the installation functioned as an emotional hyperlink to a specific memory. a grainy picture of roots bridging an eroded crack in the dirt reminded me of time spent walking along the banks of rio salado just south of downtown with Leah Arambula Terry, passing her camera back and forth, back and forth. a series of risograph prints hanging above the back doors returned me to sun-streaked afternoons with Dennis Dominguez when Pachanga Press, with its furry orange wall, was in the room where Xochitl plant shop is now. a piece of paper crisscrossed by typewritten conversational snippets transported me to a mini-park along roosevelt that's now fenced off, on the verge of condofication. back when it was a park, maryhope|whitehead|lee, june powers, hanan robinson and i braved the wind as we made collages and collectively wondered toward our visions of the future.

i'm at work now, secretly writing, but i need to go do my job, so i'll stop here for now. as the show continues, i'm excited to spend more time sitting with and in the memories that get activated. i can already tell that it will be a way to (re)connect with friends and past versions of myself. thanks for being part of this process <3

[05.07.26]

here at night and it feels like i'm gardening. adding tape to a curling edge. transplanting a scrap from one wall to another. hanging a small, spiraled wire from a bent one. i find myself getting caught in the various eddies. having all these things "shown" in this way feels strange, not just because they are visible. but also because they're familiar. it feels like when a friend visits from out of town and we go for a walk. it's like my eyes activate a new filter. with "visting friend vision," the ordinary explodes, glimmer-filled and radiant. sitting in the gallery, surrounded by things that are part of my home (not always out for me to see, but always there, roommates), i'm experiencing them with a new intensity. or maybe a curiosity. and since curiosity is a primary engine of my care and attention, i'm feeling a certain care and attention for and toward myself that can often be drowned out by the less gentle voices in my heartmind. it's refreshing to be hearing something kinder in this moment.

i'm debating whether to include images in these reflections. there's a part of me that's interested in using this space for visual documentation. a webpage affords lots of possibilities. pictures, gifs, embedded videos, carousels, etc. a webpage also offers avenues for access, like alt-text and audio descriptions. of course, it also allows people to experience the visual aspects of PAPER BABY who were not able to be here in person or who are wanting to engage with the project sometime in the future. [quick note: i realize i just called it a "project" rather than a "show" -- maybe something to think about later...]. all of this said, there's also a part of me that wants to use text as my exclusive mode of reflection. i'm interested in what range of thoughts might emerge if i focus here on words, at times asking them to lift a visual load that otherwise images would bear. tonight, though, i don't need to decide. and perhaps there are more than simply two choices.

[05.09.26]

sitting here with arthur in the gallery -- it's a saturday morning and SOW is having a clothing swap. uriel just walked in the door with some new plants for xochitl. frances just showed me a shirt she dyed with indigo. there's music on and overlapping conversations all around. the warmth of community in action. already i've talked with a few friends about the stuff up for the show. there's been a joy in looking around and seeing things in the daylight. the metal hanging from the vent swaying when the a/c churns on. the mobiles quivering in the wake of people walking by. as people drop off clothes and pick up new-to-them shirts and hats and shoes etc, it feels like watching an ecosystem. how could art participate this way? pieces passing from home to home, finding new life.

nica just walked in and said the art feels like stuff that's both random and cohesive. i think that cuts to the core of how i've been thinking about this show. how can i put my energy into gathering. like collage. but the page is the room. disparate elements that, when put together, have a charge. years ago, i made a book/zine called "true//starts" which was a way to practice celebrating imperfection and incompleteness. i reached out to a bunch of friends and asked them to send over some creative false starts -- things they'd started but never finished for one reason or another. one rule, no edits before sending. i received a cascade of scraps and drafts and sketches. for each spread of the zine i combined multiple pieces, no names attached. together, oriented in a range of directions, they felt anything but lacking. i've been chasing that same feeling here in PAPER BABY. how can i take bits and pieces of my life, give them an opportunity to be alongside each other, and witness the sparks?

[05.22.26]

a few days ago i stopped by to re-hang some things that had fallen (like leaves) off the walls. it made me think about a word i learned from my friend maya many years ago -- abscission, which is the process of leaves or fruits or flowers separating from the rest of the plant. more recently, i learned that the same word is used in a fungal context to refer to spores being "liberated." and in the world of cell biology, it refers to the final stage of cytokinesis, which is the final stage of cell division. there's something "cuspy" happening here that i hope to continue learning from as i move through my own transformations (relationally, vocationally, artistically, etc.).

in the spirit of transformation, i've continued to add new components to the show. most recently i used blue and pink yarn to turn an attic-access panel on the ceiling into a blank sheet of paper. a few feet away i also added a safety-pinned cluster of pages with a few months-worth of notes about my sleep from three years ago. it's been interesting to notice that it feels emotionally easier to add things to the swirl rather than to re-arrange them. going forward, i plan to explore that discomfort by moving some things to new places in the room. this, i hope, will activate new/different connections between components of the show while helping me to remain open to change and flux. good practice for other parts of my life.

[05.29.26]

yesterday i walked with my friend pam on a path not meant for our walking. we talked about uncertainty, silence, ways to change our relationship to time. she asked me about PAPER BABY and i did my best to describe how it's emerged. again i found myself toggling between talking about individual components and then talking about the whole conglomeration. it made me realize that here, in this digital space for reflection, i haven't actually articulated much about the specific things or groupings of things that form the show. so here is list that i had made on my phone a few months ago when i was thinking about what i'd like to include:

insomnia drawings
textures
test print pages
fine-tipped drawings
dimensional things
spiral of references
handmade paper
stitched scraps
postcard photos
printmaking stuff
translation drafts
transfluxion things
envelopes/packing material
typewriter play
insomnia things
scanned notebooks
screenshots of code
screenshots of emails
screenshots of texts
hoverlay (maybe)
microbit/makey makey (maybe)
video/audio (maybe)
anthotypes
walk finds

many of these things found their way into the swirl of PAPER BABY. some of them did not. for instance, originally i'd thought that i would use the show as an opportunity to look at how some of my translations have changed over the years from one version to the next, etc. this year marks a decade of sustained engagement with translation, and i though that a visual exploration of the indeterminacy central to the process would be a fun celebration. that said, i ended up deciding to use the show as a way to focus on other parts of my inner life that i've had less opportunity to share with my friends and community.

now that things are (for the most part) installed, i would make a different list to think about the throughlines intertangling the mess:

there is a constellation of things thinking about sleep/lessness -- things i've drawn or written while trying to prepare myself for sleep; things i've drawn or written while unable to sleep; things (like to-do lists and doctor-ordered sleep-and-food-tracking sheets) that have swirled through my mind while trying to sleep; reflections on fear/disorientation/optimism related to asking for and receiving certain forms of help around sleep; etc.
there is a constellation of things thinking about making process visible -- gathered images and iterations used to create different types of prints (block prints, photogravure, risograph, etc.); phenekistoscopes used to make animations; physical and coded designs to create a touch-activated spinning mirror; hand-drawn sketches for mobiles and zines; etc.
there is a constellation of things thinking about alongsideness -- an "altar" of inspirations; pieces made through collaborative processes; pieces made out of many small parts that on their own would seem insignificant; handmade paper composed of paper scraps and plant debris; etc.
there is a constellation of things thinking about text and ambiguity -- sculptures and animations switching between languages; texts that can be simultaneously read in multiple languages; a thoughtswirl about my practice of making transfluxions; paired stories hinging on a switch in word order and a single accent mark; etc.
there is a constellation of things thinking about transformation -- poems and mobiles exploring the process of rewiring patterns of internal harshness; sculptures putting trashed or scrapped materials to new use; pieces blurring the line between the digital and the physical; etc.
there is a constellation of things thinking about walking as a mode of listening -- photos of personified trash on the street; photos of defamiliarized textures of everyday objects; things i've found in the neighborhood; etc.

i'm realizing this list still remains a bit vague. i'll stop here for now. tomorrow i have the mid-show opening, so perhaps some of the conversations with people then will help me think about additional ways to articulate what PAPER BABY is. excited to find out <3

p.s. after circling around the question of whether to incorporate images into this page of reflections, i've decided instead to start a separate page that's completely visual. another way to spend time "in" and "with" the show.

[06.13.26]

yesterday i stopped by casa caracol to add a couple more things to the show. it's been a nice rhythm of dropping by once or twice a week to rehang fallen items while continuing to add new ones. most recently i put up a "sequence" related to my zine CONDO®S (which came out five years ago!) and then a "sequence" for my zine when i woke, i was still sleeping.

for the CONDO®S sequence, there's a swirl of light green packing material (those inflated little bags that sort of look like shark eggs) coming up out of the trash in the corner. As they reach the ceiling, they join with the light green pages of a notebook i made using a manila padded envelope as the cover. this is the notebook where i wrote several of the poems that eventually became CONDO®S. at the edge of this light green upward swirl, there is the first blue-printed yellow page of the zine itself. stitched together in one long central seam, the entire zine snakes (two by two by two etc.) across the ceiling like an upside-down canal, the outer edges of each spread dipping slightly thanks to gravity. the final page reaches the place where the ceiling joins the wall just above the "inspiration altar." here i used zip ties and discarded plastic to hang the finished zine, with its "sub-prime" binding using the infamous white+blue amazon enevelopes. i'm curious to see if people will crane their necks to read the poems. does text, if it's inconvenient for a body to read, cease to be about words and more about texture?

for the when i woke, i was still sleeping sequence, i created another shelf using some of the same scavenged cardboard packing material i'd used for the shelf below the rotating mirror. i used this new shelf to hold a process snapshot for the creation of the zine. there are the three notebooks i hand-wrote the storylets in, each with their construction paper covers. then there's a miniature mockup i created to figure out the pagination. next, a paper lunch sack that i used for making the covers along with a blank draft copy where i was testing different ink before printing. i also have the craft foam where i cut out and then mounted the design for the covers. finally, i have a finished copy of the zine. it feels nice for all of these components to be able to live together at once.

ok, i think that's all i'll write for now. but as an added bonus, you can check out this separate page where i've copied an interview about PAPER BABY i did with SOW Art Collective for their newsletter earlier this month. enjoy!

[07.09.26]

everything's off the walls. piled up and back in my home. last night, yaz, chawa, arthur, daniel, and jeff helped de-install PAPER BABY and load it all into the back of my car. as we pulled out thumb tacks and removed tape, we swayed along to chicha and cumbia rebajada filling the room. after we were done, yaz noticed that the room was echoey. empty.

though it's a little sad to transition out of the show, i'm feeling grateful for the conversations it's opened up with friends and strangers in my life. and i'm excited to see what the next person (ayo) puts up -- it's good for things to shift.

looking back on the show, one of the highlights was a few weeks ago. i facilitated a workshop called "let's draw with plants" using some of the drawings i'd made for PAPER BABY as reference points. together, we walked through the yard collecting leaves, flowers, and fruits. then we scraped or rubbed or pressed them onto paper to transfer their pigments. finally, we used pens, pencils, and markers to complete our drawings. some people even decided to embroider! at the end, several people opted to leave their drawings with me so i could scan them and turn them into a little zine. it was a really nourishing process to spend additional time with people's creations! here's a webpage i made to document the workshop and the zine.

looking forward, i'm not sure what comes next. i've enjoyed the way this show has given me space to learn in public, and i've found it really healing for some of my harsher inner voices. it also helped me open different channels of communication with my parents. getting to show my mom the show in person and my dad via pictures was simultaneously vulnerable and also empowering. it felt like a way to give them some context for some of the ways i move through the world and the world moves through me.

i'm not sure if i'll try to install paper baby somewhere else or if it will continue to transform into another shape or medium. perhaps it will simply live dormant. a memory that gives generative life to something else in the future.

for now, thx for accompanying me on this reflective journey, and feel free to check out the compiled webpage where i've gathered links to the various digital components of the show. yay PAPER BABY!

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