Joan Dare
Jenna believes that she can defeat the erratic Wendy Well by acting as her cohort, while secretly developing a more Washington D.C. appropriate alter-ego, and Joan Dare is born. The fall of 2016 shed a dark grey cloud over Washington, and all humanistic earth conscientious communities. The type of thick cloud lets little light through. Somehow I felt so dark that it was time to bring some comic relief into our lives.
Joan, a Senators wife, enthusiastically arrived in Washington from her homestead in rural Kansas. During her first couple of years in Washington Joan spent her days on self-expression through her passion for musicals, tap dancing, and her love of the arts. She’s building a network of socialites to attend her tea parties intended to elevate the importance of small talk, with an emphasis on the weather. Although she is interested in cultural activities and artistic expression, she ignored the darker side of humanity, and avoided the news. Seemingly unaware of her immunity to challenges faced by groups of people that can’t benefit from being born with white skin, we discover that Joan was actually raised by poor farmers that were basically serfs to large agribusiness. Another recent discovery is that fracking was invented in Kansas, and Joan is related to the engineer that designed the first ever frack site.
Aspects of Joan Dare embody the other-ness that I experienced in the mid 2000’s while living on an isolated 600-acre farm in rural Kansas. I was a stranger to those plains, and the giant locusts in swarms of hundreds of thousands looked like an alien invasion upon my numerous gardens. I arrived during the early onset of the cruelest drought since the dustbowl, and experienced inconceivably extreme weather. I wholeheartedly embraced the land of Kansas. I shopped at the farm store for overalls and tractor paint. I raised chickens, made gooseberry pie, and tended to perennial flowers that had been dormant in the ground for over ten years. As the years went by my tolerance went dry. I was sick of never getting to enjoy the fruits of my labor due to the imbalanced ecosystem brought on by all the surrounding farms who were bought out by Monsanto. I missed natural lakes, the ocean, mountains, and being around other people that got me. I left the farm, my partner, my dogs, and that whole life to pursue my MFA in San Francisco. The hardships I witnessed in Kansas due to extreme weather followed me to the west coast where I first embarked in working through my climate change anxiety through art.
Since arriving in D.C. Joan has sought out artists and curators in her quest to understand the pulse of the art world here. Her dream is to open her own gallery. Over the past almost five years, her naiveté around world problems is slowly diminishing. Her tea parties no longer have the etiquette of niceties with copacetic chatter about the weather, gardening, cooking, etc. Back home in Kansas, if you didn’t share the same views and values, then you just smiled, nodded, and politely excused yourself when conversations got heated. Over the past five years she’s witnessed anger like she’s never seen before and found herself in situations where racial disparities could not be overlooked. Her heart bleeds for the migrant children separated from their families. And she is now coming to terms with the fact that climate change is not just a slow evolutionary shift, as she harks back on her own memories of the aftermath of the dustbowl, the droughts, the tornadoes, and all the other strange weather she’s witnessed. Small talk about the weather is no longer immune to politics. Right before the pandemic she was downtown to meet with an artist when she heard the familiar voice of Jane Fonda, speaking intensely to a crowd. Joan always adored Jane, did her video workouts religiously, loved her heartfelt character in On Golden Pond and even felt a warm alliance in her classic feminist film Nine to Five. In 2020 she voted for the first time, sporting a mask in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She didn’t tell her husband. Life is changing for Joan, and the pandemic forced her to look, listen and read more about the trouble the human race has gotten itself into.
Jenna believes that she can defeat the erratic Wendy Well by acting as her cohort, while secretly developing a more Washington D.C. appropriate alter-ego, and Joan Dare is born. The fall of 2016 shed a dark grey cloud over Washington, and all humanistic earth conscientious communities. The type of thick cloud lets little light through. Somehow I felt so dark that it was time to bring some comic relief into our lives.
Joan, a Senators wife, enthusiastically arrived in Washington from her homestead in rural Kansas. During her first couple of years in Washington Joan spent her days on self-expression through her passion for musicals, tap dancing, and her love of the arts. She’s building a network of socialites to attend her tea parties intended to elevate the importance of small talk, with an emphasis on the weather. Although she is interested in cultural activities and artistic expression, she ignored the darker side of humanity, and avoided the news. Seemingly unaware of her immunity to challenges faced by groups of people that can’t benefit from being born with white skin, we discover that Joan was actually raised by poor farmers that were basically serfs to large agribusiness. Another recent discovery is that fracking was invented in Kansas, and Joan is related to the engineer that designed the first ever frack site.
Aspects of Joan Dare embody the other-ness that I experienced in the mid 2000’s while living on an isolated 600-acre farm in rural Kansas. I was a stranger to those plains, and the giant locusts in swarms of hundreds of thousands looked like an alien invasion upon my numerous gardens. I arrived during the early onset of the cruelest drought since the dustbowl, and experienced inconceivably extreme weather. I wholeheartedly embraced the land of Kansas. I shopped at the farm store for overalls and tractor paint. I raised chickens, made gooseberry pie, and tended to perennial flowers that had been dormant in the ground for over ten years. As the years went by my tolerance went dry. I was sick of never getting to enjoy the fruits of my labor due to the imbalanced ecosystem brought on by all the surrounding farms who were bought out by Monsanto. I missed natural lakes, the ocean, mountains, and being around other people that got me. I left the farm, my partner, my dogs, and that whole life to pursue my MFA in San Francisco. The hardships I witnessed in Kansas due to extreme weather followed me to the west coast where I first embarked in working through my climate change anxiety through art.
Since arriving in D.C. Joan has sought out artists and curators in her quest to understand the pulse of the art world here. Her dream is to open her own gallery. Over the past almost five years, her naiveté around world problems is slowly diminishing. Her tea parties no longer have the etiquette of niceties with copacetic chatter about the weather, gardening, cooking, etc. Back home in Kansas, if you didn’t share the same views and values, then you just smiled, nodded, and politely excused yourself when conversations got heated. Over the past five years she’s witnessed anger like she’s never seen before and found herself in situations where racial disparities could not be overlooked. Her heart bleeds for the migrant children separated from their families. And she is now coming to terms with the fact that climate change is not just a slow evolutionary shift, as she harks back on her own memories of the aftermath of the dustbowl, the droughts, the tornadoes, and all the other strange weather she’s witnessed. Small talk about the weather is no longer immune to politics. Right before the pandemic she was downtown to meet with an artist when she heard the familiar voice of Jane Fonda, speaking intensely to a crowd. Joan always adored Jane, did her video workouts religiously, loved her heartfelt character in On Golden Pond and even felt a warm alliance in her classic feminist film Nine to Five. In 2020 she voted for the first time, sporting a mask in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She didn’t tell her husband. Life is changing for Joan, and the pandemic forced her to look, listen and read more about the trouble the human race has gotten itself into.
