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. The type of cloud that lets little light through, one that reminds us of the impermanence Wendy may have offered a creative in the Perhaps Joan’s role is to remind me to laugh and lighten up. Through her I’m able to tap-dance my way to a state of blissful ignorance in the name of white privilege.
Joan, a Senators wife, enthusiastically arrives in Washington from her homestead in rural Kansas. Joan spends her days on self-expression through her passion for Broadway 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 prefers to ignore the darker side of humanity, and avoids 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.
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. The type of cloud that lets little light through, one that reminds us of the impermanence Wendy may have offered a creative in the Perhaps Joan’s role is to remind me to laugh and lighten up. Through her I’m able to tap-dance my way to a state of blissful ignorance in the name of white privilege.
Joan, a Senators wife, enthusiastically arrives in Washington from her homestead in rural Kansas. Joan spends her days on self-expression through her passion for Broadway 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 prefers to ignore the darker side of humanity, and avoids 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.
