Amy Pleasant

 Sense of Belonging

When the current administration began to ban words and phrases termed “woke initiatives”, I felt compelled to write and re-write this list as an act of preservation.  It is also an act of endurance, as these works are not only labor intensive but challenging psychologically and emotionally.  The list began with the words “accessible, activism, activists” on to “diversity and inclusion”, “female”, “feminism”, "LGBTQ", and ends with “women and underrepresented”. 

This project has resulted in a quadriptych (oil and acrylic on canvas) as well as a series of approximately 16 drawings that I am currently working on and began during my time at the Mildred Thompson Residency in Atlanta, Georgia (April/May).

In 2019, my first monograph, The Messenger’s Mouth Was Heavy, was published and contained a typeface that my design collaborator, Michael Aberman, developed for the book. This alphabet of upper and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation, was created by selecting an individual drawing of mine for each character.  This typeface was the culmination of my career-long interest in the shared qualities of writing and drawing.  This project takes this idea one step further as I am now drawing the typeface.

​I chose the title for this series, Sense of Belonging, a phrase also included on the list, as it describes the collection in its entirety, an effort to create space and visibility for all.