Edge of the Woods
Editor’s Note: November of 2025 will be the five year anniversary of ATNSC inhabiting its physical space in the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. We asked five artists: Zoe Charlton, Jenna Hamed, the artist duo Hollerin’ Space (Angela Davis Johnson + muthi reed), and Isabella Saavedra, all who spent time in residency with us to reflect on their experience. Our residencies and exhibition spaces prioritize Indigenous artists and artists of color.
The traditional “wedding anniversary” material for the fifth year is wood. In this context, wood marks time (carbon dating, defined growth) and is used to create structures of support. Hospitality is a value embedded in the foundation of this project, one meaning being the importance of hosting and the mutual responsibilities in the exchange between visitor and host. The city of Cleveland is sometimes referred to as the “forest city,” as it was once 94 percent woodland. Its tree canopy is now at 17 percent. ATNSC’S home is located between Woodland Avenue and Shaker Boulevard––edge of the woods.
Image courtesy of the artist.
Happiness Addition
Sapling,
trampled.
Windblown, dry.
Sometimes you have to take a plant inside
to learn
how to become more than just a coat rack.
Greeted by the buck
Is it okay to bury my head
to pray
if it is only for as long as I need to?
Walk the block
searching for the word that means everything.
I think I found it wedged between two bricks
but when you find it,
you keep it there.
Learn to count the rests.
They are important.
Maybe I’m too young…
Rest.
F-E –F-E-E-D
Cross-stitch the lessons onto your heart
or in the palm of your hands.
In every shake,
Thank you for having me,
Thank you for having me,
Thank you for having me.
Image courtesy of the artist.
The Grain of Endurance
July 29th – August 9th, 2024
ATNSC became my heartwood during my residency at The Morgan Conservatory. The heartwood – that essential core that keeps a tree standing – offered a kind of rest and shelter that I hadn't known I needed. Each evening, returning from long days of papermaking, I would feel the space insist on both my comfort and evolution – like a tree slowly, deliberately expanding its rings.
When a tornado hit Cleveland on August 6th, knocking out electricity for three days, ATNSC and the Morgan became two sides of my daily practice: the physical work of papermaking by day, the deep connection to ATNSC's archive by night. In the aftermath of the tornado, we continued making paper – creating life-sized watermarks that were declarations of presence. The watermark – that subtle assertion of authenticity – became a metaphor for how we persist, how we verify our existence in spaces that would rather we remain invisible. There's something profound about making paper during a blackout, about continuing to create when the world goes dark.
The John D. Carter Resource Library for Consciousness & Change – with its 2,300 rare and out-of-print texts – held me in ways I didn't expect. These archives are not just collections; they are root systems connecting struggles across time, feeding new growth with old wisdom. The books about Black women's labor, organizing, and legacies… and endurance... become the very pulp from which we make new pages, new stories, new ways of being. Like the central core of a tree most resistant to decay, true endurance isn't about being strong. It's about being necessary. When people mistake endurance for strength, they misread the entire forest for a single quality of a single tree. They see the standing, but not the cost of remaining upright in hostile soil.
True endurance finds its home in places like ATNSC, where the practice of hosting and space-making becomes forms of resistance and reclamation. Like a buckeye tree offering both shelter and solace, ATNSC creates circles of solidarity where artists can expand freely, where our heartwood remains intact. In reclaiming space for people to heal, create, read, and forge relationships, it reminds us that true strength isn't in withstanding alone, but in growing together – especially when the power goes out. Here, endurance becomes not just an individual act of persistence, but a collective practice of thriving.
* Thank you M. Carmen Lane for hosting me
in this solidarity house, where endurance takes root
and grows strong, like wood remembering its forest.
Photo credit: Donald Black, Jr.
Shifts Become Clear
My mentor gave me a roll of acid-free white tape just before I embarked on my [first] art residency. And as it turned out, the first thing I did once settled into my residency was use that very roll of tape to post up all the materials I’ve been gathering over the past year, using as much of the wall space as I could fill . . . Unironically, I needed to be back in the Midwest for a month to regain full access to my inner sense of spirited trust, guiding improvisation, and curiosity through material explorations…
In my four weeks in Cleveland, I enjoyed long summer days with my beloved cousins and family, as well as some incredible souls who channel their hearts through craft. I spent my days bouncing between emotions, retreating from the rigidity of everyday life, the vicious cycles and greedy art world… feeling held by the strong and incredible “line” of women who I am fortunate to see myself in.
Oftentimes transformative shifts become clear only after they occur. My time at ATNSC is one of those instances where I was able to find meaning in every lived second; I know that these meaningful lessons will blossom and fruit over time.
Photo Credit: M. Carmen Lane
Like dry wood for a fire
This poetic narrative is transcribed and reassembled from a recorded conversation between Angela Davis Johnson and muthi reed, collective members of Hollerin Space.
—start recording—
felt like being new for a moment in time.
ATNSC is the open heart space where we could make it up as we needed. Beautifully structured, situated in a neighborhood.
some residencies seem like they are trying to get you to be in some isolated setting.
away from it all.
There. We were able to intermix with local ways
doing things that one normally does in one's own life.
that is more real than some getaway experience.
We were really cared for.
Provisions were provided
to get into the work and not have to worry about too much.
An art practice is actually being in the practice of a life that I want to live. And so to not have to escape that in order to be in our art practice, to be in it and be supported in it.
Golden.
early morning or late night we were able to shape our work. We could porch sit with the little neighbor Marcy. the kitchen was an anchor. the center of our experience was the table, and conversations that happened while cooking, us listening to doula training and cross connecting kinfolk while homeschooling
Unschooling
Our children played together as we worked.
We walked to the farmer’s market,
returning back and arranging all the food.
The space held all the complexity of what it means to be a working living artist.
Breathable.
Like piano playing in a room sound
Like dry wood for a fire
It allowed one to breathe through one’s practice,
through work,
through life,
through parenting,
through loveships
through a genuine space
the mundane things felt extraordinary.
We played games of hopscotch out back,
And Amber Ford’s exhibition happening in the night with everybody out there. It was a beautiful weaving.
A type of rebellion like living your life on purpose
About devotion
the experience felt like how I would imagine an underground railroad functioning, where you have left one place and you go to another. And no one really knows
where you are or
those who know know.
those who know know.
to be in a space of home, but home in another kind of way.
It was home made for me to be in care of something else, even though the demands of my own life were still on me. being in the same kind of domestic space, but with different tools, different intentions, and in a limited time.
no demands were made.
There were no expectations to produce in a certain kind of way. I really appreciate that because, like I said, it doesn't take you out of the regularity of your life because the reality for most artists of color, most working artists, sure, you can go off to some woods and be there for a couple weeks or a couple months, but you still have the demands of your life, especially if you have work obligations, if you have family obligations, you have certain things that you are committed to. It could actually be a detractor for you having to go somewhere and not attend to those things.
It becomes a burden.
This is a standard in how most residencies are run, even to the point where they say, oh, children and partners aren't welcome in these spaces. That feels like, oh, you just want certain people to be here, rich white people younger or older people only
Single individuals.
The working artists that I know are very committed. They're committed to their families, they're committed to their communities, they're committed to their work, and these are the important things they are driven by.
About rebellion ?
It's very beautiful but I've struggled with that terminology because I think I grew up with a notion that rebellion was not a good thing. Rebellion was a bad thing. You're being rebellious.
To reconcile what rebellion means
means confronting shame
Because literally I've been told by people i love that i am being rebellious. And i never felt good about that. It’s given me a sense of shame about what I'm doing that makes somebody say that or make somebody look at me like that. I am grappling with that term as i do the work of rebellion.
Rebellion is a heated term. And also, the art, the life that we are shaping, what I understand
the connection of a direction considering the whole, considering the whole, considers the body, considers the food, considers the wellness of yourself, This is our, our call to arms. These are all these things connected to me.
listening to Alice Coltrane and our performance in the street. I just remember seeing the trees and the birthing chair and that it was around my birthday and it felt like a bend in the road,
a bend in the road
encouraging a new direction.
the dancing, the direction, the showing up to it
it was a prayer. A prayer for the space. A prayer for the times that we were in. I remember it as such.
The birthing chair being an object. For an experience. The bodies in relationship to the birthing chair, the bodies in relationship to each other, even I remember the picture that Carmen took from above in the act of what we were doing.
Our work in residence was about rebellion.
It's not safe to be in the street doing what we do. There is no safety here for us in general except what we create. People often don't feel safe even in their own neighborhoods, even in their own environments. Safety is an issue for Black folks in particular.
Safety is not a guarantee.
Safety is created by intent.
And so I really appreciate the environment, a neighborhood environment where we felt
completely safe to do something in the middle of the street, to do something directed and intentional in the middle of the street. It was just that kind of vibe.
I think that's why most residencies are structured where you go out somewhere so that you won't have to encounter anything so you can be free to let loose or whatever that means to you as an artist. I felt completely safe
to occupy the middle of the street
to occupy the sidewalk with our blackstudies
I don't know if that's the character of the neighborhood. That Carmen knows all those neighbors. Supports us being there
To take up residence there. Supported in a way that was really beautiful to be able to be
creative, not only inside the space, but to have creativity outside. To be a presence outside. In a neighborhood
I love the fact that the neighborhood we were in, the Shaker neighborhood. From immigrants, to how it became a historically Black area. And whatever it is now.
So I appreciated the staying power of what we were nested in. It was like a staying power that felt like it was trying to preserve something of origins, something of indigeneity, something of the really important things that seemed to me the energy of that neighborhood. Yeah. Like those homes are, where those homes are, it seemed like those homes were old, you know, at least a hundred years.
Open land is a privilege.
Mm-hmm. A lot of people within the past couple hundred years are growing up in urban
environments.
We may not know about open land, but people still are making land arrangements. And so how do you keep those kind of spaces in the conversation of land stewardship?
Environments where gentrification happens and people are pushed out by things like eminent domain and stuff. Where family land is lost because, you know, the next generation can't support it. The property taxes then going up. People be getting priced out, can't keep the property up. What does that mean for us in the conversation about land? How do we be in the conversation with homes that have been here
Our home in this abolitionist space has been here for at least a hundred years. So it's, you know, like open land and Mississippi, these neighborhoods. This is a single residential dwelling actually intact because of the legacy and the staying power and the intentions of the people who are here
Cleveland
there is something, some type of intention, you know, behind the movement, you know, with the land
with the life of the thing.
the intention going into it,
and you're recognizing the life of it, the history of it, the future of it,
the completeness it's
something about the intention of life, the recognition, the
Possibility of shedding
regeneration
My family, they’ve been on their land for a long, long time. And at the point that it is now, it's just land that you get money from, you know, whereas years ago, it was land with the imagination that it was giving life. It was life.
mark that life of its own,
And the ability to return to that is something
That hasn't happened yet. The return of that.
unpacking Ownership of something.
to possess
you get in the conversation of what is alternative to private property.
Or
democratic socialist is
socialist is democratic
that influences and changes and shapes and
is shaped and influenced by community and not a
private matter
is how we is
trying to shape a residency
by what our particular movements,
the differences between what everyday people are doing in terms of living arrangements
I am curious
there is something to know,
About deconstruction
Breaking
From
it belongs to me. It belongs to me. I own it.
stretching the skins of this.
You know,
enough
I think it was in the resistance.
spoke to impulse
what I feel
and you hear. If you hear me
to return. like the Underground Railroad ?
Like that
these places,
these marks
of,
these marks along the way, the satellites,
satellites of sanctuary
power and recognizing
speaking over it
about naming
like the violence that happened in Palestine that October
i remember
it was three days after my birthday
For so many
We're entering into something new and old at the same time, and naming that and being able to call it out and move on, move on
even the birthing
As Angela Davis namesake
Life after what life was before and life after that moment.
About rebellion.
I can understand it within the context of this saying that says another world is possible. Because a lot of time when going to the conversation of rebellion, what folx are talking about is the events of fighting or taking over through violence, you know, you take power, so that the people who were in power are no longer having power because mostly they've probably been abusing the power.
And in the conversation of rebellion, i find that there's usually no conversation about what happens next
the afterlife.
You know, so
Roll Call
ATNSC
House of Lux
Charleston and the Tiny is powerful community over there
Utica. SIPP Culture. Arkansas
Jackson, Mississippi
Weeksville
Talking Dolls and Detroit River
afternoon water dips
Underground Music Academy
fam
again Cleveland and ATNSC
power changes is happening
will happen
has happened.
And now what next, you know, this is the other world that is possible.
the way you dream about your family land
letting someone else use it and harvest from it.
No owners.
be a domicile every so often
about a community
Be space that has
that is able.
bring people together and provide a safety nest and a place of respite for people to partake in.
home is how
we will
A third space.
for the kind of socializing that we need in order to relate to each other. You know, because with socializing comes a bit of tension sometimes, you know, and you need spaces that can hold that. Right.
Cuz
We need satellites
third spaces is
the library or
like these spaces that are public and like, not your home, but even like schools these locations
are kept under close surveillance
I mean, most of them are state funded. State funded. So they have certain ways in which they have to behave.
Right ?
Yeah. You know,
conversations we have. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
they're extremely important.
about rebellion
because rebellion
Our black rebellion
studies
third spaces
Makes their own rules. Yeah
part of rebellion activities happen in broad daylight. Right. And then there's another aspect of rebellion activities, like how the rooms did that nobody saw you know, don't tell all your business. Right. Like, keep that
after hours
It's like the under commons that Fred Moten talks about. You know, it's like, everything is not for everybody. Like my mom said,
everything is not for everybody.
My grandmother said.
Only reason why the duck got caught because it was quacking
Duality living
out loud and having the underground spaces,
golden.
Down
Okay light shadow werk
grandma had something to eat
She provided a place to stay
It was a home
And it was open
Ours
as everybody,
everybody's hand in it.
to be with the woods to be with them and to imagine letting it rest. to restore the garden to be fed from it to have quiet time to go off by yourself to laugh together on long night walks.
reciprocating
envision your participation
Living there would require more of me than I can give. But what I can do is participate in the dreaming of it and the shaping of it and the collaboration of it. Even if it's letting the land rest and not placing anything on it, but to go in there and to tend to it. be with it that way
what you mean, tend?
Tend to it like a burning
of
regenerating
regenerative
action
Let it sit and grow back.
restore
from
burning
season or
planting
new trees
after
letting it rest
after
eyes on it
it's true
being
land
complicated
used for productivity
why is our care
living there ?
disrupt that
Right
True
Spaces for partnership and community
ancestors come asking
It's not clear now but it feels like
where land is free
Can you talk about that?
That was happening
It needs a rest from that killing
It needs a rest from that endless
overuse
It's possible
to restore
Because
relationship
with it
Agrees
to that or want that
We would be
fighting
yelling at crop dusters
dropping roundup
to pump out
into the earth
them pellets of chemicals that would be dropped from the air to our land
Had we been there, we would have stopped them.
It's a lot of work.
But because we weren't there, no one was there. They were able to tear those trees down and they destroyed the trees. But really because of the way the trees were, the water flowed. It was more like a creek. But we called it the ditch. It went from our side all the way down
to
the bigger creek
Was
more
a lake
And now it's been obstructed in such a way that it doesn't do that anymore. And it was able to happen because we were no longer there
to protest
Those kind of actions
is
Everything
Remembering rice fields
And the water
the land
to the service of those crops
I appreciate all nature
of the underground
railroad.
And us
to be able
to travel
the way we need to travel
and be
where we need to be
where we want to be!
it requires that
different habitats, locations, know how to care, tend to know how to be in service and in
relationships to what's there, the different culture that's in a certain kind of place
you say you come from nothing ?
Nowhere
of some other place
hymn
when
existing
seeing
reality.
move and be
space.
heard ?
able, we're able.
a certain type of way
community and strong ?
Yeah.
We a different type
currency,
like sense
flow
It's different types of currency
You know,
that was needed. That was needed.
I couldn't,
I can't understand a residency
where
you have to pay.
Who wanted that?
Who doing that?
got to pay application fee
got to pay to get there and pay to be there
sure. It's for certain
has a certain cause
and objective
And we
in the middle of something so.
deconstructed
sense
still looking.
infinite as
Black
—stop recording—
Listen to sound created in residency at ATNSC
Watch animation compilation created in residency at ATNSC
