“I Used to Have a Favorite Tree” | Celebrating 1 Year of Cherry Knot
⭐️ Cherry Knot has been nominated for Best Art Collective in Chicago Reader's 2023 People's Choice Awards! ⭐️
Voting closes 11:59 PM January 14!
Attendees enjoy drinks and viewing the work in the main space of Superkhana International.
On Monday November 13th, Cherry Knot celebrated their 1 year anniversary! Cherry Knot is a Chicago based, artist-run curation group conceived by Peach Miller, Amanda Thomas, and Rain Shanks.
Cherry Knot describes themselves as being “committed to dismantling the notions of the white walled gallery-artist hierarchy by fostering art accessibility through community building and the creation of queer and trans centric spaces.”
“I Used to Have a Favorite Tree” captured just that.
Hosted in Logan Square’s Superkhana, the vibrant venue was described all night as “cozy” and “warm” offering a loving backdrop for the works making up the show. “I Used to Have a Favorite Tree” prompted artists to consider how we might cope with a deteriorating environment, how we can demand action, and begin to heal our relationship to this planet.
The show featured a variety of work — with rose pruning, buried cassette tapes, cross country etchings, and aerial tapestries; Each artist explored their relationship to the environment in a completely unique, but totally cohesive way.
I asked the Artists behind Cherry Knot a few questions to round out their first year together and their latest show!
Q: What was your favorite memory as Cherry Knot this year?
PEACH: I felt incredible during Chris Aldana’s performance at the “Portrait of Perfect Grief” exhibition. The collective grieving of that show was so moving. Although it was probably the least attended Cherry Knot show, it meant so much to everyone who was there. Additionally, anytime spent with Amanda and Rain reminds me of why we work on these shows. To feel love and held.
RAIN: To echo Peach, the best part of Cherry Knot is the space created for joy and community alongside grief and nostalgia. If I had to pinpoint a moment maybe it would be before I Used to Have a Favorite Tree, when the “what if no one comes to my birthday party” feeling was a lot quieter than earlier shows. After a year our confidence and audience has really grown and solidified. Other than that, it’s every single performance. Activating the show with movement and sound really connects everyone in the space.
AMANDA: At our “House of Worship” exhibition we ran out of floor maps, a performance was about to start, and someone pulled me aside to inquire about buying a piece. It was a busy second that forced me to take a step back and really look at what we put together. It’s hard to believe that anyone cares until you're in a room surrounded by people who are consistently showing up for you and one another. Our goal has always been to try our very best to get everyone paid, so to see all the pieces working in the way that we dreamed (or even better than) was truly such a reassuring moment.
Q: In your closing remarks on Monday night, Rain mentioned Cherry Knot coming from a place of wanting to create a balance between working to survive and creating as a community/maintaining an art practice. What is some advice you all have for artists trying to find that balance? How have you all cultivated that balance for yourselves?
P: I reckon we all just have to stop trying to validate why we are making, whether or not it needs to be made. We carry our art practices with us, everywhere. As you go, keep your eyes peeled for that encounter, phrase, image, sound, or whatever it is that follows you. Hold on to it, and give yourself time to sit with it. Stop to write that thing down, or take that reference photo. Go easy on yourself and talk about it with other artists. Under capitalism, balance doesn’t exist in regards to working and living. But if you hold space for yourself, your whims, and your community, well the art is right there too. And the time to practice will follow with intention. In this way too, it will come with pleasure and joy rather than pressure.
The lead up to organizing is so much bigger than the act of it. If you feel that there is not a space for something around you, chances are other folks are missing it too. We created Cherry Knot just like that. Bonding over strife about how impossible it is to spend money that one barely has on making something that no one may ever see. The power of people is unfathomable. We are able to organize big exhibitions so quickly because of the incredible people standing in our corner. Get with those you love, and wonder if you could make it happen.
R: Cherry Knot showed me that doing is a lot easier than I thought. If you’re looking for something, if you have something to say, if you have a feeling that’s too big to hold, someone else feels that too. Let sharing that be your practice. And, even if it’s bad art it’s okay because you don’t have to share everything you make.
I like to believe that Cherry Knot advocates for artist-laborers in an anti-work framework. If art is your career you can grow to resent it and lose your voice, trust me I have. There’s a lot of discourse about having a life that is not centered around work and career, and I think a lot of emerging artists should be considering what they want out of their art practice. Most likely it will never make you rich, but how do you make sure it keeps making you happy? How does it keep you authentic and grounded? How does it take care of you and how do you take care of it?
A: None of this would have happened had I tried it alone. It’s so important to lean on your support system when life or ideas feel too big or too much to handle by yourself. Don’t get me wrong I love my independence, but realistically I just know I would not have space. We’re taught to be in competition with each other in the art world. But I think balance rests in the collaborative. Of course the way that collaboration shows up in Cherry Knot is resource or skill sharing, imagining, and task distributing with Rain and Peach. If one of us has to pick up some shifts or is at mental capacity, the others pull more weight knowing that in the future it will be reciprocated. It’s also good to have people to work ideas or non-ideas out with. Have silly conversations about what you’ve been into lately whether you’re going to make something from it or not. Like Peach said, it's all about finding the art in everything you do, because as artists we can demand that. I’m not always making but I am always dreaming, and that helps me feel balanced. (:
Q: What are you looking forward to most in this coming year?
P: I am so eager to continue to expand what Cherry Knot is, and the type of events we organize. We hope to find more interactive ways to engage with our community next year. We are gonna partner with other artist run collectives, and find ways to pay people for their work.
R: I’m excited to keep experimenting, to collaborate, to take on bigger concepts and issues. We want to try for more funding in this new year so we can pay more artists!
A: I think being a part of Cherry Knot has helped me ground myself here in Chicago. So I am looking forward to building it into my routine more as well as leaning into how Cherry Knot can evolve and change to support everyone involved.
Rain Shanks (left), Peach Miller (middle),and Amanda Thomas (right) in Superkhana,Chicago IL.
Peach is a non-binary, Chicago-based Photographer, Writer, and Bartender working in collage, book-making, and installation. Originally from Georgia, Peach’s image-obsessed work examines the complicity of photographic imagery in the perpetuation of hegemonic systems and cultures. Their work addresses this through dissecting the poetics and politics of intimacy, the ever changing meaning of looking and being looked at. As a curator and co- founder of @cherryknot.chi , Peach is eager to work to develop art spaces that are equitable, communally organized, and queer centered.
Amanda Thomas is a photographer, bookmaker, and service industry worker. Her artistic practice tends to grief and nurtures feelings of loss. Similar to composting, where dead materials provide the nutrients for new life and growth, her creative process is an act of cultivation. She uses a soft, often romantic feminine lens to reclaim her own lived experiences, ideas of self, and familial connections. Thomas works with analog photo processes to share with the viewer synchronicities, entanglements, and moments that feel magical.
Rain Shanks is a Chicago-based painter, graphic designer, and curator. Her inspiration comes from dinner parties, hand painted store signs, love, heartbreak and other feelings so big they feel spiritual. Her approach to organizing art spaces is it should always be economically and ability accessible and it should always be a little weird.
About the Show:
“I used to have a favorite tree. It may have collapsed, or shriveled. It also likely burned, or bore marks of an ax, automated or otherwise. My former favorite tree was a willow, an oak, an evergreen, a pagoda dogwood, a sweet, sweet sugar maple; as I’m sure was yours as well.
In memories of favored trees from forever ago, we notice a distinct question that demands to be asked~How can we possibly cope with the deterioration of our own ecosystem? When our own roots have been exhumed, when we cannot find ground to fight the powers that be, we find ourselves frozen and furious. Standing absolutely appalled at the full force of an ecosystem that is struggling to continue to exist. Lashing out disastrously, demanding to reroot rapidly… Perhaps we should take note. Perhaps through discovery we cope.
Finding ways to reconnect with our own world and ties to it that have been severed without our knowing. Perhaps it is through appreciation of Earth, and all the organisms who have, will, or do live in it~ our former and future favorite trees. Through creation we mourn, heal, and demand an end to an end that we have not yet met, and that we may still prevent.
Join us as we investigate ways to cope, to demand action, and to imagine healing our relationship with our home”
— Cherry Knot
