Q&A with Julie Ezelle Patton

Collaboration is at the heart of the Roberts Institute of Art. As we continue to learn about what collaboration can be, we have asked a variety of cultural practitioners to discuss the way they live and work with others.

Permaculturist, poet, performer and artist, Julie Ezelle Patton talks to us about listening and living well together on this planet.

How can we live well and sustainably together?

Honouring and valuing ‘right relationship’ with Earth, finding the connections between things/beings, giving more than we take.

Think of progress, not as producing but listening, waiting, learning to be still, doing nothing uncalled for. Being able to feel remorse, grief, compassion.

Henry David Thoreau's idea of ‘In wildness lies the preservation of the Earth’ sustains me so get busy... starting from your doorstep.

How does collaboration play out in your work?

By working with and receiving what's most local, immediately around me in my circle of connections, and meeting it/them half way.

Bringing the unseen, unheard, yet to be realised into the realm of the present...

For giving and forgetting the self... Finding moments of not-being, where material meets immaterial in something greater, grander and more sublime than what ‘l’ (ergo ego) alone perceive. The self in an other meets the non-self. The joy of taking CHANCES takes me into the unknown, unpracticed space of visionary possibilities — chance encounters time only knows as out of ‘here’ boundless and there for — the life of WE — synchronic, s-p-a-c-e-d out and beside myself with discovery. Play. Working with a sense of freedom realised within the safety, margins of constraint. Magic.

Do you have a dream collaborator?

Yes, so to speak... Of a near presence...sense. A ‘muse’ perhaps. Something greater than I can imagine alights here/there when I least expect it. No name for this. Beyond me! What comes and goes. When I empty my ‘self’ and become THAT which ‘I’ am. My mother artist Virgie Ezelle, pictured here [below].

What does creativity mean to you?

Maintaining Care Cure Community of Good for Something Food Earth energy procuring cooking Nature nurturing Meditation Deliverance Duty Grace all the rage fingers the World stuff. I'm Maid of thou sands of Times travel release Step brake home handing gear take off, on Holy role Art Chaos faking Do waste makes haste Mend for yourself Muck raking WTF!

Surprise Miraculous going On or At Hand Easily-had inner Dimensions hone in on sur face touch Tone pitch Mark to the Poem embrace elaborate race Mother, Aunt Lena Wind bold sit down vows Inspiration ‘whipping something up’ every day Dash Open Ground Drop off a Muse staring and stopping Time hustling Dirt gardening with fingers Composing space poop'd out stalk'n sheets Circle square'd Chance pickings discard punk junk Curator of t/Rrash Miss misbehave Monk povArty as the day is Blue on brain bow blended knee mEcological stress Role zentological Hike relay pat on mouth pray stations crossing borders the Cat's Meow nomadic song bird land Devotion, Love, goods Grief beyond Sound barriers language hex carriers text frame resistance pre-Exist stand where from what For survival misery mastery Broke off the charts on the Books dodge day for night Miniature work julie lie burrow steal Nothing more or less is more Sculpture Mess harbor until Gone to the other side meeting Moments... Family...

Ritual above all else small facts of devotion light motion Play back daily life maintenance polish the temple Performance actions Common to SENSES the world over gloss in Time found in Space way out of Line co Lab orate Blackness dried in my mouth hold, Fly off the handle Cut-UP Risk Gamble heArt objective foundling Life hunt Sacrifice...Until the lights are out.

What do you think of when times are challenging?

It has been said that if one generation sneezes then the other catches a cold... Thus I

contemplate the book of nature and its timely signatures, what it will take for life to continue on

this planet for all beings, from the plants to the oceans and beyond.

I think of strength, self-sacrifice, family and community care, the living lessons inscribed in elders (if we take the time to listen), and the wisdom of ancestors known and unknown—all the way back to hidden stars.

I look up to

My Aunt Lena (Evelyn Davis, 1921-2021) set an astounding example of generosity, selfless love and resilience. She drew much of her strength from reading, writing, reciting and memorising poetry which served as a constant source of comfort and solace throughout her 100 years on the planet. Poetry called. Lena responded by applying its lessons to life. That, along with readings from ‘scripture’ (which was not limited to the bible), being born into the post-1918 pandemonium of war and pestilence; and enduring the Depression, WW2, Jim Crow segregation and lynching, burning crosses, the events of the Korean War and so forth — taught my aunt that people from varying backgrounds, countries, and languages can put differences aside and work together. Eight years old when the Depression hit, Lena and her childhood peers gathered wayside coal fallen off the train cars, grew gardens, foraged food to help feed the hungry, and helped with boarding the many strangers (‘hobos’) that traveled back/forth across the country look'n for work. Feeding the poor and taking care of the young and old became a life-long passion of hers. Lena walked her talk, ran through her 90's in high heels, was a Rosie the Riveter, a newspaper boy who made the papers at age 97 or 98 after throwing her fearless herself on the hood of her car to stop a carjacker.