In the Space Where We Were Free

Reflection on My First Artist Residency and the Liberation I Want for Us All

If you want to fly, you’ve got to give up the things that weigh you down.
- Toni Morrison

There are places you don’t just visit, you remember.

Milkwood was one of those places. Not because I’d been there before, but because something in my spirit had long imagined it: a soft landing for Black, Indigenous, and POC creatives, fields where you are safe enough to rest and free enough to create without apology.

From top/left to bottom/right: Nic Wong Forti, Nyasha Williams, Belinda Arredondo, Roger Lam, Kat Fajardo, / Sara Beltran, Floyd Thompson III, Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson, Madison Moore, and Emily Sun Li.

Upcoming is a five-part series, a reflection on what it meant to enter that space: spirit-led, Ancestrally-held, and deeply in tune with the work of becoming freer than the day before. These are the lessons I brought home. The cards that guided me. The ancestors who laid beside me. And the future I now feel more ready to build.

Founders & Owners of Milkwood: Sophie Blackall and Ed Schmidt