Creative Workshop with TC Tolbert

Join us in the Oasis, a space for programming and rest in the exhibition Keioui Keijaun Thomas: Magma & Pearls, for a workshop titled Passing: Practices with Grief and Attention led by TC Tolbert.

For anyone interested in the practices (infinite) of turning (and thus, tuning) their attention, this experiential, collaborative, and generative workshop will poetically explore grief and some of its other living companions: love, contemplation, silence, beauty, space, and creation. The workshop will include a variety of invitations to make and be made: generative writing prompts, scavenging, sculpting, reading, reflection, and revision.

No previous writing experience is necessary. Sharing during the workshop is always optional. Please arrive a few minutes early so we can begin and end on time.  

RSVP here.

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About TC Tolbert

 TC Tolbert (he/him/hey grrrl) is a trans and genderqueer monkey-goat who never ceases to experience a simultaneous grief and deep love any time s/he pays attention to the world. S/he writes poems, works with wood, learns, teaches, and collaborates in Tucson, AZ where s/he is the current Poet Laureate. Publications include Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press, 2014/Nightboat Books, 2022) and five chapbooks including The Quiet Practices, winner of the 2023 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize at Beloit Poetry Journal. TC is co-editor (along with Trace Peterson) of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books 2013). In 2019, TC was awarded an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate Fellowship for his work with trans, non-binary, and queer folks as Tucson’s Poet Laureate. Affectionately known as The Project Princess, TC builds for The Outlaw Project (Tiny Homes for Trans Women of Color) and Mariposas Sin Fronteras (short term housing for LGBTQ+ migrants). In 2022, TC co-founded Building Out Safer Spaces and Skill Sets with Victor Valencia. Building Out is committed to, and excited about, creating a skill-building community that is explicitly anti-racist, feminist, and physically, mentally, and emotionally safer for Women, Queer, Trans, and Femme of Center people. TC hopes you’ll jump in and Build Out too!

About the Exhibition

Magma & Pearls: Oceans Rise and Fall Like Meteorites is the first solo museum exhibition by artist and performer Keioui Keijaun Thomas presenting a large-scale sculptural installation, video, performance, and community-generated programming. The exhibition builds on over a decade of the artist’s work exploring the affective and material conditions of Black and trans identity and expands on her ongoing practice of world-building to create spaces of safety, joy, and healing. The artist transforms MOCA’s Great Hall into a post-apocalyptic geography to imagine new ways to relate to the American landscape centering interdependent systems of care for all living beings.