Photos of Johnny Swing and his work, taken by Paul Specht.

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John Bisbee’s Brunswick, Maine work and environs was photographed by Take Magazine photo editor (and so much more), Izzy Berdan.

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John Bisbee: Maine sculptor, wannabe songwriter. Photo by Izzy Berdan

When not chopping up and pounding nails into beautiful art, Brunswick, Maine, artist John Bisbee loves to make music. “I write music when I have the chance,” Bisbee says. It’s still my favorite thing to do, to touch that guitar. Music and lyrics. It’s not very good—just what pops into my head. Melancholic, lonesome folk. Sadass white dude. I love it; probably few others do. I don’t really share it. But it is my favorite thing to do, when I’m not doing this. I love to discover chord progressions and try to put poetry to it.”

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These shots were captured by photographer Brittany Solem for our October/November 2017 print issue.

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Outtakes from our photo shoot with Susan Schwalb, at her studio in Watertown, Massachusetts. All photos by Izzy Berdan.

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Arien Wilkerson in Hartford’s Willie Ware Park. Photo by Brittany Solem

Arien Wilkerson on his genderfluid approach to fashion:

“I want to have my ass out if I want have my ass out, I want to have my titties out if I want to have my titties out. That’s it.”

On his contextual gender fluidity:

“I definitely identify as non-binary. I feel like the hard part about my gender is having to correct people a lot. I’m okay with they, them, him, his. When we’re going out and we’re partying, it’s all girl all day long. When we’re at the club, my gender is straight up femme out the ass. In corporate settings, it’s non-binary. In the ’hood, it’s he/him/his.”

On the label “boy”:

“When I was studying African dance, everything was boy, boy, boy. I actually liked it because it was so innocent and playful. African dance has so much energy and I feel like a little boy when I’m doing it.”

On his reluctant participation in youth sports:

“My mom used to make me play basketball. You know how it is when you’re just a young queer kid who knows he’s queer—and your mom makes you play sports.”

On his “rockstar lifestyle”:

“I totally believe in the rock star lifestyle—but when rock star lifestyle can cross over into high art and fine art…you got me! But when that same rock star lifestyle doesn’t cross over into that shit, I’m like ooo, ew you sloppy. You better have some dope-ass motherfucking shit if you’re going to act like that.”

On financial sacrifices for his work:

“When I say no money, I mean no money for me. If Arien wants to go to the mall or get some ice cream, he can’t.”

On persistence:

“I’ve learned that if you want something, you’re gonna call that person. You’re gonna email this person. Then if you want something else, you’re going to Facebook friend-request everyone in that company, like all their photos, and then contact one of them. Throw yourself out there.”

Read the full profile on Wilkerson that appeared in the October/November 2017 issue of Take here.

Top image of Arien Wilkerson by Brittany Solem

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House of Cach makes wearable art from cicadas, starfish, and bullet casings in their Providence, Rhode Island workshop. Many of the pieces shown can be found on their website; some are one of a kind.

All photos by Ian Travis Barnard. The models are Dylan Handy and Alena Renay. Christina Cook did makeup and styling, Rachael Lee Pine did hair. Production design was provided by Yarrow Thorne and Kelly Knapp; art direction by Izzy Berdan.

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Nine-year-old Arien Wilkerson stands on his grandmother’s porch, popping, locking, and dancing along to the jeers of his North End neighborhood friends who yell, “Do the Michael Jackson! Do the Michael Jackson!” This makes Wilkerson’s mother wary. If her son bends to their will now, then who knows what they’ll get him to do later in life? “My mom would say, ‘Stop putting on a show for people; this isn’t HBO!’” Wilkerson remembers. “‘They want HBO, they can go watch it in their living room!’”

Nearly 16 years later, Wilkerson is walking through his favorite spots in the North End of Hartford. It’s a neighborhood pegged with familiar labels like “pretty rough part of town,” “scary,” and, according to a notable Hartford publication, “one of the capital city’s neediest areas.” Wilkerson doesn’t deny this perception, especially when he points to specific spots on his block: the place he found a dead body; a backyard where he saw his neighbor being chased by police; the corner where his childhood friend, Kerry Foster Jr., was shot 13 times.

It’d be easy to think of Wilkerson as someone who’s persevered as a dancer despite his disadvantaged surroundings. But it’s his life in the North End, with all its complexities, that yields the knowledge he taps into when choreographing performances and connecting with a live audience. “My energy and my purpose, my ’hood-ness, my queerness, my blackness—it all definitely comes from these streets,” he says.

Wilkerson in Hartford’s North End, Connecticut, by Brittany Solem

Wilkerson started dancing at the Artists Collective when he was 12 years old. He speculates that his mom brought him to dance because of a heavy suspicion that her son was queer (her hunch was correct, as it turns out). She figured the arts could provide her boisterous child with a safe space for expression and even social mobility.

After just one class, head instructor Jolette Creary demanded that Wilkerson come back. “People are born with some type of supreme talent, and I was born with this inner cunning, and a desire to be on stage and map it out. Jolette knew,” explains Wilkerson. “The minute I hit the stage, it was a wrap.” He danced in his first show one week later. Wilkerson quickly became Creary’s star student, assistant, and rehearsal director. This success led him to the unprecedented position of entering Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in his senior year of high school.

Deborah Goffe, dance maker and director of Scapegoat Garden, was impressed with Wilkerson even before she saw him dance. “There was a way that he was watching the dance that seemed to be beyond his years, and deeply attuned to what is possible in dance.” Goffe has worked with Wilkerson since these early years, and is clear about the nature of their bond. “Back and forth between teacher and mentor, but also as a colleague. Iron sharpening iron, in some ways.

“He’s dynamic and a gorgeous performer,” she continues. “He really cuts through space in a way that’s compelling for people.”

Wilkerson hangs out in one of his childhood haunts, Willie Ware Park. By Brittany Solem

Wilkerson dances with seamless variety, marrying nearly a dozen disparate styles of dance in just a few awesome moments. “Movement can be so enticing, attractive, hypnotic, and so alluring,” says Wilkerson. “I dance for the dogs a lot”—his grandma has two teenie mutts—“and they love it; they sit and watch. They’re so intent. You can hone somebody like that.”

This fluidity and variety is not exclusive to his approach to movement. In the same way Wilkerson transitions from modern dance to breakdancing to ballet to jazz to West African dance, he’ll take you on a winding conversational ride in which he shamelessly professes his love for barebacking in the same moment he hands you a book on labanotation (a system to analyze and record human movement). His performative affect never wanes and is in constant flux.

His time at the Artists Collective and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts certainly shaped Wilkerson. But it was Israel that birthed the transgressive queer consciousness and playful approach to identity that sets him apart from other dancers. “I was sitting at home, dreaming of wearing dresses and skirts,” he recalls. “When I went [to Israel] and I saw the fashion and all the gender-fluid people and all these big-ass, beardy, tattooed punk dudes fucking gender-fluid men, I was like, ‘Oh, this is hot.’ It was then and there that I knew I could be myself, and someone would love me crucially.

“I was more like Kanye in high school,” he continues. “But when I went to Israel and came back, I realized I can be Mykki Blanco. I can be Junglepussy. I can be an intelligent, brown, queer, forward person who doesn’t have to rationalize who I am and what I want.” Undeniably, our social institutions present a specific set of challenges for individuals who are unapologetically intelligent, brown or black, queer and forward. Even Wilkerson, with his endlessly candid joy and intense work ethic, cannot fend off all the flies buzzing around the stinking pile that is institutional racism.  

“I’ve been there,” says Goffe. “I’ve been the only choreographer of color in Hartford who gets ignored.”

Wilkerson responds to this fucked-up system by divesting from institutions that do not want to understand his message. On social media, he posts detailed call-outs about the lack of access and visibility for people of color in Hartford’s performing arts scene. “I try to have more tact than I used to have,” he admits.

Some people find his approach to critiquing these structures confusing, because part of his audience is white. Wilkerson explains, “The white folks who come to my performances come because they want to learn something. They want to reevaluate. People say, ‘Think about the fact that your [production] crew is all white’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but they fucking know. They get it.’”

Wilkerson’s not interested in bending to the will of certain arts organizers, or in making work for the sake of funding. Instead, Wilkerson envisions the work he wants to make, then personally funds his performances. “I don’t want to do this thing where I only go to places that have money, and I only make their work,” he explains, “because then I’m building a repertoire of work I don’t even like.”

Even though Wilkerson had several sold-out shows in 2016, and about a half dozen other performances commissioned or accomplished though TNMOT AZTRO, his performance art and dance installation company, he still can’t attain a stable position in the system. After selling out three Projector Series shows at Real Art Ways in 2016, “I’m still broke and I was not getting funding,” he says. “So I was either tricking or working at a restaurant in order to make money for putting on shows and paying artists.”

“He’s doing the hustle a la 1974,” says Goffe.

“Why is it that I have to live in the community, work my ass off, and [they] hire people from Los Angeles to perform here?” Wilkerson asks. “Just give me the space, give me the crew, give me the money, and stand the fuck back.” This is partly why he doesn’t perform in classic prosceniums or black box theaters. Recently, he’s been performing in galleries and museums, fully embracing the challenge. “I like working in those confines because they have mad rules. So many things you can and cannot do. I love that we’re a company from the North End performing around thousand-year-old paintings.”

In EQUATORS, Wilkerson responds to climate change using an eroticized queer aesthetic. Photo by Brittany Solem

EQUATORS, which was staged at Housatonic Community College, is the most recent piece produced by the TNMOT AZTRO team and explores the intersection of environmental justice, racial justice, and “how racial divides are manifested in homes, neighborhoods, and geography due to impacts of zoning, segregation, and gentrification.” Clearly, Wilkerson’s intellectual and creative preoccupations are varied, vast in scope, and a bit daunting.

Wilkerson is particularly taken with a specific element of the sculpture David Borawski installed for him to dance through during EQUATORS: the metal chain he uses to pull himself up. “Right now, I definitely still feel like I’m on that chain. I still feel like I have to wake up every morning on that chain. I have to take myself to sleep at night holding the chain. Having something hold you up is such a gratifying experience, but also scary.”

Though there’s no doubt Wilkerson is a rogue, hustling to fund his own shows while actively raging against the institutions that still aren’t quite sure what to do with him, he does have a lot of staunch supporters. His newest group of dancers at TNMOT AZTRO are enthusiastic, skillful, and ready to support their fearless creative director. He is nearly in tears when he talks about his new team. “I’m such a baby. I’m so emotional. I cry,” confesses Wilkerson. “I’m a crier.”

Additionally, there are some organizations and individuals outside the world of dance and performance art that have the cultural clout needed to support Wilkerson’s mission. This past summer, he became the youngest person to receive the Spirit of Juneteenth Award from the Amistad Center for Art & Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum, which celebrates community and cultural leaders. And Kristina Newman-Scott, Connecticut’s director of culture, values his transgressive approach to public discourse and performance. “He’s definitely one of our change agents,” says Newman-Scott. “He’s not afraid to ask questions, or tell you what he’s thinking”—she laughs—“which is appreciated. For him, being young, African American, male, queer, and coming from the world of performing arts, it’s never going to be easy.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” she adds, “for Arien to be the next Alvin Ailey?”

Certainly, Wilkerson could easily head back to the tattooed boys in Tel Aviv, or dance with his friends in different companies across New York City. But that’s not his definition of success. “I’m very invested in bringing high art and fine art back to the ’hood, and back to where I grew up,” he says. His biggest preoccupation is with “build[ing] a language where young queer people and young black people can talk about art. [The North End] is rough and I can’t fight that,” he continues. “I can’t be the guy who’s like, ‘stop the violence, stop the madness,’ but my art can.”

Despite his lack of reliable funding, Wilkerson wants to stay in Hartford. He wants to show the North End his truth, instead of leaving it behind. “I don’t want to do that to Hartford,” he laments. “I don’t want to threaten my city. I feel like I already threaten people enough.”

This piece originally appeared in the October/November 2017 issue. If you’d like to read more articles from that issue, click here.

Subscribers can also see an exclusive gallery of outtakes from our amazing photo shoot with Arien Wilkerson.

Arien Wilkerson – Dancer, Artistic Director – TNMOT AZTRO
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Top image: EQUATORS at the Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Photo by Brittany Solem

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By Hammer and Hand, All Arts Do Stand, 2017
Mural by Ryan Gardell, located in Worcester, Massachusetts

Ryan Gardell–Muralist
Worcester, Massachusetts
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Image courtesy of the artist

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A stone’s throw from the trendy bars and restaurants of Providence’s west side, on an unassuming block dominated by body shops, parking lots, and mill condos, sits a retail showroom. Barbed wire surrounds the building—a relic from previous owners—but eagle-eyed shoppers will spot the House of Cach logo on the building’s tufted front door. Beneath it, a description: “A Concept-Driven Jewelry/Accessory Retail Studio.”
Inside, buddhas, butterflies, and bullet casings cohabitate with preserved flowers, starfish, and cicadas.

The accessories company creates wild designs—which they describe as “wearable art”—for daring customers. Bold photos line the walls; a studded jockstrap/fur vest combo hangs only a few feet away from delicate pearl wedding headbands and large editorial pieces from a collection inspired by beetles and other bugs.

Company cofounder Alexa Cach (pronounced “cash”) was born and educated in Switzerland, but has called Providence home since 2002. Though she has always been compelled to create, she began her career in business, launching several production companies that showcased the work of other creative people: GWAND, a fashion week in Switzerland that lured the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Raf Simons; and later Pet Fashion Week, a New York trade show and runway event targeting high-end pet owners. (It sounds strange now, but this was peak Paris Hilton era.)

House of Cach founders photo by Ian Barnard

“It finally got to a point that my desire to build things outweighed the fear,” Cach says about her current venture, which she and cofounder Molly Northern launched seven years ago. Both knew immediately that they wanted House of Cach to exist outside the fast-paced fashion world. “As a small company, we can’t pump out several brand-new collections each year,” she admits. “By doing what we do, we’re not creating throwaway pieces that lose value as soon as next season comes along.”

On Alena: Silver spike flower crown, $1,300; white rose chestplate, $1,500; on Dylan: Gold flower choker (worn as headpiece), $675; gold flowing flower headpiece (worn as neckpiece), $1,275. Photo by Ian Barnard

House of Cach is conceptual, not trend driven. Cach thinks of each line as a large art installation, one that inspires pieces that incorporate the wearer into the project’s larger whole. #projectbug, for instance, was a multi-artist effort with pieces made from preserved insects. Large masks and headpieces were designed and showcased in elaborate photo shoots, and, eventually, smaller brooches and necklaces were made from real cicadas and beetles. It remains their most popular line.

But bugs? “I’m interested in the duality of emotion that insects provide,” she explains. “A single bug seems delicate and fragile, until it lands on you.”

Rondelle hair band, $79; crystal drop earrings, $110; crystal shard neckpiece, $275. Photo by Ian Barnard

Cach and Northern base a lot of designs on vintage metal components, many of which they’ve collected together over the years. “I can usually find just about anything,” says Northern, who designs individual pieces and sources all raw materials for the company. She’s secretive about her sourcing, but says that the company currently houses a large inventory of materials that are employed for custom pieces.

HoC has begun courting the bridal market, a seemingly incongruous creative jump. But brides had already been seeking out their designs, and the company enjoys the challenge of custom work, particularly for adventurous clients. (They once made a pair of bullet cartridge earrings for a three-year-old flower girl.)

To that end, the company launched a ready-to-wear bridal line in July, with headpieces and neck-pieces that incorporate freshwater pearls, real starfish, and orchids preserved in full bloom. Each element is part of a small capsule collection, one that can be modified and customized to fit the desires of each bride. Select New England stylists will carry each capsule—from tiaras and combs to necklaces and earrings—offering an unusual opportunity to mix and match.

Lucite earrings, $98; crystal shard, $275. Photo by Ian Barnard

As the bridal line expands, the artsier projects will also continue. “To offset the sweetness of the bridal line,” Cach says, “I want to do a body of work dealing with animal bones.”

A winking disclaimer on the company’s website perhaps best explains their philosophy: “Wearing House of Cach expresses an inner rebel and is not for everyone.”

Need more cach? Here’s a subscriber-only gallery of outtakes from our House of Cach fashion shoot.

House of Cach–custom jewelry
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image: Large cicada necklace (worn as headpiece), $178; crystal drop earrings, $110; black hematite and onyx cuff, $98. Photo by Ian Barnard.

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