I spent hours exploring the life in the creek.

One day, I noticed a bunch of snails.

I asked them in their mom loved them.

A large empty field, and a small creek separated my block and my school.

Our parents preferred we took the longer way to/from school

since it was sidewalked and didn’t involve cutting through a creek.

Some days my brother and I would walk through the field to get home

since it was much faster and frankly more fun,

also our parents weren’t home anyway, so how would they know?

In Winter/Spring, we would try jumping onto the ice floes, dance, and jump back.

The last time we played this dangerous game, the ice floe cracked

and started separating between my brother’s feet, he barely jumped off in time.

One of the only times I saw fear in his eyes.

We walked home in shameful silence, I looked up,

and the spotlight’s gaze down on us felt contemptuously omnipotent.

My brother came home from playing outside

and told us the other boys were dropping rabbits

from above the creek’s tunnel, breaking the rabbits’ legs.

Now, I wonder if he gave them the idea.

“These three images come from my most recent series, tentatively titled, “Memories”. This series uses  collaboration by combining poems of personal memories with almost portrait-like photographs of  landscapes or man’s effect on nature. The photographic transfer process used throughout the series  encapsulates memories and how time and perspective factors into how we remember. With pieces  that speak to the vulnerability, loneliness, boredom, and mysticism of childhood, from the insightful perspective that comes from adulthood, this series opens possibilities for new interpretations of the past. “

Bio: Jamie is a queer visual artist currently living in Chicago. In the past years, she’s been working on  projects that focus on intimate and public explorations of femininity, queer identity, race, as well as  on ideas about ecology as a critique to the dominant and oppressive societal values.