A message from Callie
I spent the long months of the lockdowns pouring through the last 10-15 years of my work and pulling out the makings of a monograph. The wonderful team at Drago then sifted through thousands of images and crafted a volume which is somehow both a deep dive into a complex creative life, and a satisfyingly succinct take on it.
This is my first book in 12 years, and A LOT has happened in that time. Helping us even begin to comprehend it all, we have essays from Jeffrey Deitch, Melena Ryzik, Pedro Alonzo, RJ Rushmore, and me. There are contributions from my collaborators in Haiti, Robinson Michelot and Michael Joyceline Aristil, as well as quotes by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Judy Chicago, Gabor Mate, and Jerry Saltz.
There are photographs by Tod Seelie, Luna Park, Halopig, Sal Rodriguez and Jake Dobkin, all helping me tell the story in ways I never could on my own.
The amount of love and fortitude this book contains; the record of history and creative evolution, the complicated collaborations and journeys that weren't easy but that I'm still proud to share -- it's here. It's all in here. I'm so honored to bring it to you.
Here's the link so you can pre-order it directly from DRAGO - which is an awesome thing to do because it supports independent publishers and helps my book roll out with a wind at its back. I hope you'll get your copy now, and come get it signed by me sometime in the fall.
With love and gratitude,
Callie
About Swoon: The Red Skein
Swoon: The Red Skein is Swoon’s new monograph, spanning over a decade of her work as a public artist. In 224 pages, with more than 200 color images, the book features her work in the street and in the studio, including her collaborations, museum installations, community-based projects, and her recent work as a filmmaker. Surveying her pioneering early career as one of the most recognized women Street Artists in the world, her technical contributions to the field of printmaking, and her advocacy for social and environmental justice through socially engaged art projects, this collection positions Curry as a genre-defying artist whose vision of public artwork creates transformative possibilities for us to heal ourselves, our communities and connect to one another.
Curry’s work is accompanied by a selection of essays, including an introduction by bestselling author Dr. Gabor Maté. A Hungarian physician with expertise on a range of topics, Curry initially encountered Maté’s compassionate writing about the link between trauma and addiction as she embarked on her own healing journey. In 2018, Maté was the keynote speaker at The Road Home, a public symposium hosted by Curry and Philadelphia Mural Arts as part of a multi-part harm-reduction education and advocacy series.
In addition to invited contributions, The Red Skein includes Curry’s own personal reflections on the power of art to heal in her essay “Persephone, Medea, Hecate: Constructing a crossroads for art and psychedelic-assisted therapy.” Curry takes an intimate look at the history of trauma in her family, and how art became a powerful tool to materialize the metaphor of moving from fragmentation to wholeness.
“Recently though, I’ve come to believe that what we’re actually witnessing is lives lost to early trauma, the wounds of which found expression in art, but not healing. The question I’ve spent the last 6 years asking myself is: what would it look like if we lived out not just our pain, but also our healing within our work as artists?”
Essays by art writers, critics and curators, including New York Based Curator RJ Rushmore (one of the youngest and most respected critics of street and graffiti art in the world), Melena Ryzik (New York Times reporter who was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment), Jerry Saltz (American art critic, senior art critic for The Village Voice and columnist for New York magazine) and Pedro Alonzo (Boston-based independent curator and Adjunct Curator at Dallas Contemporary) focus on Curry’s impact on the field of contemporary art.
Other contributors include Hans Ulrich Obrist (director of Serpentine Gallery, Art curator, critic and historian of art), Jeffrey Deitch (art dealer and curator, director of the Moca 2010-2013) and Judy Chicago (feminist artist, art educator and writer).
Swoon: The Red Skein is a 224 page hardcover book published by DRAGO, based in Rome, Italy. It is available for pre-order now, and will be released to stores in October 2022. ISBN: 9788898565474