The Journal, 2024–2025

The Journal is a periodic publication that has taken different forms throughout the decades of Skowhegan. For the 2024-2025 edition, we imagined the School as a multifaceted character, living between ideas, wishes, and predictions. The resulting booklet moved backward and outward, using our experiences at the School to imagine other stories close, inspired by, and parallel to it.

We subtly wanted to create a sense of cohesion across its contents by following a shared line of inquiry around generosity: a quality that has long sustained the School and the many people who have passed through it. We think of this as “a flexibility muscle,” a contagious warm-up that allows ideas, practices, and relationships to remain responsive.

Within this framework, we invited alums lele dai and Helen Wilson to reflect on their experiences at the School during the past two summers. Daniel Bozhkov and Ruth Estévez engaged in a back-and-forth exchange of ideas exploring the unpredictable landscape that has shaped Skowhegan over time. We also returned to our archives through new texts that engage with mythologies and dreams as much as real landscapes and historical facts, playing with genre and genealogies: Claudia La Rocco wrote an autofiction text, as she returned to her hometown in Maine after a quarter century away; Lilia Rocio Taboada dove into the concept of a Shadow through an installation by Betye Saar, produced on campus during 1985; and Mariel Capanna shared a very particular fresco recipe.

A selection of contributions live online in The Library. Friends and members of the community receive printed copies.