No. ONE

DIEDRICK BRACKENS

Brooks In 2023, you gave a fascinating talk and had a wonderful conversation with curator Erin Christovale at the Hammer Museum here in L.A. You said a lot of intriguing things, but I want to begin by asking you about being a self-described “horse girl.”

Brackens It’s true. [laughs]

Brooks As an artist from Kentucky—which is a state known for horses—I have consciously avoided them in my own work. People seem to have finally stopped asking me, but for many, many years, the moment someone found out I was an artist, they’d want to know if I painted horses and the answer was always, disappointingly, no. I have nothing against horses— they’re beautiful—or horse paintings—but in Kentucky it's just such a trope that I was not at all interested. In your work, of course, the horses feel like an antidote to all of that stolid tradition. It’s interesting that we are both from the South, but those parts of the south are very different and come with varied sets of experiences. In Kentucky, horses are mostly associated with some notion of “gentility” and racing, whereas in Texas, they’re more about cowboys, ranching, and westward expansion.

Brackens Yeah, absolutely. I think about Texas so much as a quintessentially Southern experience, but it's also undeniably the gateway to the west. The horse does a lot of different things in Texas. As far as horses in my art, I think I have felt less baggage about being “the horse girl” because there are fewer eyes on weavers and fiber artists, and less expectation about what we are up to. The “baggage” is more about nostalgia and craft presented as a pejorative than it is about like whatever your subject matter might be, so I don't think I had any kind of anxiety about being a “horse girl.” But I certainly went to an art school where there were…very strong characters…and there was always a “horse girl” in every cohort, always someone who was so passionate about her horse, and for every project figured out some way to make every project about her horse, her actual horse, or her love of horses. And I hated “horse girl” in school! [laughs] And then I think something happened, like something turned over in my head where I realized, “oh, I'm interested in horses and it has no bearing on the way that like “horse girl” is interested in horses.” I don't know if that's honestly true honestly at this point, but yes, I am a “horse girl.” [laughs]

Brooks I think this is a good example of why ideas and intention are so important when considering why an artist’s work was made and what it might mean. Like you, I use a lot of animals in my work, and though our reasons might differ, neither of us simply want to make a pretty horsey. [laughs] The animals in your work feel so multidimensional; you’re engaging with the history of these particular animals—and their images in visual art—in unexpected ways.

Brackens Yes.

Brooks In your talk at the Hammer, for example, you mention “The Unicorn Tapestries” [1495-1505] at The Met, which you have used for inspiration, but you’re not an aspiring medieval weaver, you’re approaching these works of art from the perspective of Queer, Black, American in the 21st Century.

Brackens Yes. I don't think horses or any other animals ever show up in the work just to be an animal. They are there to do a job or register a certain set of histories and—I hate to say it—Queer those histories or to point out the ways that someone with my identity and background might have a different sort of understanding of what those animals do or how they belong. Sometimes I'm trying to register a mood or an emotion. An animal can also be a stand-in for a human to human relationship. The animals sometimes allow me to say hard things, or overly romantic things, in ways that I would not want to or don't feel able to do with two humans.

Brooks They’re poetic, not props.

Brackens Yes.

Brooks One of the reasons I use animals in my own work is as a reminder that we’re all creatures on this earth, that we share this place. That seems so simplistic, but human beings often have an attitude that all of this exists only for us, and it’s so untrue, and such a boring way to look at existence. Living without respect for the natural world, without a sense of wonder, is not a good way to live.

Can you also talk a little bit about the genesis of the catfish, which have become a frequent theme in your work? You were inspired by the story of three young Black men who in 1981 were killed in your hometown of Mexia, Texas.

Brackens Oh my gosh, yes.

Brooks 1981. I was alive then, though you weren’t. I was going to say it's hard to believe, but of course it's not hard to believe.

Brackens I think it is still hard to believe. As close as I am to it, when I sit with the facts and think about all the great sweep of events that have happened in American history and something like that happened so close to us…it gives me chills. It's a story I've heard my whole life, but to reflect on it, so far into the knowing of it, it still gives me chills.

Brooks Can you describe what happened?

Brackens In 1981, three young men were at a Juneteenth celebration at Lake Mexia in Mexia, Texas, which is my hometown. There is a piece of land on the edge of this lake that is owned by or chartered by forty individuals, I think, who are are essentially the descendants of folks who were enslaved in and around Mexia. After emancipation it became a sort of celebration ground where Juneteenth was celebrated for many years, and where picnics and birthdays and baptisms all would occur. There are names on the charter that belong to both sides of my family. It’s a place I feel very connected to. In 1981 at the Juneteenth celebration, these three young men were arrested for possession of marijuana. They were put in handcuffs and into a boat—along with four cops—to go across the lake to the local precinct, and for an unknown reason, the boat capsized. All three young men drowned and the cops were either rescued or swam to safety.

Brooks The young men drowned because they were in handcuffs.

Brackens Yes, though this was contested by the cops, who said they weren’t in handcuffs, but the community watch said they were. There are all of these conflicting stories, and this part of the account is even tied up around this idea of the community members insisting they could swim and the cops saying they must not have been able to swim because they drowned. I can only imagine that it made what was an already fraught relationship between Black and white folks, between the police and the public much worse. I think in the end the cops end up being acquitted.

Brooks Of course.

Brackens Yes. Tell it. All the time.

Brooks Texas, 1981. Or Texas now.

Brackens Yeah. It really decimated this place of community; particularly the Juneteenth celebration suffered. There was a point in history where this was one of the largest Juneteenth celebrations in the country, in this rural place that no one really knows, and if they do know it, it's because of some country singer or Anna Nicole Smith. They don't know it was an epicenter of freedom in this country. There are all kind of complicated feelings that I personally hold when I think about the history.

Brooks And you started using the catfish as a symbol for these three young men.

Brackens Yeah, because they lost their lives in this lake, I started to think about that space as their final resting place, and thought about trying to turn what was tragic and tough into something that had some kind of transformative power. I thought about a kind of transmission of energy and life force from the living to the dead. And this idea is being negotiated with this catfish, which is a pretty southern, pretty Texan creature. You see it in the cuisine, you see it in advertising, you see it as mascots, you see the catfish everywhere.

Brooks And, just speaking from my own experience with catfish in the south, they’re present in both white and Black culture.

Brackens Absolutely. I think about it, too, as maybe a psychopomp that might be particular to the South in the same way that we think about a chiron or Br’er Rabbit. I was thinking about the fact that catfish are in all levels of the water column, and that they will go on land to find water. They have this in-betweenness to them already, and I was thinking about extending that in-betweenness to have something to do with race. I think of catfish as Southern but I don't necessarily think about the South belonging to one group or another.

Brooks Well, it certainly doesn’t. Catfish also can get enormous.

Brackens Yeah, yeah.

Brooks And in the right conditions, they can live a long time.

Brackens Yeah, and they have a resiliency. People malign them and talk about how they're dirty and scavengers and all these other things, and despite all of those things, they are so tough, so resilient. They live in the best and the worst circumstances.

Brooks Yes, and you have to be careful if you're fishing for them. Don't they have spines or something? I know people who have gotten poked by them.

Brackens Yeah, they will poke you, for sure. [laughs]

Brooks Were you a fisherman when you were a little boy?

Brackens I went with my uncle and never liked it. Or what I should say is I never liked the parts I was supposed to like. I would be into the shallow water where they would keep their bait and I loved watching the minnows kind of like spin and spin and the little fish trap that they would bring, but I didn't want to bait a hook. I would happily sit on the edge and look at the water but I didn't want to sit with a pole. I didn’t like the hook, or, you know, any of those things, they didn't really excite me. I don't know if anyone was a great fisher, so there was never the moment of Oh my God, we got a big one!

Brooks I come from a big extended family, and a lot of the men were hunters and fishers. I was never asked to go hunting—my dad wasn’t a big hunter, and I think everyone knew to ask me to do that was beyond all possibilities [laughs]—but I remember going fishing a few times. What you said about not liking the parts you were “supposed to like” really resonates with me. I liked being outside, I liked looking at the water, I liked the silence, but I didn't want to touch—or kill—a worm. I didn't want to put my hand in a fish's mouth. There is a photograph of me with the first bluegill that I caught, and it’s twilight, and the camera flash is reflecting off the fish’s scales, and I'm a bit bewildered, like, what is the point of this? [laughs]

Brackens Yeah. [laughs]

Brooks Are there any other animals that you feel strongly about?

Brackens That's a great question. I think I love animals, period. And I love anytime that I can be baffled by an animal in the sense of like, oh my God, I can't believe it has those capacities. I'm obsessed with whales, but I don't think I'm alone in that.

Brooks You and I have a lot in common. [laughs]. Do you know this question: if you could be any animal, what would you be? For me—as much as I love birds—the answer is always a whale.

Brackens Yeah, absolutely. I just love them. I love how large even the small ones are. I love that there's so much about what they are doing when they're submerged that is seemingly unknown, to me at least. I wonder what are y'all doing down there? And I have a friend who says oh yeah, they're definitely down there holding the planet together. I don't know what kind of magic they're doing, but they gotta keep doing it, so they better keep doing it. [laughs]. I think there are always these ways that everything about them points to the idea that they love, and when you were talking about it's not just us here on this planet, I think whales are such a strong case for being capable of things or having qualities that scientists would hesitate to attribute to non-humans. Thinking of whales always just humbles me and makes me so happy and it makes me try harder.

Brooks That makes so much sense to me. They absolutely do seem to love.

Brackens I think so. There’s no reason for me to think that they don’t. I’m not gonna lose anything if they don't, but it would be hard to convince me that they don’t love.

Brooks That's wonderful.

Let's talk about music. What music do you listen to when you're working?

Brackens It varies. I tend to work in silence, to be honest. I go in with the mindset of setting myself up and getting ready and entering the work really slowly. I might play music, but I'll let the Spotify or whatever do a lot of the work or I'll play the things that I always play. Or something might newly have entered into my consciousness and then I'm like, OK, well, I have to wear this out now. [laughs]. Being at the loom is a great place to play something that really repeats and if I'm working a full day, I can go through an album, six times or whatever. Right now I'm really, deeply into playing Meshell Ndegeocello.

Brooks Oh God, she’s incredible. I saw her at the beginning of 2023 in New York at the Blue Note, which is very small; we were packed in like sardines. The crowd was so beautiful, all kinds of people. It seemed like every Black lesbian in the tri-state area was there. [laughs]

Brackens I’m about to scream because I went to see her for my birthday here in San Francisco and I was gonna say, you know, it was just like me and the Black lesbians. [laughs]. Ok, it was not exactly like that, but Black lesbians were definitely well represented.

Brooks The concert was incredible and there were maybe eight people in her band on stage and they seemed to range in age from like sixteen to one hundred. [laughs]

Brackens She’s so good. Sometimes I'll listen to podcasts. I do like the accompaniment of voices, and the idea of talking to or talking with someone while I'm working, and sometimes that is literally the folks in my studio. I think there's something about the cadence, the flow of a podcast, that allows me to think, or I feel like I'm dialogue even if I can't really talk back, but it's like, oh well, like, what do I think about that? Or I find an idea is inspiring or lifts me in a certain way.

Brooks I love listening to podcasts and interviews, but I cannot do it when I'm working. When I'm working, it has to be music. I want something that, in a way, gets me out of my headspace. I won't say it's an unthinking, but it's a different kind of thinking. I listened to an interview with Amy Sherald—I think it might have been Talk Art—and she talked about listening to Harry Potter books while she works. I find that image hilarious. [laughs]

Brackens Oh my God, you're triggering me to say all the things now because…I’m not lying on purpose, but I love listening to a book and if there are more than, I don't know, three books, I'm like, alright [laughs], and especially if it's about magic. I’ve never listened to Harry Potter on audio, but there's a series called The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, and there have to be like 13 of these books, and I have listened to them all. Wow. I feel a little disgusted at myself. [laughs]

Brooks There’s no need to be disgusted! [laughs]. Are they science fiction?

Brackens More like fantasy. I do love Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, or anything that builds around a sort of magical system. I think that there is something in that building that is like what I try to do in the weaving and it’s a nice staging ground for ideas I might be thinking of. I certainly don't think I go as deep into world building as any of these people and but I like being immersed in that space and dreaming while I listen to all of these things.

Brooks So for you there is a correlation between building your own world, your own language, and engaging with another work of art, or another art form, in which someone else has done that.

Brackens Absolutely. I imagine that I'm supposed to feel guilty for listening to or reading fantasy, but I think there is something like deeply satisfying about trusting these writers. If someone writes a book of fiction, we trust that they are giving us insight into the human condition but I think we often discount when people “make believe.”

Brooks Yes, I think we’re conditioned to think that a book about fantasy is somehow not serious.

Brackens Even in my own work when I'm depicting this person on fire, or igniting, I feel like I should say I hope that a viewer of my weaving realizes that there's something else at stake, right?

Brooks I think the lesson there is not to feel guilty about the things that inspire you.

Brackens Yeah. There is a book called Ours by Phillip B. Williams. It’s a pretty recent publication, and it blurs the line between historical fiction and fantasy and magical realism. I think a lot of the writing or conversations I've heard related to it are invoking Toni Morrison as kind of mother of this book. I think it is one of the best examples of sort of hitting the sweet spot for me: there’s a little mysticism and magical stuff happening, but that’s only the backdrop to a story that largely takes place in the shadows of emancipation. It asks how are these folks who were born into bondage able to articulate to their children what it is to be free or how they should exist in the world when they've never been able to negotiate that for themselves? It's not necessarily always explicitly put that way, but there are a lot of these moments where as a reader, you're gutted thinking about what would you do with freedom and how could you even tell someone else what to do with it, even if you are their “caretaker” and are supposed to be instructing them on how to live, but you’re learning it in real time. There were moments where I was just like, Oh, I gotta put this down. I can't read more of this today. There are all these people who are working in different mediums than I am, but they feel like peers.

Brooks I love that. That's reminding me that in my high school AP English class— which was a long time ago—we read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. I loved my teacher very much—she’s a wonderful woman, and we're still in touch—but we had a big argument, because there is that line in the last passage: if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it—at the time I remember taking that literally, and feeling, whether it made sense or not, that Milkman took flight. I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, or thought that he had supernatural powers, but at the time I felt that she was describing something that was so real. We had quite a tense classroom discussion about it. [laughs]

Brackens Yeah. [laughs]

Brooks I'd like to go back and read that now.

Brackens Oh, I need to read you this passage out of this book. I’m scrambling around the house. [laughs]

Brooks Take your time.

Brackens There are a lot of tropes, you know. You throw a rock and you hit a trope about Black people. There are a lot of folks who’ll say I watched this movie and I really kind of fell out of it because, you know, they were really using the magical Negro trope. I’ve had to work through anger and discomfort around this issue because I worry a non-Black person might look at my work and feel like Oh, I'm being absolved or healed by looking at this weaving. That’s not my bag. But there is magic in the world. I think sometimes I'm earnest about that and other times I think I mean a thing that I'm not articulating.

Brooks Art may reflect the real, or the lived experience, but it also doesn’t exist entirely in that space, does it? Art exists in its own space where we can imagine realities or rules or laws of physics or whatever that may not reflect what we know from our own known world.

Brackens Yes.

I found the book, which is called Unravel: The Power of Politics and Textiles in Art. There’s a quote talking about textiles and the rearticulation of power is part of the context, but the point is that magic exists. Here it is: People thought that they had the power to fly, to have out of body experiences, to communicate, to speak with animals, and to take on their powers and even shape shift. Not all of these powers were imaginary, remarks [Silvia] Federici, referring to the fact that many of these powers came from daily contact with nature as a source of medicinal and spiritual knowledge. So, I've been like, I gotta get whatever book the writer of this essay is quoting, because I want to know what this feminist Marxist has to say about magic? [laughs] I think this is part and parcel of what we're talking about here, that someone who is so invested in a structural way of looking at the world could also be like, oh yeah, of course, there's magic. like. It's wonderful. We're not alone in believing like there's something rigorous and serious there.

Brooks Yeah. You could say that entire empires have been built on a kind of magic or magical thinking. All kinds of different people of different backgrounds believe in what is essentially some kind of magic.

I want to talk a little bit about poetry with you. I love that this a love that we share, and as a creative person who is interested in operating in more than one lane, I always love meeting someone else who is doing that, too. I think that being an artist does, on some level, have to do with skill and viewpoint, but it is also simply a disposition, a way of looking at the world and living in the world. Just because you're a visual artist doesn't mean you can't also be a poet or inspired by poetry. I love the complexity of references that you bring to your work.

Brackens Sometimes I think, oh I was a frustrated—fill in the blank. There are moments where I thought I would be a scientist of some sort and a writer of some sort, but also I was always an artist, and I think early on, I felt like I had to choose. I would go to sign up for English classes and think oh, what am I doing? I know I really want to study art. And, frankly, in undergrad I had professors who were really dissuading me from pursuing English for whatever reason, so it was just like, OK, I'm gonna stick with art. But I kept writing. And I think right before the pandemic, I made a commitment to writing: I’m gonna do it every day. I wanted to maybe take a class, so I signed up, and then the pandemic happened and I thought, well, I have been gifted—not to say the pandemic was a gift, although I think it allowed me time and space to think—I have been gifted this time. It was one of the first times where I was like, OK, I'm taking this seriously. I am socializing my writing. I'm hearing other people’s ideas and styles and openly talking about poems with other people, published and unpublished, and it was just like, oh, there’s a whole like texture to this that is resonant with what I already do in art and I think it made critique or workshop, or the language so much easier because I was like, oh I'm so used to being ripped apart or making something bad. This is great, I love it. I think the stakes felt so low in that initial stage because it wasn't my degree. I didn't need it to pay my bills, and although I was sharing with my classmates and a professor and a few friends who write, my work didn't have to stand up in the same way that my artwork has had to, be public facing, where I have to defend it in a different way.

Brooks In some ways, there is a lot of pressure if you’re an artist who is writing. Like people might think who do you think you are? On the other hand, you have something to fall back on; you can say this isn't my real work.

Brackens Right. And there's no demand for it. If I experiment on the page, people are ready to go there, whereas if I'm like, actually I'm not weaving anymore…I’m making…portrait photography, people would be like oh, we don't know about that. I felt like any mark is a mark. Any mark can be considered, and I think that freedom has been super propulsive.

Brooks That's wonderful. What was your early exposure to both art and poetry? How did that fit in your family?

Brackens My family has always been pretty supportive. Of course, I've had moments where they're sort of like well, how are you going to make a living? or didn't you say you wanted to be a Bio major or a lawyer that one time? But they were always supportive. They show up for whatever. They let me be, I think, more than they tried to intervene, so it allowed me to make a lot of decisions. They were always kind of like, yeah, sure, try it. I think art was always something I did. It took a long time, probably until the end of high school before I had a sense of like oh, I’m gearing up to make this my life or like I'm going away to school and study art. It took a minute for it to connect, but it was always possible, I suppose.

Brooks I know you were raised Southern Baptist. I don’t know your coming out story, but in terms of your family, do you think that being both Queer and being an artist made one or the other easier for them to accept? Like oh, it’s fine, he’s already weird. [laughs]. Or not necessarily weird, but maybe you didn’t fit within the expectations of what your family probably had planned for you.

Brackens Oh…

Brooks Of course these could be separate issues. Or maybe not even issues at all! There are plenty of artists who are, of course, heterosexual, and maybe even artists who aren't weird. [laughs]

Brackens [laughs] I think that's a good question. I feel like being Queer was definitely a much harder sell. Not for my whole family, but for some of them, and I don't think anyone's ever really cared about me being an artist. Everyone was sort of working and middle class, and I don't think anyone thought you're supposed to go make a lot of money. I think people thought as long as you can take care of yourself, do whatever you want.

Brooks Do you have any other artists in your family?

Brackens My great uncle is an artist, but I didn't really grow up with him. He wasn't an influence. In my story or trajectory, I have people who are certainly creative, my grandmother in particular. She was a seamstress. She made all the clothes for all of her children.

Brooks Did she teach you to sew?

Brackens She did. She is the person that gets credit for putting the needle in my hand.

Brooks Amazing. What was her name?

Brackens Dorothy. She’s still living.

Brooks Oh, amazing. Hi, Dorothy. [laughs]

Brackens Yeah, I love, love, love, love Dorothy. [laughs] I spent a lot of time with her as a kid, and then also in college. I’d go stay with her during the summer just to help her out, spend time with her. She's one of my favorite people.

Brooks Wonderful.

Let's talk about artists; artists who have been or are really inspiring to you or artists who you're thinking about at the moment.

Brackens Influential, I would say Aaron Douglas, Essex Hemphill. Veronica Ryan is someone who I'm thinking a lot about right now. Belkis Ayón is one of these people who I feel like…predicted me…is the way I would maybe put it in the sense that I've been “making what I make” well before I discovered her work, and when I discovered her it felt as if she dreamed me up, because I was like oh my God, how have I been making what I make and I didn't know this woman existed? I think I have an attraction to artists who are no longer living. I feel like it's easier to have a conversation with a ghost than it is with flesh and blood. I think the ways that you can change your thinking or grow with someone whose work is finite seems, so different than someone who continues to exist, in the sense that living artists are still here, we can change our minds, we can amend what we’ve said and distance ourselves from past work.

Brooks That’s fascinating. I’ve not necessarily thought about looking at artists in that way, but what you say makes a lot of sense, thinking about the finality of a life, its beginning and its end. This is the totality of the work, this is where it started, this is where it ended. You can trace a kind of trajectory and the zigging and zagging, wheras with someone who's still with us, we’re still in the process of understanding the work because it's still happening.

Brackens Yes, and living artists get to say oh, that's not what I meant. With things that are locked in time, it's so much easier to make scholarship and really think and develop a sense of like how to respond to that thing than it is with your peer, your contemporary.

Brooks And every living artist is a peer. They might be the most famous and well thought of fiber artist in history, but if they're still living, they are your peer. It's important to think of yourself in that way.

Brackens Yeah. Right now I am in a couple of huge multi-artist textile shows, and I'm obviously deeply inspired by textile artists, but I think so many of the people I think of myself in conversation with are not textile people. I love the skill that exists in my profession, but I think this has helped shift my thinking in some way because looking at the books and bios and artworks, I’m always amazed by other artists’ techniques or by how they use materials. I've really started to admire folks like Feliciano Centurión, and Cecilia Vicuña is someone who I've always had a love affair with, I think particularly because she does that thing that we are interested in: she’s a poet and she's an artist. I look at her work and think about possibilities for myself. José Leonilson is someone whose work I didn't know until very recently. He is one of these Queer ancestors who we lost to AIDS and HIV, as is Centurión. They’re two of my ghosts who I think I should still be in dialogue with.

Brooks I don’t know Leonilson, I will look him up.

Brackens Yeah, do.

Brooks Oh my God, he's so cute! [laughs]

Brackens Right? I was like, oh my God, I have a crush. [laughs]

Brooks Those eyes are so amazing! Not that that matters, but…[laughs]

Brackens Whatever! We’re people who appreciate beauty! [laughs]

Brooks He has a great look.

Brackens Throw that picture up on the ‘gram later. [laughs]

Brooks I think I'm going to. [laughs]

Brackens I have peers who greatly inspire me too, but I think I'm always like, I have to give the ghost some shine. I don't want people to forget the names.

Brooks Yes, and it's hard when you start naming your peers, you know, not to leave someone out. If the ghosts get mad at you, they'll maybe let you know, but it'll be a different kind of response than with a living peer.

Brackens Yeah. [laughs]

Brooks I want to make a strange loop here. Since we started our conversation talking about catfish, maybe we should end by talking about food. Are there some foods that you love or that are important to you in terms of memory or maybe even what you eat when you're working. Hopefully nothing too sticky or messy. [laughs]

Brackens Oh. [laughs] I think the line that I've been trying to banish, but I have to say for the sake of this interview, is that I eat to stay alive. I used to tell people that all the time. Food comes up so often in conversation, and I feel like I'm one of the least invested in food.

Brooks Interesting.

Brackens Not that I don't like to eat necessarily, but sometimes I don't think I have the same palate for food that I have for art. It’s taken me a long time to be able to taste something and be like oh, there’s..I don't know…tarragon in this.

Brooks Maybe there’s not a lot of tarragon in Texas. [laughs]

Brackens Maybe not. [laughs] Also…like, why did I pick tarragon? [laughs] I think I've been with people all my life who can do that thing as far as taste, and it took me a long time to appreciate and develop the skill of liking something and being able to articulate why when it comes to food. Generally, I'll eat until I'm full. But I've always loved fruits. I think growing up in a rural context, there was always fresh fruit. The part of Texas that I am from is essentially peach country or stone fruit country.

Brooks Wonderful.

Brackens There are just fields and fields of nectarines and peaches and plums and cherries and all these things. So my childhood was just filled with bowls of perfect fruit. I still consume a pretty outsized amount of fresh fruit. As much as possible.

Brooks Luckily, you still live in a state where there's almost always good fruit.

Brackens Yeah. I try never to eat a peach that has been on an airplane, for instance. I always mourn the end of summer, which to me is marked by the last fresh ripe peach or nectarine. When you get that last peach, maybe not even the last peach, but the peak one, the one that is like that that’s it, that’s where you're like fuck. [laughs]

Brooks I know exactly what you mean. My mother's mother was from Mississippi and was a great southern cook. I went to college in South Carolina and she would always have me bring back bushels of peaches. There were times when the back seats of my car were just filled with peaches. I know very well what a perfect peach or a perfect nectarine tastes like and when they fall short of that, they really fall short.

Brackens It's such a bittersweet feeling to eat a peach like that because the best ones can be oh so blissful, so blissful.

Other Swans Conversation No. One

Diedrick Brackens (b. 1989, Mexia, Texas) is a Los Angeles-based textile artist. Brackens received his M.F.A. from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. His work is held in the permanent collections of various institutions, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. Brackens is the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award, and a United States Artists Fellowship.