yes is the only living thing

photographs: Alexandra Silverthorne
text: Julie Poitras Santos
conversation: Annie Mahon
editor: Anna Rutenbeck

printed by Edition One Books (Berkeley, CA)
cover embossed by Michel Droge at Pickwick Independent Press (Portland, ME)
support provided by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities (Washington, DC)

The images presented in this book were created in the year following a friend’s cancer relapse and near-immediate death. The 76 images look at moments of celebration, wonder, and stillness in my own life in an attempt to infuse it with some of the same determination, thoughtfulness, and grace that was ever-present in her life. The series was captured with recently-discontinued peel apart instant film on a fickle hand-me-down Polaroid Reporter camera. I was attracted to the unpredictability of both the film and the camera and how this seemed to echo the unpredictability of life, itself.

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Annie Mahon is an author, ordained Buddhist mindfulness teacher, and founder of the Circle Yoga Cooperative in Washington, D.C. Annie has always enjoyed writing about her life, from journalistic pursuits at the University of Michigan to technical papers for IBM and Oracle. She has been writing about mindfulness, parenting, stress and yoga since 2004. Her blog, rawmindfulness.com, is a hit with the mindfulness and yoga community and led to a book of Annie’s collected essays, Words to be With. Annie’s newest book, Things I Did When I was Hangry (Parallax Press, September 2015), documents Annie’s search for sanity in her eating disordered family life, and reveals how mindfulness helped her go beyond the search for perfection and learn to love the moment as it is.

Annie holds certifications in yoga, focusing and massage therapy and dabbles in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), as well as a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science and a Masters in Religious Studies. When not visiting her children, teaching, traveling the world with her husband, drinking Jasmine tea with honey, writing or walking her dogs, she practices yoga and mindfulness with her community in DC.

Julie Poitras Santos‘ site-specific creative practice comprises video, writing, and public projects that include a walking component. The relationship between site, story and mobility fuels a wide range of research and production, including the relationship between natural histories, myth and individual story; walking as a form of listening to site; and material agency in an age of climate change.

Recent exhibitions include the Queens Museum, NY; Center for Maine Contemporary Art; Bates College Museum of Art; and Karlskrona Konsthall, Sweden. Poitras Santos’ writing has appeared in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, The Chart, The Café Review, Living Maps Review, and The New Guard, among others. In 2016, with the support of a Kindling Fund, Poitras Santos initiated Platform Projects/Walks, a platform for curating walking artworks within local communities. Her curatorial work with Catherine Besteman for Making Migration Visible in the ICA at MECA was supported in part by an Art Works Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Poitras Santos works as assistant professor at Maine College of Art.

at Washington Project for the Arts
2124 8th Street NW, Washington, DC

August 1, 2019: 5:30pm | Portland, ME
Conversation in conjunction with exhibit at MECA
with Julie Poitras Santos & Katarina Weslien

at Maine College of Art Osher Hall
522 Congress Street, Portland, ME

August 8, 2019: 5:30pm | Dublin, NH
Artist Talk + Book Signing
with Kathy Hoffman

at Dublin Community Center
1123 Main Street, Dublin, NH