For Latham Zearfoss, Change Is A Chance For Discovery

Written by Vocalo Radio on December 21, 2023

Chicago visual artist Latham Zearfoss navigates the spaces “between personal desire and collective identity.”

No two pieces of Latham Zearfoss’ art look the same. But whether it’s vibrantly-colored icicles or an installation featuring tree stumps and carpet, each piece shares thematic elements of identity, ecology and the potential for change.

As an artist and community organizer with a passion for mutual aid, Zearfoss’ work is often a reflection on life, death and sustainability. His creations challenge the notion that things must endure forever, noting the importance of old ideas fading away to make room for fresh growth.

“[I use] a lot of recycled, repurposed or just organic materials that can slowly degrade and become something else over time, and eventually maybe even disappear,” Zearfoss noted. “When we think about a notion like sustainability, I think the first thing that comes to mind is something continuing forever and ever and ever. But actually … Things needed to die and compost and return to the earth so that new things can emerge: new ideas, new presence, new energies.”

In addition to Zearfoss’ artistic practice, he is a community organizer and a cultural liaison for the Chicago Park District, supporting the city’s 15 park cultural centers with programming, collaborations and partnerships. His journey toward these roles began when Zearfoss moved to Chicago in 2001 to study commercial filmmaking at Columbia College. Dissatisfied, he ended up taking a break and eventually found his way to studying artmaking at the School of the Art Institute for undergrad and UIC for graduate school.

Throughout his time at SAIC and UIC, Zearfoss always centered his work on themes of identity politics and navigating between individual and collective identities — primarily through video, sound and sculptural work. Shaped by his experiences as a queer person in a conservative environment, his art speaks the language of change as a constant, a source of discomfort and a realm of discovery.

For this segment of “This Is What Chicago Sounds Like,” Latham Zearfoss explains how, whether through art or community organizing, he strives to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

What do you do for work?

My day job is a cultural liaison for the Chicago Park District. I get to support some of our parks with their arts and cultural programming. First of all, there are over 600 parks in Chicago. The theory is that every Chicagoan is a 10 minute walk away from a park. 200 of those parks or so have buildings on them, and of those, 15 are identified as cultural centers. There are eight of them on the South Side, there are four on the West Side and there are three on the North Side. I work with a small but mighty team, and we support those 15 cultural centers, and their staff and supervisors, with building out cultural programming, amplifying it and bringing in partnerships.

Outside of your day job, what kind of work do you make?

I am an artist, and I work mostly with video and sound. I also have a conceptual sculptural practice. I moved here to go to Columbia College for a while, but I entered into — this was like 2001 — I went into a kind of commercial narrative filmmaking program. I felt really alienated by it, culturally. I was looking at moving from taking these core classes into starting to collaborate with all of these people. I just was like, “I don’t think this is the right program for me.” So I dropped out of school, and I kind of just putzed around, I was in a band, and then I needed a job. I was really struggling to find work, and I ended up having a friend that worked at Planned Parenthood, so I took a job at Planned Parenthood and I worked at an abortion clinic for six years.

But the first half of that, I think, really opened up a lot for me, in terms of my understanding of what it means to make choices. What it means to make hard choices, and to pick a life path. Coming into that clarity, I think, also opened up space for me to really revisit my desire to be an artist and to make art. I put a portfolio together and I went back to school at the Art Institute, and I had a really great time. I was an older undergrad, I was like 26. Then I graduated, and I went immediately into grad school at UIC, which was also a really, really rich time. I think what I learned in my early time was the subjects I was really interested in, it really had to do with this idea of the universal versus the specific, or thinking about the collective versus the individual and finding the really exciting spaces of tension between them.

I think I’m really interested in and invested in identity politics, but I also see so many flaws in the way that they function and work. I’m really excited by exploring the messy areas between where our desires lead us and then who we need to present ourselves as to the outside world, especially to gain power. As I’ve been making sculptural work more frequently, that work has really shifted to have an ecological focus or framework. Making sculptural work that is intended to degrade and return to the earth, as it were. Using a lot of recycled, repurposed or just organic materials that can slowly degrade and become something else over time, and eventually maybe even disappear.

In the video work, in the sound work and the sculptural work that I do is just change. Change as a constant, but also change as a really exciting space of discovery and discomfort, and also where I think the juiciest stuff of life happens. I’ve been really thinking about death — not necessarily as a thing that has to be so laden with meaning, but can actually make so much possible. When we think about a notion like sustainability, I think the first thing that comes to mind is something continuing forever and ever and ever. But actually what also needs to be part of that is, things need to die. Things needed to die and compost and return to the earth so that new things can emerge: new ideas, new presence, new energies can come forward. [That is] what happens for a species to sustain. We need the old to fade away, and we need to take as much knowledge from them as they go, and then the young carry forward and kind of put their spin on it and so forth.

What would you say you focus on mostly in your art?

I make work that’s about that tug between personal desire and collective identity, and the changes that happen and how we navigate them. Every piece that I make is different from the one before it. In the last year and a half or so, I made an installation for a show that was about mutual aid, basically. Sort of about collective care. I do a lot of work that’s around mutual aid, but I was invited as an artist so what I wanted to do for that show was create a space that would be restful. I was like, “Oh, this is a lot of busy people doing volunteer work, and then all of their friends, who are also probably doing volunteer work, are going to come and see the show. What is a nice space that I can offer, where they can take a little bit of a break but still have something meaningful and artistic happen?” Not just let people totally check out, but rather create a space of digestion for all the other things that are happening in the space, and therefore also in the world. Because a lot of it is also about suffering. Mutual aid is a response to suffering.

Can you describe what your art looks and feels like?

I created this environment, which had this plush carpet. I went to my parents’ house in Ohio, and my dad and I cut up a dead tree and we made these stumps that people could sit on. Then there was a video of clouds and a blue sky. Tucked into the logs were these subwoofers and I had a soundtrack that I recorded right behind my house of a train passing by, kind of sounds like the ocean or something.

^{Latham Zearfoss, Grant Us Serenity. Looping video, stereo sound, sections of a dead maple tree, hand-dyed deadstock velvet, recycled carpet padding. 15′ x 15′, 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.}

Also, I made a piece, February of 2023, called Stalagmite Creamsicles. It’s basically ice sculptures that are pigmented with natural coloring, like hibiscus and turmeric. Conical shapes, these cones, are filled with water and these pigmenting agents, and then some native seeds. They are frozen in my backyard, and then I get to install them. As the weather warms they start to melt, but in the interim, they create a kind of fantastical, slightly uncanny valley moment where people see basically an upside down icicle that’s brightly colored in the winter, which can feel so gray and drab.

^{Stalagmite Creamsicles by Latham Zearfross; ice, native seeds, natural dyes. Variable, 2022. Photo by Sandra Oviedo of Colectivo Multipolar, courtesy of Latham Zearfoss.}

But also they have a function, which is that they melt, and all of this nutrient-rich water with these native seeds kind of scatter into the earth. Seeds that are native to Illinois, most of them, require a freezing period as part of their germination. When the sculptures melt, all that water has the frozen seeds inside it scatter, so it’s a really nice part of their cycle. I think it also reminds us of the urgency of climate change at the moment. Part of what I was hoping to do with that project was to bring a little magical sort of celebratory moment that really uplifted the powerful part that winter plays in our daily lives and our ecology.

^{Stalagmite Creamsicles (2023) by Latham Zearfoss. Photo by ANF Chicago, courtesy of the artist.}

Can you talk about your activism?

I think I identify more as a community organizer than an activist. I really love bringing people together. I came from a really rural place, which is very conservative, and I grew up as a queer person in a place that was not queer. For whatever reason, that really impressed upon me what it means to be an outsider. I think really early-on [I] had an analysis that the reason I was bullied was not necessarily because I was queer, but because I was feminine. That, for me, created a real clear link to feminism.

I think also growing up having friends of color, particularly having Black friends in a place that felt really hostile and racist, I think that also became really clear that this was something that I had a role in. I think, then, I thought screaming at racist people was doing the work. Now I think having conversations as a white person with racist people and trying to call them in, where possible, is the work. It just has a very different contour, but I think it comes from the same place, which is maybe a little cliche, but it’s just caring about humanity and really wanting people to see each other’s humanity.

Tell us about the organizing you’ve been part of.

For many years, I worked on a queer party called Chances. I did that for about a decade. A little bit before I stopped doing Chances, I started doing a project called “Make Yourself Useful,” which was another collective project, very informal, made up of white folks trying to understand their role in white supremacy and how to move against it. In 2020… we moved to McKinley Park in 2018, and then when the pandemic hit, we became aware of some folks in the neighborhood that were working to support neighbors in need. My partner and I got involved, and we got to support folks through a mutual aid framework. What that really means is people coming together as a community to meet their own needs.

How does Chicago influence what you do?

I think Chicago has such a collective, collaborative, experimental and DIY kind of energy. I think it has [had it] the whole time I’ve lived here, and I think I am a very collaborative person by nature, both in my creative practice, but also in my professional work, and in my community organizing. That’s what community organizing is. It’s bringing people together to create something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. I love collaboration, I love working with people. I love, especially, working with people who are in a different field or have a different knowledge base, or have a different identity than me, or all of the above. I have found Chicago and Chicagoans to be so game for that and really generous.

Since 2016, we have been profiling people who give their all to Chicago and enrich us socially and culturally by virtue of their artistry, social justice work and community-building. Take a listen. Read their words. Become inspired.