One day, in the history of Columbus, Ohio
Written by A.J. Verdelle, 2024 Aminah Robinson Writing Resident
Winning a fellowship does not prepare you for the intimacy of this artist’s house. As a person who knew little about Columbus, you drive the roads your GPS makes blue. You ask no questions. You sing along to your soundtrack. You hope that every bridge that GPS says is there, is there.
In Baltimore, where I live, you recognize and contemplate and register in real time how fast a bridge can disappear.
Your GPS guides you to Sunbury Road.
Arriving in the dark, you do not yet know bright Columbus. You will collapse, asleep, in new Columbus. You will not expect, finally awake in Columbus, the bold bright light, the unhumid, unheavy air. You do not realize, in the Columbus afternoon, that you will soon associate this very air with Ms. Aminah.
Alone, you examine all her many creation stations: the many corners of her house, each with their own time-tuned drench of light.
You soon speculate that Ms. Aminah chose her house and organized her house and arranged her voluminous expansive work, in response to the wide sheets of light that blare through her curated windows. Different spaces, different windows, different perspectives, emanating like a kaleidoscope of history, of color, of whimsy, of deliberation, all in this one artist’s house.
You, yourself, are soon making daily choices. Which creation station has the best light and at which specific time of day?
Ms. Aminah’s kitchen door is the entry door. (IYKYK.) When you enter, you are shocked to stand in your street shoes on Ms. Aminah’s mosaic-in-process, also known as a kitchen floor.
You walk in as if you are entering the house of the oldest, wisest lady on the block. The lady everyone knows is an artist, who has a gallery of works in progress, room by room. The lady talks to you from the shadow of her protective doorways. Maybe she calls your name — words sailing out from underneath her awnings. Not a disembodied voice, but a known quantity. Not a curious bird, but an anchor in the neighborhood. Not someone you wonder about, but an elegant, widely-known queen on the scene. A lady who knows her neighbors, who worked over her whole house, made it bigger, made it famous, over decades of artwork, of son work, of son loss, of arms wide open to history, and to the art-loving future — also known as children.
Neighbor Juliette, wrestling with her Rose of Sharon, lives and gardens behind Aminah’s sanctuary; remembers Aminah, calls her friend. You can hear eternity, perpetuity, and anti-time in her pronouncement: I am going to have this rose of sharon cut all the way down. It sprays seeds and grows up everywhere I don’t want. From a calculated, personal, time-limited obscurity, you imagine Ms. Aminah dishing in the shade, sculpting light over her own artmaking, noticing that rose of sharon blooms are the size of big buttons.
Past the carved swooping shapes elevating her many doors; past the painted murals on her street-facing entryways.
You know you enter sanctuary. She may not see you, or you may not see her, but you cannot miss the art. Glass bottles in the ground, reminiscent of a bottle tree. Buttons in the concrete, which you have to be invited to get close enough to see.
Out front, on what we call in Baltimore “the stoop,” if you walk up what are called steps in Columbus, you will go cool under the awning, go awed at the carved front door.
If you walk those steps, if you stoop down, you will see buttons pressed into Ms. Aminah’s concrete.
You can imagine her hands. You can envision her long fingers pressing down, this button, that button, orange, bone, yellow, blue. Keen eyes, taking in, assessing. You can imagine her choosing. You stoop down in the present tense and view her chosen buttons. Her dark bottles sucking in the heat and sun.
Her art suffuses every corner, and yet she has left the planet. Her engineering mind still speaks. Her orientation toward steps and stages, sketches and drafts, brushes and thimbles, oils, pastels. No material out of bounds. Fabric billowing bigger than flags. Buttons click together quietly, their clacking so soft — almost like keyboards, almost like wind-chimes. You can see Columbus fluttering the infinite tops of trees, shaking at the nexus of sky.
Her profundity is unarguable, even after. After all the identified stages — of the story, of her life, of the buttons, of her Sydney, of the markers, of the paint splattered on the dining room floor. The sequins, the music boxes, the fabric, the future, the past. The unassailable folklore.
In her kitchen, her art-populated kitchen, you feel yourself in the heart of the house, the heart of the artichoke, the heart of hope for the future of art. In her kitchen, her walls are all drawn. A big statement written profoundly, in cursive: One day, in the history of Columbus, Ohio.
You read this writing. You see that “of” is painted over a pipe. You realize that one day in the history of Columbus Ohio, you are there. You realize that her kitchen boasts a line that is forever true. That forever, which equals that one day you stand there, includes — in its infinity — you. That day in Columbus, there you stand, in her kitchen. She stood there once, on many days. Many nights. Many sweeps of the paintbrush, many dreams of DaVinci. One day in the history of Columbus Ohio, I was there, she was there, every pair of eyes who came through the kitchen-side door was there.
Oh, the Profundity. Oh, the Clarity. Oh, Ohio.
Consider with me: Aminah in the After Light: Give me a yellow button. Let me sew in the sunlight. Watch me meditate on DaVinci. Stand beside my wild carvings. Experience me morph into myth and ancestor. See me make monuments, elevate both the primal story, and the ordinary.
See Sunbury. See Columbus. See Poindexter. Bring your brown skin and big talents along. Make your momentary history with your days in Columbus. Consider: How art — and writing — stay forever fresh and alive.
