Broken strategies. Broken systems. Broken hearts. Lots of wreckage after the results of this week’s election, and lots of gratuitous commentary by all those who seem to know what should have been done differently. If in doubt accuse progressives, never mind that we have a centrist president, centrist senators who are holding up any substantive legislation and a moderate candidate in VA who lost a substantial point advantage after remarks that triggered parents grappling with increased diversity in their children’s schools. Never mind a progressive candidate for Mayor of Buffalo who won the primaries fair and square being ousted by a write-in campaign supported by her own party’s establishment in alliance with republican donors.

Let’s focus on something positive instead. I am encouraged by art that points the way to something more constructive: take the shards, the remnants, what’s discarded and make it into something beautiful that functions as a reminder of what came before but also points the way to what can emerge.

Julie Decubber is a jewelry artist currently working in the South of France. She forges connections between things with a history and new creations, with an exquisite eye towards what compliments or what does not distract from the visual beauty of the material itself.

I was first drawn to her work with old porcelain shards. I have always loved patterned porcelain. In my childhood our plates that so often held food I did not like or was not interested in came from a pattern called Burgenland (Castleland.) It spurred the imagination of the (even then) travel-hungry child. It is no longer produced just like my own 50 year-old china which floats phoenixes (birds, of course!) and ideas of renewal, and which will be proudly used into perpetuity with chips, cracks, and dulled glaze.

Here are some samples found on Decubber’s website that show her work with porcelain shards.

Her newest project, however, is what really interests me. She visited, interviewed and formed impressions of a number of contemporary ceramic artists, all women. They entrusted her with discarded shards from their projects which she then turned into jewelry.

I always admire collaborative projects because they require heightened sensitivity to diverse approaches, but also widen the repertoire of ideas that are collected cumulatively. Before you look at what she came up with it might be fun to check out the work of the ceramicists, linked below.

The ceramists:

Anne Verdier , Julia Morlot , Émilie Pedron , Julia Huteau , Héloïse Bariol , Enrica Casentini , Agnès Debizet, Ulrike Weiss , Francine Triboulet , Kaori Kurihara , Nani Champy-Schott , Léa Van Impe , Linda Ouhbi , Fanny Richard , Alice Toumit .

Here is some of what Decubber created. The whole collection was shown in an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris which closed last month.

Here is a glimpse backstage, a mosaic from her workshop, beautifully laid out by some clever website designer.

Decubber describes her pieces as history that can be worn, as documentation of the history behind their origins, from porcelain manufacturers of old to the eclectic output of contemporary ceramicists. This history also includes nods to cultural influences rooted in geography, from subsaharan styles to asian forms, stressing the importance of art to break nativist boundaries.

It is perhaps no coincidence that this work caught my eye during a time when the denial of history partially drives election outcomes. “Let’s not make our innocent White children feel bad when they hear in school that humans were treated as animals by their ancestors! Let’s not delve into the racist structures of our nation lest we ourselves would have to admit that we are on the side of evil, if only via complacency. Let’s not even face the fact that maybe, after all, we ourselves don’t think of ranking skin color, religion, class as wrong. As just one example, almost 50% of Republicans assert that only Christians can be true Americans.

In Virginia it was not just the straw man of Critical Race Theory. A lot of uproar was caused by a 2019 third party – audit report that described public schools as “hostile learning environment” for students of color and that staff often failed to address racist incidents. Multiple students, the local NAACP, and even the commonwealth’s attorney general have called for the public school system to correct systemic racial discrimination.” This led to a 2021 equity plan calling for implicit bias training, enhanced protocols for handling racist behavior, and improved reporting systems for students. Parents erupted, suing the system over the plan, and the Fox news universe took over during a time of parental frustration with school closures due to Covid that had reached the boiling point. (Ref.) Preliminary statistics of voter choice indicate that Republicans gained the most strength in districts that had recently seen increased diversity in their student population.

Nationally we see the same trend emerging, just looking at school board meeting disruptions. It really is a perfect platform. Boards are accessible, they are filled with or represent parents driven to the brink by worries about their children and the burden of homeschooling during the Covid lockdowns. Aspiring candidates are easily financed with organized dark money (like the Tea Party of yore, by the same sources.) And hostile environments and even violent threats drive a lot of parents who were perfectly happy to be members of school boards or other educational settings into retirement.

Let’s face it: we are not seeing a simple misunderstanding about the dog whistle Critical Race Theory being or not being taught in public schools. We are seeing a veiled but deeply ingrained aversion of many parents to a change in racial relations, to a reckoning with racial history in general, a willingness to hold on to their own prejudices. “Yes, slavery was bad, so we ended it hundreds of years ago. Let’s move on, nothing to see here. And if we have to ban Toni Morrison books, so be it.” We see a centeredness on White kids when CBSNews asks “How young is too young to teach kids about race?” while Black kids as young as three years of age feel the implications of their race. For them obliviousness to race is not optional. Why should it be for White kids?

How do you make that an issue as a democratic campaigner, calling out voters‘ explicit or implicit racism, without shooting yourself in the foot? Or, to stay in line with today’s visuals, walking barefoot over broken shards?

Here are shards of light turned to music.