Saved: Objects of the Dead is a collaborative project by NC-based artist Jody Servon and CA-based poet Lorene Delany-Ullman that began in 2008. This monograph of their work, published in 2023, includes “Mattering,” an essay by Cora Fisher, Curator of Visual Arts Programming at the Brooklyn Public Library, and micro-essays with photographs by five notable artists/authors: Sonya Clark, Alex Espinoza, Erika Hayasaki, Swati Khurana, and Leslie Gray Streeter.
Artist, Author,
& Contributors
Artist, Author,
& Contributors
Saved: Objects of the Dead is a collaborative project by NC-based artist Jody Servon and CA-based poet Lorene Delany-Ullman that began in 2008. This monograph of their work, published in 2023, includes “Mattering,” an essay by Cora Fisher, Curator of Visual Arts Programming at the Brooklyn Public Library, and micro-essays with photographs by five notable artists/authors: Sonya Clark, Alex Espinoza, Erika Hayasaki, Swati Khurana, and Leslie Gray Streeter.
Jody Servon is an artist, curator, and educator whose work connects people through storytelling about our lived experiences. She was raised in New Jersey by public school educator parents who loved exploring, collecting, and hosting gatherings for their beloved cast of characters. Her family life and wide array... of jobs, including donut filler, kids ski instructor, beach badge checker, and oncology unit clerk, provided her with opportunities to interact with all kinds of people at some of their best and worst moments. The wealth of stories she heard formed her interest in integrating people’s stories of love, loss, grief, joy, and more into her work. A firm believer in public education, she earned degrees in New Genre from The University of Arizona and in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She has exhibited, published and created projects in North America, Europe, and Asia. She lives in Western North Carolina with her family and is currently a professor and coordinator of the art management program at Appalachian State University.
Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian and received her MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine. Before embarking on a teaching career, she worked as a technical writer for a large aircraft company and a marketing research firm. Currently, she teaches composition to... UC Irvine students, a profession that allows her to explore topics ranging from war and popular culture to the rhetoric of grief and mourning. Her book of prose poetry, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, won the 2011 Sentence Award. Her poems and nonfiction have been published in various anthologies and literary magazines. Because of her own life-threatening illnesses and after witnessing her father's gradual decline and death from Alzheimer's disease, Lorene understands how talking about our mortality is a complex yet necessary conversation. Through her collaboration with Jody on Saved: Objects of the Dead, Lorene continues to learn much about loss, memory, and life. She resides in Newport Beach, California, with her husband, Richard.
Jody Servon is an artist, curator, and educator whose work connects people through storytelling about our lived experiences. She was raised in New Jersey by public school educator parents who loved exploring, collecting, and hosting gatherings for their beloved cast of characters. Her family life and wide array of jobs, including donut filler, kids ski instructor, beach badge checker, and oncology unit clerk, provided her with opportunities to interact with all kinds of people at some of their best and worst moments. The wealth of stories she heard formed her interest in integrating people’s stories of love, loss, grief, joy, and more into her work. A firm believer in public education, she earned degrees in New Genre from The University of Arizona and in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She has exhibited, published and created projects in North America, Europe, and Asia. She lives in Western North Carolina with her family and is currently a professor and coordinator of the art management program at Appalachian State University.
Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian and received her MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine. Before embarking on a teaching career, she worked as a technical writer for a large aircraft company and a marketing research firm. Currently, she teaches composition to UC Irvine students, a profession that allows her to explore topics ranging from war and popular culture to the rhetoric of grief and mourning. Her book of prose poetry, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, won the 2011 Sentence Award. Her poems and nonfiction have been published in various anthologies and literary magazines. Because of her own life-threatening illnesses and after witnessing her father's gradual decline and death from Alzheimer's disease, Lorene understands how talking about our mortality is a complex yet necessary conversation. Through her collaboration with Jody on Saved: Objects of the Dead, Lorene continues to learn much about loss, memory, and life. She resides in Newport Beach, California, with her husband, Richard.
About the Contributors
Sonya Clark creates installations and objects rooted in craft’s legacy. She employs the language of textiles, politics of hair, and power of text to celebrate Blackness while interrogating historical imbalances. She’s the Winifred Arma Professor of Arts and Humanities at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Previously she chaired the Craft/Material Studies Department At Virginia Commonwealth University. She’s received awards from many organizations including United States Artists, Pollock-Krasner, Art Prize, and Anonymous Was a Woman. Her work has been exhibited in over 500 venues worldwide.
Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico to parents from the state of Michoacán. He graduated from the University of California-Riverside, then went on to earn an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints, was published by Random House in 2007. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was published by Random House in March 2013. Alex’s work has appeared in several anthologies and journals. His awards include a 2009 Margaret Bridgeman Fellowship in Fiction to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a 2014 Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 2014 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Five Acts of Diego León. His latest is Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime (Unnamed Press 2019). Alex teaches at UC-Riverside where he serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing.
Cora Fisher is a curator and arts writer based in New York City. Since 2018, she has been Curator of Visual Art Programming at the Brooklyn Public Library, where she organizes exhibitions, public programs, and art commissions. From 2013-2017 she was the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) where she organized over twenty solo and group exhibitions, numerous performances and programs and produced four print publications. As a freelance arts writer, she has contributed reviews, profiles, interviews and conversations to Artforum, Bomblog, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, NY Times Blog, Objektiv Magazine, MOMUS and the Rumpus, among other publications. Her perspectives are shaped significantly by her upbringing as the youngest member of Squat Theatre, an expatriate experimental theater group formerly based in New York City. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Erika Hayasaki is an independent journalist and writer based in Southern California. Her feature stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Atlantic and various other publications. Formerly a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, she is the author of The Death Class: A True Story About Life from Simon & Schuster. Her newly released non-fiction book, Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family, centers on a pair of identical twin sisters born in Vietnam and raised apart (Algonquin Books, Fall 2022). Hayasaki teaches science, health, digital and cultural narrative storytelling at the University of California, Irvine, where she is an associate professor in the Literary Journalism Program.
Swati Khurana is a writer, artist, Tarot reader, and Flash Fiction editor at Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Guernica, Apogee, The Offing; in the anthologies, Good Girls Marry Doctors (Aunt Lute) and Book of Curses (AALR), and has been a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. They are the recipient of fellowships from NYFA, Center for Fiction, Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, and Center for Book Arts. Swati likes quiet train cars, loud dance floors, bhel puri, being chaotic on Instagram @tarotbooksradio, and knowing what other people like.
Leslie Gray Streeter is a veteran journalist, author and speaker who is currently the lifestyle columnist for the Baltimore Banner. A native of Baltimore, MD, she was also previously a columnist for the Palm Beach Post, the York Dispatch/Sunday News and the Miami Times. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, O, The Oprah Magazine and more. Her memoir, "Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief For People Who Normally Avoid Books With Words Like Journey In The Title" (Little, Brown) was released in March 2020. She lives in Baltimore with her son, Brooks.
Sonya Clark creates installations and objects rooted in craft’s legacy. She employs the language of textiles, politics of hair, and power of text... to celebrate Blackness while interrogating historical imbalances. She’s the Winifred Arma Professor of Arts and Humanities at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Previously she chaired the Craft/Material Studies Department At Virginia Commonwealth University. She’s received awards from many organizations including United States Artists, Pollock-Krasner, Art Prize, and Anonymous Was a Woman. Her work has been exhibited in over 500 venues worldwide.
Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico to parents from the state of Michoacán. He graduated from the University of ...California-Riverside, then went on to earn an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints, was published by Random House in 2007. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was published by Random House in March 2013. Alex’s work has appeared in several anthologies and journals. His awards include a 2009 Margaret Bridgeman Fellowship in Fiction to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a 2014 Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 2014 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Five Acts of Diego León. His latest is Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime (Unnamed Press 2019). Alex teaches at UC-Riverside where he serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing.
Cora Fisher is a curator and arts writer based in New York City. Since 2018, she has been Curator of Visual Art Programming at the Brooklyn Public... Library, where she organizes exhibitions, public programs, and art commissions. From 2013-2017 she was the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) where she organized over twenty solo and group exhibitions, numerous performances and programs and produced four print publications. As a freelance arts writer, she has contributed reviews, profiles, interviews and conversations to Artforum, Bomblog, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, NY Times Blog, Objektiv Magazine, MOMUS and the Rumpus, among other publications. Her perspectives are shaped significantly by her upbringing as the youngest member of Squat Theatre, an expatriate experimental theater group formerly based in New York City. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Erika Hayasaki is an independent journalist and writer based in Southern California. Her feature stories have appeared in The New York Times... Magazine, Wired, The Atlantic and various other publications. Formerly a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, she is the author of The Death Class: A True Story About Life from Simon & Schuster. Her newly released non-fiction book, Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family, centers on a pair of identical twin sisters born in Vietnam and raised apart (Algonquin Books, Fall 2022). Hayasaki teaches science, health, digital and cultural narrative storytelling at the University of California, Irvine, where she is an associate professor in the Literary Journalism Program.
Swati Khurana is a writer, artist, Tarot reader, and Flash Fiction editor at Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins. Her writing has ...been featured in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Guernica, Apogee, The Offing; in the anthologies, Good Girls Marry Doctors (Aunt Lute) and Book of Curses (AALR), and has been a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. They are the recipient of fellowships from NYFA, Center for Fiction, Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, and Center for Book Arts. Swati likes quiet train cars, loud dance floors, bhel puri, being chaotic on Instagram @tarotbooksradio, and knowing what other people like.
Leslie Gray Streeter is a veteran journalist, author and speaker who is currently the lifestyle columnist for the Baltimore Banner.... A native of Baltimore, MD, she was also previously a columnist for the Palm Beach Post, the York Dispatch/Sunday News and the Miami Times. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, O, The Oprah Magazine and more. Her memoir, "Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief For People Who Normally Avoid Books With Words Like Journey In The Title" (Little, Brown) was released in March 2020. She lives in Baltimore with her son, Brooks.