Care: Symbolic or Actual?

This offering operates like a CSA farm share, but instead of CSA standing for Community Supported Agriculture, it stands for the name of an investigative art project, Care: Symbolic or Actual?

For the next year, I’m acting as the City of Cambridge’s first-ever artist in residence, embedded within their public health department. The main theme of my work across the year will be an effort to define what care actually means to people. It will culminate in a public artwork installed at The Kiosk in Harvard Square in the fall of 2027.

My first step in this role, which began in October 2026, has been to take photos and record audio that helps show where the Cambridge public health department’s work actually happens (hint—it’s not in an office or clinic!) These images and sounds collect surprising, uncanny juxtapositions that hint at what caring looks like when it happens in spaces that weren’t designed for health care, but which make perfect sense when your goal is to meet people where they’re at, both literally and figuratively.

For years I’ve worked in contexts that imagine art as a kind of community care, and one of the things I’ve questioned in this space is the difference between symbolic and actual care. Care: Symbolic or Actual? will follow my personal efforts while acting in the role of “artist in government” within the CPHD to make sure that the final product of my work is not representing or enacting symbolic care, but demonstrates actual care. If you are interested in following along, I am offering the following CSA Packages.

Care Package 1: Care Curious - $50

Every month you’ll get a snail-mail letter (a total of 12) and 3 blank postcards of images (a total of 36) from my time in the field with the health department. The letters will share stories from the residency experience and my thoughts around the question of symbolic vs actual care as they evolve.

Care Package 2: Tangible Care - $100

Care Package #1 plus physical objects from the project. Your hands will touch things that city of Cambridge health workers or care receivers have also touched. At least quarterly, your snail-mail package will include artifacts from the field, ‘zines or limited-edition multiples made with the community or CPHD as a part of my residency. You’ll also be invited to a weekly virtual experience that will occur during the second half of my residency and is otherwise only open to Cambridge residents for free. (The ticketed value for non-residents is $20 per event.)

Care Package 3: Symbolic Care - $365

This care package cares for me!! It makes me feel less alone with the precarity of the path I’ve felt compelled to choose to have the time and flexibility to do this kind of work. It’s symbolic because $1 per day isn’t enough to reduce anyone’s precarity in the USA in 2026, but I will feel cared for, believed in etc., by you in a daily way, and that’s important too. This package includes Care Package #2, plus free downloads of audio projects I’ll be making as a part of this work.

Care Package 5: Actual Care - $500-10,000 (sliding scale)

Like Care Package #3, this package cares for me, but not just symbolically! This offering is only for folks who don’t find the amounts listed in the cost range difficult amounts of money to part with. Especially at the higher end of the sliding scale, purchasing this package has the capacity to actually impact the level of precarity that I, and conceivably others (as it’s my nature to share my resources with others once my basic needs are met,) live within. This package includes Care Package #3, plus a copy of the second volume of The Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, a book about care that I’ve written a chapter for that will be released by Thick Press in 2027. Purchasers of this package also receive one or more of the following: a piece of artwork produced by me during the residency that I consider to be a failure (so far there is only one of these, but failure is an important part of making art, so I expect there will be more!); a manuscript or advance proof of a writing project I’m doing about care based on my experiences as Cambridge’s first “Artist in Government” and/or a custom “care walk.”

Purchase all subscriptions at: