Editor’s Note

At What Cost is—and here presents—a catalog of obsessions. I’m especially excited to express this theme by sharing the work of these writers, artists, and people whose art, for one reason or another, I’m obsessed with.

That my own obsession with the work of those collected here led me to invite them to consider their own is, perhaps, fitting: the nature of obsession is that it has a tendency towards multiplication (consider the expanding line of tabs inevitably accompanying online shopping, scrolling, stalking). We measure our degree of affection for something by the attention we give it. It can feel involuntary, almost thrilling in its lack of autonomy. Who are we if not our preoccupations?

In my own life, I’ve experienced obsession as a kind of barometer for how I felt about things: if I was obsessed, I was sure—sure it would happen, sure I needed it, sure it was for me. Obsession can function as a God, a parent, a voice above your own: louder, clearer, more practical, even—a call and response, a thing to trust, a lover in loneliness.

Once, in the eye of an obsession draining the life from me, I closed my eyes and brought them toward a window. The bright light in the dark felt warm, and that something beautiful was beyond the object of my desire, something unimaginable, less cerebral. I knew if I was capable of giving something all this attention, I was also capable of redirecting it. My presence, that process of observation—my control—was the thing I desired. And I’ve come to believe that what’s underneath obsession is more interesting than the thing, place, or person one is obsessed with: it’s our careful, directed attention that is ultimately an expression of our magic, not the thing we thought we desired.

How, then, to channel our obsessive energy in a way that sets us free of the object of our obsession? The answer for me is through creation. It leaves room to examine the occupation of obsession versus any one particular obsession. An example of that: I’m obsessed with the way that being in love begets detail after detail, and the way love is expressed through attention to these details, and how to delight in these details is to pay a kind of attention few other sources of life receive. To watch this play out, rather than to be in the eye of it, is to learn how to channel your attention, your affection.

Which brings me back to the catalog I share with you here: it’s both a manifestation of my obsession with these artists, and an expression of the transmutation described above. From Adrienne Raphel’s fables to Robert Whitehead’s beachcombing, or Sara Lautman’s hatchet to Grady Chambers’ cardinals, the work gathered here gives a window into the obsessions of these artists who’ve inspired me, and, maybe, a space for them to enact their own transmutation. I hope it will invite you to ask questions of your own life: What parts of you are hidden by your obsessions? What parts are accentuated? Does obsession cut through the fog? Or create it?

—Jessica Scicchitano

CONTRIBUTORS

Jonathan Aprea
Grady Chambers
Oscar Cuevas
Patrick Dundon
Callie Garnett
Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo
Greer Gibney
Julia Grosso
Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez

William Hazard
Anya Maria Johnson
Sara Lautman
Jessica Laser
JJ McDonald
Cate McLaughlin
Ash Pattison-Scott
Brice Peterson
Jessica Poli

Adrienne Raphel
Libby Rosa
Walker Rutter-Bowman
Natalie Shapero
Shy Watson
Robert Whitehead
Gabrielle Woolley

Can Art Be Taught