Fraxinus, Volume 2 Issue 2 (Twenty Gestures Toward Utopia) features collages and poems by Bird Closet, an art collective based in the rural village of Bethel in Appalachian Ohio. Supportive, inclusive, and democratically governed, Bird Closet has been created and cultivated by more than 23 participants ranging in age from 16 to 38 since its formation in 2018. Participants inhabit self-selected bird alter egos as a means of evoking an alternate universe in which they are free to pursue creative and social projects that may seem untenable in the world as it exists. In the Bird Closet universe, collage is the voice of the birds, reconfiguring language and imagery from publicly available historical documents and other relevant literature to form a new language of agency.
