On a hike with a family member, I described my project and the challenges I’m facing in coming up with a design. He agreed with my current sense, which is that I’m just trying to do too many things in one papercut. It’s too much detail to try to convey that America’s justice system is injust in the way that it polices Black people and the way that it judges them and in the way that it imprisons them and in the way that it reduces their rights after prison and that Jews have a responsibility to fight mass incarceration and that most of us benefit from this oppressive racist system. That level of detailed messages is not my usual style and it’s noisy. Maybe I can say that many things that explicitly in a series of papercuts, or a triptych of 3-5 papercuts, or in an essay that accompanies a papercut.

Maybe I will make a triptych of three panels. They can have similar designs, and one of them can feature handcuffs or shackles with a text about freeing captives, one of them can feature a supreme court building with jail bars with a text about choosing righteous judges, and one of them can feature a tallit with a text about the obligation to pursue justice. The three can be connected by perhaps a chain of shackles, weaving through them all. I’ll consider this idea, do some sketches, and see what develops.