{"id":7271,"date":"2026-10-04T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T10:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/?p=7271"},"modified":"2026-10-04T17:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T17:10:15","slug":"am-i-dead-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/am-i-dead-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I dead yet? Are you?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/span><\/div>

“Am I Dead Yet?”
\nPen & Ink
\nFound on Harstine Island, Washington
\nSeptember, 2026<\/p>\n

Artist unknown.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

I live in the woods, surrounded by trees, trees, water, deer, and more trees. There’s beauty, but no room for the spontaneous art I found when I lived in Chicago. Or so I thought.<\/p>\n

I began to look beyond the boughs, and found what I was looking for. A wealth of abandoned projects exist in marginal places: garage sales, thrift stores, and on one thrilling occasion, by the HOA dumpster. I took in these originals, fished them out of free boxes, liberated them from bins, unfolded them from the tucked pages where their creators hid them.<\/p>\n

A few were pleasing as they were, and I framed them and gave them pride of place in my home. With others, I contemplated the effort and decided to improve upon what was done. Once or twice, I obliterated the works after my own attempt was inadequate. These await another iteration.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the art questioned me. “Am I Dead Yet?”<\/p>\n

I contemplated the question, and believed the best thing, in this case, is to launch it into the world. Travel. Adventure. A chance to interrogate everyone who sees it. As long someone looks, then the answer becomes apparent.<\/p>\n

Fly and be free.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[226,120],"class_list":["post-7271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-found-art","tag-pen-and-ink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7271"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7278,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7271\/revisions\/7278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steepedinthelore.bitingreviews.com\/steeped\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}