Alison Dilworth is a Philadelphia-based artist, muralist, and shrine-maker whose work spans the profoundly private and the intensely public. She is also someone who has spent her adult life thinking about what it costs to hold things — grief, love, other people's stories, a kid running toward traffic — and what it means to be genuinely present to any of it.
We talk about what it means to make a shrine, and how that practice bleeds into everything else she makes. We talk about the difference between curiosity and bearing witness — and why that distinction matters more than it might seem. We talk about girlhood, about what it felt like to watch herself become visible to men before she had any framework for it, about the refusal that followed, and about the door she's walking through now on the other side of all that. We talk about a miscarriage, a snow cone, and a little girl named Dagitu who showed up at exactly the right moment without knowing why. And we talk about an elder neighbor with a shovel and a gaze that went straight through her.
Alison is one of the people who taught me — without trying to — that holding space is a real thing you can do in the world. Talking to her again after fifteen years was a genuine joy.
In this conversation:
...more of Alison's work: https://www.instagram.com/brainsoulface/
The Principal Uncertainty is a podcast by George Laufenberg. It's not about finding solid ground — it's about staying oriented in open water.
