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About Yone Jon Kriney

I am an artist, researcher, and digital access worker living in a part of Lenapehoking now called Philadelphia.

My digital access work primarily takes place in publishing—I am a big epub fan, advocate, and builder. More importantly, I am a fan, advocate, builder, and student of disability justice. Feel free to contact me about accessible publishing consultations and conversions! I'd love to make a reflowable epub for you and your work.

I make web stuff for fun and play, including this website.

I also make more visual art in a variety of mediums, primarily using material from both public online archives and family archives. That work is a visualization of the process of me searching for resistance, care, and liberation in those archives, finding the overlaps between personal memory practice and public memory work, and making my best attempt to embody historical material. It is also a visualization of a lot of experimentation and fun mistakes. I make a lot of this work in the darkroom and printmaking studio at the Fleisher Art Memorial. All of my creative practice is done alongside, by, and for my ancestors.

A portfolio page is in progress, but some of my work can be found in the links below.

Pronouns are they/them.

One of my favorite activities is writing letters/emails to loved ones and people I admire. Right now , so general questions or inquiries or thoughts of all types are always welcome, but sometimes it takes me a bit to reply. Contact email is in the next section!

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Scrapbooks
by Nikki Giovanni

it's funny that smells and sounds return
so all alone uncalled unneeded
on a sweaty night as i sit armed
with coffee and cigarettes waiting

sometimes it seems
my life is a scrapbook

i usta get 1.50 per week
for various duties unperformed
while i read green dolphin street 
and the sun is my undoing
never understanding my exclusion
but knowing quite clearly the hero
is always misunderstood
though always right in the end

roy gave me a yellow carnation
that year for the junior prom

the red rose was from michael
who was the prettiest boy i’d ever known
he took me to the jack and jill dance      
and left me sitting in the corner until      
the slow drags came on then he danced
real tight and sweated out my bangs
i had a white leather monstrosity that passed
for taste in my adolescence pressed with dances
undanced though the songs were melodious

and somehow three or four books were filled
with proms and parties and programs that
my grandmother made me go to
for “culture” so that i could be      
a lady      
my favorite is the fisk book with clippings      
of the forum and notes from the dean of women
saying “you are on social probation” and “you are
suspended from fisk”
and letters from my mother saying “behave yourself”  
and letters from my grandmother reminding me
“your grandfather graduated fisk in 1905” and not
to try to run the school
but mostly notes from alvin asking when
was i coming over
again
i purchased a blue canvas notebook for the refrain

it’s really something when you sit
watching dawn peep over apartment buildings
that seemed so ominous during the night and see      
pages of smiling pictures        groups of girls throwing      
pillows        couples staring nervously ahead as if they      
think the kodak will eat them        someone with a ponytail     
and a miles davis record        a lady with an afro pointing     
joyously to a diploma        a girl in a brown tan and red  
bathing suit holding a baby that looks like you 
and now there is a black leather book filled
efficiently by a clipping service
and a pile of unanswered letters that remind
you to love those who love you
and i sit at dawn
all my defenses gone sometimes
listening to something cool sometimes
hearing tears on my pillow
and know there must be other books
filled with failures and family and friends
that perhaps one day i can unfold
for my grandchildren