My Life in Coffee Spoons

How well I remember the afternoon light filtering through my honors advisor’s windows at UT Austin, not so/so long ago. The timbre of Dr. Sullivan’s voice when he peered at me over his glasses and said: My dear, Edna St. Vincent Millay was writing about you.

Worst/best compliment ever. My flame will not last the night; But “ah my foes, and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light!” Much as I try to pare down my [schedules, desires, hopes, projects] self, the same bad habits sustain me: inertia, miraculous interventions, and an unhealthy amount of caffeine. Here I am, fifteen freakin’ years later, and elbows deep in art show prep, full time teaching, and trying my darndest to raise my two kids to be good humans. Oh, and an impending studio move to Old East Dallas. I’m joining the new studios at Art on Main! Because enough is never enough, and this candle is lit, y’all.

Just a year ago, I changed high school campuses and reframed my teaching career. At the same time, I put together my first solo show, hosted by the fabulous Susan L Sistrunk in Waco, and on the heels of the opening, I began house hunting. My family moved into our first home at the end of the winter, collapsing weeks of packing and unpacking into a flurry of manic days. Last year was hard. I swore to myself I’d do less, but here I am: a mouthful of “oops!” and glorious evening espresso. This is fine.

I have a problem. BUT check out my first public photos of my new space! If you’re local to Dallas, you know real estate prices have escalated at an unholy rate since the pandemic. My new studio was a miraculous find (seriously!) nestled closely between our new home, Woodrow Wilson High School where I teach art, and Deep Ellum. I get my keys in about two weeks! I love the light, the location, the fact that I have more space, and the window the studio owners installed for me so that I can see the skyline from within my walls.

New beginnings mean endings, as well. It is with a sad heart that I bid farewell to the space that’s been my home by White Rock Lake for the last six years, and the dear art friends I have made there. I’m a better person and a much better artist for having worked among the fabulous ladies of ArtWorks Studio. Wednesday Studio Nights have been the highlight of my week for years. While I’m looking forward to forging new friendships and evolving in my practice, I will miss my home-away-from home so very much.

Art Mart is coming- catch me next weekend at the Bath House Cultural Center for my first official art festival since 2019! And help me celebrate my move by checking out my studio sale! Onward, aflame and aloft on caffeinated wings and daydreams.

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”
— Edna St. Vincent Millay

With gratitude <3

In Memoriam

In April, one of my dearest mentors passed away from cancer. We had kept in touch over the years, in fact, he had written a grad school recommendation letter for me in 2019. The last time I was in Austin, I ran into him at the Elisabet Ney Museum on a Sunday morning. My family and I were there to walk the grounds after brunch, and I saw his unmistakable red hair behind a thicket of beautiful Austin landscape. Of course, Oliver would have been on site on a Sunday. I’m so thankful I had the chance to introduce him to my kids. I am struggling to find words to process the grief and gratitude I feel- but my heart and mind are in Austin.

When I met Oliver, I was a floundering junior at UT Austin. I had just finished a summer internship at the Kimbell art museum while working two other part time jobs. I had to move back home for the summer to take the Kimbell opportunity, and while the internship was wonderful- the implications of living at home for a few months left me with actual stomach ulcers. I had been accepted into the Harry Ransom Center’s year-long undergraduate internship program in 2005-2006. I was double majoring in Humanities Honors and Art History, but I had not really found a home for myself in Austin yet.

The Ransom Center internship changed much about my life’s trajectory. Although Oliver was not my program coordinator, I interned in his department first. When I walked into the public programs office on my first day, wide eyed and so excited, Oliver welcomed me warmly and with the enthusiasm that so many people love about him. Of all the people I worked with during my time at the HRC, he was the person to whom I was closest.

Under of his mentorship, I learned to write copy for press releases, and coordinate hospitality for visiting scholars, writers, and artists for evening events. Oliver introduced me to the archives department, and I archived part of the Norman Mailer collection. Then, I actually curated an exhibit on Stella Adler. I enjoyed public programs so much, I became a docent and led school tours through the galleries. I found the “home” that I so desperately needed at that time in my life. And Oliver Franklin, whose love of his community was the wellspring for so much good, taught me to cultivate the virtues of kindness, joy, and enthusiasm. These virtues are the foundation of my teaching and artistic practices today. They are the virtues I struggle to uphold especially through the trauma of sickness and violence in my community.

I’ve been tending my own little garden up in Dallas, reflecting on the relationships I cherish. In a way, I’ve been cultivating my grief: pouring loss, yearning and thanksgiving into the dirt on all these sweet, pastoral evenings. A few lonely fireflies keep watch while I water, prune away yellow leaves, delight at the tender new growth. The highway roars not so far, but there is quiet here under the old oak tree. Time swells in a bubble of earth, and the moments are nearly big enough to contain all my heart needs to say.

"Meet Me on the Equinox"

Tantalizing golden light of false autumn (thanks, Texas!) filters through my windows. I get an itch between my shoulder blades this time of year, jealously dreaming of what I imagine real fall must feel like: misty mornings, and trees arrayed in red and gold. These are things I have never experienced. I’m working on my West Texas series, and the light pulls at my attention. I want to be outside, where the vastness and buoyant air beckon.

Meet me on the Equinox

Meet me half-way…

After a few weeks of intense art deadlines, I gave myself a bit of a break, but I’m back at it prepping for fall and winter shows. There’s just not enough time. Covid supply chain issues have made getting art supplies- particularly Venetian Plaster- difficult. I’m not sure what it’s like in other parts of the world (or even in other parts of the US), but here in Texas there’s a weird dichotomy to daily life: near pre-pandemic busy obligations, little news on Covid, groaning expectations in all realms of life; but at the same time, store shelves are bare, places are short staffed, and it’s really hard to plan anything concrete due to rolling quarantines and cancellations. It’s exhausting. We had Covid in my household at the end of August and we still haven’t caught up - and we were so lucky. I am able to do far less than I could, even this time last year, because I am so drained.

When we went camping this past summer, most of the other campers near us were either teachers or first responders. In fact, one night our camp host in New Mexico told us the entire campground was full of first responders, EMTs and teachers. We had the best conversations and the best time, sitting around the fire and talking about how grateful we were to be there. We didn’t discuss what we’d been through the past year- nobody did!- it seemed we had shared experiences, and also a shared need of renewal, fellowship, and spiritual rest. We thanked all the first responders we met, and were surprised and humbled when they thanked us for our service. The most any of us said about the past year was “It’s been really hard. We are so happy to be here, now.” We had no cell service, no access to social media or news.

It was so nice.

I am longing for campfires, stars, and reading at night by lantern-light.

Here’s to making it through this latest gauntlet. I’m going to celebrate with my first solo show! Milagros: Visions of the Desert opens at the Susan L Sistrunk Fine Art Gallery in Waco on Saturday, November 27 with a reception 5-8 pm. I’ll be there and I will give a brief artist talk about my inspiration and my process. I can’t wait to share what I’ve been working on over the past few months. Check out the event page here!



Surrounded By Stars

Dizzying tumult of summer, bleached-white sunny afternoon windows and simmering city pavement. I clawed past the finish line in late June, and once summer finally arrived, it swept me up- caught me in a rough net of all the neglected life stuff from the past 18 months. I honestly can’t even remember how it felt that first week at the end of June… I was already running out of time.

It’s weird to revisit this post now, from within the context of another pandemic school year. I began writing it at the end of July. Cases hadn’t reached their frenzied pitch yet, and I was not yet back in the classroom full time.

I had begun writing… about hope. And a breath of air. And stars. All those gleaming points of light that seem so impossibly miraculous. How camping in New Mexico felt like coming home to myself, to a much more firm and clear reality, when I could see the stars above my head at night. Now it is August and what an August it has been; I am cherishing the memory of those stars and reassuring myself that the knowledge of those stars is more important and sacred when I cannot see them. They persist. So must I.

***

I had been painting again. I moved out of my classroom at my old school, into my new room at my new school, and reorganized my studio space. Finished some commissioned work, started on other commissioned work. With the living-trauma of the last year firmly behind me, I finally found the heart space I needed to invest myself in painting again.

I am jealous of my time to the point of neuroticism- and frankly, I could not give my time to my work, when my time was needed at home. Time passes faster, in a scary way, when I’m painting. Whole afternoons or evenings, I look up and the light has changed outside the studio windows. I was gone -elsewhere- for hours, and I grieve because I did not feel the time as it passed. Time, irretrievable. As Eliot said,

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”

So I painted during that short breath between the Covid deep-dive that is pandemic teaching and parenting in Texas. I painted while I could afford to lose myself in time. New works for Kettle Art, a painting for auction at the State Fair of Texas, and a series for my solo show in November in Waco.

Perhaps this was the sweetest summer, home and on the road with my children, giving thanks through my whole spirit for a change in circumstance, for making it through, for God’s grace in all things in all ways, always. Sweeter, because it was shorter; sweeter, because nothing was guaranteed; sweeter, in oil paint messes and sleep and morning couch snuggles with tussled, summer-smelling hair.

In July, my family drove nine hours to Cimarron Canyon in New Mexico. We arrived after nightfall and set up camp by lantern light. After we tucked our kids into bed in the tent, my husband and I turned off the lanterns and shared a beer beneath a sky full of stars. No campfire, our huddled forms perched atop a picnic table. The limitless, inky mountains, vague washes of shadow color. Entire universes could hide in their arms. Stars like jewels, scattered generously over our heads.

“And you, you took me in

You loved me then,

You never wasted time.”

The mind reels, looking up in a quiet campground, seeing what is there always, finally un-obscured by city lights. Heady sensation, climbing to 8000 feet in a day, driving from 100 degree humidity and landing after sunset, across the border of the Sangre de Cristos, where all the stars are visible and the sound of the water and the smell of pine and wind and wildness contains the whole world.

For me, it was an appreciated reminder that we are all connected. We are all small. We can rejoice in our smallness; our temporal lives -no matter how significant we feel our lives are- pass quickly, but we are held together in a common embrace by a benevolence of earth and sky.

Maybe it would be easier to be better, if we could always see the stars.

An Acceptable Time

Perhaps the most difficult virtue I’ve had to embrace this year is patience- with myself, with decision makers at various levels, and with the louder, meaner voices I’ve encountered. Regarding this school year, I am not exactly comfortable saying “the end is in sight!” yet… but it is getting closer. I learned a lot. I absorbed a lot of trauma. I was stretched in difficult ways. I’m not entirely better for it, and it’s going to take me time to recover- so I will need to be patient with myself through the summer, too.

-Knowing it is OK to take a break and be unproductive is not the same as feeling guilt-free when doing so. That’s tough.-

A while back, I wrote about the importance of creative habits. I had to let go of my studio habits this year, as my work responsibilities ballooned to gigantic proportions. If I’m being completely honest, in order to be emotionally available in the way my kids (all my kids) needed, I had to put almost everything else on hold.

I need to re-establish my artistic inertia (especially as I plan for solo shows this coming year and wrap up some commissions), BUT I am enormously grateful for having confronted my work-life boundaries.

What I really crave is the space- the mental and emotional breathing room- to explore some ideas I’ve had rattling around in my head. If I could, I’d cloister myself with some paints and books… and disappear. When I used to teach dance, sometimes I would go into the studio during my planning period, turn off the lights, turn on some music, and move without any real purpose. Freedom! Freedom from being seen. Freedom from being “productive.” Freedom and the vast, empty space to fill with whatever movement felt right. I want this as an artist, desperately.

I used to stay up late to paint. I delight in being the only one up- it is so quiet in the wee hours of the night. There’s a pleasant stillness and inherent mischief in the air, a sense that the line between possible and impossible blurs a bit. It’s a blissful solitude that I love so much.

Freedom from being seen… anybody else need that in their lives? It certainly takes on new meaning after teaching through a camera being broadcast on the internet for an entire year!

It ain’t over yet, but it will be soon. I am so, immensely, grateful for my students this year (and every year, but this year those relationships sparkle in a precious way). I pray that I have the energy and fortitude to be the human/teacher/artist/mom that they inspire me to want to be.

Some recent work, with the hope of more to come.

Breeding Lilacs, Mixing Memories...

April. How are we here, and not here- so long?

This year has its own inertia, its own chaotic ebb and flow that at times feels like it will spiral out of my control. “Why do you never speak?”

I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.

We emerge, changed, wide eyed in the sudden sunlight. While I kept my studio space over the past year, I worked almost exclusively at home. The tides of productivity in my hands, heart and brain- unpredictable. Large scale paintings would flood out at the strangest times, in surges that wore me out afterwards. Small works, staccato, intermittent therapy.

Mostly, I felt like I was in the midst of Dry Salvages, in a contraction of creative energy. I still battle with feeling unworthy of the time to paint: undeserving the gift of time in the midst of obligation.

“For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”

I began moving back into my studio two weeks ago. I’d been uncertain. I use my habits to maintain healthy inertia and work flow, and I am out of the habit of studio practice. Already an introvert, when I retreated to my home, those tendencies toward solitude swelled.

It felt really good to go in with some boxes and trash bags and get things cleared out and reorganized. I re-cleaned palettes that have sat, unused, for 13 months. I dusted paintings on lonely easels. I still need to mop, but for the first time in a long time, I feel free: lighter, unencumbered, joyful at having a dedicated space to create.

I began prepping for a solo show that had to be put off due to the pandemic, and I am finally finishing a batch of commissions that stalled out when the school year started.

It feels good to work.

I've been reading Demons, but I keep returning to the Brothers Karamazov for the truth and wisdom that burnishes a weary soul back to shining. Demons, like the Idiot, is a conceptual novel- driven by characters who represent ideas in parlor room dramas… but the Brothers K is like coming home. I find such hope in those pages: wisdom and mercy, and a keen understanding not only of what it is to be wholly human, but the sanctity of our human weaknesses that cause us to rely, beautifully, on humility, reconciliation, compassion, and love… and the one true source of those spiritual gifts.

As I roll up my sleeves in earnest, these lines “echo thus” in my mind:

“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”

To all things new, and to newly opened eyes: may we perceive our faults as blessings, and be patient with the faults we see in others. Cheers, to homecomings and happier times.