In Dallas, we received our “Shelter in Place” order effective this past Monday at midnight. My family and I had gotten back from Fredericksburg on Friday, so we spent the weekend mostly at home preparing. I haven’t mentioned this here, but I am a full time art teacher in Dallas, as well as a working artist. In my professional business, I keep the teaching sphere separate (although my students know that I have a professional practice and I often invite artist-friends to class or make community connections with my classroom).
There is some stigma attached to teaching-artists: that they can’t fully devote themselves to their craft, or that they’re playing it safe by keeping up employment beyond the studio. In professional circles, I tend to downplay my role as an art educator for these reasons. It simply takes too much time to explain how beautifully intertwined are the practices of teaching art, loving kids, and creating. Honestly, my kids (both my classroom kids and my biological ones) teach me so much, hold me accountable, keep my perspective from growing stale.
But, as the larger infrastructures in our lives groan under the pressure from this pandemic, our social ties are more important than ever. It’s been difficult for me to create much (beyond online lessons and healthy home-learning spaces), so this blog is changing in scope.
Visit me here, if you want to read (and share!) rantings about how wildly crazy it is to navigate Covid-19 as a creative who depends on community support.
Visit me if you, too, are trying to keep your family healthy, happy and as un-bored as possible (parents and teachers know that bored kids are time bombs!).
Visit me here to share your own thoughts, impressions, anxieties, comforts. Comments welcome.
I’ll be sharing stories from my teaching life, my professional practice, my misadventures as a working-artist-hot mess mom, and that weird, chaotic dance I do to maintain balance between the spheres.
Craft projects and calamities will surely follow!
I visited my studio for the last time in what may be a while, yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t left my house beyond walking through the neighborhood streets in exactly seven days. It was a strange Friday afternoon, only a few odd cars on the road when a week ago there was still plenty of rush-hour noise. I drove by Studio Arts to pick up a clay kit for my son (enormous thank you to Barley, Dea, and all of the teachers there who have embraced online learning- J. is SO happy to continue art class online). Then I drove across the street to my studio. The parking lot was empty. My studio mates’ areas were cleaner than usual, palettes wiped down or wrapped up, tools organized… everything looked like a fragile maybe. Maybe it will be safe to come and work in our own spaces, alone… but maybe this is only the beginning.
My own space is cleaner than usual too, but that’s not saying much. I photographed some work, bid adieu (for now, maybe) to the larger panels I have in progress… loaded up some portable stuff and a few tubes of paint that I couldn’t bear to leave behind. Gave wistful backwards glances at my buckets of plaster. Hit the lights and locked the door.
One manageable goal is to set up the home-studio space this weekend. My reluctance to do so has layers: I’ve got other duties (to my family, to my students) that are higher priority; I’m slowing down into a new pace and managing my books (a scary thing for anyone facing closures due to this virus); and I also don’t know how I feel about this home-studio thing. It’ll take a lot of work to set up in my house, my husband has loved having a mostly art-free living space, and it’ll seem very… permanent. If I set up a home studio, does that mean I’m abandoning my studio for a while? Am I ready to say goodbye?
What has this brave new week brought you, dear friends? What are you letting go? What are you hoping to embrace?
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Shelter In Place Week One Highlights
Baking bread with my daughter, Sidewalk Puff Paint, Spring Greens and Slow Life.
