"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.

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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.

"Cinnamon and Sugary and Softly Spoken Lies"

October in Texas is alternatively blue skied and beautiful, and sweltering and oppressive. The diffused light of this most glorious month lies, sometimes: peering outward, you’d expect the air to whisper its sun-ripened promises, but half the time you’re met with a hot, brutal weight that embeds itself in your brain. Humid betrayal in the pale light. Autumn’s golden raiment is brown and crispy.

We went to Glen Rose with some dear friends to celebrate my daughter’s 12th birthday. It was the first gasp of fresh air I’d had in weeks, and a great, 108 degree gasp it was! Dinosaur Valley State Park is a treasure not too far from Dallas. The Paluxy River and the limestone cliffs are tantalizing reminders of the Hill Country. Every October, my mind goes south: Austin-ward. The few Autumns I spent in the city marked me forever. The heat, the light, the overgrown Austin yards, and long walks along the dusty streets, or hot coffee overlooking the pier from Mozart’s. There’s a special magic in central Texas.

My hands and my head are full of unfinished paintings. This year has me questioning all my life choices, and I feel off-balance, flat footed, somewhat impotent. It’s hard to commit to the act of oil painting, the labor and -labor- and bold intention of it. I’m surrounded by actions and decisions that forcefully deny accountability, dragged by the tide of the times toward some ruined shore. How much culpability does my participation bear down upon my head?

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

These roller coaster days parallel Texas’s October weather. Sometimes, my heart swells for my students, my commitment to the work, my desire to serve these kids who really do give me life and hope. Other days, the policies (and policy changes) and lack of consensus about anything, and the fatal indecision and its consequences, which push immutably forward… all of it makes my mind reel. I wake up most nights in a cold sweat. We have a lot to lose, and only in retrospect will we see the cost. We are too close, too close to these problems; we are too close to ourselves; and we care not enough about the life and liberty of our neighbors, valuing only our demands, our ceaseless and selfish “I.” “I.” “I.”

Those who feel the most justified do the most harm.

My kids provide daily reminders that the work matters. There’s much about all this cognitive dissonance that shatters the reasonable mind, but I keep spiraling back to the “essential.” Of course we are essential workers- teachers catch most instances of child abuse. We provide care and nurturing and growth that kids need. We are a service not just to our students, but to their families as well, by providing a safe place for their children while they work. And yes ::gesturing wildly:: Education Matters! Obviously, we are essential. But to receive that designation now, as a political chip- after years of under funding, when the structures of our educational system have been crumbling for decades, when we are over burdened already, and then to be treated as unfortunate casualties in this weird, fractious war? If we are essential, we need the resources to Do Our Jobs. If we are essential, we need the support to Do Our Jobs. If we are essential, should we not be given the same professional dignity as the nurses and doctors to whom we are constantly compared? Hmmm. Essential means valuable and necessary, not expendable. They keep using this word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

So I straddle these questions, while I continue to go to teach, I straddle these questions, and this fine line between work and life, career and profession, calling and -seriously- self preservation. I grapple daily with whether what I am doing is morally acceptable. And when I want to paint, when I really thirst to take this burning in my brain and make it better, I am just too tired.

Recently, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for the first time. I’m reading East of Eden now. I’m embarrassed that after the small taste of Steinbeck I had in high school, I’d never read more of his work… my immature mind did not at all appreciate his wisdom.

“An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.”

We are not meant for this world, but we are called to do our best to make it better. Stay safe out there, friends.

Erosion

Uncertain times. I’ve begun working in a new medium (alcohol ink). The inks dry quickly and are difficult to control: artistic vision has to be comfortable coexisting with a certain amount of chaos to work with this stuff. Over time, and with practice, the chaos becomes… predictable. I can impart a measure of control because I know, generally, how the materials want to behave. I wonder if I gravitate towards this style because I am caught in such turbulent times. It is impossible to plan anything more than a couple of weeks out right now. Desire hangs suspended.

I’m reading On the Road. I am stuck at home.

My family and I escaped Dallas briefly to visit dear friends in Northern Colorado. What a balm to the spirit is fellowship and time spent with friends! And the mountains always soften the tension of concrete that builds behind my eyes when I’m stuck in the city. I live with longing for vast, un-peopled spaces. My daughter started reading My Side of the Mountain (one of my favorite books when I was a little younger than she is now), and it has been fun to listen to her questions and hear how she relates to the merits of habitable trees.

Slowly now the evening changes his garments

held for him by a rim of ancient trees;

you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you,

one sinking and one rising toward the sky.

And you are left, to none belonging wholly,

not so dark as a silent house, nor quite

so surely pledged unto eternity

as that which grows to star and climbs the night.

To you is left (unspeakably confused)

your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,

so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all,

is changed in you by turns to stone and stars.

-Rilke, translated by FC MacIntyre

August approaches. With it, questions I’ve put on hold since March. What was February, some unreal dream? Where was I? Who was I, several months ago?

In February, I received my acceptance into a Masters of Visual Arts program at the University of Texas at Dallas. I had completed by application for Distinguished Teacher at my district, and was praying that the merit salary I hoped to earn this fall would offset the cost of tuition so that I could finally finally go back to school. I’ve learned so much since I scraped my way through graduation in 2007. I really, desperately, want to go back to school.

I’ve learned that education is still mainly for the wealthy. Most graduate programs in the arts require a full time commitment and preclude having a job. This institutional mindset infuriates me: working students shouldn’t be barred from higher learning simply because they have to balance work and school; likewise, the mindset of a working student brings a pragmatism, and an ethos of hard work and dedication, to a graduate program. With the insane cost of higher ed, the mind reels at how one could even afford to take time off to just… have the luxury of being a student.

I had, I thought, found a way to maintain employment in a job I love (and have worked so very hard to attain), and work towards my masters. My seniors and I had bonded over the application process and shared joy at our acceptances, trepidation at the work that awaited us in the fall.

Enter Covid.

August approaches. I need to make some decisions that I’ve put off due to uncertainty, yet things are even less certain now than they were in March. I am a teacher. Will I be returning to the classroom? I’ve been advised to update my will and carry disability this year. Teaching is already an emotionally rewarding/draining profession that requires so much investment. I am trying to be realistic about what the upcoming semester will mean for my mental health. Should I pay $3500/class to start a graduate degree when I have these new stressors? Can I justify the expense?

This public health crisis underscores the fragility of our social contracts. That’s a big, broad, general statement, but it bears mentioning because, if August approaches… so does November. There’s little consensus about anything in our country. What truths do we hold to be self evident, exactly? Do we hold to Truth at all?

I am a teacher. I have seen my countrymen disparage my profession for years. Now I am seeing my neighbors demand their tax dollars back. I watch as politicians devalue the lives of the kids I teach. I witness my own health and livelihood politicized.

Ironically, many of the problems we face today are the consequences of our cultural attitude towards education. We’ve earned this mess.

. . .

Stone, and stars share common elements. Perhaps the theme of this disjointed rambling is: that which may seem incongruous, opposed, unlikely- is not altogether separate at all. Living with flux is learning to breath on the precipice, and finding there a moment of balance. And if we are to salvage ourselves, we must learn to value one another. We must understand that the success of our nation depends upon our collective attitude towards these inalienable rights: that my neighbor’s rights and my own are equally valid, full stop. Polarization leads to radicalization, and that slope is steep and slippery.