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.

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.

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.

It's FALL, y'all!

I’m celebrating our first day of not-90-degree-weather in forever by finishing up some paintings and preparing for the annual White Rock Studio Tour. I’d forgotten what 60 degrees felt like!

Fall cleaning is a thing, right?

At the studio, we got a new roof… which meant a lot of deep cleaning before and after, and not much time to accomplish everything with the tour coming up this weekend. If you are in the Dallas area, come out after the TX/OU game on Saturday and see my space. It might never be this clean again! I even mopped.

Autumn also means building up inventory for winter shows, so I have been working hard both at home and at the studio to finish my many in-progress projects. I finished the messy task of plastering and sanding panels, and I am ready to paint! My favorite subjects for fall are Aspen trees, but I am still on my cactus kick from Big Bend and New Mexico.

See the photos below for studio map and info on the tour! We are stop #35, and there are many of us (although our beloved Lynn Rushton is the artist named on the flyer), so you get to see LOTS of artists at one, convenient location. PSA, we are located close to White Rock Coffee and it will be perfect pumpkin scone weather this weekend… so come down! We’d love to meet you.