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.

Lakewood Forever and Ever

One of my favorite charitable projects is the annual gala for Chase’s Place, a school for students whose needs require more support than what is available at a traditional, public school. The students paint canvases, then local artists pick up the canvases and finish them off. All the artwork is donated and put into an auction at the gala in February. Proceeds go towards tuition relief for the students.

The canvas that I picked this year has beautiful swirls of blue and green, interspersed with metallic copper and a few pops of orange. It reminded me of the excitement I feel whenever I get to go out to the theater: evening settling over the city and the bright lights of the marquee. The vertical orientation of the canvas seemed especially suited for a night scene of the Lakewood Theater.

If you’ve followed my work, you’ve probably noticed that I have quite a few paintings of this theater in particular (and many Dallas theaters in general). Lakewood holds a special place in my heart. Though I don’t technically live within the bounds of this neighborhood, when I first moved to Dallas more than a decade ago, it was under the lights of the iconic Lakewood tower that I first felt at home.

My family and I moved from Austin back in 2008, and I had my daughter just a couple of months later. As a young, new mother in a new city, I struggled with feelings of isolation and adjusting to life after college. I had no friends within the city, and knew no other moms my age. In Austin, I had been active in the performing arts and I was a regular at various theaters, dance classes, and arts gatherings around the city. At that time, Austin still felt like one, big neighborhood. I had lived downtown, where I could walk to Tapestry on West 6th for tap classes, or north to Ballet Austin at 38 1/2 street. While we lived very close to downtown Dallas, in an old townhouse off of Cedar Springs, the city seemed a concrete maze.

Once the midwives gave me the all clear, I began searching for dance studios that offered adult classes. I quickly realized how spoiled I was by Austin’s art scene, which flourished in part because of the college culture there. One of the few studios that even offered adult classes was the School of Contemporary Ballet Dallas.

One evening in November I gathered up my courage, stuffed my postpartum body into an old leotard, plugged the address into google maps, and drove to a little pocket of East Dallas that I had never seen before. It was that time of year where evening comes early, and the sky was already a half-lit shade of urban nightfall. I drove past small houses, over winding roads with potholes, and into a neighborhood filled with Arts and Crafts style homes and enormous live oak trees. I turned a corner and saw the Lakewood Theater for the first time, just down the street from Contemporary Ballet Dallas. Its tall, blue tower (cobalty-ultramarine; a color I’ve always thought of as “Lakewood Blue”) was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The neon lights and little shops around the theater showed me a side of Dallas- a local, neighborhood, almost hippie vibe- that I hadn’t known existed. Dallas on a human scale; who would’ve thought?

That drive across town was the first of many, and the friends I made in modern dance and intermediate ballet were my first in my new city; I associate that view of the Lakewood Tower at night with my first feeling of being at home here. I loved that East Dallas vibe so much, I moved across town and I’ve lived over by White Rock Lake ever since.

Although I have painted the iconic Lakewood theater many times (and followed it as it went from concert venue to abandoned building to historic landmark before becoming a bowling alley), I have never painted the theater at night until now. I’m having a lot of fun playing up the swirling brushstrokes made by the student-artist at Chase’s place with the linear, neon of the tower and the fluorescent shadows the lights create on the building’s exterior. I hope y’all enjoy this painting… and I encourage you to check out Chase’s Place. This piece will be auctioned during the “Viva Las Vegas” gala at the F.I.G.downtown on February 15, 2020. I love the glamorous vibes of our own, Dallas Art Deco theater for this party. If you can’t make the gala, but you would like to support this wonderful school, consider making a donation at http://www.chasesplace.org/support/

Cheers!

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.

All things new

I suppose it is human nature to long for spring in midwinter. Grey days abound, in Dallas. I began working on a series of work in oil on Venetian plaster last year, and I find myself obsessing over color. These works are still largely experimental, but I love working with plaster and oil. There is something calming in the rhythm and method of plastering thin coats on panel, scraping and re-scraping, then burnishing the layers to see what sorts of patterns emerge. And then, there is something about Texas herself: the sky, the land, the hospitable people and damn, inhospitable heat. So here I am, playing with contradictions. Blossoms in winter, oil and plaster, the sweet, natural gifts of the Texas landscape for those who are willing to sweat their way through Texas summer.

Magnolias are among my favorite trees. They are a symbol of summer in the South. I began painting magnolias last spring, taking walks with my daughter after the heat of the day had (somewhat) passed, and photographing the blossoms before they turned brown and curled in on themselves. Magnolia petals contain beautiful shadows, and make for great color studies. My newest is on crimson and turquoise plaster, a palette that reminds me of everything I love about the southwest.

Magnolia in Crimson and Turquoise, 2019