I’m sitting in my studio today stitching on a project that has no intent. It doesn’t need one: it’s simply beautiful. And that makes me happy. My needle moves in and out of a sandwich of rayon challis and silk chiffon, a repetitive meditation on color. There’s no other point to it, which is a nice break from my usual, content-driven artistic pursuits. The...
Read MoreRemodeling my life: Starting from scratch in a space
Fall makes me greedy. I want to capture the light and the colors and the smells for safekeeping, so I can enjoy them in the dead of winter, when the light is too low, the days are too short and the colors are not so vivid. The sun streams into my studio this fall morning, at that rare angle perfectly designed to show off the yellows and reds of the leaves...
Read MoreRoad of clouds: Traveling an ever-changing path
Audria is a massage therapist and a painter. She’s well-known for her lovely cloudscapes, having studied clouds closely and painted them for years. She’s painted clouds on the ceiling of her massage room in greys, yellows, browns and blues. It’s one of the favorite moments of my month: to be on her massage table, and roll over onto my back and study her...
Read MoreContra dancing with chaos
A couple of Saturdays ago, I unintentionally went contra dancing. And though I’ve been before, I never understood the appeal of it. This time, though, I really enjoyed myself. I needed to get out of my head for a while, and while I’m not sure why this time was different, it worked. At one point, the caller said something that made my ears perk up: “It’s...
Read MoreGet Dirty: Doing the hardest thing
In our family of girls in the early ‘60s, my two sisters’ and my primary jobs appeared to be staying clean and staying safe, not necessarily in that order. In my mother’s defense, these two principles – cleanliness and safety – were deeply embedded in the culture of that time. The edge of that generation of women raised to be housewives and mothers barely...
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