It is about that time. A new statement about the work. I don’t know exactly what it will look like. So i start here. Parts of this will make its way to my website where i write about my philosophy and process. -Less this time – there is less to say. Interested in simplifying further. […]
5:41am a contemplative studio practice (I) The moon is bright through my studio window – the electric blue in the sky continues to increase. Emptiness. The basis of the contemplative studio practice is emptiness. Shunyata. For the Western mode of thought perhaps an oxymoron because emptiness is from where all things come. How can that […]
Notes for and to my students…. I often talk with you about your studio practice. No Pictures is dedicated, in part, to you because you ask how I do what I do. My hope is that this curiosity extends itself to the study and understanding of how others do what they do in this field. […]
Grandma and Grandpa were farmers from Italy. When they arrived in Chicago in 1910, to what is now Jefferson Park’s Linder Avenue, it was all land. They had a garden that produced numerous vegetables; among them, corn, which my mother sold by the ear on the street corner during the depression. Everywhere Apollonia and Salvatore […]
Sun, pink, illuminates mountains outside the studio window. Pink, then changing to orange. Me in silence, Serendipity sits in the window. New paintings for the new year – i clear a space off the studio table so she can sit. At 7:30am, continuing to squeeze the last absolute breaths of this immensely creative time away […]
2014, on the cusp – always excited by this time of year. Missed about 11 days in my written journal while life came into view sharply; teaching, students, and home routine back to its particular rhythm after much travel on my husband’s part. New work in the studio. Completed a painting that hit its mark. […]
Making work is a struggle. That is not a myth. It is a truth. The myth is that the struggle of making work is a myth. Somewhere along the way with more money and education, a larger market system, better medicine, and looking like and thinking we will live forever-we forgot we are fucking human and […]
To follow your heart takes particular stillness. And it takes confidence and some fear as well. It takes willingness to be alone in your decisions. This is because to follow your heart is to be genuine. Many are not willing to be truly genuine, as a result they spend unnecessary time pondering you. The energy […]
I think of Andy Goldsworthy this morning. In the film Rivers and Tides, when he is in the kitchen having breakfast with his family. You know the scene. Every maker who has witnessed that film knows that scene. It betrays Goldsworthy’s (and our) need for the slowness, silence, introspection and magic required to make work […]
I am up early thinking on an animated dinner conversation with a small, dear, group last night. Ridiculously, perhaps, thoughts of O’Keeffe arise. Her reputation for speaking her mind – even more so as she got older. Some did not like this, others prized her for it. She did not suffer fools it seems, nor do […]