Lessons from the Trails
and other news from a tumultuous 2024
Ashe Juniper trees at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve
Join me on Sunday, December 8, from 2-4pm to celebrate the opening of my exhibition “Lessons from the Trails,” featuring work created during my 3-month artist residency at Wild Basin.
This year has been filled with unexpected joys and frustrations
Maybe I’m finally becoming a grown up because I’ve felt really present for all of it: The struggles to help my older daughter finish high school. A family summer trip to Ireland that opened up a new world of nature, history and culture. Our journey home that turned into a week-long airport nightmare during the IT outage…with food poisoning. Our recovery at home cut short by emergency repairs that forced us out of our house for more than three months. My older daughter beginning Austin Community College and my younger trying out for all region orchestra (made it!) while staying in a VRBO.
In the midst of these ups and downs, I remained grateful for my art practice. The work I’ve created this year was not what I’d planned or imagined. And it has been important to my ongoing development as an eco artist. Accepting the unknowns as part of the process. Learning from nature despite, or maybe because of, life’s challenges
For our trip to Ireland I packed good paper, art pencils, a dozen small tubes of gouache. I came back from the trip with the paper barely touched. But my phone was filled with photos—greenery on castle ruins, my teens pondering ancient burial mounds—and 3D scans of the mundane and unusual: A boulder, hexagonal stones, a massive beech tree stump. I followed my joy: Spent hours watching a slow sunset on the beach with my younger teen; Took an evening hike in the drizzle along the Giant’s Causeway with my older daughter.
I came back from these travels ready to rest and recalibrate before the start of my residency and my kids’ school year. But that didn’t happen. And maybe the unexpected trials of our house repairs helped me stay connected to Ireland.
With every complication, I kept refusing to lose my energy to anger. I’d look at photos, talk about our discoveries, reminisce about the music and green grass and sheep. It felt important to commit to deep memory moments like the estate gardener who pointed out that trees have elbows, connecting with an Aran Island creative witch, or seeing puffins in the wild along the “Cliffs of Insanity” (lol)…otherwise known as the Cliffs of Moher.
We spent our summer in five different apartments as we travelled around Ireland. Each place was an adjustment, especially for my kids who hadn’t taken a big trip since before the pandemic. But it was worth the work for those experiences.
On the flip side, we spent August in a hotel and two separate rental houses before settling into a the vacant home of a good friend’s mom. Leaving home again because of walls being ripped out and no A/C felt more like a punishment. We were exhausted, unmoored, and certainly less charitable toward each other.
With September came the start of school for the teens and a 3-month artist residency for me
I was ready for some routines
Hiking at Wild Basin every Monday was a balm after months of chaos
I felt that familiar anxiety of not knowing where to start, and then remembered that plans are just an imaginary form of control. The trails would guide my work. My real job was remaining open to what those paths would reveal.
I leaned into the kind of experimentation that is encouraged at artist residencies.
My commitment was to a visual and intellectual connection with Wild Basin. I observed the trees, bark, flowers, spider webs, and vistas, through drawings and gouache paintings, photos and video.
I learned from their head of research about studies into the rare coral root orchid’s connection to the mature Ashe Juniper trees. Research that has brought about a new understanding of the endangered warbler’s need for specific tree bark and spider webs to nest. An ongoing study about water quality changes as surrounding development picks up. The history of the Basin, a rehabilitated landfill, closed in the early 1950’s before plastics existed. I saw glimpses of interconnectedness—animal, insect, plant, water, human.
As a visual artist, I can get overwhelmed by explaining in words the development of my work. I want the art to speak.
I pushed myself to loosen the boundaries of my creative practice; to step beyond the limitations that have helped me complete large projects but often forced me to cut short the time for meandering and imagination. I was surprised by how much I learned in the past three months and by how much is happening on this relatively small chunk of wilderness. That’s my best explanation for how I ended up with porcelain sculptures, video animations, and a large-scale drawing and painting,
I’m proud of this exhibit. It is loose, and a little raw, yet still feels complete. I am excited to share it and even more excited to continue developing the ideas that crystallized during the past three months.
A still from my stop motion animation short film, Mimic. See it, and other artworks, at the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve visitor center from December 8-January 24.
Birthdays are meant to be shared
The beautifully illustrated children’s book Zen Shorts (by Jon J. Muth) has been popping into my head a lot this year. It’s about a bear who teaches a family of three children ways to live with more connection and joy. He tells them stories. Like the rabbit who cycles through a string of good and bad situations. The moral: Bad situations can lead to good and vis versa, so nothing is ever quite what it seems. Or the bear uncle who always gives others gifts to celebrate his birthday…because bringing joy to others is also a gift to himself.
Color brings me joy. Adding some color to a wall at home or the office might bring you (or a loved one) some as well.
This is why I’ve decided to offer all of my readers a gift on my birthday, tomorrow, December 1. 25%-35% off 52 unique paintings and mono-prints, one for each year of my life. The discount is good for the entire month of December!
I’m embracing the learning curve and acknowledge my sales page is a little, well, clunky. :) Prices listed are pre-discount and if you click to inquire, I’ll send you an invoice through PayPal or Venmo.
Bartlett, TX is a small town about an hour northeast of Austin. The old buildings are slowly being renovated and re-opened. I was invited to add some holiday cheer to this storefront!
Thank you for reading and being part of my community. I appreciate you and sincerely wish for you a calm and joy-filled December.
