You haven't heard from me in a really long time.
Actually, the last time I was in front of this bookcase was in August 2020.
You know what?
This feels really weird.
Let's go somewhere else.
Ah, okay.
This is better.
Anyway, when last we spoke, I told you I was gonna be taking a hiatus for a while, but then would come back and post every so often.
I didn't think it would take me two years, but you know how things go.
What have I been doing instead?
Great question.
I would love to tell you.
I've just been watching TikTok like the rest of you.
Just kidding.
The first thing I've been doing is making a lot of art.
After seven plus years of talking about art and telling you guys to do assignments, I'm taking my own advice and making things myself.
Part of this was a pandemic necessity.
Seriously, for a good stretch of 2020, making art was my only loose tether to reality and calm.
But I also just remembered that I really like to make things.
Creating collages for friends and for fundraisers like the Project for Awesome was a way for me to get out of my head combing through vintage magazines and playing around with images and words until something felt right or even just sort of right.
This is a series of collages I made using some old calendars I had of images by architectural photographer Julia Schulman, mixed with images I cut out of magazines.
Are they going to win any awards?
Surely not, but that's okay.
They bring me great satisfaction.
While I'm making them, I think about all the things that are different today than they were when the pictures were taken.
I also get to give something to someone else and communicate on this other level, which just makes me happy.
I also took an online workshop earlier this year with the artist Elizabeth Hadle about illustrating personal power symbols.
We did this exercise called inner self-portrait, where you write a list of words that describe what's going on in your head at the moment.
And then you make a pie chart of them that forms a head, and then add a neck and shoulders and decorate as you like.
We also made what Heidel calls sigils, mysterious or magical symbols that describe personal goals or points of focus.
I wanted to focus on the word open, so I played around with the form and came up with this one that felt right.
And then I tried making it in these different color variations, which was really fun.
I also started taking pottery, which I really, really enjoy.
Here you're seeing a bit of my process, which probably doesn't look very impressive, but is way better than where I started out.
Pottery is one of those 10,000 hours things that you just have to do a lot to be any good at.
And even then, you still mess up a lot.
Failure is part of pottery and there's something really satisfying about that when you can embrace it.
There are also so many steps and stages and tricks and tools and methods.
The things you think are going to be great come out of the kiln looking like poo.
And then the ones you curse about and almost scrap turn out to be your most favorite things.
You can also fix things you mess up and turn a pot with a gloopy heavy bottom into something that actually looks like a bowl.
There's also the absolute joy of getting things back from the kiln.
These humble lumps of clay have been transformed into objects that you can actually drink coffee out of or just stick somewhere and admire.
The other thing I've been doing is looking at art.
Sure, I'd been doing that before, but it's really nice to look at art without thinking about making content about it.
Not thinking about whether it would represent well on camera or if it would lose its magic when seen through a lens.
Here, we're breezing through the many photos I've taken of art in the last two years.
Admittedly, not many in 2020, but picking up steam from there.
I do take photos to post online sometimes, but often it's just for reference, making sure to snap pictures of labels too.
Sometimes you don't know what's going to stick in your head for the long term and I find myself circling back to my art pics, often to remember a name, make a connection between something else I've seen, or give me ideas for my own art.
Before I take any pictures, I almost always spend time with the art first, just looking and walking around and trying to listen to my thoughts and any questions or responses that might bubble up.
I realized during the pandemic how much I missed being in the presence of art and the ideas of others in physical form.
It makes such a difference to be there.
And when I could start to leave the house and see art again, it felt both like being with old friends I hadn't seen in years and also like meeting a bunch of new friends and being super grateful for the opportunity.
While I've been not making YouTube videos, I've been thinking about the difficulty of capturing art experiences in any single format.
Horizontal footage is just better for documenting certain things.
And long form video is important for communicating more nuanced histories and ideas.
But vertical video is definitely better for other kinds of art experiences.
And short form tends to be more playful, more fun, and more likely to keep someone's attention.
It can be less polished and more authentic feeling too.
I've started to experiment with shorts here on YouTube and also on TikTok and Reels, where I'll continue to post as I travel and see things and make things and feel like sharing them.
I've also been working on a longer form project with the brilliant minds over at Bright Trip that I'm really excited to share with you.
It's an online course on how to appreciate art, which we filmed in and around Washington DC in some outstanding locations.
In the course, I share a ton of my secrets for how to relax and enjoy yourself in the company of art, and also how to talk about it and share your experience with others.
I give tips on photographing art and also what you can do to prepare for art viewing in advance.
It's not the usual art appreciation course about composition or schools or movements.
Those things are fine sure, but to me minimally helpful when art can be so many different kinds of things.
With this course, I really wanted to share with you my own relationship with art and break down very practically how I interact with art and incorporate it into my everyday life.
The course is now live, and I hope you'll consider giving it to yourself or someone else that you like.
You can find a link to the course in the video info and comments below.
Over the last two years, I've been thinking a lot about how we integrate internet life and real life.
And, with the previous seven years being a situation where I was primarily living online, I've been attempting to better know my own physical geographic community.
One of the ways I've been doing that is stepping back into real-life curating instead of the more nebulous form I've been practicing through the art assignments.
I was part of the curatorial team for this year's Butter, a black fine art fair that takes place annually in Indianapolis.
These are images of the final installation of the show, but I loved everything leading up to this finished moment.
Doing studio visits with artists, hashing out placement of artworks with colleagues.
I admire seeing how different artworks relate to each other and actually talking with other people about art in the presence of art.
It was magical, and I'm looking forward to doing more stuff like this in the future.
There is, of course, a lot of other stuff I've been doing during the past two years, including trying to raise two human children, being a decent wife, maintaining my health and friendships, and also working on a lot of other super secret future projects.
But really, I just wanted to say hi and let you know that I haven't disappeared.
And if you want to keep up with me, there are still several ways to do that.
I hope you haven't disappeared either, and I'd love to hear what you've been up to.
Let me know in the comments, okay?
