Just Begin

Getting Stuck and Getting Unstuck

Once, years and years ago I was backpacking in Denali National park with friends. At the end of the first long day we had decided on a camping spot, but had run out of water and had just enough to boil pasta. As the pasta was cooking, the pot tipped over, and afraid of losing our meal, I reached out and grabbed the metal handle, searing the palm of my hand. I saved our dinner though. As we ate dinner, my hand throbbed, and the conversation drifted towards the inevitable: we had to find water. Up at altitude, we had to find a spring, or hike back down to a river or stream. It was late, we were tired, and none of us, except Trevor, had much ambition to go. I was miserable and paralyzed. I simply wanted to lie down and nurse my burn. At that moment, I tried to imagine what my friend Ryan, who hadn't been able to join us, would do. He was always reliable in a crisis, giving everyone the right tone for pushing forward. I sat up and said: "I'll go with." Trevor and I grabbed packs, filled them with everyone's water bottles, and prepared for what could be an all-nighter. I was thirsty, had a headache, my hand was throbbing, and we were off. 25 yards later we found a spring. Trevor and I cackled as we filled the bottles up. The whole expedition took about 15 minutes. Our all-nighter was just in my head.

The situation was only terrible because of my perception of the situation. I was paralyzed by my expectations. All I really had to do was begin. In that situation, it was as simple as channeling a friend. And then I started.

My last post here was about 17 months ago. I have been, to put it mildly, paralyzed. I could write a whole post about this, but let me sum it up simply. My life took a turn I didn't expect and for the sake of my family and my own well being, I pretty much stopped making art. It was necessary to focus on my career. I am now a school librarian, teaching in two rural schools, in graduate school to get that endorsement; and so far, it looks like I have traversed the red tape of Vermont's incredibly bureaucratic Agency of Education. I've tried to make art here and there, but much to my surprise I just have not had the ambition to do so. Absolutely no spark, even when I schedule time to make it happen. I've faced some mental health challenges, namely anxiety, which resulted in throwing myself into the support networks of friends, family, and professionals. I’m weathering the storm and growing as a result. To come out and write all of this, to admit that I haven't felt strong, that I have not made art, that I still do not have that spark, has felt insurmountable. This morning I thought of that Denali story and what really needs to happen is simply to just begin.

A couple months ago, as I was cleaning my disastrously messy studio, a thought came to mind. As I was putting art into piles, I began to see chapters in front of me. I work in a series. For over 30 years I have made work that comes in waves, and almost all of it can be put into categories. It occurred to me that I have been looking at this newsletter in only one way: writing posts about what I'm working on. What if I looked at this newsletter instead as a retrospective?

Moving forward with this newsletter, I'm going to experiment with different kinds of posts. I’ll be looking at old work and posting that here, so the posts may feel like time capsules. And of course, if I can get back into a groove, I’ll post new work as well. I may write some, I may not. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I’m going to stick with it, as sporadic as it may be.

For this post, I'm going to do a sort of year in review, covering the few things I did make last year, which as it turned out, was mostly for other folks.

Last bit of housekeeping: I’m going to stop using Instagram and Facebook. For now I’ll post here and see how that goes. There are many reasons to do this but the prominent ones are that I don’t want to support Meta and I don’t like how they exploit creative folks, especially visual artists, so I’m just not putting my work there anymore. The good news is you can find it here!

Thanks for being here, being supportive, and paying attention.

I painted this from some sketches that I made real time during the 2024 solar eclipse. My pal Karen saw them on Instagram and asked if I could do a bigger version which resulted in this. That eclipse was magic and for a few seconds everything got real Sci Fi and surreal! Here’s an excerpt of the sketch process:

This was a birthday present for my friend Sam Kelmann. His wife commissioned me to make a logo for building company. I had fun with the Witch’s Window -the sideways window if this sort of thing is new to you. These can be found all over Vermont and after researching the lore (supposedly they are sideways so that if a witch flew in on her broom, she would hit her head and fall off. So funny. Witches are much smarter than that) I discovered that they are simply a practical solution to creating air in upper floor rooms.

This was a design for my friend Jess Oparowski, who spearheaded a mountain bike team for kids in Montpelier. I donated this because I was inspired by Jess and how she gives so much to our community. It’s fun seeing the T-shirts on kids around town.

For getting my teaching license reinstated, I had to take some college classes. I took an amazing class called Literacy Through The Book Arts based on the book of the same name. Using the concept of the 8 page concertina, it is a method of having students creating work so that they have constraints, and don’t get overwhelmed. I’m using it in my current teaching and it is super fun. These book examples I made during class at a breakneck speed. We were assigned projects on Wednesday and they were due on Sunday at midnight.

That’s all for now! Thanks for following!