It’s a good thing I can drive to and from my childhood home in St. Louis, MO to visit my parents for the holidays. Yes, of course it’s preferable this year to avoid exposure to COVID-19 at the airport, but the real reason is a lot sweeter. I doubt I could get all the leftover Christmas cookies past security in one bite.
I may joke that my return to Des Moines after the requisite holiday consumption of cheese, chocolate, and good cheer serves as a diet - I can leave much of said comestibles behind with my family. In all honesty though, the trunk of my car on the return journey harbors more than the snow boots, and heavy winter coat I will don once I cross the border. I can’t help but bring a few Christmas confections across the divide with me.
“There are some aspects of 2020 that I do want to bring into the new year with me.”
We may think of the New Year as a fresh start, a distinct transition from the past 12 months to the next. It’s especially tempting this year to believe that we are leaving the struggles and sorrows of 2020 behind us. But the divide between one year to the next is often even less discernible than the border between Iowa and Missouri. I’d hardly know I was back in my adopted home state without the yellow and green sign declaring my arrival back to ‘Fields of Opportunity’.
Certainly I’ve had my share of challenges this past year, but like those sugary delicacies I carefully pack for the drive north, there are some aspects of 2020 that I do want to bring into the new year with me. So in the spirit of finding gratitude for what did go well this year, here are a few morsels which will whet my appetite for an even better year to come:
A Hug for Theodore
After losing two jobs in less than two days in March, I channelled my energies into realizing a children’s book idea that had been percolating in the back of my head for months. In just five weeks I brought Theodore, the eponymous character of my latest story to life. Of course, that was just the beginning. In fact, just last week, I put the final touches on the last full-color illustration for the dummy book I am submitting to an agent this month.
Mainframe Studios
Fortunately for me, while most of my friends and family were stuck working from home, I had a refuge outside the four walls of my apartment: Mainframe Studios. For more than a month after the pandemic became our collective reality, I sought refuge in my studio and the blank piece of paper I set before myself, day after day. It was what I fell asleep thinking about at night and woke up thinking about in the morning. When my mind started to swirl with anxiety, when my fingers itched to hit ‘read’ on just one more COVID-19 news flash, I thought of Theodore.
In August, Theodore made the move with me from the Drake University sponsored studio, which I inhabited as Artist in Residence to a temporary shared space with fellow Mainframe tenant, Sarah Noll Wilson. This March, I will finally make a final move to my own studio on the newly renovated third floor.
I am so grateful to the people who kept Mainframe’s doors open when I needed a creative space outside my own four walls, and I am so excited to continue my residence there in a more permanent capacity.
Teaching Art & Design
In July I received an unexpected email - a job opportunity for a job I had not even applied for: to teach at Grand View University as an adjunct instructor for the department of Art & Design.
Despite the fact that my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and sister have pursued teaching careers, until this fall, I never envisioned myself standing in front of a class of college students as I have day after day and week after week at Grand View University.
I am now preparing to teach the intermediate drawing course this spring, a decision that came easily to me after teaching a beginning drawing course and advanced level digital art class this past fall.
Since I began teaching in August, I’ve realized that I am no longer content to just make art. Teaching art scratches an itch I didn’t even know I had: to share with others the lessons I have had to learn to reach where I am now.
In a way it has come full circle. Every time a student has that ‘aha!’ moment is like reliving the experience myself. I am once again tapping into if not my childhood, then my younger artist self: the one with less answers, but no less of a passion to create.
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Much like my experiences of the past year, my most favorite Christmas cookie packs a bittersweet punch. Semi-sweet chocolate is tempered by a dusty white coating of powdered sugar. It’s the perfect balance of flavors and reason why I’m always reaching for just one more.
I hope 2021 is filled with more sweet moments than strife. But I also know that it’s the moments of bitter adversity that makes success taste all the sweeter.