A knock on my door pulled me from my toe-tapping, paintbrush-wielding flow. Pulling Airpods from my ears I saw two of my current Drawing II students from the class I teach at Grand View University standing outside my door at Mainframe Studios.
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Reductive charcoal drawings from my Foundations of Drawing I class, Fall Semester 2021.
The Art That Binds
The other day one of my Drawing I students asked me, “When did you first know you wanted to be a teacher.” Usually ready with an answer when it comes to queries of how to add more contrast to a pen drawing or the difference between willow and compressed charcoal, this question gave me pause.
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Creative Kismet
I watched, nervously as the numbers slowly ticked down before my eyes, and the gap between my car and the vehicle in front of me slowly widened.
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Facelift
It still astonishes me the number of Des Moinesians who have never heard of Mainframe Studios, let alone visited it.
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Stronger by Sharing
Sweat droplets decorated the mat beneath my feet, now supported, not by my living room carpet but the firm wood floor of my yoga studio and second home of the past five years
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Where the Coffee is Hot
It is far from unusual for me, a confessed coffee addict to drink the black stuff at all hours of the day (or night).
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Ode to Winter
If by chance, you saw a fur-hooded, down coat-bundled figure pass by in the evening weather update from Sherman Hill during last week’s blizzard, allow me to confirm, yes, that was me.
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Year in Review | 2020
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.
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The Artist's Guide to Creating During a Pandemic
Just the other week I had the pleasure of sharing my experience of the past year, both as the recent Artist in Residence at the Drake University Alumni Studio at Mainframe Studios as well as an illustrator navigating 2020.
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Off Season
I broke my own rule. And I blame Trader Joe’s.
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License to Drive
I had a great visit to the DOT today. Said no one ever.
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Turning Tables
Sweat trickled along the seam of my double-layer cotton mask. It was a familiar sensation, now five months into this global pandemic, when a face covering is as ordinary as a pair of socks or shoes to get out the door everyday.
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Let It Be
It should not come as a surprise to me at nearly 28 years of age that I have curly hair, but let me be the first to tell you, it has.
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The Long Run
Sun-seekers and softball players alike looked on in bewilderment as my friend Laura and I waved hand-painted signs and whooped and hollered across the well-worn grass. We were a two-person cheer squad for our friend Rachel who, in light of her first ever marathon being cancelled due to the corona virus, decided to run it anyway, solo, just this past Sunday.
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A Case for Creatives
For the past few months, I’ve been escaping to one of the best places I know: inside my favorite books. A voracious reader, in ‘normal’ times, I depend on a book to wake me up in the morning and put me to sleep at night. But I rarely allow myself the pleasure of of resisting an old favorite…
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Down Dogs & Disinfectant
When writing and illustrating children’s books, I’ve learned that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is take a step (or two or three) away from the page.
The same holds true I have recently discovered, in my yoga practice. Both as instructor and practitioner…
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Comfort & Creativity
I hesitated, hovering my curser over the ‘share’ button. For five weeks, I sequestered myself inside my Mainframe studio sketching, finessing, and decorating my desk with the fine coating of eraser crumbs. Now, after uploading the completed work to Dropbox I paused.
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Spoiler Alert
I’m not the kind of person to skip ahead and peek at the end of a novel I’m reading. But when it comes to writing and illustrating children’s books, I’m just as likely to start illustrating page one as I am page 32.
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Doodle Dog
I have not bothered to wear eye makeup this week. It’s not due to the global state of quarantine that renders my face from flesh to pixels whenever I need to socialize. I don’t care if my closest friends and family see me sans mascara via video chat. It’s because I will only cry it off.
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Tears, Fears, & Friends
Nothing can prepare you to lose not just one, but two jobs in the span of three days, but a gin & tonic does make it go down a lot smoother.
I was not (as I later clarified to my family via text) imbibing alone at home between tears (though I had my fair share of them last week): after my local yoga studio where I teach and practice shut it’s doors and when Moglea, the studio where I spend my weekday afternoons painting, folding, and packaging greeting cards and other paper ephemera closed up shop. Rather, last Wednesday afternoon I stood in solidarity, plastic cup in hand around the dusty worktables at Moglea with my remaining coworkers, enjoying a final happy hour before we hung our paint-splattered aprons for an as of yet undetermined hiatus.
I share this not to weave a tale of my own woe as one of many left unemployed by the novel Corona virus, but to highlight those people who have stood with me, who have shown me innumerable kindnesses amid their own fear, uncertainty, and angst.
I don’t for a moment flatter myself to think my situation unique. But the people who have shown up for me in the past week to fill the blank spaces on my calendar pages with virtual yoga classes, my mailbox with a hand-written note, and my bank account with money to buy a myself a bottle of wine and a bouquet, they are special. And as someone whose 3-year-old catchphrase of ‘I do it my ownself,’ still holds true at 27, this past week has been a lesson in humility. I would be nothing without the support of my friends and family.
“Fears are better faced with our friends.”
Ironically (or perhaps, not ironically at all), the children’s book I have been working on for a year and a half and recently submitted for consideration to a publisher is, as I stated in my query letter, ‘a story about the intersection between independence and friendship.’
Indeed, this book would not be where it is today (traveling to a NYC-based publishing house) without the help of each and every person who read it, from ‘shitty’ first drafts to it’s current illustrative pages.
There is no guarantee my story will find a home with the first, second, or even third publisher I submit to. It’s a long road ahead, I know that. But like Marcella, the heroine of my book, I too have learned that fears are better faced with our friends.
