I don’t currently have a studio. Since the pandemic all my work has been created at my dining room table in our apartment. It is not ideal. But plenty of artists have created wonderful work in cramped settings.
For the past two weeks I have been trying to re-start my life. I have been grieving. Grieving for the children of the world, grieving for the planet, grieving for my mother and grieving for the future. The overwhelming grief and despair I have been feeling has resulted in me being very “present” with my granddaughters. I am more able to just shelve my thoughts and enter into the fairy or mermaid world. Me and my daughter’s girls have been doing science experiments and craft projects and we even made “Witches Stew” the week of Halloween.
For the past few months every time I tried to pick up a piece of charcoal or a brush or a colored pencil the depression and grief would result in me quickly giving up. And instead I would choose to do something mindless. I started folding origami again. This in turn resulted in us taking my oldest granddaughter, Roen to MIT where we had an amazing time learning to make a bat with Michael Lafosse. Michael is one of the best origami teachers around and he did not disappoint. Roen had a great time and it is amazing to see how her understanding of Origami has improved after that class. She can now almost follow origami instructions from a simple origami book entirely on her own.
Even making loose marks or playing with paint resulted in me feeling empty and devoid of joy. I had no patience for mark making. I went to the Natural History Museum and tried to see if drawing in the whale room would give me inspiration but I only left feeling frustrated and discouraged.
I restarted the Peer Art Group after having to cancel for much of the fall due to the crises with my parents and it feels good to see my peers work, even if I did not have anything to share. And it is always fun and helpful for me to find artists for us to discuss that relate to our work.
It is day 36 of the war in Gaza. I have seen too many tears and funerals and death on the TV. My heart breaks every time I see a mother cry for their baby. I have often thought about how unbearable that pain would be.
And so with that thought in mind I return to the dolls. The dolls that my kids loved and the dolls that my granddaughters adore. The dolls that embody children and play and life and diversity. And I throw them at the chaos of my dried flowers on the table and draw and today I finally was able to move beyond the shutdown that I have been in for the past few months and for the first time found I could sustain a dialogue with the page. The work is not done. Maybe I will stop working on this and start another. But it feels good to have charcoal smudged on my face and to look at something I created. It feels good to know that I can still speak through my mark making.
