The benefits of limitations to the creative process

I have written before about how my granddaughter has allergic colitis. This happens when infants and toddlers have trouble breaking down certain proteins and so it irritates the gut. It is something they grow out of as they get older but it means that for some babies the only solution is to be on a very restrictive diet until their gut has matured, New foods have to be introduced slowly. The result is that our son and family can’t eat take out and when they come I have to cook and bake for them, avoiding dairy, eggs, soy and legumes. It has not been easy but I have also found the restrictions have broadened my repertoire of dishes and has resulted in some creative hacks and new inventions in the kitchen that are quite tasty. Where before I had a catalog of dishes I would make for the family. Now I have explored various pies and cakes, made new grain dishes that do not depend on rice, and found ways to create interesting vegan main courses without using tofu or legumes as the primary protein.

Something happens when you are given a limited palette. When everything is not available it makes it easier to come up with new and fun combinations. It is easier to experiment without fear that you will mix all the colors and end up with a muddy mess. It is a reminder to me that as I think about returning to color with my Marcescence images I should consider limiting my palette at first. I am glad I returned to charcoal initially but now I am thinking this week I need to go back to color and find a way to use color to convey what I feel I am successfully conveying in the dark charcoal drawings.

New Images-Art and Climate Change.

I posted a new web page on this site for the first time in a while. Marcescance is the withering and persistant retention of dead organs. It refers to leaves which stay on certain trees all winter until the new leaves emerge. The money plant featured in many of these pieces has leaves that are marcescent. The term could be used for all those things people are clinging to despite the knowledge they are harming the planet, such as flying. This morning I listened to a podcast from Art Basel about climate change. At first it was annoying as the various panelists gave lip service to what artists and gallery owners should do to support indigenous communities, suggesting they donate a portion of their profits as an action to fight the harm being inflicted on indigenous communities by climate change. It was not until the end of the podcast that flying and the huge amount of carbon spent by the wealthy traveling to attend Art Basel from all over the world was finally brought up. Indigenous people need their land and their planet to not be destroyed by our addiction to carbon more than they need money. And I almost lost it when one panelist explained that she did not take a train to Art Basel because then she would have had to spend an extra night in a hotel. But the insanity of that is if she was really paying the true cost of flying to our planet the train and extra hotel night would be considerably less expensive.

In addition to climate right now there is also military policing and the death of Tyre Phillips, Gun violence, a corrupt food supply, and unions that are finally standing up and saying it is unacceptable to pay those doing the actual work so much less than those who rule over them. ….oh and covid….YUP…Covid is still here!!!

A Joyful Day of Art

Mass College of Art has had the most magical installation by a Portuguese Artist named Joana Vasconcelos called Valkyries Mumbet. It is a giant 2 story creature made from various fabrics and crocheted yarns. I think of it as a joyful version of Louise Bourgeois’s mama spider. We initially saw it when Ethan, Chris and Nikko were here in December.. But I knew I wanted 4 year old Roen to see it if possible. All the color and combinations of textures would excite her. Fortunately this weekend they were having a closing party for it and everyone was finally healthy (at least for now). My in-laws were visiting and it would be the perfect activity to do with them because then we could go over to the MFA.

There was grumbling about walking from the MFA to this exhibit. But I knew as soon as Roen saw it she would be engrossed. It was lovely to see it on it’s final day as there was music from Berklee Global Jazz (the same program Isaac graduated from) and boy were they good. Isaac better watch out because this next generation of musicians sounds AMAZING. As expected Roen was transfixed by the magical creature. But then discovered the craft table where they had a button making activity with sparkly washi tape and fabric scraps from the fabrics used in the installation. Roen could have spent the rest of the day at the table if we allowed her to. Maeve also enjoyed the creature. Where baby Nikko was afraid of it, I think Mae wondered how she could climb it. She also enjoyed the Jazz. It would have been fun to have Nikko there given that Nikko enjoys Jazz music.

After lunch while Mae napped we walked around the MFA. Roen’s eyes were just big the whole time and you could tell she was really looking and thinking and processing everything she saw. It was fun to take her into the Cy Twombly exhibit and watch her turn around to Roy and ask him the questions I was asking her, “What do you think the artist was thinking about when he made that picture Grandpa?”

But it was once back at our apartment when the magic happened. You see I rushed to clean up my still life and work area in the morning so the whole family would be able to eat dinner at the dining room table. My mother-in-law showed up with a square pad of watercolor paper for me that I left on the table thinking maybe Roen and I would paint in the afternoon. But as soon as Roen came in she was very excited to find the smallest piece of dark charcoal and a small bit of eraser broken off of the eraser I have for making small lines. And before we could even sort out our coats and get settled she started in on making art. And me being me, ignored the mess potential of this discovery and just let her go for it. .It was not long before there was a classic “pandemic school” art project and mess happening. But the results were magical and it was clear Roen absorbed so much from the day at Mass College of Art and the MFA. And her work is a reminder to enjoy mark making when making art. The reason for Picasso’s comment about it taking a lifetime to learn to draw like a child is it is hard for us adults to just be in the moment, experiment and not be so attached to what we imagine will end up on the paper. Children engage in the dance I talk about in my artist statement. A call and response between a line made and a line being made.

Tangles

My interest in tangles goes back to when I was a small child sitting on my parent’s bed. One of my favorite activities was to untangle my mother’s chains and necklaces in her jewelry box. I always thought this interest would translate into mathematics and I would fall in love with topology. But the abstract language of pure mathematics was definitely not for me. I didn’t enjoy thinking that hard about non-tangible things.

When I did my yarn and charm bracelet drawings during the fall and winter of 2020/2021 when we were still mostly staying at home and waiting to get vaccinated. The world was at a turning point with the potential for political change as a result of the pandemic, But many were refusing to listen to the scientists and the science became twisted and manipulated in the hands of elocutionists who could manipulate it for their own benefit.

Last year, 2021/2022 I returned to making art at a time when there were both images from various weather/climate disasters and images of bombed buildings in Ukraine. I have always found ruins of modern buildings both horrifying and beautiful. On one hand when one looks at the image it is clear that lives have been forever altered. People have lost their shelter, their bed, the place they went to feel safe and comfortable. But at the same time modern homes are also containers for possessions and there is this liberating feeling to see this visual embodiment of the inevitable unraveling of the past generations of material excess: A sense of hope that destruction can lead to a reset.

The dried flowers are from Lindentree Farm and Drumlin Farm. Both organic farms where I have worked in the summer. Both farms that feed me and my family. The flowers start off as small bouquets and by August the table is filled with blossoms and color. I try to get a selection of flowers that can be dried and I hang those around the kitchen. Come October when the first frost has hit and there are no more fresh flowers I take newly dried flowers and refresh my old dried arrangements.

The money plant was collected in Bedford on my walks with the girls to and from the library. Each day this fall I would take a branch or two and put it in the bottom of the stroller. Now I realized that the money plant is the perfect symbol in my drawing the way we impose our petty material concepts onto beautiful natural things.. We like to think we are separate from nature in the four walls of our homes. Modern humans, at least in the West, tend to assume that everything will be OK despite our abuse of a planet that we know will change in a way that is not favorable for us if we continue to burn fossil fuels. After Chernobyl the natural world continued even though humans could no longer live there. And so it will be with the earth. Humans might not do so well with an increase in global temperature but other organisms will.

Ukraine, Davos and the pathology of the world right now

I heard on the radio that CEOs and the wealthy who are attending Davos are not concerned about the state of the global economy. Like the wealthy folks in the brilliant tv show “White Lotus” their money gives them the freedom to tune out the world’s problems. They can live in the bubble of the wealthy and ignore the dire climate emergency we are in, the war in Ukraine or the way capitalism is failing so many. It is almost comical how they all act as though a space ship is going to be built to save them and their families from all the planet wide disasters that are in the earth’s future if we do not just stop…STOP ADDING Carbon to the atmosphere. All that matters is that Chinese workers are back at work and their wealth can continue to grow despite everyone else’s wealth declining. I also learned listening to the radio as I walked today that some people like Kim Kardashian and other wealthy people are having their PPE Covid loans forgiven. How bold of them. And that most of the wealth gained during the first year of the pandemic went to the 1%. Which means that all those nurses and doctors and teachers and grocery store workers and delivery people and other’s who worked like crazy and risked their lives during the first year of the pandemic were just sacrificial slaves for the elite.

Last night we watched the protestors in Germany as they stood in freezing rain and walked through muddy fields as they attempted to prevent a village from being destroyed so a coal mine can be expanded. Greta was there and arrested. Meanwhile nature continues to send us signals that this warming thing is not going to be kind to humans. California’s torrential rains might seem like a blessing given the drought. But the volume of rain on ground as dry as concrete is causing floods and mudslides.

My conversation with Joel definitely helped me reset. He was right to point out the disconnect between what I want to say with my art and what I pinned on the walls. The result has been a return to the broken button/sewingbox but this time with my dried flowers from Drumlin and Lindentree Farms. The images or scene I set up reminds me of the destroyed buildings I see in Europe in winter. I included a photo from the NYTimes because the trees remind me of the tangles of dried flowers I am drawing. I also took his advice to work large and use my 18x24 pad…although the problem with large is if I decide to frame these it will cost a fortune. And stay tuned as I am off the hook for babysitting tomorrow and I am eager to see what happens when I approach this still life with color.

The trees in this sad photo from the NYTimes of a funeral procession in Ukraine reminds me of my dried flowers that I am drawing.

I returned to charcoal on a large sheet of 18x24 paper for these two drawings. I am thinking about going back trying a version using ink.

A reset

So I have been busy making “pretty” ink drawings of the many dried flowers I have. But I was frustrated with my ability to have them morph into something more than just pretty dried flower drawings. And every time I tried to bring in the dolls or scissors or any of my go-to vocabulary I use to express my feelings of concern about humanity and climate. I knew I needed help to figure out where I was going and what I needed to do to no longer feel stuck.

Yesterday I drove into Boston in the yucky slushy snow to see Joel in his studio for a 15 minute critique. It is so funny as soon as I walk into that building on Wareham street the musty smell makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and excited. Seeing Joel, was just what the doctor ordered. For some reason I threw in a charcoal drawing I did of the sewing box last spring and Joel hung it up alongside the flower pictures. We talked about how the flowers were all very frontal and there was not much depth in them. And I talked about how I wanted to create an image where the viewer was led into the darkness and tangles rather than the tangles being all up front. We talked about picture planes, size, color and where I was succeeding in creating that dark tangled mess in the back and where I was not. It was incredibly useful and I left eager to dig up my drawing board (Joel suggested I use a drawing board so I can work bigger) and my large pad and charcoal (using charcoal first just to see what happens). I have my work cut out for me but so far I am beyond excited to have charcoal smudges on my face and be working today….(I am off the hook for babysitting today due to illness in my daughter’s house).

Happy 2023

What a year!!! Covid is still around causing havoc. But so is the Flu and RSV. We managed to gather for Thanksgiving and everyone was well. It was a brief respite from the toddler/preschool illness treadmill our family is on. And it felt, as always so special to have all three kids, their partners, the grand girls and all four grandparents in one place at the same time. Two weeks later our son and family would visit so they could attend a concert while we babysat. For several weeks it seemed all I did was cook and clean and cook and play with the grandchildren. It did a number on my poor back.

I finally got a steroid shot for my back and it made me aware of how much the chronic pain was impacting me. I hope I can start the new year off moving and doing more than I have been doing.

Now I am back doing ink drawings. I keep saying I want to make a series of cards to use as gifts for my mom (who turns 85 this week) and for others. But as I know from years of experience the worst thing for me is to put pressure on myself to make something pretty.

Meanwhile I am experimenting with the ink. I have discovered an interesting technique where I draw with the alcohol ink on print making paper (which can handle getting wet repeatedly) and then wash it off. Light marks are left behind and so just as I enjoy drawing with charcoal and wiping away and redrawing over and over again…I can do it with the ink but in color. It is quite exciting. I almost gave up on the drawing pictured below but I just kept working it over and over again and then suddenly something emerged that I was happy with.

The gang…..all together for our annual couch photo. Not sure how it is going to work as those girls get bigger…LOL.

I am especially proud of this cake because it is egg free, nut free, soy free, dairy free, legume free…so sweet Nikko and her mom can eat it.

Continued ink experimenting and a questionable studio space

So the town of Cambridge has built a new multipurpose STEM and Art space called The Foundry. I still can not figure out who the board is and who is making the decisions for this space. They said they had available studio spaces available and the fee for them was flexible so I applied and was offered a space for 3 months for free. The building is on the other side of Cambridge so it is not exactly convenient, but I figured I would give it a try in hopes that I could potentially work bigger and messier than I can in our apartment.

The problem is I do not think they had a single working artist on the committee when designing the artist studio space. I could go on and on about the problems with this space. The actual room is lovely. But destroyed by a waist high divider that serves no purpose. There are shelves for materials but no spaces for vertical storage where one could put canvases or portfolios. There is a sink but no guidance about how to wash materials so as to not clog the sink. And the sink should theoretically be just a bit bigger with more space on the side. There is no designated wall to hang material on either. Unless people are doing small table size crafts the space is no more useful than my dining room table.

Still I am going to keep giving the space a try. During the week it seems nobody is there so I have the room to myself which allows for me to get into a quiet head space to work. This week I did not want to cart a ton of supplies. All I brought was some large paper, ink and some pens. Lately I have been focusing on mark making and being loose and trying to let go and experiment to help me get un-stuck. Since I like to draw from life and the only objects I had were my body parts I decided to just do an explore of hands and feet and phone selfies and reflections of myself in the glass

I was thinking of the following artists: Kara Walker, Larry Rivers and Mags Hambling. Could I be loose and somehow arrive at a page that is alive and tells a story of my being in this empty space drawing. My peers in critique group were very helpful in their observations. They pointed out that there is no variation in scale. Things seem to be on a grid (which could be good or not depending on what I want). We ended the discussion with the usual recommendation of “Do Another”. So hopefully I will.

But yesterday I didn’t want to leave the house. I was hoping to spend some time reading but I also wanted to make Flax Aquafaba to use when Ethan and Chris are here next weekend and experiment with seeing if I could make a dairy free, soy free, egg free gingerbread dough so Nikko could have some cutout gingerbread cookies. And I did!!! Between baking and boiling I drew the dried flowers again and ended up with the surprise drawing below. I think it will end up being a gift.

Experimenting and Peer Critique Group

I am so glad I have restarted our peer critique group. It definitely helps keep me motivated to push through when I am dealing with a creative block. And our discussions are always so interesting. We had a discussion about paper and somebody (I think it was Amy) mentioned that Wendy Artin (the savant-esque watercolorist/ink artist) sometimes uses printmaking paper when drawing with ink. I have some inexpensive reeves BFK paper left over from printmaking classes that I used for proofs. So I took a sheet and got my ink out and decided to tackle the dried flowers I have.

At the same time I was going back and looking at old photos of drawings Roen did when she was Maeve and Nikko’s age. Both girls are now enjoying mark making on paper and I still remember how much I treasured those early works of Roen’s. One time I included one of Roen’s images in my collection of work for our critique group and Joel used it to remind all of us about the importance of varying our marks. Remembering this comment I decided that in working with the ink and dried flowers I also would try my hardest to employ a range of mark making techniques in making my image.

The result is a loose somewhat abstract drawing that I have come to love.

I am hoping to do more of these drawings in the coming weeks.

Last CSA of the season

Today was the final CSA distribution of the season. I always approach this time with a combination of relief and sadness. I am excited to reclaim my Wednesdays for art making, but sad to leave the amazing community of people involved with Drumlin’s CSA. By this point in the season I don’t miss the lack of salad greens that much as I am tired of salads. I am ready for stews and soup that use up the storage crops.

IIt was a rainy wet day at Drumlin and I am so glad I decided not to volunteer for distribution. Instead I came home and made broth and roasted a squash and dealt with trying to squeeze the large share into my refrigerator.

But while at Drumlin I did take a walk. I was secretly hoping to run into the preschool class so I could get my final Roen hug for the season. But the preschoolers were nowhere to be found. Matt, the head farmer drove by in the truck and he said he had not seen them. Instead I found myself all alone on the big hill with the birds. And I have to say it was the perfect ending to a chaotic summer. It was a sharp contrast from trying to walk up and down that hill with my pail of water for flowers trying to navigate the large numbers of campers and counselors and visitors to the farm, while I also was feeling sick and achy from the Anaplasmosis.

I never managed to do my weekly tree drawings. I can blame some of it on illness but a lot of it was as the CSA shares increased in volume there just wasn’t time to sit and draw. This is not the tree I was drawing but it is a tree I would like to draw. Maybe if we have a warm day I will head out to Lincoln and spend some time drawing it.

Cornelia Parker at the Tate

Cornelia Parker is one of those contemporary artists whose work I admire so much that it makes me question my own work and ability to make art. Is it any surprise I admire a sculptor who blew up a shed and turned it into a sculpture, or who flattened silverware with a road paver or who made a whole room out of the paper left over from punching out poppies? Oh how I wish I could hop on a plane and see the retrospective of her work at the Tate. Below is one of my favorite pieces by her and a drawing I recently made. I was not thinking about Cornelia Parker’s work when I was making the drawing but as soon as I saw the Tate’s instagram advertising the show I realized I was influenced by her. I do not remember where I have seen this piece but I know I have seen it in person multiple times. Maybe I saw it at MOMA, definitely at the TATE, possibly at the Whitney. For some reason I feel like I saw it at the MFA in Boston.

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View by Cornelia Parker

Getting back to work

I have restarted our Zoom Peer Critique group, which feels great. I forgot how much I need my fellow artists to have eyes on my work. And also how much I get from looking at their work and hearing the group talk about the work. It is a low key beginning as many are busy this fall.

Meanwhile I am trying to find myself again artistically. It is hard. I feel like MidJourney and Dall-e both resulted in a bit of shut-down for me. I am not sure why they should shut me down any more than my seeing work created by another artist would. There is just something so weird about being able to have an image rendered in another artists style so effortlessly. And the way the AI can produce a rendering so easily using a specific perspective or palette. And yet the images always seem to be lacking in some way that I can’t quite put my finger on. I would love to take a bunch of AI Generated images and hang them up for Joel to analyze. Maybe this winter I will join a class or two and can do that.

I also feel like some of my success and failure that I had this summer has contributed to my feeling a bit shutdown. Intellectually I know that I should not think at all about what curators or jurors want and I should just make my art. But it is hard to see some work get praised and other work, which I feel is more where I want to go, be rejected. I am super glad that Alignment Problem was hanging this summer because I feel that it speaks so well to the issues I want to address in my work.

So I have returned to scissors and messes and energy. The drawing below was made on election day. The messy state of the planet was on my mind.

Our butterfly was born and we released it

Wednesday our butterfly was born!! Roy was able to capture it with a time lapse. It was so amazing to see the butterfly colors emerge in the chrysalis and watch it become more defined each day. Wednesday night I prepared a sugar water mixture which I brushed on the cheese cloth. Although the web says they do not necessarily eat the first day our butterfly was clearly hungry and went right to the sugar and was eating. By Thursday afternoon it was clear the butterfly was eager to take off and since it was warm and sunny we walked over to Fresh Pond and let it go. We joked about how it was like sending a child off to college as we circled around to see if we could see it in the tree and then how much we felt it’s absence when we went home with the empty jar. We are learning about Monarchs now and figuring out how we can be their stewards.

Moment of Awe

I volunteer for Drumlin Farm’s CSA, community supported agriculture. Last year I helped with packing and preparing the vegetables that members would get. This year I am handling distribution, which I love. I get to meet all the various members who range from the elderly to parents with very young children. Sometimes I get to spread the joy by stopping a sobbing child with a gift of a brightly colored cherry tomato or by giving an especially kind member something extra to take home. The work can be physical and this summer has had it’s challenges. I hurt my back and then was suffering from an infection that was likely Anaplasmosis (a tick infection similar to Lyme). Despite being sick and injured I have managed to use my vegetable share each week. Having a new refrigerator that actually works has probably helped.

Now in addition to vegetables I pay extra for a flower share. I love fresh cut flowers in the summer and I knew I would miss Lindentree’s flower garden when I switched to Drumlin so paying extra for the flower share was a no-brainer. Plus I like to pick flowers that I can dry and use all winter. This summer was a challenging summer for flowers because of the drought and Drumlin’s lack of irrigation. Some flowers never really took off. But I managed some very beautiful bouquets. Last week after preparing the bouquets and changing the water we found on our counter a caterpillar. Roy quickly used an ID app and determined that it was a monarch caterpillar. It was dinner time and the sun was setting, but after putting it in a jar we decided to head out to hunt for Milkweed in our neighborhood. We knew we had seen it nearby. Roy remembers showing Roen the milkweed pods last fall. But we could not remember where. On our way out I tripped and fell on my side on a large metal globe we have bruising my rib….OUCH. So I limped in pain as we walked around the block and finally found a milkweed plant. We brought the leaves home and put one in the jar and the caterpillar almost immediately started munching and pooping and munching and pooping. Over the next few days the caterpillar tripled in size and went through a large milkweed leaf every day. It grew and grew and I swear one night I went to bed and thought it was going to grow so big it was going to attack us in the night.

The plan was to bring the jar to Bedford for Roen but alas they had colds this week. Then Friday afternoon I noticed it was hanging upside down with it’s bottom curled up. It was shaking and Roy came to see it and wondered if it might be suffering from one of the many viruses that attack caterpillars. We both went back to what we were doing and I swear only 5 minutes passed and I looked in the jar and I could not find the caterpillar. Looking more closely I saw a small green chrysalis hanging upside down . Since Friday the chrysalis has become more jewel like. There are gold and yellow dots on it. One can almost see what looks like wings inside. It is truly miraculous.

And once more...CLIMATE CLIMATE CLIMATE!!!!

Pakistan is experiencing horrible flooding. Newspapers are mentioning it but the magnitude of the tragedy is not really making the headlines of US papers. The floods are impacting over 33 million people and there is more rain to come. It is a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions. Flood water and displaced people combined with heat, is likely to breed more disease and public health officials are concerned.

Scientists announced that the Greenland ice sheet melting means at least a 10 inch sea level rise will occur regardless of what we do to limit our carbon emissions going forward.

This weekend (Labor Day Weekend) the US will experience yet another extreme heat event on the west coast. There is concern this will result in wildfires.

It is a lot to take in all the news about climate change. I admit it is easier to turn the other way, especially because almost none of us live a carbon neutral life. There is guilt. I get an Amazon package with something I need and toss away the plastic bubble envelope and I feel guilt. There is also a feeling of powerlessness. There is fear.

But I am always surprised when I tell people I feel morally conflicted about flying right now and moving forward I am not sure I will ever fly again. I tend to get vacant stares and comments about how of course I will fly again and how we need to live our lives. But what if living our best lives means we are destroying the lives for the children. I look at my three amazing grand daughters. Roen with all her curiosity and desire to explore and learn about the world, Maeve with her energy and enthusiasm for life and Nikko with her intense observation, humor and meticulous logic. Don’t they deserve a world that is not burning? Will they have a safe place to live as adults? Will there still be honeybees and ants and “hipmunks” in backyards? Why should adults need to travel be a priority given that it plays a role in destroying our children’s futures. And yes if we all stopped flying it would not be enough. Much needs to be done to shift our planet from a consumption capitalist system to a world that lives more in harmony with nature. None of us alone has the power to make much of a dent in this problem.

The first step is acknowledging “WE HAVE A PROBLEM” and then we can collectively work the problem rather than just assuming there is nothing we can do.

Education

Those who know me know I spent time working as a special education advocate after working like crazy to help pull my three kids through school. Specifically our middle child whose needs were never met by a rigid high performance school district. Although now a father and a professor he spent more time out of school than in school from 8th grade until his high school graduation.

I recently read a NYTimes op-ed piece by Joseph Allen, who is an associate professor at Harvard’s Chan school of public health. It was all about how we needed to work hard to make the upcoming school year as close to what it was pre-pandemic. Well if you have read past entries in this blog you know that I do not agree with this position. School had problems before the pandemic. Plenty of problems. And initially I had hoped that the pandemic might help us re-think how we approach educating our children. I imagined children exploring outdoors and learning about nature. What better excuse to get children outdoors and into the natural world than the need to be in fresh air because of a pandemic. With the bonus that our children need to learn about nature if they are going to survive the growing climate emergency.

There is a tendency to blame the pandemic on the rising number of children with mental health issues. But mental health among children was suffering before the word “covid” was part of our vocabulary. Why? Well I could probably fill a book with my thoughts on this one. I will start with one thing I have observed as an ex La Leche League Leader, special education advocate and grandmother. We fail parents right from the beginning. Limited maternity and parental leave results in parents having to return to work before they have even adjusted to life as new parents. Limited sick time and family leave time mean parents are stressed as they try to balance the duty as a caregiver with the demands of their job. Parents do not have the resources to pay for extra therapy, tutoring or activities to support a vulnerable child. Schools do not have the resources to provide nearly enough special education, therapy, tutoring and activities to meet vulnerable children’s needs. Health care costs mean that many families are one health care crises away from financial disaster. Food deserts and disparities mean many families do not have access to the healthy food options. Safe access to nature is not always available.

If parents are stressed and anxious then children will be stressed and anxious. We treat children like they are these little “pets'“ that we can send to school and feed information in hopes they morph into healthy workers. It is insane given how much is known about child development that this overarching belief is still so prevalent even among associate professors of public health. One can not expect a child to be excited about learning and reading if their parents simply do not have the energy to read to them or spend time counting out cheerios, toes and kisses. And we can’t blame parents because surviving in this economy means always being on a tread mill with the fear you might fall off. Without any safety net most parents are living in constant fear for their future and the future of their children.

I know of many families whose children actually thrived during the school shut down. They were privilaged upper middle class families whose parents were highly educated. For them school shutting down gave them the gift of time to spend with each other and explore those things that interest them. These kids had healthy meals and parents who were emotionally available to them. They had houses filled with books, access to broadband and green spaces to play in. Their parents had the emotional energy to limit screen time, play board games, go on hikes, pause to look at a honeybee and more.

It is wrong to blame the shutting down of school for the problems our children are suffering and assume that returning children to closed poorly ventilated buildings that feel like prisons will somehow fix the problem. Instead we should have used the pandemic as an opportunity to reorganize and rethink how we want to prioritize our economy so that it works for families and not against them. And we could start by simply valuing caregivers in their roles and maybe making policies that give them the time and space and emotional bandwidth to be caregivers.

Aging, Anxiety and Anger

So I have had a lot of generalized anxiety lately. I have had enough therapy over the years to know what it is and I know the things I need to do to manage it. But anxiety is tricky and I know it was impacting more than just my mind. Plus I had a very busy week with helping our son move into his new house, working at Drumlin and babysitting the girls.

A week of physical and emotional stress resulted in me throwing out my back. I went to pick up a relatively light crate of carrots while doing distribution at Drumlin farm and I heard something go “POP”. That did not sound good and I was fearful remembering the time in my 40s when I herniated a disc and was crippled for a few months. But the back pain did not seem that bad and felt more like a pulled muscle. The sort of thing ice, rest and stretching would help. And it did. So Friday I went off to babysit the girls. I was careful to not pick up the baby who fortunately is very willing to walk while holding hands. But Saturday I was considerably worse and a doctors visit confirmed age related back issues. These spines of ours did not evolve to be beneficial to our survival after 50 years.

I must say I am angry to be in this state. I want to be with my grand girls and be active. I want to be working at Drumlin. I want to go to NYC for the opening of the Prince Street Gallery Show. And none of my anger was helped this morning when this is what I woke up on in the Guardian.

So here I sit getting anxious about the future. We get distracted by other issues and ignore the fact that nothing matters if we don’t have a planet that is habitable.

HEAT!!!!

Wild fires in Alaska and Europe. Record breaking temperatures in the UK. Large waves destroying a wedding in Hawaii. NYC subways flooding. “Humanity is facing a collective suicide over the climate crises” warns the UN chief.

So much magical thinking: Climate varies. It can’t be as bad as they say. Bill Gates will fix it. There is nothing we can do. Democratic processes will solve the problem. Capitalism and Wall Street will solve the problem. I am OK, I like the heat.

We are dancing on the deck of the Titanic. Some of us know it is sinking. Others are pretending the party is still happening. Covid showed that people don’t care about “others” and our addiction to capitalism has made us incapable of imagining a better world and addressing the problem we face. The dinosaurs didn’t know any better. We thought we were better, smarter, cleverer and that there was no limit to what humanity could achieve. But we are our own worst enemy.

Guston

We went to the MFA yesterday to see the Guston exhibit. The exhibit was well done and did a good job navigating the challenging imagery necessary to include in an exhibit about Guston’s work. There were videos from the 60s civil right’s movement in the exhibit and I found myself standing in front of them with tears in my eyes because I can not help think how bad things are today. Even with all the progress made toward civil rights and diversity and discussions around racism, the resistance has grown in strength and power and all the progress that has been made seems to be threatened. I know from Joel, who was a student of Guston’s when he taught at Brandeis, Guston was a deeply intellectual and thoughtful man. This particular quote really struck me as an artist whose work has always been about my processing what is occurring around me.

“So as I read this (referring to the 1966 book Treblinka), and my mind starts running away with everything I read or touch or see, I began to see all of life really as a vast concentration camp. And everybody is numbed…Then I thought, ‘Well that’s the only reason to be an artist: To escape, to bear witness to this.’”

No Words →

I don’t have a title for this blog. I don’t even want to be writing this entry. But the reality is my drawing “Alignment Problem” is hanging just a few blocks from where today’s fourth of July shooting occurred. And I hope member’s of the community will look at alignment problem and ponder what we can do to stop our world from becoming a dystopia for our children. When I made alignment problem I was angry. It was late winter/early spring 2021. With vaccines being distributed at a rapid pace all the talk was about “returning to normal”. But what is “normal” and why was everyone so eager to go back to it? Pre-pandemic our planet was already on the edge of a climate catastrophe with increasing inequality and many youth suffering from mental health issues. So I wondered why nobody saw an opportunity once the world stopped to make systematic changes, to imagine and reinvent a future that would not be the dystopic future we clearly seemed headed for. And here we are. Rather than Alignment Problem being a predictor of what was to come if we did not re-align our systems it has become a mirror.

Alignment Problem is going to hang at The Art Center in Highland Park for another few weeks. It is a mirror of where we are today. My heart breaks for our country and for the Highland Park community. I am tired of this. I am angry!!!