weekly recap

I flew in from France on Tuesday, I went there for 3 weeks to fulfill my last three credits for it was a Master in landscape architecture degree. Paris was magic, but it was also one of the rainiest springs on the record.

currently reading

When I need a break from writing and learning new programs and screen time, I dip into Oudolf Hummelo and remember why I'm taking all this work on. I love looking at plants outside, huge grasses, huge agaves, black striped mesquite trees and creosote bushes. 

I just discovered one of Oudolf's inspirations. Mien Ruys (1904- 1999). Her garden is still open to the public in Dedemsvaart- the Mien Ruys Tuin. I've just added it to the long list of places to visit. 

I have been doing some free writing sessions for my thesis topic. Trying to wrangle it in to something manageable and absorbing. The focus will be on urban design- walking and idiosyncratic space. I realized I've been designing shade structures since I arrived in this program. I live in Albuquerque, the sun is so intense out here. There is so much opportunity to play with light and shadow here.

It's been a lonely time this fall, so interesting to be in my third year of the program. Three years of intense, absorbing work, both within Landscape Architecture, and my own art, life and yoga. I don't really have a social life- (not that I ever did, except for maybe the Philly years) but here, it has been interesting to spend so much time alone again. A huge relief in a way, and waiting it out in others. I talk to the J's at least weekly it seems, so that helps too. I feel sorry for them, a little, because they have to survive my torrent of ideas, observations and state of being... There's a Rumi line that keeps circling about loneliness. It keeps me in my studio, or in my writing.

Don't surrender your loneliness 
So quickly 
Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you 
As few human 
Or even divine ingredients can 
Something missing in my heart tonight 
Has made my eyes so soft, 
My voice 
So tender, 
My need of God 
Absolutely 
Clear. 

"The trouble with you is you think you have time." Jack Kornfield. the trick is to keep everything in check, to let the stress roll off of me, not to hold it, not to let things affect my work/ vision and attitude. To take the long view, to be resiliant, deep like a well, so that if a pebble was dropped into it, it would fall silently with barely a ripple. (another zen poet, maybe suzuki roshi?)
Have a good day, poets lovers, Generals.

claim your ground

ink on paper part 1

2013

untitled (reverb)

The studio is sacred space

claim your stance- claim your ground. Some things should be off limits until you are ready for feed back or scrutiny. 

watch the timing

be careful what you ask for. (and when) 

If a careless person comes into your space, you have a couple of options.

...you can make them tea

...you can ask them to leave

...you can leave

the most important thing to remember is that it is your work, your process, your space, you. This process requires vulnerability, not everyone can be that generous at any given moment, and might say something that shifts the mood-- that beautiful and precarious tight rope that art making requires. Sometimes people forget how demanding that psychic space is, so part of the learning is to protect yourself. To demand respect. To surround yourself with allies, like Guston, like Brady, like Twombly and Deibenkorn. Like your own amazing work. Your drawings, your sculptures, the things that you love, that are home for you. That send you out. Get gone on the investigation. 

seduce 

cajole

praise

be generous

make tea

but by any means necessary, get yourself some solitary space. It took me a long time to understand that, to understand that it was a necessity for me. That the protective energy required in a shared space was never worth it. We are distracted /distracting enough on our own.  We should not have to fight for it with anyone else.

And one thing for the weekend:
aha moment

this is the life

"this is the life" my best friend said, as we sweated and cut and hacked away a bank full of brambles and vines. To be able to have time to work together, to make ceramics and drawings and bracelets is an amazing gift.
I am back in Pennsylvania for the summer, adjusting to the intense humidity after living in Albuquerque for 9 months. I had heat exhaution twice since coming back. But I think I am figuring it out now.

from the archives

..." what i really wanted was every kind of life. It's so effortless to let my lonliness defeat me, make me mold myself to whatever would (in some way- but not wholly) relieve it. I must never forget it... I want sensuality and sensitivity both... let me never deny that... I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than underfill my moments." Susan Sontag

Finalist for Marfa Housing Competition

I just got the news that Jackie and I were finalists in the Design Marfa housing competition. I posted the boards on my webpage- here. 

I have been going to or through Marfa since 2008. I was on a road trip to Colorado when I first passed through. I fell in love with the silence and light of that landscape. Now that I live in Albuquerque, I go down there every once in a while. (it's a seven hour drive.) But it's different than up here. There is something to the remoteness, you don't just show up there- you have to decide you're going there. I love the desert, I love the combination of art and space, and the people that go through there too. I feel so honored to have had my work in front of the jurors.
Good news is so motivating. Here is the first board

reading::drawing

The color studies that I started this Spring will continue  each season that I am here in abq.

the bosque

4th street landscape

el malpais
white sands

I am interested in space design, urban and natural landscapes and technology. This constitutes a research project, and investigation into the same concerns that pervades my drawings. Light, shadow, lines, arcs, ovals, triangles and the poetics of space in both mediums. The question remains, how to reduce structure to pattern-- what are dots and points --the point of departure from form to shadow

what does it mean to describe a somehow sublime but imprecise realm on the margins of iconic representation?