It’s post-holiday and pre-spring semester time. In the past, I’ve looked forward to this time as a chance to get into the studio and to tend to projects that languished during the semester. Maybe I still will, but right now all I want to do is sleep late, read cozy fiction, and take ambling walks. Artists who I love tell me this is normal and to lean into winter rest. Maybe I will. But my inner voices tell me that squandering this team means I’ll fail…at something. Life? The coming semester? Unclear.
Oftentimes, when I’m feeling this way, I think about what I would tell a student who came to me with these same complaints. I would tell them to ease up, cut themselves some slack, take walks outside, and get into the studio on the regular without expecting much. My friend Kat O’Maera once gave me a fabulous screenprinted poster (by Survival Techniques) that says FART AROUND MORE. I love it for the color palette, the sharp geometry of the drop shadows, and the cheeky vulgarity of the advice. And so, patient, heal thyself. I’m off to fart around, take a walk, look at the plants coming up in the warm TN winter, and maybe draw a postcard or two.
For posterity and my own archive, these were some highlights from the end-of-semester and the holidays:
- Seeing my drawing students become friends and caring for each other
- Cutting a real tree and setting it up in our new house
- Cleaning out the drawing studio with grads (plus Katie and Greg) for better feng shui and work
- Seeing Martins, Rieses, Harts, and Dossetts
- Getting a cutting from Doc’s “Einstein begonia”
- Singing karaoke with various family members
- Dancing with G + M at Daisie and Will’s wedding
- Not flying to and from the frozen north
- Seeing John and Johanna (+ kids) on their way to Knoxville, seeing the Jerles in Nashville
