Hole in the Woods

Trying To Connect

Whoa! Where’s my head? I missed the month of June for my blog. I’ve only missed two other months since starting it in 2013 (at my rate of one post per month), and at least one of these was because Ellis was born early. Well, so be it. Here’s to being a body and a head trying to connect but not always succeeding.

The monthly post is mostly about being accountable to myself and getting some rough ideas out there. Sometimes you just gotta do that thing you do for yourself because you know it’s good practice, and practice is how we start to make connections.

Social Isolation

A photo I took nearly ten years ago at Yellowstone National Park. It seems relevant now.

Bark Boat Sailing

Being in social isolation with a toddler is incredibly challenging, and I have no doubt other parents with young children at home are going through the same. It forces us to be a little extra creative and resourceful. I feel incredibly fortunate for our backyard space during this time.

With all the rain we’ve had lately, the small stream in our backyard (mostly for water runoff) has been flowing swiftly. My son Ellis and I have been spending a lot of time playing in and near the water on warmer days, clearing the waterway of debris and moving rocks around.

One afternoon, while he was napping, I built these little bark boats with leaf sails out of materials I had around my studio. And when he woke from his nap, we sailed them!

Assuming the boats would ultimately be lost, I didn’t want to use anything that wasn’t natural in constructing them. I drilled small holes into the bark in order to hold a twig in place and created sails from dried leaves by threading them onto the twigs.

A few minutes of construction time and I had a small fleet of small bark boats to sail with Ellis! Check out this short video of our launch below.
*Note: If receiving this via email, you will have to visit my site to watch the video. Or if you follow me on Instagram, you can see it there!

Shape Shifters

Photographs from the Topiary Garden at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA.

We visited Longwood Gardens for my birthday and as part of a week-long road trip through New York state and Pennsylvania. The temperature outside on this day was in the single digits, so we spent most of our time in the conservatory, surrounded by the lush, tropical vibes of the plants within. It’s an amazing place to go if you’re looking for a summery get-away in the middle of February, and one that doesn’t entail a plane ride! However, in our last hour of our visit, I ventured back out into the cold to see the topiary garden.

The conservatory is so full of color, detail and depth, and I find it is very hard to capture a photo of what it’s like to be in the space. Not to mention the heart-opening smells of plants in bloom––impossible to capture in a photo! These images of the Topiary Garden happen to be some of the more interesting ones out of the many photographs I took that day. These thoughtfully sculpted trees have quiet dignity about them. From what I read about the history of the garden, some were planted in 1936 and more were later added from a Long Island estate in 1958.

I last visited Longwood Gardens in March of 2015, and you can see photos from that post here.

Paper-thin

This is a collage I’ve been working on with dried ginkgo leaves, cut, painted and pasted to resemble the growth rings of a tree.
Check out this brief stop motion animation of the work-in-progress below (note: if viewing via email you will need to visit the website).

Merry and Bright

Happy New Year! May 2020 be filled with beauty and wonder!

Wood Type

I've been teaching at Wells College this semester, and while on campus, I've been doing some preliminary tests in wood type at the Wells Book Arts Center. Since my days at Women's Studio Workshop (2005), I've had a real fondness for letterpress type. As I continue work on my book project, I've been stuck on how to deal with the text in terms of the placement, font and scale.

The book is about the wisdom of trees and the parallels to human experience, and it's also all photographic in nature, so I thought it would be fitting to preserve the quality of the wood through wood type in some way. I had first planned to set the type, print and scan it, but as I thought more, I considered the possibility of photographing the wood type and mirroring it. I did a test by setting the type, photographing it and flipping it horizontally in postproduction. As you can see, I got confused with 'you'. It’s really challenging to think backwards! I think it will take a bit of practice and the use of mirror if I do decide to continue in this way. It's kind of a wacky idea, but this test has me curious if it could work for the book. I do love the way the text seems to glow.

There is an extensive collection of typefaces at the Wells Book Arts Center, however, several of the wood type cases are missing some letters, particularly in the larger font sizes. I found a complete typeface in wood that was labeled "Unidentified" in case #24 alongside “Bradley Extended” and “Devinne XX Condensed”. Overall, I think that this mystery font is a good fit for the text of the book. The '?' is maybe a little too stylized, but it's growing on me.

Groundbreaking

Dear friends,

I have a new project in the works. It's not done, but it's close now. I'll be doing a sneak preview of this new work at a Saltonstall Foundation event on Thursday evening. If you haven't yet heard, Saltonstall is redesigning and renovating the studio building designed by architect Caroline O’Donnell in order to make it fully accessible to all. The groundbreaking and fundraiser event is from 5:30-8:30 p.m. on 10/3 with live music, food, readings and open studios.

If you've never been out to Saltonstall, it's a magical place.

During the event, I'll be there as a past fellow to talk about my experience and the work I created in the parent residency. This residency is designed for artist and writer parents, and I was there this past May . My son was just shy of a year old. It was nothing short of incredible. As a new parent to only be responsible for making artwork AND to have amazing dinners prepared by a chef each night to eat in the company of other inspiring artists...need I say more?

This is totally worth supporting, people! The parent-fellowship is one of the big reasons I have a nearly completed an ongoing project in the midst of motherhood. It gave me the space and time to pull it together. This project is different from anything I've made before. It's been the project I love to work on whenever I have a spare moment, and it's almost done. It's a picture book for children, and you can see it in progress! You can RSVP to the ticketless event at www.saltonstall.org/groundbreaking

188 Years Marked By Tree Rings

Silent Observer

Earlier in the month of May, I had the amazing opportunity to be a fellow at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts as part of a new parent residency program. It’s an incredible space for creative work, and I’ve been trying to hold onto the magical quality of my time there.

The main house overlooks a pristine yard with a pine tree that sits off to the far edge. The tree seems to sit between two worlds—the one of the manicured lawn and the one of the wild, unkept landscape just beyond it. I found myself looking at the tree often during my time at Saltonstall and wondering how many artists and writers this tree has seen come and go over time.

Big Island, Secret Garden

In the early part of March, I quietly escaped halfway around the globe to Hawaii on the big island of Kona. I traveled there as part of a yoga and meditation retreat. I have immense gratitude to my family for supporting me on this venture and for taking such good care of my son while I was away for a week.

It was an incredible experience to step away from my life for a bit and to find myself in a vastly different ecosystem with a lot of open-ended time. I took many photos from the trip, however, none truly capture the essence of this magical spot on lava rock and near the ocean. Some of my botanical photographs from the trip may resurface in a new studio project I have brewing in my mind.

Reading Between the Lines

Lou and I made an escape from parenthood for a couple nights to Holiday Valley in Ellicottville for my 36th birthday, and we lucked out with the timing of the snowfall. I wasn’t feeling very surefooted for the first several runs, and it had been nearly two years since I’d been on a snowboard on account of my pregnancy through the previous winter. But as the morning went on, I began to find my groove. As clumsy as I felt, I found the best part was spending the day outdoors after the recent snowfall. Being mid-week, it was a slow day on the slopes, and there was a quiet peace about being at the top of mountain with only the low hum of the chairlift in the distance.

As serene as it was, there was something pulling on me. Life has been complicated for me as of late with a lot of questions about what my future holds, who I want to be in this world and how I begin to make that happen. A birthday makes these questions all the more pertinent. It’s times like these that I wish I could have a Choose Your Own Adventure book of my life placed before me (those of us born in the 80’s may remember these books). I want to look ahead to see the outcome if I was to choose to go this way or that.

The decisions we make both big and small do indeed change the course of what is to come, but I need to remind myself that there is only one reality of the moment we are in, however we got there. There’s no going back to page 35 to see where another decision would have led us. I’m trying to be grateful for this transitional stage and not overanalyze it. I find that there’s something about spending long spans of time with a baby that gives the allusion of time moving at a different pace, and questions of existence have been percolating in my brain. It can feel uncomfortable to be living in the density of the unknown, but maybe it’s a necessary part of becoming the person we ultimately want to be.

Way Leads To Way

As a young girl, my dad had asked me to recite a poem. I choose to memorize “The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, and I did successfully recite it back to him long ago. It’s hard to recall what the poem meant to me then, but it seems particularly relevant at this moment in my life as I embark on a new path. We shall see where it leads me “somewhere ages and ages hence”.


The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Winter Solstice Snowfall

The grounds of Lakshmi Living Arts, a Trumansburg yoga studio, looked like a Japanese garden after the recent snowfall.

Improbable Fall

There are forces of resistance and of forces of alignment. Sometimes things fall into place in ways that seem improbable. What’s that about?