My project has been exploring circulation: the movement of gifts, knowledge, care, stories, tools, and responsibility through communities. I always imagined the concept visually, inspired by railways, gift economies, and the ways objects find new lives through repair and reuse. Then I realized I could hear it.

Last week’s module focused on listening and sound art. At the beginning of the week, I began planning my video project, inspired by 8 seconds of footage I captured while on a walk in Lancashire. Wind was moving through a set of shutters built into a stone wall. The slats shifted gently back and forth, almost as though the building were waving hello. I had always thought of that clip as a visual moment.

But now, what I hear within it has given me an idea. The clacking sound is air circulating. Sound itself is circulation. Vibrations moving through air. Wind moving through shutters. Crickets calling across a summer evening. Train wheels traveling along inherited infrastructure. Music passing between musicians and listeners. A voice carried from one person to another.

The realization feels obvious in hindsight, but it changed the way I think about the film. Instead of treating the soundtrack as background or focusing on a voiceover script, I have started thinking about sound as another expression of the project’s central themes. The wind, the trains, the crickets, and the music all tell the same story. They are evidence that movement, exchange, and relationship are taking place.

Perhaps this is why listening feels so important. When circulation is functioning well, we often stop noticing it. Water arrives from the tap. Air flows through a room. Stories move through families. Care moves through communities. Gifts find their next recipients. The world hums along.

Listening reminds me that none of these things are static. Everything is moving. Everything is participating. Everything is connected to something else. And sometimes, if we are lucky, a building waves hello and reminds us to pay attention.

I also bought things: Snacks. Drinks. Handmade deckle-edge paper. I had visions of making cards and other saleable items. The Cricut remains in its box. The self-healing cutting mat remains pristine. The little bottles of enamel paint I bought for a dollar each are still waiting patiently for their moment.

Like most cats I’ve parented, my Open Studio guests largely ignored the expensive toys in favor of the free ones. Five visitors came over the course of the weekend. Some were neighbors. One had visited last year. Two shared stories of attending the Venice Biennale and encouraged me to find a way to go. Another arrived shy and uncertain, but we stayed with the conversation long enough to discover common ground and leave feeling enriched.

The weekend reminded me that Open Studios are not primarily about selling art. They are about meeting people. That realization connects directly to what I’ve been exploring in Falmouth University’s Sustainable Strategies module. When I think about what sustains my creative practice, I think about access and generosity. The freedom to use the cottage as a studio. The art supplies my mother left behind. Paints given away through Buy Nothing. Conversations with visitors. Encouragement from fellow artists. The circulation of knowledge, materials, stories, and care.

In the quiet moments between visitors, I began an experimental painting using crepe paper, gesso, and leftover acrylic paint.

As the piece evolved, I found myself thinking less about whether it would ever sell and more about the value generated through making.

Art has certainly been sold through Open Studios over the years. But this weekend reminded me that I am reconnecting to another tradition: giving. Giving attention, hospitality, time to a conversation, a second life to materials. Giving myself permission to experiment without knowing the outcome. Those things sustain me every bit as much as making the work itself.

The biggest downside to being an overthinker is my vulnerability to ambitious and impossible ideas. I love getting sucked into projects that rely on bursts of inspiration, perfect conditions, or solving ten unknowns at once.

Today before starting the work of preparing for this weekend’s open studio, I was briefly tempted to wallpaper the cottage screen door, build participatory installations, and produce finished sets of assorted greeting cards (with my art printed on them) all at the same time.

Instead, I shifted my focus toward one single priority: hospitality. As soon as I began asking, “How do I want people to feel when they arrive here?” everything became clearer.

I started moving through the space as a visitor might, then realized what was needed to make people feel most welcome: an open invitation to see some work in progress.

So I have spent my afternoon arranging my finished pieces, setting aside the most recent ones to scan, tidying surfaces, organizing materials, thinking about seating, flow, and conversation. That’s when the energy changed completely.

I’m beginning to think that hospitality may be one of the hidden structures underneath my art practice. Offering space and bringing people into my practice, rather than a performance and validation seeking around my value as, or right to call myself, an artist.

As a result, this afternoon became unexpectedly enjoyable. I gave myself the gift of hot tub time, with Tinkle the cat balancing on the edge. She was acting weird and naughty like ‘Little My’ from the Moomins. Then I moved to the cottage for setup, listening to history podcasts and the gentle hum of fans cooling me down while I got the space ready.

Such a contrast from the guilt I experienced yesterday, when I realized I had been far too busy at work to make anything at all for this open studio. I’m quite pleased to say that I recovered my equilibrium, I accepted this past week for what it was, then I got onto the business of preparing an hospitable environment.

A place where I can talk to others about their art, my art, art as art, and whatever else strikes our fancy.

Tomorrow I’ll deliver it to the East Bay Open Studios group show. This may sound ordinary, but it marked a shift for me.

Until recently, I had not really allowed myself to think of my work as something worth selling. I’ve treated art practice as an act of learning, observation, gift-giving, or memory-making.

Last month’s experience at Boundless Creativity art camp changed something about that. I began to trust the continuity of my practice. This work has hung in my home for two years. I have scanned and photographed it. But after art camp, I realized, “I could make something this good again. I’m ready to let it go.”

So I have priced it in a way that feels balanced to me: high enough that I would feel proud if it sells, while also remaining unsurprised if it does not.

I immersed myself fully tonight in the practical rituals related to making it available:

• painting the canvas edges

• deciding not to varnish it

• adding my initials in the bottom right corner

• drilling holes into the stretcher bars to attach it to a floating frame

These tasks were integral to my decision to allow my very favorite painting to enter the world as an object with its own future.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about attachment and circulation. What changes when an artwork moves between people, places, and contexts? What remains? What is released?

For now, I’m just happy that Bolinas Beach exists in a frame, ready to hang. Maybe it will sell. If not, I’ll bring it back home and hang it up for display at my Open Studio coming up on the 6th and 7th of June.

Since returning from art camp, I’ve begun planning what to show at the cottage, as I’ll be participating in East Bay Open Studios for a second year.

• my work from last semester’s module on collaboration in art journaling

• originals, prints, and postcards

• decoupaged journals with cyanotypes and vintage ephemera

• creative reuse materials, participatory prompts

• a “Field Notes from Alameda” talk on plein air artmaking

I’ve also been thinking about the local circular economy, places like Urban Ore and Reuse Arts & Crafts, the Depot for Creative Reuse. I’m eager to chat with visitors about role these spaces play in supporting experimentation, improvisation, and low-pressure creativity.

This weekend, I attended a four-day art camp in the mountains of northeastern San Diego County. At the opening circle Thursday afternoon, our leader K handed out permission slips, small pieces of paper with simple statements such as, “You are allowed to call yourself an artist” and “You are allowed to make bad art.”

Some people laughed. Some went quiet. It felt both gentle and disarming, like being given something you didn’t realize you needed.

After introductions, we were guided through an acrylic pouring exercise. I hated how mine turned out, but thought of the permission slip. I just made bad art. No big deal.

While the group gathered by the fire, I hesitated, wondering how we would manage working together, sharing materials and methods. There seemed to be so many of us — 20 in all.

But I reminded myself, we all seemed sensitive in similar ways. Open, creative, a little unsure of ourselves, and unsure about how this was all going to turn out.

I had signed up to help with the dishes after meals, in exchange for something steady to do when I felt socially awkward. A task, a rhythm, a place to stand. It helped a bit, but it was lonely.

That first night was very cold. I slept poorly in my tent, adjusting layers, trying to find warmth. I thought seriously about leaving, or at least finding a hotel for the rest of the weekend.

On Saturday morning, I took a solo walk after doing the breakfast dishes. It helped. Then K gave a lecture on her favorite artist and our muse for the weekend: Van Gogh. She showed us a beautiful example of his work done while hospitalized for mental illness in Provence. K encouraged us to sketch it, and then paint it.

For my assignment, I laid down a vivid fuchsia behind the sky to honor Van Gogh’s use of geranium lake, a pigment known for its intensity — and its impermanence. Joyfully, I let the fuchsia show through. It created a vibration, an aliveness, beneath the sky and clouds.

Katinka had invited a two-piece band to play while we worked that day, and the accordion music suited the mood perfectly. I couldn’t be happier.

That night we painted under blacklights during an 80s-themed party. The full moon was high. Glow sticks, music, people dancing and collaborating on their canvases. The landscape dissolved into electric blues and greens.

I made a painting of crossing lines and fluorescent color. Energy moving outward. After the field, we glowed. I slept very well that night in my warm den.

By Saturday morning, K and T, our chef, had both noticed I was doing more than my fair share of dishes. They told me I didn’t need to work quite so hard. I explained that I use work to regulate myself in group settings. They understood immediately, and said they both do the same. It was a kind moment. I felt seen.

That day, we were asked to “borrow from Van Gogh.” I worked on a portrait inspired by one of his—brushwork, structure, and a tolerance for strangeness. I plan to keep working on it at home.

Later, we made abstract work with a limited palette. Three colors, repeated shapes, attention to value. I chose colors I don’t particularly like. The painting resisted me. I stayed with it, again remembering I’d been given permission to dislike what I was working on.

I touched the canvas with a wet brush full of white paint and let it drip. The tops reminded me of the small clustered blooms of yarrow which were growing near my tent. I hadn’t planned on that, but it was enough to keep me going.

Later, we gathered for a guessing game with our abstract paintings. Each piece was pulled from a box and the group tried to identify the artist. Mine drew laughter. Someone said it looked like a melting Christmas tree. Others noticed that, when rotated, the focal point resembled buttocks.

More jokes ensued. K blushed. No one guessed it was mine. And I suppose that was the point.

On Sunday, our last day, we were paired to draw portraits. I worked with Patty, a quiet widow a few years older than me. She had lost her husband two years earlier and had come to camp on her own, just as I had. It felt like a shared step outward for each of us.

We settled into the work. There was a steadiness between us. Attention without pressure. She told me the portrait she made of me was the first she had ever done. I think she appreciated the one I made of her.

At the closing circle, we shared the work we had made over the weekend. Each of us named the piece we felt most proud of. I chose my Van Gogh study with the fuchsia underpainting.

We were invited to ask K for feedback about one of our artworks, so I brought out my abstract piece. I said I didn’t like it enough to hang it up, nor did I hate it enough to start over. I wanted to know what else I could do with it.

She suggested I put it away for a few months, then look at it again. She pointed out the botanical quality of the white drips, the ones that had reminded me of yarrow. I liked the painting more after that.

By the end of the weekend, something had shifted. I learned how to stay with things. Through the cold first night. Through uncertainty. Through making things I didn’t immediately like.

I adjusted. I kept going. Something emerged. I made paintings I didn’t expect. I let myself be seen. I left with new friends and a series of hugs.

And I will be going back to art camp next time.

I’m a few days into a solo trip in the desert, taking a bit of time between modules in my art course.

When I first arrived at the guesthouse here, I wasn’t entirely sure about it. The photos had suggested something more secluded, more contained. In reality, the space felt a bit exposed—sight lines into neighboring areas, sounds carrying in ways I hadn’t expected. I noticed myself scanning for what wasn’t quite right.

It’s a familiar reflex: to assess, to compare, to hold something at a distance until it proves itself.

But gradually, something shifted. Not in the space itself, but in how I was using it. I made coffee and sat outside in the morning chill. I rearranged a few things. I cooked chili from scratch. working with what was there, rather than what I wished I had. Over the course of a day or two, the place softened—not because it changed, but because I did.

I’ve been thinking about that shift as a kind of practice: moving from evaluation to use.

Yesterday I drove into Palm Springs and spent some time in the Backstreet Art District. In one of the galleries, I struck up a conversation with the man working there. He was the featured artist—possibly even a co-owner—and his work, in soft pastels, had a quiet, luminous quality to it.

We talked for a while about his process. About layering, about restraint, about letting the material do some of the work.

It was an easy conversation, unforced, the kind that unfolds when neither person is trying too hard. At some point, I found myself doing something I don’t usually do. I showed him a painting of mine.

Just a photo on my phone. Not presented as a portfolio or a formal introduction. More like, this is something I made.

There was a moment of vulnerability in it. A familiar voice in the background—some version of who do you think you are, showing this to someone who does this professionally?

But I showed him anyway.

And the moment passed. Not dramatically. He looked at it, responded thoughtfully, and we kept talking.

That was it. But it didn’t feel small. It felt like I had quietly stepped over a threshold I didn’t realize I was still standing behind. A kind of low-grade impostor syndrome I’ve carried, even as I’ve continued to make work, to study, to share in more structured contexts.

There’s something different about showing your work informally, person to person, without framing or credentials. Just placing it into the conversation and letting it stand.

Back at the guesthouse, I’ve been making small things. Nothing particularly ambitious. Just paper, water, pigment. A series of washes that suggest, loosely, the colors and textures I’ve been seeing around me. I’ve been trying to respond to the landscape without taking anything from it.

Driving along the highway, I noticed long stretches of fine white sand. The kind that makes you want to stop the car and gather some, just to hold it. I didn’t. It didn’t feel right.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about how to translate that impulse into something lighter. Something that registers attention without requiring extraction.

The materials I brought are simple. In some ways, insufficient. And that’s been part of the point.

There’s a particular kind of ease that comes from working within constraints—using what you have, adjusting as you go, letting the process be a little more improvisational than planned.

This morning I made breakfast, assembling something nourishing out of what was already there. It felt continuous with the making I’ve been doing on paper. A small, practical kind of creativity.

I may head out later to Pioneertown, just a short drive away, to see the light at the end of the day. Or I may not. One of the things I’m noticing is a reduced urgency to optimize the experience.

There’s less pressure to see everything, do everything, make everything count.

More interest in letting a day unfold at its own pace. Going from holding things at a distance and toward engaging with them more directly. Using what’s there. Showing what I’ve made. Letting things be enough.

There’s more here than I expected, and less to prove.

For various reasons, I didn’t get to attend any of the tutorials or all-cohort webinars except for the first one. As previously reported, it was a bit of a cluster. My fellow students seemed to have calmed down after their initial freakouts, though.

Still, I can’t help feeling a bit isolated and out of synch with everyone else, most of whom are in the UK, eight hours ahead. Accordingly, the WhatsApp chats are most active well past my bedtime.

At any rate, I’m proud of the work I did on this module, and I’m ever so glad it’s done. Thanks to the assignment’s focus on collaboration, I was forced to crawl out of my SAD winter hole and meet up with people. I persevered with the work despite loads of day job stress, unexpectedly bad weather, and other twists and turns.

And to celebrate, I get to go on a weeklong vacation culminating in the ‘Boundless Creativity’ Art Camp! Four days of plein air painting, halfway between San Diego and Palm Springs. The change of scenery will do me a world of good, as I’ve been spending too much time indoors, moving pixels around on screens.

Yesterday at the thrift store, I came across a page of handwriting in a small binder. Someone had copied a poem by Langston Hughes—Mother to Son—line by line, in blue ink. The year: 2002.

I didn’t buy it.

I took a photo.

I often notice things like this—notes, drawings, half-filled journals—and feel a pull to take care of them.

A few shelves over, I saw a wooden box with a brass plate engraved: “Purry.”

It was a container for a cat’s ashes.

I didn’t buy that either.

I took a photo of it as well.

Both objects were for sale. Both had belonged to someone. Both had been placed into circulation.

I left them where they were.

Lately I’ve been thinking about materials that move between people—books, prompts, scraps, tools. A practice of exchange: offering, responding, deciding.

But not everything that circulates is right for the taking. Some things can be taken up again. Others are left. Part of the work is noticing the difference.

Timely reminder from a previous version of myself. (2017)

I have been organizing a small craft and upcycle event. The format was beginning to take shape, a gathering where I could share my ideas and materials, other people could pick them up, respond to them, and make something of their own.

This week, the plan changed. Not dramatically, but enough to shift the shape of the event and my relationship to it.

I’ve been telling others in my MA Fine Art cohort not to worry so much when curveballs come. I’ve said that the experience of things not going according to plan can be just as instructive as things working out. I still believe that. But I’m noticing how different it feels to say that in theory and to live it in practice.

What’s becoming clearer to me is how much I had invested in the way the event was going to unfold. There was a sense of shared momentum, of things taking shape through conversation and collaboration. When that shifts, something subtle but important shifts with it. The work feels more exposed now. More mine to hold.

At the same time, I can see how closely this aligns with the themes I’ve been working through. This project has been about circulation—materials moving between people, ideas carried forward, forms of collaboration that aren’t fixed or controlled. It has also been about reciprocity, where contributions are uneven but still meaningful.

Seen through that lens, a change in plans is part of the system. The conditions shift, and the work shifts with them.

Still, I’ve been taking on some unflattering comparisons this week. I saw documentation of a fellow student installing work in Venice. It’s beautiful. Visually resolved. Immediately legible as “art”—something that photographs well and, along with his collaborator’s work, holds together as a finished set.

In comparison, my own work feels provisional. Process-based. Harder to point to. Impossible to capture in a single compelling image. I found myself thinking, quite plainly: my event might fail. I’m trying not to rush past that thought or correct it too quickly. It’s revealing something about what I value, and about the kinds of work that are easier to recognize and affirm.

There’s a tension here between different kinds of practice. Some work resolves into objects that can be seen and shared. Other work unfolds through interaction, participation, and time. The latter can feel less certain, especially when placed alongside something that appears complete.

This week has made that tension more visible to me. As I move forward with the event, I’m thinking less about executing a plan and more about holding a set of conditions. The materials are still there. The prompts are still there. The intention to create a space that feels open and welcoming is still there.

What has changed is my sense of control. And maybe that’s part of what it means to do this kind of work. Not to arrive with everything resolved, but to make space for something to happen—even when the shape of it is still uncertain.

This week, I cried in a meeting. It wasn’t dramatic or intentional, and I wasn’t trying to make a point. It was a moment where something I had been carrying moved through me in a way that could no longer be contained.

Later, I thought about a line often attributed to Isak Dinesen, that the cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. That day, it was tears. A few hours later, I went for a workout and noticed the shift in my body as my face changed from pale to flushed, health and energy visibly returning. These experiences felt connected, not as solutions, but as forms of movement.

I have been thinking about circularity — the ways in which materials, ideas, attention, and energy move through systems. This has begun to shape how I interpret my experiences at work, particularly in relation to emotional labor. Rather than seeing stress as something that sits outside, I am starting to understand it as something that travels through individuals and across teams, shifting form as it goes.

Within this framework, I have been developing a concept of “shock absorption” in relational systems. These are functions people take on, often unconsciously, to diffuse or transmute pressure so that the system can continue to operate. Some express discomfort directly, while others take on the work of softening or mediating it for the group. This labor is rarely acknowledged, but it is essential.

What has become clearer is that this work does not disappear. It circulates. When one person can no longer carry it, it is redistributed elsewhere. At times, this feels mutual and sustaining, with care moving between people in ways that support the group. At other times, it feels uneven, as though certain individuals are absorbing more than their share, and what might otherwise be understood as care begins to feel closer to extraction.

Crying at work sits within this tension. It can feel like release or truth, but it can also feel exposing and difficult to interpret afterwards. I found myself wondering whether I had allowed something necessary to move through me, or whether I had introduced something into a professional space that would be misunderstood. I suspect the answer is a bit of both.

Alongside this, I have been reflecting on my reluctance to share my artwork. I often hesitate to put it into the world, and in conversations with others I’ve found this is common. Increasingly, I see this hesitation as connected to the same dynamics. To share work, emotion, or uncertainty is to relinquish a degree of control over how it will be received.

One of the ways my art practice is beginning to influence my professional life is in helping me loosen what I can only describe as a white-knuckled grip on outcomes. The work I am doing in the MA encourages a different orientation, one that values process, exchange, and an allowance for resolution to unfold. It’s helped strengthen my commitment to giving form to experiences, so they can be encountered and reflected upon by others.

Conversation and relationship are central to in socially-engaged practice, but for me they are not sufficient on their own. Something has to be made. The unspoken tensions and imperfect resolutions need to be translated into forms that can hold them, make them visible and available for others to recognize.

Looking back, I am interested in what my outburst at work revealed about the others around me. Each of my colleagues checked in with me one way or another — either via 1-1 messages or huddle requests after the group meeting. It showed me something about how pressure moves, how it is held, and how it can be released. It also showed me that not all outcomes needs to be managed or controlled in order to be meaningful.

We met up on St Patrick’s Day, late afternoon. It was 87F in mid-March. It felt like we had entirely skipped spring and plunged straight into summer, even as the sun sat low in the sky and the sycamore leaves were only just coming in.

We found a table outside under trees and started by catching up on work. We’ve both been carrying a fair amount of stress lately, the kind that hums just beneath the surface.

Our relationship goes back more than a decade. We later worked together in a high-pressure environment that asked a lot of both of us. That kind of shared experience creates a shorthand. We don’t have to explain much.

At a certain point, almost without noticing, we shifted into planning. There was no agenda, no document open between us. But structure began to take shape anyway. We sketched out a loose flow—how people might arrive, what they might encounter first, how materials could be offered. We talked about prompts and pacing, and how to leave space for both making and conversation.

I found myself thinking about the packets as we talked. About how they had started as small invitations—things to be picked up, carried, continued elsewhere. And now, without quite intending to, we were planning something that felt like a larger version of that same idea.

A space where materials could be set out. Where people could encounter them and make something of their own.

It reminded me that structure doesn’t always arrive fully formed. Sometimes it emerges through the act of thinking together. One idea leads to another, and gradually something begins to cohere.

I’ve noticed that this kind of process depends on how I’m feeling. When I’m stressed, I want things pinned down quickly. I reach for clarity and resolution. But that afternoon felt different. Sitting outside, in a space that felt easy and familiar, I could feel that urgency soften.

The planning became more spacious and responsive. We could follow threads a little further before deciding what to do with them. The structure felt lighter, but not less intentional.

I’m realizing that part of my role in this project is not just to design the event, but to design the conditions in which it comes into being. The schedule, the prompts, the materials—those are all part of it. But so are things like trust, familiarity, and the feeling of being at ease.

It makes me wonder how often structure is less about what we define in advance, and more about what we allow to unfold.

A couple of days ago I sent an invitation to a handful of close friends:

On Saturday, April 11 from 2–3:30pm I’m holding a small gathering at the guest cottage behind my house. We’ll do a bit of crafting and upcycling, and I’ve made room for an art supplies and crafting materials swap. Stuff like knitting, crochet, paint, hardware, costume jewelry, you name it. Welcome to bring things to swap, or just benefit from the bounty.

Within minutes one friend wrote back:

“This is perfect. I needed this.”

Her response has stayed with me.

I think many of us are quietly longing for spaces where we can make things together without pressure. Not a class. Not a performance. Not something that requires expertise or talent. Just a table, some materials, and a few other people nearby doing the same.

The gathering is also part of my ongoing masters project in fine art, where I’ve been exploring collaborative art journaling and small-scale relational creative practices. But this particular event feels less like a research exercise and more like an experiment in abundance.

For the past few years I’ve been slowly accumulating art and craft supplies. Some are things I bought with great enthusiasm and barely used. Others are leftovers from earlier projects: beads, yarn, collage scraps, watercolor paper, small tools, ribbons, bits of hardware, costume jewelry, buttons, and interesting packaging that seemed too beautiful to throw away.

At a certain point the accumulation begins to feel less like possibility and more like, well, clutter.

But recently I’ve been thinking about materials differently. Instead of asking “Where should I store all of this?” I’ve started asking a different question:

Where could these materials travel next?

Recently I was gifted a large box of memorabilia through my local Buy Nothing group. A woman was clearing up a late friend’s belongings, and decided to give away all of her travel brochures and other mid-century ephemera. Delightful artifacts from trips, events, and places long past. Hotel brochures. Tourist pamphlets. Fold-out maps. Mementoes from excursions someone once took with great anticipation.

Rather than keeping the entire archive intact, I’ve been making small packets of travel ephemera to share.

Each one contains a sampling of these fragments, tucked into paper bags printed with old-time advertisements. They feel a little like messages from another era—tiny artifacts from journeys that have already happened, waiting to become part of something new.

The materials swap table will be open to whatever people bring: yarn someone lost interest in, half-finished projects, art supplies purchased during optimistic moments, extra tools or interesting scraps.

I like the idea that the table might become a kind of temporary ecosystem. Materials arriving, circulating, leaving again in new forms.

Some things will go home with new people. Some will become part of whatever we make that afternoon. Some might remain and circulate again at another gathering.

Creative materials are especially magical this way. A scrap of paper is not just a scrap of paper—it’s the beginning of a collage, a journal page, a note to someone, or something else entirely.

Mostly, though, I’m curious about the gathering itself.

What happens when people sit around a table of shared materials with no particular outcome required?

My guess is that the conversation will wander. Someone will start cutting paper. Someone else will tell a story about where a certain object came from. A few people might quietly make something small.

And every now and then, someone might pick up one of those little packets and think:

Oh.

I could make something with this.

In a way, these materials are still traveling.

A brochure printed decades ago for someone else’s vacation might become part of a collage made on a quiet afternoon in a little cottage in Alameda. A scrap of paper that once advertised a hotel or an excursion might find its way into someone’s art journal.

Objects like this carry stories. But they also make room for new ones.

Creative materials are happiest when they stay in circulation.

Sometimes they just need a little help finding their next destination.

This morning Jason and I had breakfast with two of his colleagues, Torie and Victoria, and Victoria’s husband, Laurence.

Laurence and I walked together on the way to the restaurant, which gave us time to talk about his graduate studies. He is finishing a degree in social work, with a focus on palliative care.

He described his interest in the period when a chronic diagnosis begins to shift toward a terminal one. Palliative care social work can take place across both contexts, but Laurence said he is most interested in the time before hospice. It is the period when people may be losing capabilities but are not yet in the final stage of life.

We talked about how uncertain that phase can be. A person may not know how much time remains. Often the immediate hope is simply relief from pain. There may be no clear treatment plan.

Medical systems are often organized around goals such as remission or cure. The work Laurence described focuses on a different question: how someone lives during the long, uncertain period when those outcomes are no longer the central focus. It is a phase of life that medicine does not always have clear language for.

Our conversation helped me see my own project from a different angle. Collaborative art journaling is not therapy, but it can create a space where people pause, reflect, and make meaning during uncertain stretches of life.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the conversation widened to include everyone at the table. I found myself appreciating the group gathered there. Torie and Victoria are exceptionally thoughtful and considerate people. It is encouraging to see Jason working with colleagues who bring that kind of presence to their work.

By the time we sat down with coffee and breakfast, the conversation had already moved through graduate school, illness, and the different kinds of work people do in the presence of uncertainty.

It reminded me that many disciplines circle the same human questions from different directions. Social work, ethnography, and creative practice each offer ways of paying attention to how people live through difficult or transitional periods.

Sometimes a short conversation is enough to make those connections visible.

Today Jason and I went to Crab Cove and I drew a stand of trees.

Yesterday, I met up with my creative group and drew a folded patio umbrella and a neighboring building.

I’ve been working on my module project plan for ‘Co-Learning Art Journaling as Relational Practice’ and integrating the feedback I got from my tutor.

I’m pondering methods of data collection and analysis for my project.

And I joined a big text chat group with all the people I’ll be meeting in person at the end of April for art camp. I am already planning what to pack.

I was waiting for consent forms to come back from my collaborators. I told myself I was calm about it. I was not calm about it. I refreshed my inbox more than once. I wondered if enthusiasm would quietly fade once paperwork entered the picture.

But the forms came in. Signed. Real.

It felt like something unlocked.

And today, other things began to shift. I have been feeling stuck at work for weeks. The kind of stuckness that sits low in your chest. Conversations looping. Energy flat. No clear movement.

Then, quietly, something moved. A meeting that could have hardened instead softened. A decision that felt blocked began to loosen. Nothing dramatic. Just a small but undeniable shift.

Patience, apparently, was doing something behind the scenes.

In the middle of all this, Melanie asked if we could experiment with digital art journaling instead of working on paper. My first instinct was resistance. I love paper. I trust paper. I trust glue and torn edges and smudged charcoal.

But instead of redirecting her, I said yes.

And then I tried it myself.

My Apple Pencil was not working. Of course. So I used my finger. It was imprecise. It was also strangely freeing. I noticed I was drawing with my right hand, even though I’m left-handed. Years of scrolling and clicking have trained that hand to respond to screens.

It felt like a small revelation. The tools shape us. Our habits shape the tools. Precision is not guaranteed by technology. Friction exists everywhere.

Later in the week, I sat down with my physical journal and drew the tree in our backyard. It had been raining. The leaves were holding tiny points of light where the raindrops caught the sun. I wrote the words,

patience

pays

off

One by one, above each branching leaf.

It wasn’t a grand artistic statement. It wasn’t even particularly complex. But it felt true.

The stuckness at work shifted. The consent forms arrived. The digital experiment opened a new way of thinking about materials. None of it happened because I forced it. It happened because I stayed with it.

There is something humbling about that.

I am beginning to see that collaboration is not about orchestrating a perfect outcome. It is about saying yes when something unexpected appears. It is about noticing when control softens. It is about allowing things to unfold at the speed they need.

This week did not produce a masterpiece.

It produced a finger-drawn page. A rain-washed tree. A sentence that felt earned.

Patience pays off.

Work was way too busy last week to do any art school things, other than scribbling in a sketchbook at the hotel restaurant on Wednesday night. My colleague and I had just delivered a two-day workshop and were both suffering from our respective forms of jet lag: he was mentally five hours ahead, and I was three behind. Consequently, he did much better than I did—far more articulate and effective. But them’s the brakes.

I’m glad I got all my schoolwork done the week before.

Once again, I’m finding that my time is split about 80% toward academic pursuits (reading, reflecting, and writing) and only 20% dedicated to making art, which is sometimes a little sad. But I enjoy the topics I’m reading and thinking about so very much.

Upon reflection, I’m realizing that one of the biggest tensions in any collaboration (which our current module is all about) happens when things feel unequal. This was true for us at work this week. I’m sure my colleague did not appreciate having to shoulder so much of the intellectual burden for our workshop, and I felt terribly guilty about how things turned out.

At the same time, I’ve been gaining insight from the readings I’m doing around organizational development and collaborative dynamics. This is not an unusual state to be in—struggling to balance workload evenly. As I read more and more about collectivism, I’m trying to accept that healthy, reciprocal relationships do go through periods of unequal contribution.

It’s not an easy thing to navigate. The struggle has been real for me this week: sitting with the guilt and embarrassment of not pulling my weight on one project because another, competing effort—one I’m responsible for—requires so much of my energy and focus.

But I am getting a little disappointed with a few of my fellow students lately.

We have a WhatsApp group, as I’ve mentioned, and sometimes the tone of dialogue there is not to my liking. And in the all-cohort webinar yesterday, I became truly embarrassed by the behavior of my peers. A few of the students berated the tutors for not being clear about what time the webinar started. The module lead apologized saying she was in Germany when she set up the invitation, but back in the UK for the event. The hour’s time difference had messed up her computer’s calendar settings. No matter, the mob was out for blood.

Then someone else came on to say that they had already formed a collaborative project but the date set for exhibition won’t be after the module is complete. Then she went on a bit of a rant, asserting that 12 weeks is not nearly enough time to collaborate properly in her view, and that the time pressure of our final assignment’s deadline was tantamount to being asked to lower her standards for professionalism. At that point, one of the tutors stepped in and said, “I think we all should back up a bit. These questions are starting to feel like you may be thinking that our job as tutors is to ‘catch you out.’ Please remember, we are here to support you.”

When another student pressed the tutors for more specificity about how we’re expected to collaborate, the response was, “You can do anything you want.” The WhatsApp chat blew up. Some of my cohort started griping about this deplorable, chaotic lack of structure. Rather than seeing it for the opportunity it was to exercise our agency and unique talents along with others.

And it kind of went downhill from there. I thought to myself, “With peers like these, how will I possibly find people to collaborate with?” I meditated on the shrinking of my social circle since 2020. I’m not in touch with anyone as much these days. Work is a nightmare right now, I don’t go outside enough, and I just can’t think of what to say in this WhatsApp chat that might help model the tone and mood I think we should be striving for.

I am reminded of my great grandmother’s favorite saying, “There’s no hell. We’re already in hell. With all these people.” Midlife Queen. While I can feel for the sentiment, I do disagree with her. I’m actually a super nerdy utopian. My previously arty collaborativey projects have been soooooo earnest. I can channel a real, “Aw shucks,” Midwestern-nice kinda vibe when it comes to telling people I think they’re doing a great job. Coach Walz is my hero. But sometimes I do despair of my fellows.

And then I read this artforum article on The Social Turn, Collaboration and its Discontents. And it stopped me in my tracks.

“These homilies unwittingly push us toward a Platonic regime in which art is valued for its truthfulness and educational efficacy rather than for inviting us—as Dogville did—to confront darker, more painfully complicated considerations of our predicament.”

Oh god. Is art journaling with other midlife women the most twee (and/or entitled) socially engaged collaboration idea ever or what? I have been drowning in hesitation, and haven’t put pencil to paper in about 5 days. Does NOT feel good. Here is a photo of me making something to remind myself. It makes me feel better, and that is enough.

My current practice is centered around gift-giving as both a material and ethical gesture. This focus has emerged in tension with long-held tendencies toward pausing, over-thinking, and holding too tightly or closely. This applies to ideas, knowledge, materials, and even to unfinished artwork. While introspection is an important part of my process, it can also show up as a form of stagnation, preventing work from moving outward into circulation and shared meaning.

This tension closely aligns with the psychosocial framework of generativity versus stagnation, a core personal and creative struggle for me in midlife. I am increasingly aware of how withholding (whether through perfectionism, fear, or self-protection) conflicts with how I wish to live and practice. I yearn to generate, to share, to teach, and to contribute within collective contexts.

I’m reminded of a painful, earnest conversation with my partner about the “wall-facers” in The Three Body Problem, individuals tasked with holding vital knowledge that can never be shared. Because I can be so secretive and private, he compared me to these characters, and implored me not to play a similar role within our relationship. Since then, his request has prompted me to reflect deeply on how self-containment and isolation can seriously interfere with my artistic practice. I am interested in exploring how making, finishing, and giving work away might function as counter-points to this impulse.

Although I do struggle with creating and completing work consistently, I am sustained by the influence of collaborators, colleagues, and creative communities who model iterative, relational ways of working. Through these connections, I hold a growing sense of hope that ideas can move toward action, that outcomes can emerge through shared process, and that art can function less as something held and more as something offered.

This module asks you to open your practice to creative partnership and innovation. You will plan and deliver a public-facing project, whilst gaining insight into different frameworks and ethical considerations for collaborative practice.

During the module you will explore different possibilities for collaboration as an artist, asking how cooperative and innovative ways of working can grow the ambition – and inform the ethics – of your practice.

You will be invited to devise and develop a collaborative project relevant to your work and contexts. You will be working towards a public facing outcome, which might include – but is not limited to – an exhibition or event, a publication or performance, activity in the landscape or civic space, or activity online. You might need to explore strategies for ethical collaboration in your locality, a new context, or at a distance.

You will critically evaluate your work in a report at the conclusion of the module and consider the relationship between your intentions and the processes and audiences with whom you engage.