Let's be Thankful.

I'm a sporadic poster (see: my entire blogging history). But after going down the charming rabbit hole all night and morning that is Today's Letters (talk about #goals, amiright?), I'm enthusiastically hopping back on the blog-train, like a freshly-inspired idiot who makes sweeping statements with no actual plans. But a girl can dream.

Without further ado, things I'm thankful for lately: 

This sunset from Mt. Sassafras that has stuck in my mind since the January evening it occurred.

Patty Griffin + Sara Watkins + Anais Mitchell = the kind of magnificence that takes a while to process.

The beach condo that was once a particularly dusty shade of mauve (SMH), painted! Suddenly this place is quite inviting. 

  

The sounds and colors of a cold ocean in February.

And this. Because cookie cakes and birthdays are cause for great celebration.

Toxicodendron radicans v. Parthenocissus quinquefolia

 

I was barely coordinated enough to drag a rake across the grass when my dad introduced me to the chore of yard work. The backyard in Princeton Corners was packed with pine trees, and every couple weeks my sisters and I faced the dreaded task of "picking up sticks." We always protested - we faked sick, feigned exhaustion, and occasionally if it was Sunday we played the devious and manipulative (but in retrospect, pretty funny) God-card on our Jesus-loving father, reminding him that the Lord commands us to rest on the Sabbath and his orders sounded contradictory. I can't believe he put up with us all those years. As we got older the three of us learned to do our work with mostly good attitudes. And when our dad started to trust my sisters with tools like the leaf blower and chainsaw, it even became somewhat enjoyable. Any kid who was subjected to hours of weed pulling, hole-digging, hedge-trimming, and stuffing thorny foliage into brown lawn bags, is bound to learn the classic virtues veiled in light manual labor, getting dirty, and collecting a few scratches and splinters here and there. But aside from anything character building, one of the most valuable lessons I picked up in my amateur landscaping days is how to tell the difference between Toxicodendron radicans and Parthenocissus quinquefolia. That is, poison ivy and Virginia creeper. Both plants are around the same size, have the same coloring, same leaf shape, and grow in the same environments. Poison ivy has three leaves and does horrible things. It makes perfectly good people become puffy, discolored, uncomfortable, and contagious. Virginia Creeper has five leaves and does nothing at all. The problem is the two can look so similar; it's easy to mistake a harmless patch of leaves for a sea of something poisonous. 

During those years growing up in Atlanta’s suburbs I lived in a neighborhood with a gaggle of other curious children, some who also had to do yard work, and others whose parents let the pros handle it. Any given day after barreling off the school bus we could be found trolling and trespassing through strangers' back yards, stashing our bikes and backpacks between boxwoods, and setting out on foot to explore, presumably in search of a suitable headquarters for our mischief. Occasionally we came to a rocky creek that we would valiantly ford. Other times we had to jump a rusty fence or crawl through a gap in some scraggy hedges. Few barricades would deter us, and the particularly lionhearted soldiers ended up with a cast - or if they were lucky, crutches - to prove it. But one thing we were always wary of was poison ivy. If you touched it, it was game over, and we simply knew better. We were girl scouts and boy scouts, after all.

When we set out to adventure with bright eyes, fast bikes, and low expectations, the world was alive - host to a grand scavenger hunt we got to take part in. The very last thing any of us wanted to stumble upon was a poisonous sprawl lying between where we were and where the next treasure might hide. Traversing a creek only to promptly face a devastating obstruction on the pathway to magic can be absolutely crushing. And while at times, yes, poison ivy spanned too far to navigate and we had to find a new route, there were other times - more frequently than not - when we simply needed to look a little closer at what was impeding our progress and make sure it wasn't just a patch of Virginia creeper playing tricks on us. Having the simple knowledge of this subtle difference could make or break an entire day of exploration. It was the difference between forging on to find an abandoned barn or cluster of magnolia trees (nature's perfect fort, as any southern child knows), and giving up, turning around, and going home to watch Nickelodeon in someone’s dimly lit basement.

Learning to spot the difference between what is truly dangerous versus what is just scary can arguably make or break a life over the course of time. It is the difference between moving forward and backing down; saying yes and saying never mind; growing and recoiling; stepping out in faith and shrinking back in apprehension. It's not to say fear isn’t palpable, indeed it can paralyze and captivate, but fear has no place in our ultimate reality – the Good reality that lasts forever. Fear occasionally helps us avoid real danger, but there are other times - more frequently than not - we let fear sprawl across its boundaries and block us from experiencing a whole lot of goodness, too. Such trickery requires heightened vigilance on our part. We need to make sure we’re looking close enough at the actual matter in front of us to see it for what it truly is, because it just may happen the poison ivy we’re so afraid of is only a patch of Virginia creeper.

Springtime is Here.

{and my heart is swelling with joy.}

I haven't worn a coat in almost 2 weeks, I can go for a walk outside without survival instincts dictating my pace ("run faster or you will freeze and die," they say), and everywhere I look: flowers, green.

Lucky for me I live in Atlanta where greenery knows no bounds (though unfortunately, nor does pollen), and I can combine running, botanizing, aaaand listening to NPR podcasts into one, invigoratingly nerdy experience.

The act of running past pristinely landscaped West Atlanta homes, flanked by Boxwoods and brimming with Flowering Quince, Hellebores, and Dogwood, breathes life into my bored and tired eyes. It reminds me that the strange and beautiful things I try to put on paper and canvas are hardly original at all, and do not hold a flame to the arrestingly graceful perfection of something so delightful as Wisteria. They also remind me that "earth tones" include magenta and chartreuse (see: Azalea, Forsythia).
These magnificent things grow naturally out of the dirt - wild, intricate, audacious, weird, fantastic.

Springtime is here. Take it in, folks.

For thoughts on the significance of seeds being buried, staying there for a while, then shooting out of the ground into something unimaginably beautiful (in relation to Easter), listen here. 

New Space, New Paints.

Hi, friends.

It's been a minute.

Re-cap: The teaching job came and went, it ruled, there are some awesome high schoolers out there. There are also some hellions trapped inside deceivingly grown-up-looking human bodies.
I miss them often.

January came to a close, February made her introduction, and then something weird occurred: I found myself working as an artist full-time. I am wildly unprepared, unequipped, skeptical and thankful. I don't know what I'm doing, but I try to pretend I do.
The Giver has been good to me, that's for sure.

I share studio space at the Goat Farm with a dear friend, Ashton (look at her work, it's magnificent), and a man who runs a theatre production company. It's not a forever-studio, but it's about four times the space I was working with before now, so I'll take it! Our across-the-hall neighbors are photographers and my first day working in the new space they were having a shoot to the musical stylings of what I can only assume was an explicit Ray-J Pandora station. That's when I knew I would feel at home there wouldn't get bored there.

Art installation at The Goat Farm by David Baerwalde

Feathered trolls at the studio

A peek of some recent work, currently on view at Anne Irwin

 And I feel I must share a few of these photos the remarkable friend/encourager/photographic wizard Christina Devictor snapped of me during a live-painting session at RoCo... because she creates beautiful images that deserve to be shared, and makes me look like a really fun mad scientist in the best way possible.

Forty-Eight Hours in the District.

The autumn weekend possesses a certain kind of magic;

Simultaneously invigorating and restorative. 

This one was no different.

Cold mornings, oats and coffee on the roof amidst a garden of terra cotta pots. 

A hike on trails lined with crumbly leaves, overlooking the river. 

A green-lawned winery, reds, whites, sunshine soaking into my face. 

Dinner at a Langston Hughes themed restaurant. 

S'mores over the gas stove and a documentary. 

Two nights of good sleep. 

Marathoners at mile sixteen. 

Monuments, memorials. 

Georgetown. 

Row houses with window boxes. 

Eastern Market: Free samples of pears, hummus, apples and chips. 

Ice cream with a cousin. 

Natural history, Pegmatite. 

An rushed goodbye due to impatient public transportation. 

Airplane pretzels. 

The flight from Baltimore to Atlanta, listening to Goose & Fox, sleepily filing away the emanations of these past forty eight hours: brick, siena confetti-leaves, red wine, love, autumn's chill, the feelings brought forth by Autumn Weekend Magic. 

New Things.

As I sprawl on the sofa in one of my many Comfort Colors sorority t-shirts I have somehow acquired over the years despite having never being a part of any Pan-Hellenic organization, I find myself A) Uncomfortably full from dinner, and B) Thankful for new things, namely: This home, employment, friends.

 

The apartment, lovingly dubbed "The Wardrobe," quickly became home and is slowly but surely becoming attractive enough to not be ashamed of. (Problem #1: SOMEHOW we ended up with all gold-toned furniture in the living room... because we're fancy.) In addition to the new apartment is the new job. I am teaching high school art through January, and as a result I will definitely be paying my rent and bills. VICTORY. Also, I still intend to paint my own work and apply to grad schools. I'm including this information so I have it in writing and therefore have added incentive to actually do these things.

So many people have beef with post-grad life, and while I'm truly enjoying myself over here I'd be lying if I said this phase hasn't come with a couple adjustments. All of a sudden I am responsible for forging my path and finding my own work, not just to pass the time, but to pay for the necessities of life (but shout-out to the government for letting me ride my parents' medically-insured coattails until I'm 26). Then, there are the issues of re-establishing a routine, gaining momentum, making new friends, going new places.

I’ve been fortunate enough to become good friends with some beautiful people in the city, and even more fortunate to go on adventures with said friends. A couple weekends back we made it up to North Carolina for a trip in the mountains, which turned out to be utterly revitalizing and a necessary time of resetting. There is no substitute for hiking through the woods, sleeping outside, eating camp food, and embracing the incapability of taking a shower. And despite an accidental 8-ish mile detour (because who really needs marked trails, right National Forest Service?) in which we quite literally had to swing from branches and rock-slide/rappel down a small waterfall to return to an *almost* trail, everything was perfect. Trees boasted their fiery October shroud and smoky clouds rolled across the sky. A long day, capped off by a Ramen dinner, a fireside evening with campsite neighbors, a satisfyingly cold nights sleep and drizzly morning. All this followed by a drive back to Greenville for a hot coffee and bagel sandwich breakfast: bliss.

{The Art Loeb trail}

There are days that I’d rather sleep in, watch the Today show, make pancakes, and forsake all things work-related. Sometimes I miss the kind of days I spent here. I often daydream about what city I should look for jobs in next. Los Angeles? Portland? Boston? Somewhere in the middle of the Mojave Desert?

I’m not quite ready to be settled somewhere for the long haul, but I’m content with step 1, thankful for the new things.

{Last weekend: Prints by GC ArtTank students at Deeproots Festival}

{Family and Friends making beautiful music at Deeproots}

Postgrad.

For the past month I have been back home in my American motherland. This time has largely consisted of unpacking, babysitting, painting, harvesting tomatoes, and going to various Alabamian cities for weddings, moving furniture, and visiting family.

But let's back up.

Prior to this summer I had every intention of moving to Charleston after I graduated for no other reason than it's a beautiful city that is generally supportive of people trying to make art.
While in Cortona, however, I had some helpful conversations with people in Atlanta (via the interwebz) and determined that I would spend the year here instead, pursuing some opportunities I wouldn't have anywhere else. Flexible planning is my game.

I decided early on I wasn't trying to be into the whole "move back home after graduation" thing. For some people it makes sense, but knowing myself, I need to be living somewhere new with my own space and have the impending threat of rent deadlines to make me snap into a new routine and GET A JOB already (because it's a simple task, right?). It also helped when I realized I have juuuusssst enough saved up to where I probably won't die immediately after being financially independent. Probably. But I'll keep you posted... That being said, shout-out to nannying and commission painting for handling rent this month.

And HERE WE ARE now.

Yesterday I moved into my apartment in Hotlanta with my best friend/cousin, Anna. With the help of my parents, her boyfriend, and sister and brother-in-law, we spent all day yesterday getting settled into our new home. The first thing we did after getting our things inside was eat Chipotle take-out on our living room floor. Priorities. And despite a couple burned out lightbulbs and an unidentifiable white power lightly coating the kitchen surfaces (cocaine?? Anthrax?!?) that have since been wiped down, the place is perfect for us.
Holler if ya wanna help unpack.