Just finished my nearly 2 week residency at Glen Arbor Arts Center. It was sad to see it come to an end, but it was so productive and I felt completely satiated. And how could I not? A lovely little apartment to myself, an empty studio to myself (shared only with the open studio potters now and then and a couple of curious mice), Lake Michigan a half mile away and the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail to bike to work.

My day job is, ahem, property maintenance, supporting elderly parents at end of life and helping adult children/recent college grads launch during Covid and teaching part time during the academic year at the local community college, and helping run an art gallery. Which is to say my ACTUAL day job of being an artist is really interrupted on a daily basis by a lot of important things.

Bottom line is, I am too accessible in my real life.

I hit the ground running at this residency. I brought all of my supplies with me, flat things like paper in the bottom of the station wagon, tools tucked under seats, bike packed with cardboard over the chain so it didn’t ruin my grandma’s quilt and the linens I brought to sleep on.

The body of work I focused on is called Good Grief. It explores the collective grief of us all during this time and individual grief we are experiencing, as well. I am thinking about how we can get through this not too beat up and maybe a little better than before, as in more compassion for our fellow human . Grief is always there, we are always experiencing it on some level, but with COVID, we can’t get away from it. The good thing about that is we may be more willing to talk about it.

Abstract art gives me the chance to be contemplative while making it and it gives the viewer the freedom to be contemplative while interacting with the art.

Things I’m contemplating while making this work:

1. Relationships of colors, values, densities of objects and shadows

2. Relationships and placement of objects to one another

3. Closing off, opening up, solitude, vulnerability and joy