Little by little

I’m very happy to announce that three of my Cultivate pieces will be featured in the upcoming exhibition String Theories at Field Projects Gallery in Chelsea, NYC.

Curated by Charlotte Mouquin, director of Rush Arts Gallery, String Theories “examines the vibrational strings that connect humanness, cultural identities, relationships with nature, industrialization, and the subconscious.” The show opens this Thursday, June 29, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., and will run for a month, closing July 29.

I am excited about this show for all of the usual reasons, but also because it pushed me to post to this blog again. I have been working steadily all year, but with all of the recent political developments, it felt strange and somehow wrong to be writing about something as small in scope as my thoughts and process in the studio. Not entirely consciously, I found myself waiting to think of something big enough to say. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that it turns out, waiting for something profound and world-changing to occur to you is a good way to write nothing at all.

So now here I am remembering that everything actually starts from these little moments, with us doing ordinary things. I remember when I started Cultivate, I felt almost overwhelmed with my sense that someone had pulled a curtain back and I could see that the world around us was actually constructed of this infinitely layered tapestry of tiny choices, one after another after another. Small. But those choices taken together have created our whole culture. Those choices made us.

Most importantly, we are still making those choices all the time, and not just the fancy briefcase-carrying choices that loudly proclaim their importance. The humble choices you almost don’t even notice, little by little they are framing our world.

So I’ve come back to having respect for this, my little corner of the world to report to you from. I’ve remembered that one of the choices I want to make over and over is to speak up: to do my best to share honestly about who I am, what I’m experiencing, and my occasionally bumbling but determined attempts to take the things I see in my mind and feel in my heart and bring them into this reality. Little by little.