04/23/2026
Happy Earth Day, friends. This piece, “A Topography of Grief,” is a big abstract ode to the earth, to love for it and for one another, to interdependence and moving at the speed of nature. On board, 24”x24”, the work was made by pulping waste papers (old bills, work papers, &c.) I couldn’t bear to trash when cleaning out my mother’s estate, then tinting/dying them with colored tissues and mixing with glue to create a papier mache-like slurry that I “painted” with atop an old wetlands map. It’ll be on exhibit in the juried spring show, at Seattle’s , opening in May. More info to come; hoping to make it up there for opening weekend 🤞
My mother was a landscape designer at the end of her life, but I’d always known her as a true lover of nature, while I was an indoor cat. One of our running gags was that, even at 10 or 11, I’d refuse to be outside to help in the yard; instead, to avoid it, I made a bargain to clean the bathroom. (In my defense: heat intolerance has been a real bane for me for a long, long time!) As I’ve aged, and especially since she passed 3 years ago, I’ve come to feel more myself outdoors, learned to find peace and balance in the kind rhythms of the natural world, the easy flow of a stream, the softness of grass, of dirt. So this one’s for her—sorry I was such a pill back in the day, and thanks for teaching me so much despite it all; these are the peaks and valleys of my sadness, and my pride at coming from you and carrying us forward 🌎💚✨
Swipe for some process vids, and a few cute nature pics from my neck of the Pacific Northwest; while the color scheme draws to mind water, the composition itself almos reminds me of tree bark. Go on, get out there and hug a tree, it’s the least you can do to show your gratitude for this big beautiful planet 😜♻️💚
