white picket fence

2016, Good Things Edition

A number of positive things about my year, in no particular order. 

Going to pick up a book from the reserve shelf at the library and thinking of all the joy that will be felt by my fellow book nerds picking up their little gifts

Some songs I listened to on repeat this year:

• Creeks, Bon Iver.
• Eugene and The Only Thing, Sufjan Stevens.
• Supermoon, Case/Lang/Veirs.
• Also, according to Spotify, Love Yourself by Justin Bieber, which I refuse to be embarrassed about, it’s a good song.

I read over 50 books this year so I need to categorize my favorites here.

• Most important: Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
• Most fun/enjoyable: Carry On, Rainbow Rowell.
• Best overall, gotta call a tie between Lila, Marilynne Robinson and To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey.

I had some memorable long walks this year: from the Whitney Museum to Midtown Manhattan on a cold bright February day. A long quiet turn around the marsh on the day after the election. All the trips with the kids through the pond park to the grocery store (that walk is probably the thing I miss most about our old house).

I started working lunch & recess duty at the kids’ school’s this year.  That means I opened approximately two hundred Go-Gurts, cleaned up many dozens of milk spills, and told the same kids to “sit on your bottom, stop shouting please” at least a thousand times. Or at least it felt like a thousand times. I also got a lot of hugs, pushed swings every day, and once helped some kids build a contraption out of sticks to get a ball out of a tree. Happy memories!

Zine fest!

My Studio Calico class was obviously a HUGE highlight. I still sometimes scroll through the #sccutandpaste hashtag when I’m feeling bummed about myself, art-wise, and it's always a little lift. I love what all the students made, and honestly, it really pushed me forward in my own work too.

And, of course, these weirdos, always:

I'm trying to keep my expectations for the new year low and empty so I can fill it up with good things without too much pressure, you know? However, I do have a few resolutions that I feel I should share here for accountability's sake:

• Take a shower & make my bed before 8 am everyday (very basic but would change the tenor of our mornings tremendously)
• Send birthday cards to my family ON TIME. 
• Don't wait until the last minute to do everything, (for example, writing my year end review less than 12 hours before the year ends.)

Happy New Year!

what reading a book I hated taught me about the books I like

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (not providing a link because I don’t want to endorse it in any way) must have had an amazing marketing team. I encountered it constantly this summer/early fall: I saw it on blogs, Instagram feeds, and featured at a few bookstores. So when I saw it on the new books shelf at the library, I checked it out immediately. I love reading books about New York City, I love food writing, so it seemed like an easy choice.

Guess what? This book was terrible. If it's supposed to be a love story, I pity the author and her conception of love. Almost everything about it felt cynical, bitter, and self-serving. None of the characters seemed to have any real regard for anyone beyond themselves. Also, I kind of feel like Maude Flanders talking like this, and I’m usually not a prude when it comes to the books I read, but all the physical relationships in this novel felt gross and gratuitous, not to mention completely empty of any real lasting emotion. Maybe it’s because I skimmed the last few dozen pages because at that point I was so pissed I was even reading this book… but it seemed there was no redemption, no clarity achieved, no satisfying denouement of any kind.  And may I add: reading about endless days and nights of young people doing drugs/being hungover is straight up NOT INTERESTING. 

After finishing, I thought about some of the novels I’ve read this year that I have enjoyed. (You know how I appreciate a good compare and contrast / turning everything in my life into a self-improvement lesson.) The common thread in all these books I love? Well... love. Characters who care for each other despite their flaws. Characters who overcome obstacles and their own personality defaults with the help of those around them. Messages of real solidarity within struggle. Spoiler alert: All those things were completely devoid in Sweetbitter. 

So here are a few of my recommendations: 

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt was a nice surprise. A sweet coming of age story, quite free of cliches and just an overall pleasant read. 

Lila, one of the Gilead novels by Marilynne Robinson (stories about 2 pastors in small town Iowa in the 1950s) is almost unbearably earnest and tender. Robinson writes with such force that each sentence, each word feels crucial, weighted, necessary. (I'm a very fast reader and her writing forces me to slow down in a way that feels almost mysical to me.) It's a story about love when love is not easy. I can't even tell you anymore because I can't do it justice. Read her books!

Last of all... and obviously this doesn't need my recommendation, but: I read the Harry Potter series for the first time as a 35 year old and I was completely surprised at how much I embraced it. It’s FULL of love in all it’s forms: friendship, romance, reverence, respect, fellowship. Harry and Hagrid, Harry and Sirius, Harry / Ron / Hermione, Harry & the Weasley family: each of these relationships demonstrate a different kind of love and make the series so enjoyable. Plus, after getting super into these books, I realized it's never worth it to dislike or avoid something just because it's popular, or look down on people who do.

So yeah, that's my literary lesson of 2016: Give things a chance! Don't be cynical! Never apologize for liking things that some other jerk may think is corny or dumb! Consume media joyfully!

the 5 minute collage challenge

Hey! I'm excited to share this project with you. There's nothing better than an idea that just comes about organically and without a lot of forethought and turns out to be exactly what you needed. 

A few weeks ago I was interviewed, along with Lauren Caterson, for Caylee and Lauren's How She Creates podcast. Maybe I should be embarassed to admit this, but I haven't actually listened to our podcast yet because the sound of my own voice weirds me out. BUT, when we recorded it, Lauren and I briefly tossed out the idea of working on a collage for only 5 minutes a day. We thought if you set a timer and only allow yourself that small window it might be an easy way of making it to the page without a lot of pressure. 

Once the podcast released last week, I started our challenge. I want to shout this from the rooftops: this style of working is an amazing fit for me! I think I stumbled into some kind of magical workflow. 

The first day. 

Day two.

Day three. 

Day four. 

Day five. Look at that! 

I wouldn't say the end result is my favorite piece of art, but I loved that this process forced me to slow down and reassess my work daily. Lately I've tended to just barrel through things and call it done; part of this is because I do tend to prefer a more minimal look; but it's also because I'm frankly a little lazy. I'm looking forward to working this way for a while and see how it changes my processes. 

I invite you to test this challenge too! Feel free to share on instagram with the hasthag #5minutesofcollage. 

2014/2015

 

In 2014 I...

...loved walking David to school, singing Taize songs in church, going to Tuesday afternoon yoga, reading library books, and having picnics with Norah in the treehouse

...made a zine, dozens of paper packs, 20/26 of an illustrated alphabet, and countless art journal pages

...spent four happy & peaceful days in New York City with my mom

...left a lot of projects unfinished

...played a shameful amount of Candy Crush

In 2015 I will

...still love walking David to school, singing Taize songs in church, going to Tuesday afternoon yoga, reading library books, and having picnics with Norah in the treehouse

...make more zines, paper packs, and art journal pages

...finish my unfinished projects

...spend some happy (though probably not as peaceful) days on a yet to be determined family vacation

...not play a shameful amount of Candy Crush (I deleted the app in early December and it was one of my best decisions of the year)

You can see here that 2014 was actually pretty good and I don't have a lot of plans on changing that up in 2015. Taking care of my family, taking care of the house, making things, being kind, learning... that's all I want. Keeping it simple. 

Happy New Year to you, my friends.

mistakes & instincts

First, a story. 

On Sunday, I made a mistake. What I had thought would be a fun little good deed ended up being NOT good for a few people. Everything turned out okay in the end, but it could have been disastrous, and I spent half the afternoon crying and feeling awful about my actions. 

Yesterday morning, before any of this happened, as I drove through my neighborhood I saw a giant hawk swoop down and grab a small creature in it's talons and fly away again. I love seeing that kind of real wildness happen, a little nature magic in the middle of my suburban ordinaryness. And I immediately felt a pang of jealousy towards the animal kingdom. How would it be to live so elegantly and instinctively?

Being a human being, especially one trying to find the right way to live in our broken world, is so complicated sometimes. 

When I was working on this today, I realized that THIS is my glimpse of the hawk's instinctive life. Working on these pages turns my chattering, second guessing, nagging brain off, and something deeper breaks through. 

My newest methods of cutting up collages and rearranging them has been a surprisingly joyful and satisfying experience. I've learned that mistakes aren't an end, they're the begining of something new and usually better, more complex and more interesting. And realizing that through my work gives me hope that it can happen in life, too. 

(nothing ventured, nothing gained)

the blessing of a quiet house

I'm writing this from an almost completely silent house (with the exception of the Freakonomics podcast playing in the background.) On Sunday I drove my kids to my parents house, and on Monday I drove back home alone. They're getting half a week with grandma and grandpa and I'm getting a half a week to accomplish things. 

At first my expectations for these few days were sky high. I'm going to paint the kids rooms!! And sew a quilt! And clean the attic! And finish all of my letter drawings! Then I realized it would probably take me 2 weeks to do all those things. Even alone, I still only have 24 hours in a day. 

Having this unfettered time is strange. When I first arrived home yesterday, I made some paintings, watched a few episodes of 30 Rock, made a few quick little collages (the one above!). MIke and I went out for sushi and then watched this fascinating documentary about a cult in the 70s, The Source Family. I meant to wake up early today, but ended up sleeping until 9. Luxury! And now the day stretches out in front of me. 

I miss the kids, of course, but I can tell this quiet is going to do really good things for me this week.

daily contradictions: an artist's book

I'm excited to share a new project with you today. Making little books is one of my favorite things to do, though I don't complete them nearly as often as I'd like. So when I had the chance to work with one of the prompts from Kara Haupt's Tell a Story Class, I was super excited to have a reason / excuse to spend some time working on something I love. 

My initial concept for the book came from writing a list of things I regularly think to myself. And then I realized a lot of the things in the list were totally contradictory. So that's where my book of "daily contradictions" came from. Maybe this kind of thinking makes me crazy, I don't know, but it's the honest truth. 

Tomorrow I'll share a little more about my process and materials. 

Reading through all the prompts and learning some new techniques from Kara's class has ignited my passion for art journaling again. Getting some inspiration has given me about half dozen ideas for new projects. I highly recommend you check out the class. 

2013/2014

 

Things I am proud of in 2013

1. Not completely losing my mind or having a nervous breakdown after a drunk driver crashed through our house and then waiting the next 5 months for it to get back to normal.

2. Getting sketchbooks for my kids and drawing together on a regular basis. 

3. Making and producing my first zine, and finishing another one (almost ready, super excited to put it up on etsy this month).

4. Moving up to the advanced level in Derby Lite and scrimagging without breaking my leg. 

5. Never seeing the video of Miley Cyrus on the VMAs, and still not really knowing what Duck Dynasty is. (This is definitely something to be proud of, right?)

Goals for 2014

1. Licht Family Hot Dog Tour of Chicagoland! Mike and I decided we're going to visit all the most famous hot dog spots in the area this year. Chicagoans take their hot dogs pretty seriously so I'm curious to experience it all. 

2. Send (at least!) one letter or package every week. Sending mail has become something that brings me a lot of joy and I want to remember this and continue to do it. 

3. Learn how to do a hockey stop on my roller skates. 

4. Teach David to read, teach Norah to write her name. 

5. Go on an art retreat or just go on a solo vacation for a few days. 2013 dried up every bit of my creative reserves and I'm yearning to refill them. 

Happy New Year, friends. 

our august 2013

today we are driving to Iowa to attend my paternal grandfather's funeral. 

and maybe sometime I'll tell you the story about the drunk driver that crashed through our house, totalling both our cars and wrecking the garage and part of our living room. 

it's been a weird month, our August 2013. a month of patience, lessons, prayers, tears. i don't know what else to say, really, because I'm tired of talking about it and am ready for a little reflective silence on all that's passed. I wanted to write though and just mark this month here. 

thanks for reading & thanks for caring. 

the long view

I'm convinced that even if I had a full week of no other responsiblities, no kids to take care of, no meals to cook, I STILL wouldn't have time to accomplish all the projects I've got bumping around in my brain. Here's just a few, though I'm sure I could think of dozens more...

House stuff: Cleaning out the attic. Reorganizing my art closet. Repainting and redecorating David's room. Really SCRUBBING the inside and outside of our gross old kitchen cabinets. Washing the windows. 

Art stuff: finishing an artist's book I started like a year ago. Making an art piece for our bedroom wall. Doing a Project Life-style scrapbook of our summer. Screenprinting some cards of that design in my sketchbook (above). And I've been thinking about writing an art journalling e-course. 

Also, of course, I wouldn't mind sleeping like 12 hours a day, going out for long sushi dinners with Mike, getting a pedicure, renting a canoe for an afternoon. 

We can be real though. Not too many of these things are going to happen, at least not right now. The part of me that's itchy to Do Everything! is pretty well balanced by the part of me that takes the long view, so I don't mind too terribly. These things will get done, sometime, and if they don't, maybe they didn't need to be anyway. 

Do you have these kinds of dream to-do lists in your brain, too? I'd love to hear yours.