My computer means a lot to me, because I can use it to communicate and play games with my friends during quarantine.
I built it myself, so I am able to to fix any problems I may have, and I know its capabilities when performing tasks. Building it myself also makes it feel more earned because I had to research the parts and devise a build that worked together and fit within my budget, and I had to figure out how to physically put it all together.
These are some of my tools – brushes, sticks, wires, knives - anything I can use to move paint around. The shape of a brush is designed for a specific purpose, but I use my tools in whatever way will get the results I want.
I love buying brushes. There are 59¢ Chinese brushes from the hardware store, $75 handmade squirrel hair brushes for watercolor, rubber scrapers from Daiso, and stubs of brushes I used at 8 years old. It’s important to take care of your tools. Sometimes I think I spend more time cleaning and conditioning brushes than I spend painting.
Recent days have been similar to my norm. My work hasn’t changed. But I’ve been remotely coaching a friend, a scenic artist, helping her develop an abstract style. She and I have also collaborated on paintings for the USPS Art Project, an on-line artist-organized event created to bring awareness to the importance of the Post Office.
Painting is something I have done my whole life. It’s not mysterious, magical or sacred. There’s no meaning or message in what I produce. I paint because I paint, and I like to share it. I like showing people my studio, and was glad Kirk asked to photograph me here, the place I go to work.
I went to visit my friend Chloe right before the shutdown. She is a longtime career nanny, and so playtime always feels available when she is around. She had an extra hula hoop lying around from one of the kids she cares for, a child's hoop, and we started spinning together, several feet apart with our masks on.
All these memories came flooding back from my childhood: how much I loved hula hooping when I was a kid, how free I felt, and joyful. I felt like a child as I spun the hoop as an adult. I felt how wide I was smiling while I spun. So I just started hula hooping most every day.
It has evolved into more like dancing than simply spinning the hoop. I love moving with music, playing with slow and fast beats, my own little dance party. Spiral up and spiral down, I like the steady, pulsing rhythm you have to do or the hoop falls. The push from the ground through the feet to the whoosh of the pelvis. Grounding and consistent. It feels like a trance. And it feels like a massage, the constant pressure against my waist and hips. Round and round and round.
But mostly it's the feeling of making and being encircled in spirals, so fun and so familiar. It sets my mind at ease.
