Hi Friends,

I have been diving back into the work of Louise Bourgeois. I previously wrote about the assemblage tower sculptures of Cy Twombly, which helped me recall Bourgeois’ tower sculptures known as the Personages. Much like Twombly, her pieces are not rigid monoliths—they are made from stacked pieces of material. They are modular sculptures, with materials assembled together designed to be viewed in different environments.

When I think about the tower as a form, associations of rigidity, firmness, reaching upward, achieving height, come through. But the tower can also represent protection and defense. Lookout towers are used to see further out, and to fortify areas of a landscape. They are assertive in an environment. Towers present a type of structural stability, a way to guard resources and lift things higher off of the ground. The tower is also the first thing children learn to build when playing with blocks. It is a simple structure, one that is stacked and can be built easily, but also can lose balance and tumble over. In some ways, the tower brings you back to a simple structure, almost foundational.

Where Cy Twombly’s towers were often precariously built, focusing on themes of careful stability and balance, Bourgeois’ works are vertical and secure, stacked like a backbone or spine and secured to a steal base. Some of the earlier works were carved out of wood, made out of a single piece of material. Her works were built to human scale, mimicking the human body, hence the title Personages.

I became interested in what the works were responding to in her personal life, what conditions she was living in that encouraged her to make them. The works were made when she was a young mother living in a small New York City apartment. In a sense, the tower works were made as a way to seek liberation from a confined environment. She made the works on the roof of her apartment. She expressed, “Suddenly, I had this huge sky space to myself and I began doing these standing figures.”1

Although the tower is often associated with more masculine modern structures: tall buildings, skyscrapers, water towers, transmission towers, her works were often displayed in interior domestic environments. They were concerned with feminine qualities of responsiveness and agility. The piece, Memling Dawn, “stands ready to protect itself from all sides. According to Bourgeois, the separate sections function as antennae.”2

In some ways, there’s a type of internal radar she is describing. Her pieces are not rigid, they have adaptability, and even vulnerability that is held by a secure base. Later in her life she built the towers out of tapestries and textiles, stuffed fabric, building similar modular structures. But these held more softness, and perhaps revealed a greater comfort within her domestic environment and habitat.

Bourgeois writes about the potential of materials to describe how the human body adapts: “its changes, transformations, what it needs, wants and feels—its functions. What it perceives and undergoes, what it performs. What it feels and what protects it— its habitat.”3

Thank you for reading,

~Liza

Hi Friends,

Earlier this week I went on a hike at one of my favorite trails, one I return to frequently. It is extra lush this time of year, and completely secluded in the mornings making the Alabama heat tolerable. As I was approaching the end of my hike, I must have turned down a different path without realizing, a beautiful and full meadow opened up. It was buzzing with life and bugs. I was struck by its full energy, and almost missed a small gravel path to my right, about a foot wide. I decided to follow the pathway. It led me to a lush garden planted with herbs and wildflowers. I kept walking down the path, almost like I was in a dream, it led me to a shaded spot with a swing. The garden was neither perfect, nor neatly trimmed, but felt like a world hidden within a world.

I sat on the swing, amazed that I had never happened upon this spot before. Nobody could see me, away from the trailhead, but I could see the other morning walkers passing by—blissfully unaware of the magical little garden sitting right outside of their peripheral vision.

The moment made me think of the Secret Garden, a book I read as a child. In the story, an orphan is sent to live at her aunt’s estate—a cold and lifeless house— full of rooms that have been abandoned after the aunt died. The young girl is told she must stay in her room. The child is a trickster energy, going against the rules and strict order of the house. She opens doors and finds passageways leading to untouched rooms full of dusty treasures. In search of places to play, she wanders outside and finds a walled garden, covered in ivy. The garden isn’t visible and hasn’t been entered for years.

A robin appears and shows her the locked door to the garden that is hidden under thick vines. The girl returns to the house and finds a large key tucked inside of a jewelry box. The key isn’t hard to find— it’s almost sitting in plain sight. She takes the key and runs back to the garden to unlock the door where she discovers what appears to be a dead garden. But the garden isn’t dead—it’s dormant. The season is winter. All of the brown plants that appear lifeless have green underneath the stems.

A boy she befriends assures her that there will be life, lots of it, in the spring. She returns to the garden day after day, tending to it, weeding, and uncovering what is there. The garden becomes a place of safety, freedom, and spontaneity. It is also a place where rules are broken, the strict confines of the house are left behind. Life is restored within the walls of the garden.

This story made me think about the importance of having a place to go to where you can cultivate the things you want. A place that is removed from outside noise and the demands of life. The word generative comes to mind— a place that has the ability to give rise to something new, where “results” matter less. It is the energy that is generated there that matters, that helps conjure new ideas and new energy.

Thanks for reading,

~Liza

Hi Friends,

Earlier this week, I was sitting outside at 9:00pm enjoying my evening ritual which includes sitting on my front porch and listening to the summer bugs—cicadas, crickets, with the occasional hum of a distant air conditioning unit. The only interruption is a pause to swat a mosquito getting too comfortable. It is my favorite time when the sun has set, the dark shifts the body into greater ease, and the noise of the day starts to dwindle. The occasional dog walker passes by, and there is a quiet, unspoken recognition of each other.

This year has had a particular level of mental energy to it. There are the activities of the day, then there are quiet moments in between, but a certain prevailing restlessness seems ever present. A force that moves, even when everything else has stopped. Dizzying, and at times agitating, like the relentless ticking of a metronome keeping time.

As I was sitting on my stoop, I noticed a figure walking back and forth, pacing the outdoor stairwell of the apartment building across the street. Back and forth, back and forth, an unstoppable motion.

I recognized the figure to be a woman. The same woman I see every morning who has become a companion of sorts. I don’t know her name, we have never spoken, but each morning our daily rituals align as she waters the potted plants along her balcony, and sweeps fallen leaves. In this moment, I caught her pacing the short line of the outdoor breezeway. Her steps were quick, determined, and repetitive. As I watched the restless and methodical steps, I thought to myself: this is also a picture of the mind.

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Hi Friends,

The start of July has brought forward a meditation on “blankness.” Not emptiness, or something that is devoid of substance, but a surface that is open, fresh, new, and receptive. I know when I feel blankness in my own life, like a freshly primed canvas, my stance is often to decide quickly how to fill it. A blank surface can move me into action, but I have been leaning more towards blankness as a quality that allows something new to reveal itself at a slower pace.

I have been diving into the sculptures of Cy Twombly. His found object sculptures, made of collected everyday materials, are assembled into stacks. The surfaces are washed over with a thick layer of plaster and white paint, removing clues to the objects’ former uses. Pieces of material that may at first glance resemble junk, are repositioned and given a clean slate of white paint.

The shades of white leave the surfaces blank, opening up the structures to new interpretations and combinations of meaning. Over a ten year timespan, Twombly made many iterations of these sculptures and most of them are “Untitled.” Even the lack of titling strips away excess information, leaving no clues to their former context, only the year they were made in differentiates each sculpture. This allows the work to be read in a very open-ended and intuitive way.

Twombly’s upbringing in rural Virginia creates some context clues for the types of objects he used—pieces of wooden crates, wood feeding troughs, rakes, broken bits of farming tools, canoe paddles, as well as building materials like nails, wire, and buckets. All of which are remnants that could easily be thrown away, swept aside into a trash pile. But Twombly is recentering what might be discarded, and creating mini-monuments of these objects.

This encouraged me to reflect on how painful experiences or even experiences that seem “unimportant” might preferably be discarded. Tossed aside like a broken rake, an object some might consider useless, Twombly centers these domestic artifacts as having greater potential to examine and study.

The information that is there is encouraged to be evaluated in a new way. Not discarded, but given new importance, and a placement within a structure.

“The sculptures rest in themselves, protect themselves, and the information they conceal within.” -Carla Schulz-Hoffman1

The inconspicuousness of these sculptures seems to mirror his own studio. It is described as “rather inauspicious. As one store among a row it is located on a shopping street in downtown Lexington. The single-story building consists of just a medium sized room and a small one in the back...lowered blinds prevent glances inside. There is no sign, no trademark, no nameplate to reveal that in the midst of this small town bustle there hides a cell of creativity.”2

Like a relic to a former journey, the sculptures hold the tension between past and present, stillness and motion, what is collected and what is discarded.

Twombly’s gestures seem to offer that a coat of paint, or a “blank surface” can reposition something old, discarded, and outdated. He finds something new, invigorating even, in what has previously been rendered debris and broken bits.

Thanks for reading,

~Liza

Hi Friends,

I have been returning to the work of German artist, Anselm Kiefer. He is a longtime favorite of mine although his work can be difficult to approach. His work explores landscapes that are both mournful and hopeful, revealing destruction, transformation, and potential. He holds contradictions with ease while these dichotomies exist in space together. I have been enamored with his sunflower seed paintings— very large monumental paintings that depict towering sunflowers.

The sunflower often appears as a giant plant that is showering the ground with its seeds. The painting above, titled Sol Invictus, means “Unconquered Sun.” The painting’s iconography shows a giant sunflower raining seeds down on the artist’s reclined body. The seeds disperse in the air, showering him in a dust storm or field of potential.

This piece brings to mind a lot. In a moment of change, internal and external, it shows the artist at rest. I have been reminded of rest as an important metabolizer for change. Writer Matthew Biro speaks to this painting, “the dark sunflower implies new ways for spirit and matter to interpenetrate.” 1 Perhaps implying that in order for important shifts to take place, retreat is necessary.

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Hi Friends,

Welcome back. I am returning to you with a fun interview I did with artist Jakob Dwight from Mobile, AL. It is the start of a new series of studio conversations with artists that I look forward to sharing. We talk about solitude, working from a landscape saturated by new technologies, the Deep South, and healing.

LB: Remind me, are you in Mobile, AL?

JD: I’m in Mobile. Maybe 15 minutes from the water. It’s not the beach, it’s the mouth of the Dog River that opens up into the bay. It’s really part of the reason why I’ve stayed down here. The water, the trees. It’s all I really need.

LB: One thing I’ve been thinking about are the kind of reclusive tendencies of artists. I live in the city that I grew up in, Birmingham, AL, so I have a good community around me that always feels like this kind of web of support, even if I’m not totally plugged into it. When I’m in really focused periods of work, I sort of need to close everything off. It’s almost like I have to draw the windows down so I can be hyper-focused on just the information I’m working from. Do you have similar tendencies?

JD: Oh, definitely. I mean the internet helps me keep in touch.

LB: You and I both spent time in our 20’s living in Brooklyn and decided to move back South. We now both live in an area that most people would call the Deep South. We’re away from city centers and the art world center. In some ways, that kind of isolation automatically can put us in this category of being considered outsider artists. Do you feel like you’re up against that or is that a lineage you are working from?

JD: I had a show in Birmingham and a woman came up to me who was from there and she said that the show made her proud to be from Birmingham. It was the first thing that really made her feel like Birmingham is a different place than the history. Literally all people know worldwide is dogs, burning and bombing, and the last century. When she said that it made me happy and more determined. New York is all transplants, as far as the artworld. Everyone there is from somewhere else so it’s funny that once they start living there they’d look down on people from somewhere else. All my life I’ve dealt with group membership stigma. Blackness, maleness, straightness now even. I enjoy breaking those stigmas and being what people don’t expect. I also like to challenge the centrality of New York. Art has been here for more than 300,000 years. It’s the first expression of consciousness. So why should we be centered anywhere?

LB: I think something that I have found since moving back South is there’s a different sense of time here. Time really slows down, it’s not so compressed. Do you agree with this, or do you think that time does operate differently in different places?

JD: Yeah, I have a weird relationship with time. Because I had a brain tumor and neurological damage from the removal surgery, it threw me into circadian chaos.

I’m a night owl, I sleep whenever I can but sleep well and for good lengths of time, just on a highly variable schedule. I do feel like here you can own your own time. I remember in New York when I first got there, you go out to party at 10pm and just drop in for a minute, and then the train slows you down, and lines, and you don’t get home till 4am. There’s an idea in physics about time dilation. So many things go into it as far as enjoyment of your time, psychological flow, if you’re really into something it seems you lose track of time.

LB: In reading about your work you speak of making work from images of glitches. You had a hard drive crash where you lost years of digital work. In some ways we think of technology as being really expansive and limitless. It can create this illusion, but there’s very real limitations that we face from technology that we’re really seeing now in this post-pandemic world. How fragmented our social fabric has become. With great expansion, you also lose things. How do you think this impacts artists?

JD: I started digital art in ’99. It was really for making commercials and ads for painting shows and a game app I was developing. I was also working for graphic designer friends that were getting into their careers and getting busier and busier. I’m a night owl and a selective perfectionist when I’m working on something so I couldn’t be calling these people at 2’clock in the morning saying, “can you move that period or pixel over?” So I had to teach myself and then I found that digital was a good way to compose for paintings.

But I think for artists overall, with AI for instance, it’s going to drive a new sensibility for being human. For instance, the flatter a work is or the less complex, the closer it is to being AI or something that AI can do.

LB: You were included in an exhibition called Disguise at the Seattle Museum of Art. The show explored the art of disguise as it relates to African art and black identities. As a tool to amplify or conceal identities through masks and costumes. But I’m curious how you see this as it relates to social media. On some level, we’re all operating under constant disguise behind the veil of the screen. We can choose what people see and how things are presented. There’s a lack of authenticity. Do you respond to this at all?

JD: I have been thinking a lot about the writing of Erving Goffman. He talks about impression management theory that says that the ultimate fear is the fear of social death - not being accepted, or belonging or remembered, and that’s how I look at social media.

Terror management was developed from impression management theory and took an existential view. The ultimate fear is the fear of death and uncertainty. None of us knows what death feels like so it’s not really possible for us to fear it. So the theory is fun to play with on an existential level, but I was interested to find out that Terror management is also why people tend to group themselves into such distinct in-group/out-groups. I’m going back to those stigmas, rural versus urban, or new york versus everyone else. It’s that core uncertainty that can be fought by dwindling the eight billion in the world down to smaller groups. As far as hate, it’s not really in the brain. We are a pro-social species. We’re wired for one another and that’s been proven in neurology, psychology, evolutionary biology. So there is not real shared or individual hate but more of a seeking to belong and be respected, and remembered for something by one’s in-group.

LB: Both of our works are dealing with landscape in some sense, definitely not in a traditional sense. A lot of your images appear to come from satellite images, images of space. But we’re both making paintings of what I would call, “hard to map regions.” Territories that we maybe wouldn’t visit physically, places that are considered more mythical spiritual regions that we’re inhabiting in our work. Do you think that people are more open to those kinds of ideas now that we have such integration with technology? It’s maybe expanded our sense of reality.

JD: Yea definitely. We’re animated with that now. Think about how little people go outside. People want that ancient universal core of humanness. To see and connect with trees, sky, this is what we come from. Especially with the loneliness epidemic. That’s kind of my perverse excitement, that people are looking for real depth again after having seen emptiness. That should be exciting to all artists.

LB: The South is unique because there isn’t an assumption that everyone shares the same political beliefs. When you’re in a bigger city like San Francisco, New York, these places that are very blue and very progressive, there’s kind of a collective assumption about a belief system. I feel like living in the Deep South, I’m constantly seeing both perspectives, not that I agree with both, but there is a confrontation with a broader reality. How do you think that impacts you as an artist?

JD: Alabama is very red and has been. People not from here don’t know what to expect, but they think they do. Again, I like breaking down expectations. I have no accent so most people wouldn’t guess I’m from Alabama. There isn’t a strong social pull to have to think one way here. It doesn’t really affect my work, but it’s subliminal.

LB: It’s so subliminal, it’s completely there.

JD: Yea exactly.

LB: My last question, you survived a brain tumor as a child. That’s been a big part of your own personal development, learning how to adapt. I read that you are now left handed because your right side was partially paralyzed (partial paresis). This got me thinking how the artist’s journey seems to be so much about adapting to limitations that are imposed on us. Whether that’s financial or geographical limitations, and using that as starting points rather than the stopping point. How does this influence your practice?

JD: Well, I started painting when I was 10. I have always looked at painting with a certain level of objectivity. Almost like I’m observing and recording, it has nothing to do with me. I think the best art doesn’t necessarily come from trauma. Directly. I’ve never really liked that narrative. But in my case I have no choice but to work through trauma in my work. I have too intense of a history, too many things beyond my control. The surgery is something I think about everyday. I have partial paralysis on my right side of body and have had this since back then. So in the studio I am reminded at all times, I have equipment (a shunt) in my body that I see every morning brushing my teeth. I would like to not be as affected, or to have this ever-present memory but it’s kind of unavoidable.

LB: Yea part of being human is having this broad range of experience. You can’t erase it.

JD: I think with some of my new paintings I can see the anger in the work, in my lines and how I am drawing but hopefully anger is not the main thing viewers sense in them.

LB: But that’s good. I think anger is such an activator. Obviously, it can become an obstacle, and it can become stagnated and kind of destructive. But I also think it’s an activator.

JD: Well what happens when you’re healed? When you’re no longer angry? Are you not painting in the same way, or painting at all?

LB: I guess I view healing as infinite. It never ends. It’s a continual process until we die. Because we’re a constantly transforming people, with constantly moving experience that brings new frustration, new pain, new difficulties, all of that.

Thanks for reading!

~Liza

Hi Friends,

A big theme in my own artistic practice over the past several years has been steadiness. I used to get in the studio and work for very long hours, working myself to the bone, forcing myself to recover for a few days after. I would push hard for deadlines, and put everything else, including self-care to the side. This strategy wasn’t going to be sustainable long-term, and my body communicated this to me in a myriad of ways.

Learning slow, steady work habits has challenged the part of myself that likes to plunge into things. Patience and consistency, and putting off the need for instant gratification and results has been hugely important (and challenging).

One way this has shown up for me over the years is through rejections. Most artists deal with rejection if they are putting their work out there at all. Some rejections feel like another email that needs to go into the trash bin—a nuisance, an eye roll, and onto the next thing. Others have a particular sting. The stingy ones usually have something hidden inside of them: a message, a new direction, or a push towards deeper commitment to developing the work.

Often, it is not the rejection that carries the weight, but what the rejection can push you towards, or the wake up calls imbedded in it. Sometimes it is a particular direction that has been pursued that really isn’t in alignment, and needs to fall away so you can align with something that has less ego around it, and actually fits better. Other times, it is a confrontation with the self, and the rejection asks for a deeper level of commitment to the work, stepping away from external validation.

I recently watched a 2019 rendition of Pinocchio directed by Matteo Garrone. The story perfectly illustrates this idea of steadiness versus instant gratification. In the story, an old impoverished toymaker makes a wooden puppet. The puppet comes to life with a very mischievous spirit constantly falling into trouble.

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Hi Friends,

A memory from childhood came up recently. I was about 11, and very briefly joined the swim team. I was a good swimmer, but not interested in competitive sports. My parents convinced me to swim in one swim meet— I just had to do one. At the meet, I stood on the edge of the pool ready to dive in, except I got so nervous that I forgot to put my goggles on. I dove in the water at the clock along with the other swimmers, but realized quickly I had not placed my goggles over my eyes and tried to swim freestyle with my head above water. This strategy was a flop and I was coughing getting water in my mouth and eyes, and decided very quickly I would not be doing another competitive swim meet, even though I continued to love swimming.

Maybe this moment was insight into the future as I often approach life like this: just dive in, trust you can swim, you may not do it perfectly, but you will get to the other side, and there will likely be some really cool things that meet you. Even if it’s just the other pool ledge, and you think, “thank god, made it through that.” Ha!

I’ve been reflecting on how chapters in our lives close and open. Endings are like a screen going blank, relationships might filter out, maybe very conscious decisions are made around leaving environments or stepping away from things that don’t reflect who we are now, and where we want to go. But the terror in waiting for new things to fill in the space is real. It’s not the walking away that is scary, it is the middle space of what is to come that can make you want to swim right back to that first ledge and not take a dive in the first place. The familiar—maybe I’ll just hangout in the kiddy pool where I know my toes can touch the ground.

In an image making process, there must be patience for the full image to emerge and come into clarity. Sometimes a game plan is needed, and other times an intuitive approach where instincts take over logical thinking is the most fruitful. I found an image of Jack Whitten’s studio notes from 1983. In fact, I opened the book to this very page that is titled, Battle Plan, and I felt called out! The last notation, in all caps spelled, YOU MUST STOP THINKING.

There of course is a huge difference between hasty choices and calculated, considered leaps. But as I settle in with my morning coffee and write my own battle plan, I know it must include diving in and swimming away from the ledge.

Here’s to swimming freestyle with your head above water,

~Liza

Hi Friends,

I recently picked up an old book that was given to me in my twenties, Hold Still, Sally Mann’s memoir about her life as an artist in the South. My copy is banged up, probably from being shoved into a backpack on many train rides when I was commuting from Brooklyn to Jersey City. I most definitely read this book while feeling homesick. On second read, I realize it probably had major influence on my choice to move back South. Even if it was quietly informing me in the background.

Rereading it encouraged me to reflect on pivotal choices I’ve made, that in the moment maybe felt like a leap of faith, or quite the opposite— seemed insignificant like a brush with fate, but turned out to redirect the course of things in a major way.

One of the things Sally speaks to that resonates with me is the importance of place. Finding a sense of place, that can open up worlds creatively for you in how you resonate with it. Her home in the South, specifically her farm, turned out to be the source or “wellspring” from which most of her adult work was made. Place or home from her perspective isn’t just a practical dwelling, it is material to work from that is imbued with some sort of magic.

She had a close friendship with Cy Twombly, another artist who lived near her in Lexington, VA. In an interview Cy talked about the notion of returning home when you get older.

“I’ve found when you get old you must return to certain things in the beginning, or things you have a sentiment for or something. Because your life closes up in so many ways or doesn’t become as flexible or exciting or whatever you want to call it.”

I guess circling back around to books or places the second time, is my way of finding clues. It also seems to bring forth revelations about what might have been formative, and what natural inclinations I had early on that turn out to be strong indicators of what I would pursue, and conversely, what I’d decide might not feel so important.

Happy April,

~Liza

Hi Friends,

When I was in London last December, Kerry James Marshall’s painting De Style became a fixation point for me. The painting’s title references the post-war Dutch art movement called De Stijl, which translates to “the style.” The painter Piet Mondrian was one of the leaders of the movement. I first encountered Mondrian when I was in 5th or 6th grade and showed up to Thanksgiving dinner where my aunt had her nails painted white with black grids. She informed me that they were inspired by Mondrian. Of course I remembered this—art history through nail design! If you grew up listening to the White Stripes like I did, you may be familiar with their album called De Stijl.

Despite many pop culture references to Mondrian, and the commercialization of his work and style (similar to Warhol), his austere gridded paintings emerged out of a more spiritual pursuit of finding the “universal” in a broken and fragmented post-war era.

Mondrian’s life was directly influenced by the First World War, where he was forced to remain in Holland despite efforts to move to France. Later during World War II, he was living in Paris and was forced to flee to England briefly, ultimately moving to America where he arrived in Oct 1940.

He moved from place to place in all of this change where he navigated culture shock and political upheaval. His art and style remained as some sort of evolutionary backbone.

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Nothing is less real than realism,

details are confusing. It is only

by selection, by elimination, by emphasis

that we get to the real meaning

of things.

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1922

Hi Friends,

A quick note from my current post. I have been in “pruning” mode. The start of this month has encouraged me to really cut back on excess noise, look at my routines, clean out my closets, and get oriented with some new structures. I have been rearranging my space to help my workflow, and landed on Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in the process.

Looking at artist’s homes and work spaces always reveals clues about how they were living. Georgia spent the last four decades of her life full-time in New Mexico, after her partner Alfred Stieglitz died. Previously, she lived between New York and New Mexico, spending spring and summers in the desert.

Her interest in the desert mirrored her approach to image making. She was concerned with an approach that eliminated extraneous information. Her process was a pairing back to find what is essential. She would draw many iterations of a subject until she understood its form thoroughly. Information was distilled, cut back, and refined. A refreshing approach that feels important now within the information age we live in.

“within this intensity [of the desert] the extraneous is eliminated.”1

Her work process reminded me that simplicity is not achieved immediately. It requires thoughtfulness, sometimes great familiarity with something, and the ability to decide what is not important and to leave that behind.

I think we often experience simplicity today as an emptiness, or a lack of activity. We don’t like it. There is an impulse to fill voids with busy activities or material things, a result of modernity which often emphasizes what is next.

Towards the end of Georgia’s life she made a series of paintings depicting space that is captured through the holes in bones. She was painting negative space. Her focus shifted to what was revealed by the absence of something. Maybe the absence is presented as an opening or portal where energy can move, and space can open up.

Here’s to more focused simplicity.

“Real simplicity is the result of many considerations.”

Thanks for reading,

-Liza

Hi Friends,

Maybe it’s the low-tech visuals of 1990’s movies that have been holding my attention; scenes that have unsophisticated effects and feel like magazine collages I made in middle school. I’ve been drawn to the kitschy cinematic energy and have been going down a rabbit hole of watching fairytales. Alice in Wonderland, a well known story in the public zeitgeist, but also an odd one full of surreal coded messages. Like me, maybe you’ve never watched it from beginning to end. There are about 10 different versions, but I landed on the 90’s rendition.

In this version, the film opens with 12 year-old Alice at a party at her parent’s house where she is expected to sing for the party guests. She does not want to sing or perform in front of an audience. Alice runs away from the party and hides under a tree, escaping the rules and expectations the adult world is pressing on her. While hiding, a strange rabbit with a clock appears. A clock starts to ding, indicating the passage of time, or the pressures of time on our development.

Alice is enamored with the rabbit and chases after him, finding herself in a tunnel underneath the tree, where she quickly falls into a strange underworld, separating her from the known world of her family and her childhood. She steps into an initiation of sorts, the underland of the subconscious where ego development occurs through various encounters, challenges, and trials. This is where the story begins.

Alice lands in a corridor with many doors—choices that she can make, direction to choose. She feels lost and confused, each mysterious door leading to another. Some doors open, some do not.

She finds a miniature key sitting on a table that opens a doll-sized door. Behind the door there is a beautiful but starkly one dimensional garden. Bright green with perfectly trimmed hedges, it is artificial and fantasy-like. Deciding that it looks like a “safe and happy place to hide” from the real world expectations, she is determined to enter.

Throughout the movie, Alice takes a series of potions and sweets that change her size from miniature to larger than life, shrinking her or expanding her size to help her reach different doors. These tonics and potions indicate the ego’s ability to adapt and grow, to face the world around us, or the ways we regress and shrink into childlike states.

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Hi Friends,

A couple weeks ago, I received news that my family had lost my uncle, who left us unexpectedly without warning. It got me reflecting on the aftershock of moments like this for people who are dealing with loss. As an artist, I am always leaning towards finding meaning from moments that are charged with heaviness or a particular weight. It is hard to think of the right soothing balm for family members who are dealing with bereavement. What do you offer when a sudden event creates a cataclysmic change in someone’s life?

How do you hold neatly the experience of grief that is messy and deep? This got me thinking about symbols. One of the earliest tools I learned as an artist is symbol. Symbols appear in many art forms. They often show up as an image that becomes a container to hold complexity. People need symbols in grief, but also during periods of change. Something representational is needed that can anchor an experience that might be filled with confusion or overwhelm.

Animal totems and symbolism have been an interest of mine for many years. There is comfort in finding the ways ancient cultures look to the natural world for help. Death in ancient cultures is not something so severed off from the living, it is interwoven in their mythologies and rituals, as part of life on earth and as a connector between worlds. The spirit realm and the earthly realms are often connected and commune together.

Recently, the turtle has appeared to me as a symbol. The turtle is a symbol of steadiness and grounding. It is very ancient, appearing in world religions like Hinduism and Native American traditions. In nature, turtles are often found sunbathing on rocks, sitting on the earth, blending in with their hard shell. They move very slowly, associating their energy with earth, yet they have the ability to dive deeply into the water and go underwater into the depths for long periods of time. The turtle is a link between worlds.

I love turtle symbolism as it also points to self-protection, home, and security. The hard shell of the turtle is a container that contains the vulnerable body of the turtle on its journey, it points to inner-security and containment, a home on your back. Many of us grew up knowing the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. An old fable that feels especially relevant right now with the speed of this year charging ahead.

In this story, the tortoise is made fun of for how slowly he moves. The hare, confident and arrogant, challenges the tortoise to a race certain that he will win. As the hare charges ahead, he decides to take a nap to wait on the slow moving tortoise. But in his sleep, the tortoise catches up to him and finishes the race before the hare can wake up. The lessons here being about not overlooking small steady actions, instead of emphasizing swiftness that can leave you blind.

Or in the Hindu creation myth, the Churning of the Milky Ocean, the turtle is pictured as holding the world on its back. The Hindu deity Vishnu, is reincarnated as a turtle to preserve the cosmic order. The gods and demons churned the milky ocean because they wanted to acquire the Nectar of Immortality. The tortoise steadied the churning oceans and created stability as the world formed on its back. His humped shell is pictured as the foundation of Mount Mandara where the world was formed.

Perhaps your own life feels like the churning of the milky oceans, or possibly you are lucky to be sitting in a position of stability, where a gentle dance of community can return the cosmic order.

Thanks for being here!

~Liza

Hi Friends,

January is a time of year when things are laid bare. Tree branches widely visible in plain sight reveal exactly what is underneath—the skeletal structure. There are less activities, the energy is dialed back, and you are left with what is. Sometimes the honesty of that presents in plain sight things you don’t want to see, or things you missed during busier seasons. Clarity is available, although not always an easy pill to swallow.

The painting above is an early career painting by artist Kerry James Marshall. Made in 1990, it predates most of his work that gained more notoriety. It also was made at the beginning of a decade where his career took off. But I was drawn to it as the title spoke to me.

When Frustration Threatens Desire. I have been thinking about desire in terms of our intentions, the way we want to spend our energy, how we want our focus to be dialed in. What happens when the areas of our life that we want to be devoted to get pulled on and pressed on? Interruptions and obstacles present that distort our focus and pull us away from center, or away from what we wish to prioritize. For me, that is my work in the studio.

The painting shows imagery of a magician levitating a figure amidst magical symbols, referencing voodoo practices. The title of the painting comes from Paul Garon’s book, Blues and the Poetic Spirit: “Magic is evoked when frustration threatens desire.”1

Obstacles, even internal ones, often don’t feel like magic. Rather they feel like dead weights, or an internal pin-ball machine pushing us around from one thing to the next. When time and focus that is important to us gets challenged, threatened, or tested, these moments reveal with stark honesty what we wish to protect—our peace of mind, sanity, ability to work on the things that matter to us.

In a recent video I saw of artist Howardena Pindell, she spoke about this and said, “when you see something happening that could possibly affect you, you don’t know if it will continue affecting you. But do what is precious to you, even if you have to keep it to yourself for a while.”2

Maybe the magic in these moments is in what gets clarified, what we learn we must protect. I wouldn’t know, but you probably can’t levitate a figure without a lot of focus and intention. January has brought me back into a grounded space where I am thinking about the bare bones. My routines, the structure in my day that allows me to stay in balance, how I want to move from one thing to the next with clarity, and the quality of my energy so I can create.

Here’s to overcoming obstacles to our desires.

Stay Warm,

Liza

Hi Friends,

Happy New Year! Months ago I went to the Victor and Rolf Fashion Statements exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta, GA. The exhibition is full of whimsy and play, unserious costumes that brought me a sense of spontaneity. It lifted the mood, just what I needed amidst the upheavals 2025 presented.

As I walked through the exhibit, I was drawn to these gowns—fabulous, and over the top, with big letters spelling, “NO,” like a command a 2 year old might say to you, not overly complicated, just instinctual. Yes and no, two simple answers that open the way in one direction, and close the way in another. Sometimes “yes” and “no” are too simplistic, leaving little room for “maybe” or gray areas. But there is a sense of direction with the two words.

It got me thinking about messaging. The messaging we send out, the signals we give to others around us. Instructing people what we are open to and what we are not. As we lean more into the things we want to be doing, want to be creating in our lives, and the space we need to do so, energy gets directed through these two portals: yes and no. Yes I’ll do that, no I won’t do this.

In 2025 as I faced changes, I found myself getting caught on small decisions. Minutia and details became tripping points for my mind. Some people call this overthinking. I found myself looking widely at all different possibilities, wondering where my usual self-certain compass went—who threw it overboard. I needed it back.

One day as I was stuck with a full day, time on my hands, a to-do list, and mental fog that didn’t want to arrange itself into a clear pattern, I decided my solution was going to be to make two note cards. One with the word yes, and one with the word no. I would ask a simple yes/no question out loud, shuffle the cards, and pick one. That is how I started the day.

Although this little game works for small, insignificant life decisions, it maybe isn’t the best for bigger ones. But it brought spontaneity back into my life as someone who can be overly-regimented at times.

A few weeks ago when I was in London, I went to one of my favorite vintage markets. It is an underground world of vintage vendors, full of every item of clothing you can think of. There are no windows, no sunlight, and a winding path leading you from one vendor booth to another. Spaces like this would usually turn me claustrophobic. But the dizzying array of fabrics and vintage clothes is my personal playground.

I knew I needed a strategy otherwise I would get overwhelmed and make no decisions, so I brought a set amount of cash and gave myself an hour to spend in the market. I had 2 things to accomplish: spend the cash, and get out of there by 4pm.

What happened was fun to witness. I felt my decision making speed up, I filtered through racks and racks of clothing much easier, and I did not linger anywhere I wasn’t truly curious about. I walked past a lot of vendors, and spent more time in booths where I saw something that truly peaked my curiosity or where I had an interesting interaction with someone.

A man I purchased a coat from told me that he offers the “full service.” Before I realized what was happening, he had placed my shopping bags in a chair, put the coat on me, tied the waist, and convinced me I was ready to leave the market with coat in hand. I said yes, paid up quickly in cash, and went on my way to the next stop. No hemming and hawing, no overthinking, it felt right and I went with it.

Guidelines. Guidelines speed decision making and filter through overwhelm. Yes and no are true simple guardrails that protect us in some areas, and extend our energy in others. They are instinctual words we use as children, and they can become pitfalls as we move into adulthood. As I step into 2026, I am thinking about these guardrails. January is an opportunity to get clear on the direction our energy is being spent. For me, I am leaning more into play this year. Creative play, doing the things that bring spontaneity and surprise into my life.

I hope you can enjoy some time this week to take stock!

Best wishes,

Liza

Hi Friends,

I recently took a trip to London to see Kerry James Marshall’s exhibition The Histories. I knew I was in for a treat, but I didn’t predict the overwhelming sense of energy and force I would feel in the exhibition. It was a retrospective that included work from his early career (1990’s) through current work made this year in 2025. It is always an insightful gift to see an artist’s lifespan of work unfold before you in one exhibition. Sometimes it can feel truly overwhelming as this one did, and required a lunch break mid-way through. But it also is a rare opportunity to experience the evolution of work, the problems that are solved over decades, and a singular commitment to a vision.

My favorite painting from the exhibition was one I hadn’t seen before—Knowledge and Wonder. It is a work made in 1995 as a commission for Chicago’s Legler Library. It is truly monumental; reaching twenty-three feet wide with expansive, larger than life figures. It unfolded in the room like a tapestry and pulled me into its dream-like space of rich violet hues and sharply contrasting tones.

Most of his works depict scenes of black figures doing everyday activities or charting ahead into some grand adventure, but these large-scale works also hold tender everyday details and questions packed inside of them. They feel undeniably human, with careful consideration, and compositions that are meticulously constructed. One thing that stood out to me is how I could feel his questions as an artist translated through the stories he is painting. Everything is there in the work—the personal, the spiritual, the philosophical, a critical examination of the world around him, but it is transformed into pictures that depict larger cultural and historical moments.

A consistent feeling I had across his work, even his later work, was the imaginative quality of his drawing that is dreamlike and vivid. There is a dreamer in him that feels alive in each painting, like the dreamer is leading the way, creating these worlds that hold space for new moments to emerge, larger changes to take place.

The theme of voyaging is consistent across decades of work, many paintings depict ships. This is apparent in his work Voyager (1992), Gulf Stream (2003), and Outbound (2023). There are larger historical messages in these works, speaking to the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, as well as black families enjoying leisure time on the water. But there is also an undeniable sense of the artist figuring his own way, going out to sea on this large voyage.

I often prefer to see an artist’s early career work. More is apparent in the work, it is less solidified, less sure of itself. It is grappling and still trying to get it’s footing. But as I reflect on 2025 and think about stepping into 2026 on more sure footing, I want to lean into this idea of protecting the dreamer within. The dreamer can often get bogged down, clouded by minutia of everyday life, pitfalls, and distracted pitstops. His work demonstrates vividness and utilizing the dreamer as a tool, a creative tool, to lead the way and chart an uncharted map.

Have a wonderful holiday. See you in 2026.

~Liza

Hi Friends,

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I revisited some old favorite movies from my childhood. There is nothing like curling up on the couch and watching nostalgic movies this time of year with good snacks and hot drinks. It got me thinking: what is the first movie I can remember watching? Even though this may not be accurate, immediately I thought of the Sound of Music. I must have watched this movie over and over during my girlhood. Despite the fact that it is 3 hours long, I was obsessed. Rewatching it and experiencing the dramatic cinematic scenes, dancing, wardrobe, and music— it definitely did not disappoint. I was surprised to discover that the film really is a coming-of-age tale with so many poignant and timeless themes.

To refresh your memory, the main character Maria is found in the opening scene dancing and frolicking in the Austrian hillside, lost in her own world, and singing the famous number, “The Hills Are Alive.” She seems to have no responsibilities or sense of mature life duties at this point in the story. She is a nun living in a convent where she is slightly unruly and struggling as a free-spirit to keep up with the rules and expectations of the Abbey. She is caught running into the convent, scrambling, because she lost track of time and missed evening prayers. The other nuns are fed up with her inability to follow the expectations of the convent. Life as a nun seems to go against her very nature, which ultimately drives her out of the Abbey. She is given a quest to fulfill the role of governess for the 7 von Trapp children.

Cut to a scene of her leaving the convent, she appears discouraged and blue, like she has been set up for failure in a role she was never meant to fulfill. Feeling like an outsider in the Abbey, but uncertain of what will be required of her beyond its walls, she gathers her courage and takes a chance on the role of governess. This is the first test of her independent will, and her first step out into an adventure. She sings, “I have Confidence.”

Maria then enters into the strange environment of the von Trapp family. Seven motherless children and an overly strict Navy captain father who blows a whistle to call his kids to dinner. Her very presence seems to disrupt the expectations and sentiments of the family. However, she quickly learns that the qualities she was punished for in the convent— her constant singing, playful and youthful spirit, rebellious nature, and inability to follow traditional rules—are exactly what she needs to respond to the tests of the children and to adapt to the challenges she is faced with.

The qualities she was rejected for in one environment, become priceless gifts that are cherished and useful in another. They help her and they help the family. Singing teaches the children, dancing reawakens their sense of play in a joyless environment, and her rebellious nature helps her reproach the strict Captain without fear. She makes clothes for the children out of curtains, and breaks the family rule of no singing, which ultimately wins the heart of Captain von Trapp.

The film follows the structure of the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is an archetypal tale that features a protagonist who goes on a quest, faces challenges, and returns home transformed, sometimes with a gift, and sometimes to go back out into the world. The structure can be simplified across an arc of three acts. The protagonist’s departure (leaving the character’s known world), initiation (facing trials and crises along the quest), and the return (coming back home often with the urge to quit and abandon the journey). During the return, the hero may be helped by a mentor, wrestles with doubts, and ultimately is brought back to the quest by realizing its importance.

Maria’s “return” in the movie, happens when she discovers the captain is in love with her. This frightens her, she runs away and leaves the family without saying goodbye. She returns to the convent to reconcile with herself. Although she has much outgrown this environment, or it has not suited her fully, she hides in the Abbey. An older nun, Mother Abbess, encourages her to go back to the family by explaining, “these walls were not built to shut out problems. You must face them and live the life you were born to live.” This is followed by the song— “Climb Every Mountain.”

I was really struck by the image above. It depicts Maria about to walk down the aisle to marry the Captain, with the nuns standing behind a gate singing, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Her choice to marry the Captain may seem like a startling pace of events, but marriage is symbolic here. It is a commitment to joining forces and continuing further on the chosen path, or answering to the call, one’s purpose. This got me thinking about invisible thresholds we all cross that symbolize leaving one way behind, and choosing something different. Moments of recommitment seem to come after departures from what no longer fits. Perhaps the problem isn’t Maria, but finding the right environment that needs her traits, skills, gifts, personality.

I could keep going with the brilliance of this movie. I hope you all can reconnect with an old favorite, maybe it will hold the clues you need.

How do you solve a problem like Maria? A flibbertigibbet, A will-o’-the-wisp, A clown!

~Liza

“I had been taught to work like others

and after careful thinking I decided that

I wasn’t going to spend my life doing

what had already been done…I

decided to start anew—to strip away

what had been taught— to accept as true

my own thinking.”

-Georgia o’Keeffe, 1915

Hi Friends,

When reading up on Georgia earlier this week, the quote above stood out to me. In some ways, that is the hardest work we all do: filtering through the noise of what we think life should look like, and stripping away to find our own lane, modes of working, and ways of interacting with the world that suits us best. This takes years, and arguably is a constant progress of evaluating what we have learned, what to accept as true, and what to leave behind or let go of. Sometimes this takes a lot of bravery, and sometimes it is as simple as aligning with your own value system.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s work is known by many and often broadly misinterpreted as an artist who paints flowers. I think of her as being in a similar lineage to Hilma af Klint and Louise Bourgeois. Georgia’s life sits right between these two artists, she lived from 1887-1986 and had a prominent career while she was living, which is likely due in part to the fact that her life partner was also her gallerist, Alfred Stieglitz. As with Hilma and Louise— Georgia was creating language for abstraction, responding to the world around her through a series of symbols. She held sustained interests in a spiritual life, although this wasn’t spoken about explicitly or in terms of religion.

Her paintings stylistically render forms influenced by plants and the landscape, but her approach uses “radical reductivism” as coined by her teacher Arthur Wesley Dow. This included reducing and simplifying her subjects into a series of shapes, usually circular forms, spirals, sweeping arcs, and ovoids.

“Cut down and out—do your hardest work outside the picture and let your audience take away something to think about—to imagine.” -Frederic Remington, 1903

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April 24, 1889

Dear Friend, I am heartbroken, almost discouraged, and so weary that I am a little sick with it. I am not doing any good work, and despite your faith in me, I am very afraid that all this effort will come to naught! Never have I had such bad luck with weather! Never three good days in a row, so that I have to be continually correcting, because everything is growing, and turning green. And I had so dreamed of painting the Creuse as we saw it!

~Monet

I discovered a series of letters between Monet and a friend from a three month visit he made to the village of Fresselines in central France. Here two rivers merge, the Petite Creuse and the Grande Creuse, which is where he committed to paint for these months. I related to his anxieties and frustrations about unpredictable circumstances as he worked. It brought to mind how for many creatives, frustrations and problems are solved in private. They are rarely visible, but are a vital part of the creative process. In fact, they are the creative process. Solving the frustrations, uncertainties, and problems is how languages are learned, developed, and expressed.

I live near a high school. On fall afternoons when I am lucky, I can hear the marching band practicing outside while I have my windows up. My neighborhood is tucked into the side of a mountain, which echoes and reverberates sound. As I write, I am listening to the awkward starts and stops of a tuba player. A few clumsy notes here, some pauses, repeat, start, stop, try again. I was enjoying the sounds and thinking to myself how funny that this lone tuba player has no idea his humble practicing is being echoed off the mountain for many people to hear.

I decided to investigate and go on a short stroll to catch a glimpse of the practicing. As I approached the field, I expected to see a group of musicians playing, but was surprised to find the tuba player sitting on the hood of his parked car, playing unseriously surrounded by friends who were not paying half-attention to him. He was proudly and exuberantly making awkward sounds, seemingly so pleased that he had the ability to make sound and express it. I thought, how miraculous this is, the lack of fear or concern, the public display of learning. He had no idea I was listening to this 6 blocks away from inside of my apartment.

A few months later on, July 21, 1889 Monet writes:

…I am feeling very low and profoundly disgusted with painting. It is nothing but constant torture! Don’t expect to see any new works; the little I have managed to do is destroyed, scraped off, or staved in. You have no idea of the dreadful weather that we have had for two months straight. It is enough to make one raving mad, when one is trying to render the weather, the air, the atmosphere.

With all of this, I have contracted a stupid rheumatism. I am paying the price for all those times under the rain and snow, and what distresses me is the thought of having to give up braving the weathers and working outside, except when the weather is fine. Life is so stupid!

I’m glad that Monet also had days where he felt life was so stupid, ha! But of course what entertains me is that the problems he was facing: bearing the weather, dealing with fluctuations in his environment, problems with atmosphere, were indeed the problems of his life’s work. They are the entire focus of the paintings he spent decades devoted to. The struggles behind the scenes aren’t evident in the finished paintings. This reminded me to take greater pleasure in the problems I have been given to solve in my creative work. Because they are intrinsically tied into what needs solving on a bigger sphere and where development must take place. The mentality of the young tuba player comes to mind…bear the awkwardness, exude it amongst your friends.

…It is a grind; I am determined to capture a particular series of different effects, but at this time of year, the sun goes down so fast that I cannot keep up. I despair at how slowly I work, but as I go on, I see more clearly that I will have to work hard to render what I am after. Well, enough complaining; come see me as soon as you can. Affectionate regards, Monet.

…

Affectionate Regards,

Liza

Hi Friends,

Sometimes when reading about artists who lived in another era I feel a sense of longing for a different time, one not so fragmented by the digital culture of our age. Other times, I feel relieved that I have access to so many resources at my fingertips and can recognize the many comforts that modernity has brought. This week, while diving into Monet, I discovered a book full of essays and interviews with him from the 1914-1920’s. I was shocked at how much of what he spoke to rang true to me: an artist living in 2025.

How is that possible? Over a century later, and many of the issues he faced I feel connected to. Perhaps, there is a timeless story or arc that many artists grow into—or possibly there are patterns that show up again and again in various historical contexts. Fluctuating art markets, early career rejections, financial insecurity, significant relationships that underpin a career, and the artist’s rejection of cultural norms that at first is ridiculed and later met with celebration.

Maybe this is an archetype. It brings me relief to see my own struggles within a broader context of history. I don’t think it is insignificant that the 1920’s economic boom, or the “Roaring Twenties,” has some obvious connections with today. It was a period of significant prosperity driven by mass production—new technologies like the automobile and radio made dissemination of information easier. Of course, it was nothing near the volume of information today, but it was the start of a growing consumer culture. This “decade of decadence” feels all too familiar with our overconsumption lifestyles that now are so normalized.

I think this is why I felt so drawn to look at Monet’s work. His paintings are idyllic, removed, and depict natural landscapes that are not overly cultivated or artificial. In his day, leaving “The Académie,” academic traditions of painting, was considered counterculture. Now, his work feels like a return to something more real and grounded in reality.

Monet explains in an interview:

“One day I joined Boudin in painting outdoors. I began to daub my canvas. Then I watched him paint. And suddenly, I was overcome by a deep emotion…more, I was enlightened. Boudin truly initiated me. From that moment on, my way was clear, my destiny decreed. I would be a painter, come what may. And it turned out, my parents were dead set against it.”1

Monet describes his early life as an artist, how he enrolled in school to learn academic traditions of painting and, “After a month, I said to myself, ‘what they do here is stupid.’ Renoir and Sisley were my studio mates, and I took them with me. I said, ‘Let’s go paint outdoors.’ But when my parents found out that I’d quit the atelier, it was quite simple: they cut me off. Things were very hard after that.”

The primary focus of his life’s work was capturing subtle shifts in natural light and atmosphere through color. This feels so purest and simple, yet he is truly masterful at it. But in his time, people weren’t so convinced.

“My friends and I lived solely from the sale of our paintings. Needless to say, these sales were not always sufficient…Probably I should say that in the old days we had to sell our paintings the minute they were finished, one after the other.”

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