The Taos Studio Tour is this coming Labor Day weekend, and I’ve topped my own personal record for spreading myself ridiculously thin experimenting with new materials in my process, no quest, no process to finish my latest work.

I must say I’ve put myself through the ringer in the last six weeks, but I’ve loved the intensity of my explorations.

Most of my efforts in this process are still “invisible” to anyone but myself, but I can feel all the disparate threads I’ve been pursuing finally beginning to weave themselves together into what I think of as a “wholeness of action.” All my conscious gathering of new tools, materials, and techniques is starting to pay off—I can now sense in my body how the various skills I’m accumulating can work together as my fiber toolkit of expression and connection.

It’s early days of this feeling, but it’s exciting.

As a result, I also find myself scrambling to finish several pieces for the tour deadline and need all the extra time I can get.

So rather than write a new essay, I thought I’d share a favorite post of mine from early 2025 called “What’s Wrong with Hard?”

That post explores the tension in our culture about what we value more—working hard or being a “natural talent.”

As a hard worker always doing something new, I think about this issue a lot—especially lately, when I’ve been challenging myself mightily and it’s been hard.

But good-hard.

If you read the essay below, I’d love to know your thoughts—does this resonate with you? What do you think about natural talent vs hard work?

Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Meanwhile, Studio Tour Details

If you find yourself in Northern New Mexico over Labor Day Weekend, please stop by my studio! The Taos Studio Tour is Saturday, Sunday, and Monday from 10am-5pm.

I’m #29 on the Tour Map and there’s a preview show at the Taos Valley Lodge throughout the weekend where you can see a work from each participant and decide which studios you’d like to visit.

You can download a tour map here.

P.S. No Pink Teacup cafe on September 2nd. If I can manage it, I’ll schedule a “substack live” on one of the tour days to show you around. If I do that, substack will send you an alert.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Art-wise, it’s been a summer of non-stop experiments and deep rabbit holes.

This has been great for my long-term fiber art goals, but not-so-great for my urgent short-term need to finish new work for the 2026 Taos Studio Tour happening over Labor Day weekend.

That said, a studio tour—to me—is less a gallery show and more about the life of the artist in her studio. Not everything works out! And there’s almost always a lot of interesting output that gets made to produce a cohesive body of work for a gallery show that normally never sees the light of day.

That’s why I might dedicate an entire table to my most recent experiments and half-finished pieces so my visitors can see what an artist’s exploration practice looks like.

Because you can’t rush the transformation process of truly integrating information—that shift from exposing yourself to something new to having that information actually become a part of your body.

I’m a process-oriented artist, and there’s often a lot of traditional craft informing my work. But to successfully use those techniques as a part of my artistic expression, I need to learn each skill as its own craft process first—the depth and breadth of its possibilities, and the seemingly infinite variety of options living within it.

And that takes time.

On the upside, I often like to learn these new skills through making something finished and tangible—in this case, something I can sell at the tour. Some attempts have worked out nicely, and others, well, they’ll be living on my experiments table.

On the side of working out, I just completed dyeing a whole bunch of Japanese shibori-resisted organic cotton scarves using two different indigo vats, in order to both deepen my understanding of how to make multiple types of indigo vats as well as to learn how to better maintain and support those vats as I use and deplete them—and then keeping those vats healthy for months going forward.

In addition, I wanted to revisit itajime—the Japanese fold-and-clamp resist tradition—but on larger pieces of fabric than I’ve done in the past.

Because it’s one thing to create a crisp-looking fold-and-clamp resist print on a small sample and post the best parts of that image online, and quite another to extend that to successfully folding and clamping two and a half yards of fabric that’s 44” wide—the length and width of my organic cotton scarves.

Dyeing indigo is such a different process from all other natural dyes. For instance, it ir doesn’t turn blue until you take it out of the vat and it gets oxygenated. So to get a deep blue, you must do repeated dips rather than leave it in the dye pot a long time. Having it transform from a yellowy-green to blue in front of your eyes is really quite something.

Here are a couple photos of some pieces mid-process.

Here are my finished scarves. Each was dipped three times in the indigo vat. They now need to cure in the dark before getting their final wash.

Indigo Salad?

Meanwhile, you might be asking yourself, “What about using all that fresh indigo madly growing in her dye garden for heaven’s sake?”

I know, I know! As I’ve been immersed in my various other rabbit holes (looking at you, eco-printing) I’ve been fretting about being able to take advantage of my indigo dye garden bounty before it goes to seed.

While I hoped I might learn how to do an “aqueous extraction” with that bounty, I finally accepted that that’s gonna have to happen next year because there’s no room left in my brain.

But I have been able to dye some silk with fresh indigo leaves using a “salt rub” method.

And strangely for natural dyeing, this method is actually quite speedy. As close to “instant gratification” as you’re gonna get with natural dyeing.

The first step is to weigh your fabric and harvest enough indigo leaves to get the shade of blue you want.

The next step is to bruise your leaves and introduce your fabric. In the first several minutes of rubbing the leaves into the silk, it just looks like you dropped your scarf into a salad and forgot to take it out.

But then, with a little more kneading, voila—turquoise!

I MEAN COME ON—look at that!

I’m in love with this technique. It’s so direct. So gentle. So easy.

So LOW WATER!

Thank you Japanese indigo—you’re the bomb.

I’m now thinking of offering an in-person workshop next summer where participants come to my studio, harvest indigo from my garden, and we each dye ourselves a silk scarf while sitting on my patio. (If this interests you, let me know.)

In the meantime, I need to serenely rush back to the studio to get more work finished before the tour.

I’m serene dammit!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Sitting in the movie theater as the credits rolled on Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey, what ran through my mind was, “See, the patriarchy hurts everybody, including the people who supposedly benefit the most.”

As many have noted, Christopher Nolan’s version basically paints Odysseus as a war veteran with PTSD. And the movie does feel like two and a half hours of watching an aging general, filled with sorrow and regret, face all his demons (mythic and otherwise).

As J. and I listened to the hosts of The Rest is History podcast discuss the original story in detail earlier this summer, I was thinking about how irksome this epic hero’s journey is. Because all of Odysseus’s tribulations are self-inflicted. A heroic story like this could never have been written about a group of women because every choice they’d make would prioritize how to keep the group secure, and how to get home the quickest.

Safety. Safety. Safety.

If women were in charge of getting home, there would be no egotistical moves like Odysseus’s final mocking of the cyclops—yelling his own name across the water so the blinded and defeated cyclops, as well as the gods, would know exactly whose glory this was. No screwing over the whole crew just so one dude could take a bow.

Because that’s what happens. The cyclops implores Poseidon to punish Odysseus and his crew for what they did to him, and Poseidon happily obliges.

Damn. If Odysseus had just kept his mouth shut, they’d all be home by now. But no. He just couldn’t stop himself. Perhaps the real tragedy is that even though Odysseus says all he wants is to get home, his choices—based on his training and investment in his particular patriarchy—undermine that effort at every turn.

But really, that’s one of Homer’s many points.

And I think Christopher Nolan, for all his liberties with the original text (fine with me), overtly uses that particular point to structure the whole movie. That’s why his Odysseus is less the swaggering hero and more the haunted veteran—a depiction that speaks directly to a contemporary audience very weary of its own endless foreign wars.

In the movie, when Odysseus goes to Hades, he meets one of his dead young foot soldiers who complains to him about his ill treatment by Odysseus. Odysseus feels compelled to justify how he used the soldier the way he did for the larger good of the mission.

But the soldier isn’t buying it. And Odysseus is haunted by that.

In the “original” written text, Odysseus meets a lot of people in Hades. One of them is Achilles—considered a great hero and warrior in Greek culture. Odysseus praises Achilles’s accomplishments—telling him he’s on par with the gods in the eyes of all Greek citizens. Blessed. Revered.

But rather than say “Oh gee, what can I say? Thanks.” Achilles says, “No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”1

Ah. None of it was worth it. The fame. The glory. None of it.

I think Nolan read that section (in whatever translated version) and made it the film’s moral center.

And in Hades, Nolan chose to use a regular foot soldier to express that truth, instead of Achilles, because the modern viewer would need so much explaining to truly get who Achilles was to Odysseus. It was more effective to send the message in the more understandable way of the innocent young foot soldier.

Of course, if I were having coffee with myself (and I am) I’d counter that point by asking, “But what do you make of the last 30 minutes being basically a classic action movie in all its dudeness? I mean, I almost called out ‘Jason Bourne!’ while watching it, and thought, ‘Oh, that’s why Christopher Nolan chose Matt Damon to be Odysseus.’”

“Alas,” I’d say, sipping my own coffee. “That’s the thing with the patriarchy. It might be terrible for everybody, but it makes a more entertaining movie than Safety. Safety. Safety.”

“You mean,” I’d correct myself, “that it makes a more familiar kind of entertaining movie.”

“Good point.” I’d say back. “More coffee?”

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Ever since I wrote about the relationship between love and our imaginations in my post, Discovering Fire for a Second Time, I’ve been thinking about the huge impact of our endless quest for safety.

Near the end of that essay, I said:

By increasing our capacity to imagine into a greater lovingness, we can start to imagine a different kind of safety.

On the one hand, I completely think that’s true. On the other, I almost wonder if I got it backwards.

Because fear, not love, is the driver for wanting to be safe. And since fear is the opposite of love, it’s extremely difficult for humans to be loving when we don’t feel safe.

As mammals, we’re very focused on our personal safety. I’d argue that the pursuit of safety is the underlying driver, really, of almost all our actions or decisions—big and small. From avoiding a conflict with a friend to having blind support for U.S. military aggression.

“Big T” and “small t” trauma inform so much of the unhelpful patterns we automatically employ to “be safe”—such as telling ourselves we’re protecting our relationships by not being honest, or choosing to do what’s expedient rather than what’s hard in order to maintain a status quo that feels safer than the change that might occur if we rock the boat.

And because our mammalian wiring to be safe is literally an expression of our survival instinct, it’s also difficult not to succumb to those “this is how I’m safe” behavior patterns when any kind of conflict, turmoil, or change happens.

Given that our notion of societal safety is grounded in our perceptions about our personal safety, it’s no wonder that gun culture is pathologically ingrained in so many parts of this country. And it’s no wonder that so few of us think to question our wildly over-funded, hyper-militarized global police presence because it’s all done in the name of “national security.”

This is why I think we might have to first use our imaginations to redefine and re-shape what it means to be safe before we can use our imaginations to enhance our ability to love.

But what might that look like?

As an excitable person, I know well that the flip-side of excitement is anxiety. I’m realizing lately that I basically feel one or the other most of the time. So I’ve been working to simply notice my anxiety as it arises rather than automatically succumb to it. I notice how it shows up as tension in my body, in my sleep quality, and in the ways I comfort myself.

But anxiety is probably an obvious one. There are other socially acceptable behavior patterns that seem to have nothing to do with trying to be safe—like perfectionism. To me, all perfectionism is an act of self-violence based on the need to be safe. Because the story you’ve told yourself is that you’re only okay—you’re only safe—if you’re perfect.

Honestly, just doing this kind of noticing on a personal level could keep us all quite busy. But of course there are so many opportunities to extend this noticing to how the quest to be safe gets expressed in our families, our communities, our country, and the whole family of life on earth.

And if enough of us actually do that—extend the noticing all the way out—I believe it might help lay the groundwork for the next big step in our evolution as a species, one that would help us use the power of our imaginations as the vehicles of loving connection and creation that they truly are.

Here are some questions I’ve been asking my imagination to work on:

• How can I imagine and define safety so that my safety includes your safety? So that our safety includes their safety?

• How can I create safety for myself and others around me through acts of love and generosity of spirit instead of living my story of vulnerability and defensive reaction—even, or especially, in the midst of a conflict?

• How can I make my home safer by making my community safer?

• How can I help imagine a culture that doesn’t need or use dominance to feel safe?

• How can I help imagine a national security that isn’t about endlessly preparing for war—especially since that constant preparation for war is destroying the climate in which we thrive as a species?

• And of course, how can I be more loving when I don’t feel safe?

I’ve got a million questions like these, and I ask myself all of them when I lie awake at night. Trying to answer any of them feels like a tall order. And yet, it also seems like the most vital first step to finding ways to make the quest for safety and the quest for love be the same thing.

Because, like all contradictions, it’s not either or, but both and.

I know I don't have all the answers, or even any. But I'd like to start finding some—out loud, together. That's what I want to gently explore at the Pink Teacup Cafe zoom call this Wednesday, August 5th at 10am Mountain time (that’s tomorrow.)

You don’t have to have definitive opinions on this topic to join the conversation. We can just wonder. Try ideas out. Acknowledge hard things. Imagine possible baby steps.

To pull up a chair at the cafe table, you just need to be a paid subscriber. You can check out your upgrade options here.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can register for the call with the link at the top of this email. And remember, no pressure—it’s a coffee date not a test.

In the meantime, anyone can leave a comment about this topic by clicking the button below. Who knows, your thoughts might provide great fodder for the conversation we’ll have tomorrow—even if you don’t or can’t come that day.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Having particular ideas behind your art might seem like a hard creative path. Harder, say, than making work by starting with random marks and responding to what emerges.

But I actually think it's easier to build a body of work around an idea, or personally significant imagery, than to focus purely on formal elements. Because when you know what you're trying to say, your work has somewhere to go. The idea becomes a kind of compass, helping you not get lost in what can feel like the dark woods of the creative process.

And yet, for a lot of makers, I think finding any kind of driving idea feels like a mystery.

I’ve been thinking about this while being neck-deep in my indigo vat trying to prep for the upcoming Taos Studio Tour, so I thought I’d share a recent podcast conversation I had with the wonderful Pam Vale from “You are Creative” who asked me questions I don’t usually get asked about my process.

We talked about how I actually work, what drives a body of work, and why having something to say might be more freeing than it sounds.

Pam and I covered a lot of ground and it felt great to talk to a kindred spirit. I’ve done a lot of podcast interviews in recent months, but so far, this has been one of my favorites.

Here’s the link:

You Are Creative

Materials, Spirit, and the Shape of a Creative Life - A Conversation with Sarah Bush

This was a fun one…I LOVED chatting with Sarah…

Listen now

2 months ago · 4 likes · Pam Vale

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

When I first envisioned my Pink Teacup newsletter, I imagined it as a little cafe with faded pink pom-pom curtains in the window, mismatched plates, chipped vintage teacups, and a resident cat with a very large head.

A favorite spot to hang out with friends, talk about ideas, and be greeted by name when you come through the door. The kind of place where you can wander in by yourself and find someone you know eating a sticky bun at a corner table.

This little cafe in my mind is where I’ve been writing my newsletter for the past two and a half years. Talking to you across a small wobbly table being held steady on an uneven floor by a matchbook stuffed underneath one of the table legs.

Each newsletter is an expression of that ongoing conversation—my own thinking-out-loud to you across the interwebs—and watching an idea get bigger or clearer because there’s someone else—you—holding the other end of it.

I now think it’s time to bring this little imaginary cafe more into reality.

Starting on August 5, on the first Wednesday of every month at 10am Mountain, paid subscribers are invited to join me on Zoom for a cup of coffee and a chat. I’m calling these sessions The Second Cup.

The weekly newsletter is your first cup—and it’s always free. These monthly calls where we sit together and muse about life or solve the world’s problems are our second cup—together. No agenda, no homework, no need to be “a real artist” or “important thinker.”

Bring your beverage, bring a question if you have one, or just bring yourself—I’ll always have a place for us to start.

We might chat about the topics I’ve been writing about in the newsletter, but in more depth, or more personally. We might talk about the relationship between spirit and science, about our favorite movies of all time, or about how to deepen our connection to nature.

And some months, when the world hands us an assignment, that same gathering will become a Creative Change-Makers workshop and we'll make things—tiny signs, zines, small acts of beautiful trouble. But we’ll let that happen organically rather than make it a fixed thing.

It can be hard to have rich, deep conversations about big or subtle ideas in everyday life. But it’s the big and subtle things that interest me most—the things that are easy to say and hard to do. And I love talking about them with someone. Like you. Because that’s how they become more real.

And we don’t have to be wonky or intellectual about it. Just engaged.

For instance, I run a monthly book club for my spiritual group, and we read about heady spiritual topics that sound deceptively simple but are hard to truly understand. I consider it my job to be the one in the group who asks dumb questions out loud. Sometimes I feel like I look pretty stupid, but I do it anyway because I don’t want to just gloss over complicated ideas or big themes; I want to explore them. I want to integrate them into my body. And the best way to start doing that is by talking with each other.

And if you’re more of a quiet listener than a talker—still come! I’m a seasoned facilitator and married to a quiet listener so I’ll make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle (or if that’s what you prefer, no problem; I can honor that too.)

Above all, I want these gatherings to be easy, safe, and INTERESTING. To be expansive. Oh, and fun! Did I say that yet? I always like to have fun.

And just like my Zoom-based book club, we who show up regularly will get to know each other more over time. And when that happens, the conversations just get better.

In our digital age, it’s nice to feel like a “regular” somewhere. Where someone starts your order when they see you pulling into the parking lot.

Art Lovers Unite

Speaking of connecting in real life, I also wanted to share another aspect of The Pink Teacup that I almost never talk about—my Art Lovers Subscription.

It’s one step above a paid subscription and originally, Substack called this annual subscription level “Founding” which I always found very misleading. But they’ve finally let us name this level whatever we want. So at The Pink Teacup, it’s now called the Art Lovers Subscription because these subscribers get actual art in the mail.

Four times a year—every season—my Art Lovers subscribers receive an original piece of mail art—something my hands made—in their physical mailbox. Zines cut and folded one at a time, edged with gold, wrapped in vellum bands. Cootie Catchers. A poster. Or one of my favorites: an accordion book telling the ancient story of the Deer Mother, who carries the sun back to us at the winter solstice.

I never know what I’ll make until I make it—but usually, it’s whatever is feeling most alive in the studio at the time.

In case you’re curious, I made a short video to show you what past mailings have looked like, because this is one of those things you have to see.

Watch this Video:

Forty-Eight Spots

The Art Lovers tier is a limited edition of 48 people—when it’s full, I’ll close it, and open seats back up as they become available. As I write this, a few chairs are still empty.

If you’re a Founding Subscriber who recently got a metallic collage in the mail—you’re already in, I’ve just changed the name to Art Lovers.

If you’re already a paid subscriber and you’d like to upgrade to the Art Lovers level, Substack pro-rates your new subscription based on wherever you are in your current annual subscription.

And if you’re a free subscriber and happy right where you are, please know that the weekly letter itself will always be free, and I love writing it to you. Everything above is just me adding more tables to a room you already belong to. Upgrade and join us live if you want, but no pressure if you don’t!

The Upshot: Here’s how it all works:

Free: The weekly letter, the archive, comments. Always.

Paid ($36.00/year—$3.00 a month): Everything above, plus the first-Wednesday gatherings: The Second Cup monthly, Creative Change-Makers when the moment calls.

Art Lovers ($85.00/year): Everything above, plus original mail art four times a year. Limited to 48 members; a few seats are open now.

If you click the button below, you can see your options and then decide what’s best for you.

Subscribe now

The first gathering of The Second Cup is on Wednesday, August 5 at 10am Mountain.

Paid and Art Lovers subscribers can register using the link at the top of this email. Anyone who upgrades from a free subscription will receive a welcome email with the registration link.

In the meantime, I’ll save us a table by the window.

Leave a comment

On Saturday, I finally got myself to the Zane Bennett Gallery in Santa Fe in the final hour on the final day of a retrospective show that I’d been dying to see.

Called Lucid Perturbations, it was several gallery rooms full of sewn drawings and fabric books by the artist China Marks. As I walked the show, I was filled with a kind of greedy excitement. Not only was the work good, it also felt like a great example of what happens when your focus as an artist is to make something not just “good,” but “true.”

It was all weird and honest and funny and smart. Sophisticated and crude. Strange and familiar. Highly political and deeply personal.

China Marks describes the overarching themes of her work as being about “issues of control and power” and her imaginative, often complex and layered fiber explorations of these issues reminded me of the work of Hieronymus Bosch—but unlike Bosch, she manages to be as delighted by life as she is appalled by suffering and injustice.

Everything she did was also very “considered.” Nothing was put anywhere by accident. Each piece was a complicated pastiche where all the elements were completely integrated. Nothing looked like it was floating somewhere for no reason—which is harder than it sounds.

As someone who uses text in my own work and who thinks often about the marriage between text and image, I also loved how witty and cryptic so much of the “dialogue” is in these pieces—and that her titles are never direct quotes from works themselves—which has the effect of giving the text in the images more weight, not less. A good lesson for me.

What’s wild is how late Marks came to fiber as a medium. She was already an accomplished sculptor and printmaker and didn’t start this body of work until she was fifty-nine because, in her words, “My drawings told me they had to be sewn, and not by hand. I would have to buy a sewing machine and learn to generate and control a sewn line.”1

Marks’s commitment is clearly to her vision and her process. Although art school trained and highly successful, her sewn drawings and books had that “mission” quality I so love in most “outsider” art—that is, a vision of what must be done, and the laser focus of remaining true to that vision at all costs.

But it was also clear in the work that she is a social person and engaged with the world (not always true of outsider artists). And the viewer is not ignored but invited into the odd little worlds she creates.

I also found it very inspiring how much she allows herself as an artist—no sense of self-censorship or second guessing. No sense of her toning down her content to be more “acceptable” to the viewer or creating distance by over-framing her pieces to seem more “precious” or “professional.” She lets herself make exactly what she wants to make and is 100% committed to her process. Devoted is probably a better word.

The exhibit spans almost 25 years of work—unusual for a gallery show. Also unusual for a commercial gallery, the curator(s) make considerable space for the artist to share her thoughts about specific pieces and her process right next to the works themselves.

As I was drinking it all in, I told one of the gallery attendants that I wish I had come sooner so that I would have had a chance to return multiple times—he said that he noticed a lot of people actually did that over the course of this particular exhibit.

At least I got to see it in person once.

Sadly, the staff mentioned that she’s now living in memory care in New York, so she couldn’t even attend the opening of her own retrospective. If she were in memory care around here, I’d drop by to bring her flowers—to thank her, as a fellow artist, for making great work, for being so true to her process, and for modeling that to the world.

I took a lot of pictures while I was in the frenzied grip of that greedy excitement and before the doors closed. And while I don’t think the photos do the show justice, I wanted to share several in case they provide you as much inspiration as they do me.

And finally, as a process-obsessed artist, I loved what she had to say about her own process:

You can also see more of her work on the Zane Bennett website.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

I was recently asked by Paulette Rees-Denis, the host of the Heart and Hustle podcast, if I perceived imagination and intuition as different from each other or as one and the same ability.

They definitely feel like different sense experiences to me, but ones that work closely in tandem.

Our imagination and intuition are subtle capacities that remind us that we’re not just physical bodies, but also energy. That we have senses that give us access to possibilities beyond the prove-able, and when we make space for them, these senses help us experience the magic of being alive.

And for our imaginations and intuitions to serve us well, they need our trust and our willingness to listen—and to allow what they offer to come forth.

The more we are willing to listen for inner answers and offerings, the more they appear. It’s up to us to trust the way we receive these offerings—seeing an image in your mind’s eye, hearing a word or phrase in your inner ear, or stumbling across a “sign” and believing that it is, indeed, a sign—because it is to you.

The more we do this, the more we experience a greater spaciousness in our lives and the more we’re reminded of our connection to the whole—reducing the illusion of separation from others and from the energy of life itself.

What’s not to love?

Trust and Discernment

The trickiest part of developing a richer imagination and more easily accessing our intuition is that these abilities don’t just need our trust. They also need our discernment. Because fear can easily distort them both.

When I get afraid, for instance, fear fills my gut so there’s no room for my intuition, and my imagination is busy going down a rabbit hole of conjuring up every possible worst case scenario so that I’m “mentally prepared” for whatever might happen next. (Which is ironic, because whenever something terrible has happened, it didn’t help that I rehearsed it.)

And what can feel like intuition when I’m freaking out is often old survival mechanisms kicking in to help keep me safe, even in moments when I’m not in real danger.

But this is not the imagination or intuition turning against me. They’re always just answering to my states of being—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—which is why the state of my being matters so much.

That said, sometimes we can’t change the state of our being on a dime. And we don’t want to pretend to not have our fears or “negative” feelings either. Toxic positivity is never the answer. Our imagination and intuition can’t be tricked anyway—they know how we are feeling. They’re just acting in tandem with those feelings.

A Heroine’s Journey

As I sat with this after the podcast, I thought, maybe it’s enough to just bring our awareness, desire, and intention to the situation.

I can desire to pivot even if I can’t quite pivot. I can notice how much I’m telling myself compelling stories that feed my fear even if I can’t quite turn that story-telling off. And I can hold the intention of wanting to stand in my wholeness and to relax in my heart even when I can’t quite get there.

I think this matters—even when we don’t quite succeed. It’s a different kind of allowing—a mercy that makes space for us to move, shift, or pivot.

But what I think is perhaps most important is for us to take one more crucial step in that process and link that awareness, desire, and intention for wholeness to the greater wholeness of life itself.

For instance, what would it mean for me to bring an intention of linking the progress in my own healing journey to the progress of the healing journey of all humanity? Or when I manage to interrupt my own fear and ask my imagination to conjure up a new story of hope—that I’m offering that pivot not just to myself, but to my community, my nation, my species?

That might sound grandiose, but in a world where it’s so easy to feel powerless, consciously choosing to perceive our own personal journeys as connected to the largest journey of all—life itself—anchors our personal selves in the biggest picture there is and gives our individual lives an epic meaning—even when we doubt our own worthiness.

This is, perhaps, the baby that got thrown out with the bathwater when so many of us turned away from the toxicity and constrictive aspects of institutionalized religions. That your particular life has meaning, that it is connected to the divine, was the good stuff about religion. But for a lot of us, that sense of connection disappeared in a secular society focused only on what we see, hear, taste, and touch. Its absence is an ache in the culture.

We can also decide that being willing to re-connect ourselves to something larger—in whatever ways we might construe that—is our particular heroine’s journey. That anything that helps us heal old wounds, anything that helps us love better, anything that helps us untie the knots of separation serves not just ourselves, but the sacredness of life.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

P.S.You can listen to my interview with Paulette here.

“You can quit smoking, but you can’t quit eating.”

This is something my mother used to say about the trials of dieting—which she was doing often during my upbringing. Because dieting is not just about eating less, but a process of constantly facing your relationship with food.

I was thinking about this fraught “facing yourself” struggle after my energizing conversation about imagination and creativity and the challenge of making something “true” versus making something “good” with the kind and thoughtful Chris Martin on his podcast, Getting Work to Work.

I realized that whenever I talk about the importance of making something “true” versus making something “good,” I’m really talking about facing our relationship with “good”—or, more honestly, our relationship with success and the desire to succeed.

Now, I’m not a believer in the “free up your creativity by making something bad every day!” school of creative coaching. No one wants an art or creative practice that’s about constant failure. We all want to succeed at what we’re doing—whatever that might be—it’s literally part of the enjoyment.

But living in a culture obsessed with success—a culture that treats success as perhaps our highest social value—it’s easy for the desire to succeed to unconsciously override everything else we might care about in the art-making process. Like sincerity. Honesty. Vulnerability. And even joy and fun.

Of course, when you are trying to learn any new art or creative skill, getting “good at” the techniques is an important step in the process. Because when you get good at your techniques, you can then use them to express something.

An idea. An emotion. An observation. Your particular vision of the world.

But often, technique becomes an end in itself. Proof that you have talent or ability. A way to make sure you can make something “good.”

And that’s only half of it. Because I’m not just talking about the desire to make something technically good; I’m also talking about the desire to make something “Artworld-Good.” Work that gets a gallery show or representation. A review in a prestigious art magazine. Prizes. Grant money.

Everyone who’s been to art school knows what that usually is. Something “new,” yes. Clever, perhaps. Ironic, often. “Cool,” almost always.

Because the capital A “Artworld” has its own arbitrary trends and fashions. Its own unspoken rules about how work should look or be or seem. Its own invisible hoops so many of us are trying to jump through for that gold star, pat on the head, or public acknowledgment.

To complicate matters further, for an artwork to really “work,” it still has to be “good.” So really, trying to make something “true” requires us to be in a constant dance with trying to make something “good.”

This is why the pursuit of “good” is always muddying the waters of the creative process. We can’t just give it up entirely. It’s always with us.

It’s what makes it hard to get to that more soul-satisfying place of making something true.

And through it all, whatever our goals are, it still always feels good to be good at something. To make something that is recognized by others as “good.”

So how do we know when we’ve surrendered the goal of making something true to our desire to make something “good,” or to be “good”?

When we won’t take a risk. When we stick to what we know will work rather than exploring something that interests us. When we rush to having a particular “style” instead of being dedicated to developing the uniqueness of our voice.

Or when our imaginations offer us a suggestion and we ignore it because it might “ruin” what is currently “good.”

Because in truth, trying to make something “good” feels safer than trying to make something “true” because good, as I mentioned earlier, resembles success, and we live in a culture where succeeding comes first.

“True,” on the other hand, is deeply personal. “True” is vulnerable. It can feel dangerous to make your truest thing and put it out there for others to witness. “Good” keeps things more on the surface. It’s more about shared, accepted norms of quality, of passing some unspoken test.

What’s also important about the safety aspect of “success” is that it’s about external approval and identity. It’s about chasing that label of being a “good artist” or a “talented artist” instead of just being someone who makes art—no matter what. Because the person who makes art—no matter what—is someone who sometimes makes bad stuff, sometimes makes good stuff, and occasionally makes something so good, it’s true.

Because that’s the conundrum. Even though making something true is a lot harder than making something good, we must make a lot of “good” things in order to make anything “true.”

So we can never really separate “true” from “good” completely because they are always intertwined.

The trick, I think, is to make the pursuit of “good” in service to our pursuit of what is true. And to do it over and over again.

Because it’s never one and done. We don’t “get over” wanting to make something good and graduate to becoming a pure someone who only seeks the truth. “Good” is always our taxi to true, even when we’re not sure how to get there.

And if we decide to skip the work of honestly examining our relationship with “good,” and our own charged definitions of “success,” we're just gonna be left standing on the curb in the rain, never catching that taxi at all.

Even though we didn’t quite express it as I’m doing now, Chris and I explored all these subtle ideas of safety, approval, and success as we talked about making something good, finding your personal voice, being committed to process, and honoring your imagination.

And I shared my current process of learning how to rust-print on textiles to feed my next body of work, how I see the relationship between ideas and materials, and how that feeds what matters most to me in my own art-making, my own pursuit of what is true.

I’d love it if you’d give it a listen—perhaps when you’re drawing in your sketchbook, commuting, or making dinner.

Here’s the link:

https://gettingworktowork.com/bow-to-the-mystery-with-sarah-bush-gwtw898/

Or if you use Apple Podcasts:

In the meantime, what do you think about the tension between “true” vs “good” in an art practice—or any committed activity?”

Leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

As we all know, the right has very little culture, which is why the administration’s plan to hijack the 250th July Fourth celebrations appears to be a dismal failure. The president’s adolescent cage match birthday event is over with very little fanfare, and last I checked, it looks like he’s planning on a Fidel-like speech marathon on July 4 instead, which is pretty much guaranteed to be a flop.

It’s reassuring.

And yet, I thought you still might find relief in a small creative antidote to the right-wing revisionist distortion of patriotism and democratic principles that will still accompany this holiday.

So I created another tiny-sign tool kit that you can download. You can print the signs to hang or slip into oddball spots around your community—the produce section at the grocery story, a library shelf, a gas pump, the magazine pile on a table in a waiting room—you know the drill.

This time I'm giving you 12 images two ways—with my own slogans already on them, or caption-free so you can write your own.

They are all in one PDF file, so just pick the ones you prefer, cut them out, grab some tape, and carry them with you to hang up as you move through your daily routine..

And for those of you living in red or purple states—small visual gestures like this have more impact than for those of us who live in blue areas. You’re showing your neighbors that your community is not a right-wing monolith, and you’re also helping to reinforce any doubts or second thoughts that on-the-fence supporters of this administration might be feeling.

It’s also good for the soul to be a little mischievous and to color outside the lines of conventional behavior—a little invisible mustache twirling can go a long way in relieving the stress of government overreach!

Download the kit right here:

July4resistancepatriotismtinysignstoolkitr

7.61MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

As always, if you hang them up somewhere, take a quick picture and send it to me—bush.sarahATgmail.com—I love seeing what you do.

Also, feel free to forward this toolkit to friends or send them here to download it.

That’s it from me this week as we’ve got a sick kitty on our hands and getting that medicine inside her each day seems to drain all other capacity for thought right out of my head.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

I talk a lot about the importance of the human imagination. But honestly, why does it really matter?

Why should you bother understanding and developing your own imagination? Sure, it would probably increase your creative ability. But for most people, that sounds very nice, but doesn’t feel all that critical.

Especially considering the dumpster fire of political and environmental emergencies we are all facing at this juncture in human existence. Emergencies that are global and structural in nature, and the solutions for which feel out of reach for the average person.

But that dumpster fire is exactly why developing our imaginations matters so much.

Love is the Soil

The human imagination is nothing less than the interior doorway to the divine spark that lives inside each of us.

It is also one of our primary tools for expanding our capacity to love—to see beyond our own experience, to feel into other lives, to envision what we cannot yet see.

This matters because even when we figure out how to recapture our democracy, or manage to develop alternative economies or new governance structures that are inclusive and more balanced, or even if a handful of people create regenerative agricultural technologies that help the rest of us survive the 6th extinction, we’re going to limp along as a species until we learn to truly love at scale.

Because love is the soil that all the social change we hope to make must grow in.

The good news is that each of us has been equipped with an imagination that can serve as a portal into that capacity to love at scale. Which means that each of us can contribute to the success of any real global structural change just by committing to the project of love.

And you don’t need money, resources, or any kind of privilege to do it.

You just need willingness.

We can, each of us, use our imaginations to help shape what comes next—by developing our capacities to love more deeply, more widely, more fully.

How it Can Work

One of the most powerful ways our imaginations expand our capacity to love is through connection—imagining as another.

Another word for this use of the imagination is, of course, empathy. We put ourselves in another’s shoes and we imagine ourselves as them. We see someone fall, for instance, and we literally wince.

This is a simple but powerful example of love and imagination working in tandem—something most of us have done since we were very small children.

But empathy is just the beginning of imagining connection. The empathy we feel for another is imagination’s ground zero invitation to explore how the giant capacity of connection works, the first turn of the doorknob on the portal to our oneness.

All we have to do is start with ourselves and move out in any direction.

We can, for instance, imagine our own hearts as radiant, generous, and accepting. And we can imagine this radiance as an offering to the world right around us.

We can then use our imaginations to consciously expand that sense of connection—our empathy—to our family, friends, and local community. And from there, to whole hosts of people we might never know.

We can then expand that empathy we feel for humans to our fellow animals. We can then extend beyond other animals to insects and plants. To rocks and soil. Fungus and microbes.

To the elements like water, fire, and air.

To stars.

We can use our imaginations to expand our empathy across time to our yet-to-be born human descendants and our long-gone ancestors. We can expand our imaginations to consider all futures and all ancestries—including the ancestral past of the desks in our offices, or the trees in our neighborhoods, or the rocks we unearth when we dig the soil.

We can do this anywhere. For however long. Whenever we think of it.

The more we use our imaginations like this, the more deeply we re-connect ourselves to nature and the web of life. The more we connect ourselves to the web of life, the more we remember who we are, where we come from, and how vast our “immediate family” actually is.

And that in turn, changes the baseline for how we’ll start to imagine everything else—our perception of what safety looks like. Or freedom. Or equality. Any and all of it.

This is what the human imagination is capable of.

This is what your human imagination is capable of. And mine.

Each of us was born with a powerful imagination that connects us to the world around us so easily and naturally, that many of us think we don’t even have one. Our imaginations are like a hidden talent or gift we don’t recognize, so it lies mostly dormant inside us, atrophying.

But what if we each decided to acknowledge that gift and treat it like a precious musical instrument we used to know how to play—maybe way back before we were born—and start tuning it?

Believing that every time we choose to use our imaginations to expand our capacity to connect and love ourselves and others, we are part of helping all of humanity heal itself—even a little bit.

Because when humanity learns to, in the words of de Chardin, “harness the energies of love and discover fire for a second time,” we’ll stop wounding everything else around us.

And it’s as simple as starting with the idea of imagining as. Imagining into. Imagining with.

That’s why I’m always inviting you to take the power of your imagination seriously.

To marvel at your own potential to be a part of something big.

Civilizationally big.

To step into your unique, imaginal power and say, “I’m in.”

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Every spring, my art practice takes a back seat to my work in the garden.

My dye kitchen converts into seed-starting kitchen. My fingernails are an abomination (okay, that stays the same), and my hands throb at night from so much digging.

But in the last two seasons, there has been more of a through line between my gardens and my art practice than in the past because I’ve started to grow my own dye plants.

I love both the alchemical and devotional aspects of literally growing (some) of my art supplies because it creates an unbroken line between the earth and my fiber artwork. It connects different parts of myself and gives me a seductive taste of the wholeness of life that is always available but often invisible.

This is something I imagine that humans who lived before the convenience and fragmentation of modern industrialized society must have experienced more naturally—just from necessity. Because even though there was division of labor, average people still had to make so much of what they used in daily life.

It reminds me of a passage from the book Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel. Two of Galileo’s daughters were cloistered nuns (because they were born to his mistress and therefore “unmarriable”). One of them was also his intellectual peer. Galileo and this very smart daughter constantly wrote letters to each other about his work and the big ideas he wrestled with. My favorite parts of these letters, however, were the little nuggets about everyday life in the seventeenth century.

For instance, in one of them, she’s basically like, “Um, could you give me back that basket that held all that stuff I sent you last week because if you don’t, I’ll have to weave myself a new one.”

I was so struck by that reality. If you want a way to carry things, well, you’ll have to weave yourself a basket.

For most of human history, materials were few and precious. People knew how things were made because they often had to make them themselves—whether they liked it or not. Creatively using your hands was literally necessary for survival.

But now, we are living in an unprecedented time of automation where innate individual creativity isn’t a necessity for survival. As a result, the creativity we’re born with has atrophied for most people and they conclude that they’re simply not creative.

This, in turn, has impacted our entire social perception of creativity as either a kind of luxury—something pleasant to experience for self-expression if you have the downtime or resources—or as something used by a tiny minority of people—scientists, inventors, designers—that is then experienced only as a finished result by the rest of us to passively consume.

Of course, there are many advantages and blessings to living in modern society where we have easy access to so much human innovation—it’s just usually other people’s. And while all that might be convenient and often truly amazing, we’ve paid a heavy price for it.

I also don’t idealize the past, but I do deeply appreciate all my opportunities to experience the feeling of integration that comes from creating something from start (planting a seed) to finish (dyeing a piece of cloth.) It makes me crave more of that type of experience and reveals a hunger inside myself for the wholeness offered up by nature that the pleasures and conveniences of modern life don’t seem to provide—at least on the surface.

Because I do think we can lessen the fragmentation of our modern lives by finding ways to use the many miracles of modern living to serve that hunger for wholeness—if we bring that intention to it. My grow lights, warming mats, and electricity, for instance, are as much part of this unbroken line as the seeds are.

I think this is work worth doing. Whenever I experience those moments of connection and wholeness, it’s like a feeling of relief I didn’t know I needed. And each of us can create that kind of integration for ourselves in our own particular ways.

In the meantime, here are a few photos of my garden beds and dye plant “works in progress.” I’m thinking of these as my “before” pictures; hopefully in August and September, I’ll have some wonderful “after” shots of my full-grown plants to show you.

AND, after digging up all those rocks, we decided to adopt a bonded pair of kitties last week. How cute are these two?

So cute.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

What interests me most in art-making is the magical moment of transformation—when the materials you are using and the ideas or emotions you’re carrying finally meld together to become a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

And that only ever comes through in the doing.

Even when I start with a pretty clear idea of what I want to make—the truth of what I’m trying to say will always emerge as something different from what I planned.

And excavating that truth only happens when your idea (or emotion) has a chance to interact with your materials.

Only then will what you’re trying to express finally reveal itself to you. And sometimes, that takes a long time because transformation is a mysterious alchemical process that can’t be explained; it can only be experienced.

Lying in bed half asleep last night, I drowsily imagined a cooking metaphor for this phenomenon. My idea is the eggs sitting in the carton. My first attempts at expressing that idea are those eggs, raw and beaten, in a bowl. The resolved work of art at the end is the finished omelet.

You never want to serve raw eggs to your guests, you always want to give them an omelet. Finished on the inside, but not overdone. Cooked to just that moment when the egg shifts from runny rawness to perfectly cooked—transformed from inedible to perfect.

This metamorphosis can be both subtle and elusive. It takes attention and a surrender to process to achieve it, and when it works, it provides its own unique satisfaction.

Which is why I thought it would be a good experiment for us to practice together in the next Creative Change Makers call, using the civic grief we’ve all been carrying as our touchstone.

Because having a starting point that is both deeply personal and culturally significant helps us feel our way into such a process. And using an already existing form, like the cootie catcher, gives our feelings somewhere to land—a “container” to hold our “content.”

Transforming Feelings into Art

We’ll start the workshop with a free-writing exercise to explore the civic grief that we’re all carrying right now—whatever that looks like for you. Raw eggs in the bowl. Not for sharing, just for knowing.

Then we’ll pull the best bits from that writing and work them into the form of a cootie catcher—finding which feelings want to live on the outside flaps, which belong in the folds, and which might be exactly the right thing for someone to unfold and read at the end.

It’s an experiment in marrying content and form. In finding out what your feelings actually want to become.

In a way, this is what I do every week with this newsletter. I always start with a sense of what I want to talk about, but most of the time, I only find out what I really mean, feel, or think, by writing about it.

By pouring the raw eggs into the pan and trying to make an omelet.

I think of it as a searching process. I send a call out into the ether, and listen for what answers back. Then I do it again.

I write something sort of right, so I can move forward in my search, and then circle back to see if I can make it truer. Always asking, “Is this what I mean? Is this what I mean?”

And almost always I unconsciously write the same thing three or four different ways until I finally find the words that say what I mean. And then I delete the rest.

When it works out, there’s a big return: Clarity. Release. Resolution. Each time is different. And each time feels like a gift from the doing.

And that’s what I want us to do together on the Wednesday Zoom call. To seek transformation. To take the heaviness of our time and turn it into something new.

Think of joining this call as a willingness to experiment. Because this workshop is not about finishing. It’s about exploring and immersion. It’s about paying attention to yourself, your feelings, and your creativity. It’s about the magical process of doing.

Whether you think your particular catcher “works” in the end, or even gets finished, is actually beside the point. The point is to try to make something true and honor your experience through the creative process. To see what shifts. What changes. What pops up unexpectedly. What, perhaps, even heals.

Let’s make something together and see what happens.

If you’re a paying or founding subscriber, the workshop is free. There’s a link in the header at the top of this email!

If you’re a free subscriber and want to join us, you can sign up for a year or for a single month—whatever works best for you. Here’s the link to consider your options.

And if you want to come but can’t afford either right now, for whatever reason, just let me know, and I’ll send you the link.

I hope to see you Wednesday June 3 at 9am Pacific, 10am Mountain, 11am Central or Noon Eastern.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

P.S. After watching my video last week, a reader (Hi Mike!) sent me a link to a poem that felt like a great example of exactly this kind of transformation from raw emotion to art. Fair warning: it lives on an art auction page, but scroll down for the poem. Worth it.

I decided to make a short video about it because it’s an important part of why we make art, and yet, I don’t think it gets talked about very much.

I’ve also decided to use the next Creative Change-Makers meeting to explore this transformation process, using the structure of the cootie catcher toys that many of us made together back in April.

The meeting is on June 3rd at 9am Pacific, 10am Mountain, 11am Central and Noon Eastern.

I’d love it if you could join us.

It’s free for paid or founding subscribers—if that’s you, there’s a registration link at the top of your email or you can DM me for the link.

If you are a free subscriber and would like to join us, you can click here to review your subscription options and decide if you’d like to upgrade.

Also, you don't need to have attended the April meeting to participate—the catchers are easy to make and I'll bring everyone up to speed quickly.

And finally, if the video resonates, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment and share your thoughts about grief, transforming feelings into art, the 250th anniversary of our country, or anything else that came up for you when you watched the video.

As always, thanks for watching or reading—it means the world to me that you are here.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Two eggs.

One round, swivel-headed mother owl sitting, rearranging herself, and sitting again.

My hands reach out to touch the screen. I trace invisible hearts all over her owl self with my finger. I’m in love with her perfection.

I check the webcam almost daily. Time passes.

Suddenly, two eggs have become two damp balls of fluff. I gasp. When did that happen? I don’t even see any remnants of shells.

Every day, Mama sorts and arranges the damp balls of fluff beneath her.

Every day, she stares up at the opening of the owl box and then back down at the tiniest version of owls I’ve ever seen.

It looks like waiting but is probably just being.

I start to wonder how she’s feeding them. And then, at some lucky point, I get a glimpse of two talons throwing in a dead mouse.

The days pass and this routine continues— Sitting. Re-arranging. Feeding.

Until it doesn’t.

I open the webcam tab and she’s gone.

Two tiny damp balls of fluff cling to each other in the center of the box. My heart is in my throat. I stare to see if they are breathing.

They are.

I return a couple of hours later. They’re still alone. Still breathing.

Where is she? I feel like I can’t go to bed until she comes home.

I brush my teeth and check again.

Okay, she’s back. With a mouse.

I watch as she feeds her chicks. They eat voraciously, they pass out. She rearranges herself.

It’s the new rhythm.

She leaves.

She hunts.

She returns.

Dead baby rabbits line the corners of the owl box.

Damp balls of fluff slowly become two small birds.

My hands reach out to touch the screen.

I am in love with their perfection.

Weeks pass.

I come and go.

Mama comes and goes.

The two owlets cling to each other.

The bigger one always seems slightly on top of the smaller one—like it’s wrapping itself protectively around the other one’s shoulders.

Sometimes I worry the bigger one isn’t sharing the food deliveries. I check the body of the smaller one whose head is often down and slightly underneath the stronger one—yup, still breathing.

More days pass. Or is it weeks? They are becoming teenagers now, but always, when she is gone, they are touching.

One unit.

She is gone for what feels like most of the time now. I haven’t seen her for days.

And then, checking my email, I happen to hear a new rustling across the tabs in my browser. I click over just in time to see mama has come back with dinner. The box is starting to look small as they crowd together.

I click back a few minutes later. They’re alone again.

They now have more true feathers and look more like adult owls—that astonishing round-headedness and those heart-shaped faces.

I say to my husband, “They are always, always touching. They are never not-touching.”

The day after I say that, they are no longer touching.

Something has changed. Why aren’t they touching? It feels so abrupt. I’m not ready.

A few hours later, I click back. The smaller one is now alone—trying to wrap herself around herself.

No mama. No sibling. I suck in my breath.

Now what?

The owl box looks cavernous as she sits alone in the center.

I check back at midnight when I can’t sleep. Still alone in the darkness.

The next morning, alone.

Hours go by. She doesn’t seem to move.

I wonder if she’s waiting or just being.

I come back in the early evening and I see . . . no one.

No wait, there’s a tiny talon digging into the wooden sill of the box opening in the top left corner of the webcam window.

“It’s your turn,” I whisper. Oh God.

I choke up as I watch that tiny talon open and close and open and close as you hop and rearrange yourself in what feels like preparation to take that final big leap.

What will you do?

How does this work?

I write for a few hours and keep an eye on the tip of your talon. I see a breeze moving the feathers above your claws. You lean back and I see your wings opening out and closing again like you’re thinking about it.

The lingering on the sill goes on for hours.

And then suddenly, you hop back inside and start rummaging around.

You look older than this morning. More self-possessed somehow.

As the evening fades and it suddenly becomes dark, you’re back on the sill—I can only just glimpse the very tip of your talon.

Are you getting up the gumption this time? Or just being?

Is there an instinctual internal clock that tells you when?

Or does nature use hunger to help you make the leap?

Is this the moment you just lean into the air and let go?

Nope. You’re back inside again.

You poke around in the nesting for bits of food. You scratch an itch, settle down, and close your eyes.

I watch you breathe.

You are perfect. I trace invisible hearts all over your tender face.

I keep reminding myself that whatever happens next—good or tragic—has happened a thousand million times—to owls, to humans, to every living thing.

I know that.

But my heart.

My heart.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share

I think “Blind Patriotism” is really good, and since I love talking about art that excites me, I made a whole video about all the reasons why I think this sculpture is so successful.

If you’ve never heard of Banksy, that’s okay; I give a brief bio of him at the beginning of the video. I’ll be curious to know what you think of him.

Or, if you are very familiar with Banksy and are well-versed in art history and contemporary art, I’d ALSO like to get your thoughts because I’m sure you and I will have a lot to talk about.

If you’re not a video-watcher, there’s a transcript you can read if you’re interested.

Also, I’d LOVE it if you would leave a comment or hit the heart if you enjoyed the video.

Thanks for watching or reading. It means the world to me that you are here.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Back in the late 80s, I was a guest at what should have been my own college graduation, but I had taken a semester off the year before to move to California, thinking I was going to transfer to UC Berkeley.

Once I discovered Berkeley wasn’t all that different from UMass, I decided to just go back East to finish what I’d started. Which is why I wasn’t graduating when I “should” have been, but accompanying the parents of a good friend to watch the ceremony.

As a member of the Radical Student Union, I thought I should make good use of my time at this very large event, so I was helping other student activists by handing out stickers promoting the rights of gay people to be foster parents as well as to be legally able to adopt—something that became a case in the Massachusetts Supreme Court a few years later.1

Back then, the gay rights symbol was a pink triangle and this particular sticker was basically a big pink triangle with a slogan on it. I knew that most people at that event probably didn’t know what that symbol represented, and I also knew that the idea of gay rights was still a new one in that liberal but very Catholic state, so I decided to be light on the particulars and strong on cheerfulness.

I faced myself outward toward the hordes wandering into the stadium, stickers in tow. As people walked in, I’d ask, “Would you like a sticker?” and then, smiling hugely, I’d announce, “It’s FREE!” as I peeled off a sticker to put on their lapel.

I got A LOT of people to wear those stickers that day, and I loved it. You might be thinking that perhaps my methods were a little fishy, and maybe they were. But in my mind, I was pitching for the complete personhood of everyone under the law, and it felt like a righteous cause.

And my friend’s parents, whose eldest son was gay, were sort of giggly as they watched me do this—because they, like me, knew that most people weren’t so clear about what that sticker meant. And at that time, there was still a lot of stigma in many parts of the country about being gay, and I think it felt good for them to see people who weren’t gay be publicly willing to promote gay rights—and that made me happy as well.

The Personal Touch

I remembered that event last Thursday evening when I was finishing up folding a bunch of Resistance Cootie Catchers for the national Fall of Freedom May Day event.

Several of us from the Creative Change Makers group had decided to participate in this event as a decentralized group, putting resistance cootie catchers out in our local communities. Our plan was to offer them in some public space with a little sign inviting people to take one, play with one, or share one.

That was still my plan, but as I was folding on Thursday night, that bolder twenty-one year old kept popping up in my mind. I thought, why not also try handing them out directly?

So Friday morning I filled a reusable grocery bag with my catchers, lifted my chin, and headed out the door.

Offering anything directly to a stranger feels riskier than surreptitiously plopping a bowl somewhere, and I was nervous. So I decided to start with a sympathetic audience, and brought them to the tail end of a small May Day protest that I knew was happening in the center of town.

These activists were all receptive and happy to take a free catcher, and that felt good. Several also mentioned they’d be willing to put theirs out in public somewhere, so I felt like I was increasing my army a little—which also increased my confidence.

I then drove to a big local coffee shop, nervously walked up to the first table of women I saw, smiled and said cheerfully, “Happy May Day! Would you like a Cootie Catcher? It’s FREE.” I handed one to the woman nearest to me and she took it.

“Oh wow, I used to make those!” she said as she realized what it was.

Looking at her face, I could see her filled with nostalgia. “Right?!” I said. “It’s just like when we were kids, but I’ve turned mine into a zine.” Relieved, I smiled again and walked away.

Then I approached a very serious young woman working on her laptop. “Happy May Day!” I said. She looked up, confused. “Would you like a cootie catcher? It’s FREE.” I handed her a catcher and . . . her face actually lit up. She too, remembered making these catchers. I was starting to feel emboldened.

Once my bag of single catchers was empty, I went to my favorite coffee shop to ask the baristas if they’d be willing to put my bowl of free catchers out for their customers, but. . .they were closed for May Day—yay! Just another reason they’re my favorite coffee shop.

So instead, I took my grocery bag holding my full bowl of catchers to the town library. I sat in a chair next to a small table and carefully lifted out the bowl, placed it on a table, and rearranged the catchers just so. I looked around to see if anyone was watching me, but of course they weren't. I snapped a picture and headed out the door.

Later, I decided to swing by the library right before they closed to check to see if anyone had taken a catcher and to perhaps retrieve any that still lingered. But when I arrived, both the bowl and the catchers were gone. I don’t know if people actually took them one by one or if the librarians confiscated the bowl and the catchers altogether.

Form and Content

Afterward, as I thought back on the day, I was very glad I had decided to approach several people directly, because it taught me something important.

As an artist, I am obsessed with the relationship between form and content. And it was fascinating to me to see how the cootie catcher form—a paper toy that so many people had personally made as a child—created a greater reception for my content. People were willing to look. Willing to read. Willing to take something from the hand of a stranger.

While I had already understood that intellectually, now I knew it in my body.

I’m also still glad that I put out a full bowl of catchers in a public space without saying anything, I just wish I had lingered for a while afterward to see what might happen.

It always takes a little courage to stick your neck out in public. But every time you do it, it changes you. And every time you take action, it leads you to more action.

For instance, the reason I could see the possibilities in the cootie catcher form is because I had been spending months teaching people how to make different kinds of tiny signs. So when I saw how my now-friend Amelia Williams was making cootie catchers filled with her poetry—it clicked. I knew that particular form could be our next tiny sign format. Our next zine format.

My action led to more action. My creativity led to more creativity. This is how it works.

What’s Next

I like the idea of continuing to explore the cootie catcher form with different types of political content and connection.

So for the June Creative Change-Maker’s call, I’ll be offering a workshop on creating a personal reflection within a cootie catcher toy. Less factual zine and more personal letter.

We’ll explore how we might use this nostalgia-filled form to get as personal as possible—even if that means we still keep it anonymous to feel comfortable enough to do this.

I think our theme for that call will be something like “Love Letters to a Nation,” or “What I wish for my country” or . . . something along those lines.

We’ll do a few writing exercises to dig down into what matters most to us, and how we can communicate that to a stranger through anonymous but heartfelt cootie catchers. And I’ll teach you how to design the catchers so that your letter makes sense in the toy format.

My hope is for us to be able to put these out in our communities over July 4th weekend as a deeply personal counter narrative to the boatload of “Up is Down” “Corruption is Honesty” “Fascism is Democracy” that will be pervading the airwaves.

It’s happening on Wednesday June 3 at 9am Pacific,10am Mountain, 11am Central, and noon Eastern.

Come make something with us.

In the meantime, here’s a few photos from some of the Creative Change Maker participants who also put resistance cootie catchers out in their communities on May Day.

And if you want to download either cootie catcher template, click here. (Just scroll halfway down the page…)

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

What does it take to let yourself imagine something that the dominant culture insists is impossible?

This is what I asked myself after seeing the documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy at the Taos Film Festival—a film I almost didn't go to because I was afraid of having my heart ripped out. I even gave myself permission to leave early if it got unbearable.

Going in, I thought it was a movie about the environmental costs of war, but really, it was about the massive impact of the whole military industrial complex on climate change. And for someone who considers herself informed, it was a shocking reality check about how little I actually knew.

For instance, I didn’t know that the US military has a carbon footprint larger than any other institution on earth.

If the US military were a country, it would rank 47th in greenhouse gas emissions from fuel usage alone—out-polluting each of the roughly 150 countries ranked below it.1 And that statistic doesn’t even include the fuel used to power aircraft and ships operating overseas—which represents the largest share of military emissions.2

I also didn’t know that the Department of Defense manages 568,000 facilities covering 27 million acres across 4,790 military sites worldwide. The human and environmental costs at many of these installations are staggering.

For instance, the island of Okinawa—which is basically the size of Rhode Island—has 32 American airbases. Thirty-two! And aside from literally razing local forests to use the soil to fill in delicate coral reef areas around the island to support those bases, the activities of our military have also severely contaminated the drinking water of at least 450,000 Japanese people who live there. And not just their drinking water—also the drinking water of the US service members and private contractors who reside at the bases themselves.3

In fact, US service members all over the world are exposed to contaminated drinking water from military activity—including on bases inside the United States.

I learned from the documentary that from 1953 to 1987, Marines and their families at Camp Lejeune bathed in and drank tap water contaminated with harmful chemicals at concentrations from 240 to 3,400 times current safe levels.4 This was known for years before military families were informed. There’s even a local cemetery nicknamed “Baby Heaven” because of the number of stillborn infants who are buried there from military families.

And what’s happening in the oceans is just as heartbreaking.

In 2003, Congress amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act to give the military legal permission to harm and kill protected ocean mammals in the course of testing and training with sonar. According to the Navy's own environmental impact statements, sonar training disrupts the natural behavior of up to 2.8 million marine mammals every year — affecting their ability to migrate, breed, nurse their young, and feed.5 (And I’m leaving out the gory details of what that looks like.)

And even when the US first publicly pledged to lower our heavy climate footprint, our government made sure to have the emissions from our military activity exempted from US climate numbers, starting with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. And when that rule “changed” in 2015, all it meant was that reporting military emissions became “voluntary’—so of course it doesn’t happen.6

Even though we have environmental laws and policies in place, the government quietly makes exceptions for almost all military activity, ensuring the true damage goes unreported and remains, therefore, invisible to the public imagination.

And the public can’t imagine how to change what it doesn’t know is happening.

But honestly, even when we do learn that constantly preparing for war at scale is jaw-droppingly polluting, that information pushes against a long and powerful narrative that our outsized military spending (more than the next nine nations combined) is what makes us safe. A source of pride at best and a necessary evil at worst.

But how can something so utterly unsustainable be “necessary?”

Perhaps we simply can’t grasp the breadth of these damaging activities, or can’t picture the destruction these activities leave in their wake. For most of us, it’s much easier to imagine a vague feeling of danger and then the subsequent need to feel safe.

But there are many ways to be safe. We don’t have to stick to the story that is most familiar. We can use our imaginations to create new versions of safety.

For instance, I’ll never forget when Marianne Williamson suggested in the 2020 presidential race that we needed to create a Department of Peace, and how ridiculous or hilarious so many pundits found that. The message was, “What a marginal, new age, spiritual kook she must be to even say that.”

But to me, she was modelling to millions of viewers how to use your imagination to envision a different kind of future.

She wasn’t even suggesting we eliminate the Pentagon. She was simply suggesting we re-frame what “defense” could look like: to create a cabinet-level counterweight to the Pentagon focused on preventing conflict rather than preparing for it.

In a way, she asking us to consider this question: If the single largest institutional polluter on Earth is a Department of War, what would it mean to have a Department of Peace with equivalent resources and political weight?

My Gaia, I find that exciting.

Because if we allow ourselves to imagine a fully funded Department of Peace, say, or when we use our individual imaginations to create or consider new definitions of patriotism, inclusion, and national security, we’re not just changing ourselves. We’re affecting and changing the collective imagination at the same time.

And when we do that, we’re helping to make space for something new to emerge from that collective imagination. Even as the dominant culture scoffs that such thoughts are not logical. Impossible. Unrealistic. Dangerously naive. Childish.

We can love our country and want to transform the military industrial complex. We can love and respect every soldier, veteran, and civilian defense contractor and still want the Pentagon to be smaller. It’s not about choosing sides. The military industrial complex is so interwoven into all aspects of our culture, that we are all a part of it, whether we want to be or not.

And while each of us may feel powerless against the momentum and inertia of the massive and overwhelmingly entrenched structures of our current system, none of us actually knows the impact of our individual actions, however small they may seem to us. And honestly, it is not for us to assess the impact of our actions. It’s just for us to do.

Learning to take action without being able to see immediate tangible results might be hard or unfamiliar, but it’s an important step in our maturation as citizens. And it all starts with a willingness to exercise our imaginations.

Because every change we make in ourselves and our culture begins there. What do we value? Who are we? How can we hold that picture in our imaginations? How can we allow ourselves to consider something new that we previously considered impossible?

And while living in “interesting times” may be stressful and scary, it’s also an extraordinary opportunity to create something new. To evolve as a people. This is what I return to when all feels lost.

Because if we keep insisting we have no choice but to only be a hammer, then everything and everyone will always only look like a nail—including the earth itself.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Somewhere between the dormancy of winter and spring's outward push, there's a conversation worth having about the relationship between seasonal change and the pulse of our creativity.

This came up recently in my interview with Blaze Schwaller on her podcast called “Anchored and Alive.” Blaze often talks about the rhythmic and seasonal aspects of our energy and output, and we spent some time exploring how our creative energy has a seasonal rhythm as well.

Perceiving our creative activity in a cyclic, seasonal way is helpful because it reminds us that our creativity is a natural expression of being alive—something that’s always a part of us—but also something that waxes and wanes depending upon the seasonal context we’re living in.

By allowing ourselves to more consciously experience our creativity as seasonal and cyclic, we anchor our creative core into nature’s larger rhythms. This helps us step out of the pressure of a capitalist paradigm that frames creative output as do-do-do, produce-produce-produce, prove-prove-prove.

We’re mammals not factories. We have heartbeats and blood flow—circadian rhythms that deeply connect our physical bodies to the rhythm and beat of the earth rotating around the sun.

Recognizing our creativity as intrinsically woven into the cyclic cadences of the four seasons also helps us acknowledge the unique ways our individual creativity shows up within us depending upon the time of year—or even the time of day.

For instance, it’s not that creativity is necessarily dormant during the winter, but it might be more internal. Similarly, creativity might take different forms according to our circadian rhythms. While I’m an early riser, mornings are not when I’m most active. So I might catch up on some quiet research in the morning, or take an easy, early walk to gather my thoughts about an artistic project, but I usually get more “done” in the late afternoon or early evening because 4pm-8pm is my sweet spot!

Blaze and I also explored what to do when what we imagine or dream up for ourselves is larger than what our immediate creative capacity allows us to manifest.

For instance, I often have ideas for bodies of work that I literally can’t get to for a couple of years. I shared with Blaze a few of my favorite strategies for making personal symbols that keep these creative threads alive, even as I may be currently neck-deep in projects that are very different or all-consuming. This approach is also helpful when you’re up to your eyeballs with work or completely immersed in other important aspects of life that have their own arcs and seasons—like raising kids or taking care of elderly parents.

Some other ideas that came up in our conversation that I’m still thinking about:

• Navigating the tension between making something “good” and making something “true”

• What’s actually hard about making something ‘bad’

• Acknowledging our own invisible creative work that nobody sees—including us

• How our fears and our imaginations are already in a long-term, committed relationship

• Why your sovereignty needs your imagination . . . and vice versa

• How rest isn’t the opposite of creative work, but rather a crucial part of its rhythm.

Conversation is how I figure things out, and talking out loud with Blaze about the connections and disparities among clock time, nature’s time, and our particular personal creative rhythms has been percolating in my mind ever since our interview.

Perhaps you could have a listen while you’re driving or cooking dinner or cleaning the house—or whatever way you prefer to listen to a podcast.

Here’s the podcast link:

https://anchoredandalive.com/podcasts/75-Anchored-Alive-with-Blaze/episodes/1683-How-to-Use-Your-Imagination-Without

In the meantime, how do you experience your own creative rhythms? Do you allow yourself to wax and wane? Do you let yourself creatively rest at certain times of year—or day?

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

I think a lot about surrender.

For years I have lain in bed at night and silently repeated to myself, “I surrender my personal will to divine will.”

I lie in the darkness and notice the ways I hold tension in my body and how that clenching feels like the opposite of surrender. A clutching at control. A bracing that started . . . Gaia knows when.

And in the midst of personal hardship or during the illnesses of loved ones, I’ve busily checked the handle of every door of surrender that I could think of—surrendering myself to love, to what is, to the earth, to fear, to confusion, to grasping, to hope, to struggle, to faith, and even to surrender itself.

“I surrender to surrender.” I’ve said that a lot.

In the last few years I’ve also often pondered the difference between the surrender of my will and the alignment of my will—silently trying out new versions of my mantra, on repeat in the darkness: “I align my personal will with divine will. I align my personal will with divine will.”

I’ve often wondered, while repeating these nightly mantras, about the difference between saying things and doing things. Am I actually surrendering? Am I really aligning? Am I just finding ways of reminding myself of life’s precious precariousness? Perhaps that’s its own good thing?

About eight weeks ago, I surprised myself one night by suddenly saying, “I surrender myself to the sacredness of all things.” And then I surprised myself by almost panicking after saying that.

I wondered about—and felt a bit dismayed by—this instant, visceral reaction of panic. It was like some part of myself had suddenly agreed to something that my mind had not really considered. It was like I’d signed a contract without reading the fine print.

And yet, this reluctance felt strange—I mean, for years I’ve been consciously working to expand my awareness of the sacredness of all things from being a nice idea to being an actual lived experience.

So this sentence that had arisen inside me didn’t appear to be a new thought, but somehow, it felt new. Like I’d finally stumbled upon the thing that all my “surrender mantra-ing” had been searching for and yet . . . gulp, it felt big. Scary big. Life-changing. I mean, what does it mean to genuinely surrender yourself to the sacredness of all things? Was I ready to do that? What would that entail?

And just as suddenly, “surrendering to the divine” felt waayyy more abstract and vague—somehow more “up” or “out.” While surrendering to the sacredness of all things felt very “in” or “inward.” Embedded. Physical. Specific.

Of course, surrendering to the sacredness of all things is really a surrendering to the divine that lives within everything. And not just in nature. In everything. Objects. Invisible viruses. AI. All persons—the good and the heinous. Again, it’s big.

I started exploring my options:

“I surrender myself to the sacred cycles of life.”

I liked that one. It felt easier, somehow, than “the sacredness of all things.” Perhaps because a “cycle” also feels more abstract?

So I said that for a while. It felt safer.

In March I started taking a class in my spiritual community and I brought all this up. My dark nights of the soul. My questions and confusion about surrender and alignment:

Is handing over my power to the divine a kind of outmoded worshipping that mostly serves to relieve me of responsibility and spiritual partnership? Is the notion of meeting the divine with my “free will” a confusion about my ego?

A few weeks into the class, I was listening to one of the teachers discuss the role of our will in embracing what might feel like a call to do a particular this or that. Because “having a calling”—however big or small—requires action. And we humans use our will and our willpower to make things happen all the time. We make. We do. We exercise our free will.

Sometimes this “making things happen” is a form of creativity. Sometimes it’s more of a “forcing.” It can look like attention and perseverance. It can look like stubbornness or even violence.

And then the teacher said something I found very interesting. She said,

“How do I hold something with all of my will and also with an openness that allows it to adapt and change? [. . .] that will [ . . .] I’m going to call it willingness.

Will-as-willingness. My will as willingness. A lightbulb moment.

It felt like the opposite of willpower. The opposite of force. The opposite of effort.

Suddenly my perception of the space between aligning my will and surrendering my will shrank considerably. Instead of perceiving my will as a way to make things happen, I can offer my will as a willingness to help things to happen. To allow.

Willingness as a receptivity. Willingness as spaciousness.

I am willing. I am willing.

I’ve been walking around for days saying this to myself in various ways—and then inevitably asking myself, “Is that true?”

For instance, “I am willing to really take care of myself.” And then—is that true? Am I willing to really take care of myself rather than sort of take care of myself?

But even that question raises my curiosity rather than my judgment. Instead of thoughts like “I should take care of myself more,” or even, “I want to take care of myself more,” “I am willing” says hello to “I am not willing” and immediately asks “Why not?”

And that “Why Not” creates a wiggle room that wasn’t there before.

Saying “I am willing” allows me space to try. To explore. “I am willing to take a first step beyond sort of taking care of myself to deeply taking care of myself.”

This wiggle room feels like generosity.

Does this all sound like a silly game of semantics? I wonder. But I’ve found, in the course of all my spiritual seeking, that even slightly different language can create shifts in my perception that feel genuinely profound. Subtle changes in language give me space to grow.

For instance, there’s a difference between saying “I honor the journey (of my life)” and “I trust the journey (of my life.)” For me, the word trust is an expression of greater faith.

But even if that shift—from saying honor to saying trust—opens up an awareness of how I’m actually moving through life with a huge lack of faith, it creates a more honest starting point and I’m no longer where I was. And it shows me where I want to go.

Where I’m willing to go.

So I continue with my “willingness” experiment:

I am willing to be more free. I am willing to forgive myself. I am willing to try things and fail. I am willing to wait and see. I am willing to not-know. I am willing to learn. And, of course, I am willing to surrender to the sacredness of all things.

I am willing to surrender to the sacredness of all things.

I am willing to find out what that really means.

I am willing to take baby steps to get there.

I am willing to trust that I can handle that commitment.

I am willing for it to take my whole life to find out what that really means.

I am willing to get as far as I can get.

I am willing to love myself as I do this.

I am willing.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now