In Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma she revisits the work of artists after we’ve learned about the terribleness of them personally. “How do we separate the maker from the made? …And how does our answer change from situation to situation? Are we consistent in the ways we apply the punishment, or rigor, of the withdrawal of our audience-ship? …And is it simply a matter of pragmatism? Do we withhold our support if the person is alive and therefore might benefit financially from our consumption of their work? …I asked myself more and more often: what ought we to do about great art made by bad men?”

In a mix of critical assessment and sometimes personal appreciation for their influential works, Dederer’s chapters on focus on individuals Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Picasso, Carl Andre, etc. and later in the book, investigates the myth of the “masculine genius” while considering problematic women like J.K. Rowling, Virginia Woolf, and Willa Cather, questioning whether “products of their time” meant “we’re better now.” But are we? 

“It was June of 2017. Trump had been in office for months. People were unsettled and unhappy, and by people I mean women, and by women I mean me. The women met on streets and looked at one another and shook their heads and walked away wordlessly. The women had had it. The women went on a giant fed-up march..”

I appreciated the ways in which Dederer’s personal questions brought the reader deeper into the murky harder consideration: “what do we do about monstrous people we love?” 

Dederer includes the protests in remembrance of Ana Mendieta as an example of intervention: “Starting as early as 1992, a group known as the Women’s Action Coalition began a series of protests and interventions under the title ‘Where is Ana Mendieta?’ Meaning, where is she in the institution, in the museum? The question form of the title reinforced the idea of Mendieta’s silence; the voice that had gone unheard. As the years went by and the actions continued, new protestors joined in, many of them surprisingly young… By showing up and raising their voices about the life of a woman who’d died before they were born, their protest said something simple: Things hadn’t gotten better. Not really… These protestors were really saying we were no better than we were on the day Ana Mendieta fell to her death.”

Connecting the first two book recommendations was also a theme of recovery. Both Dederer and Tendler provided an unsparing, non-sentimentalized review of their own experiences. In Monsters, Dederer shares, “There are two kinds of people who stop drinking: those who simply don’t care for the stuff, and those who care for it too much. I was the latter kind. And when a person like me quits drinking, they are confessing, on some level, that they have become an unmanageable monster. Am I a monster? The answer turned out, was a resounding yes… Recovery, as a way of living, makes you see things from the monster’s point of view. You see things from his point of view because you are him. You sit in the rooms and listen and you hear terrible, terrible things, but they are ordinary things. Because everyone in that room has gone through them.”

I read Anna Marie Tendler’s Men Have Called Her Crazy in a single weekend – I found Tendler’s unsparing examinations of her own struggles to be so compelling, both specific to her own history but also common with other women in recovery – the men in her life and the impact of those relationships both trauma and addiction. 

“Women displaying anger – even acknowledging anger – are deemed pathological. As a woman I know this and have acted accordingly. I have hidden my anger, buried it, for fear of being judged or persecuted – only to have it explode out of me later, after being pushed and pushed past my limits. What occurs then is a cyclical pattern of obfuscation and explosion, instead of steady acknowledgment, distress tolerance, and conflict resolution. Anger becomes a quality of shame rather than a workable emotion, one that can spark creativity, realizations, and transformation. Men have analyzed my anger, often forgetting or refusing to understand that part of what makes me so angry is having to contort through social dynamics and notes that they have created. Men have judged me and men have called me crazy, trusting their own neutrality… The anger I feel sometimes towards men is not usually as personal as it might seem. Some of the anger has to do with them, but I also know some of it is the product of a life experience coalesced long before I had romantic relationships… I believe men have the ability to look outside themselves, to question how their actions affect the women around them, and to exist with more awareness to others’ experiences, should they want to do that. I have been lucky to know a few men who do.”

Those of you familiar with my ongoing multi-years Burning Times Project, begun in 2006, that continues with research and handmade poppets in remembrance of those killed as witches in the Witch Trial Era, will not be surprised that I found such deep connection and resonance with the beautiful, haunting journey across the sites of Scotland that Allyson Shaw writes about with such reverence in Ashes and Stone:  A Journey Through Scotland in Search of Women Hunted as Witches: “The history of the witch-hunts subsumed me – it was older than the place I’d come from, the place I’d once called home. I’d been taken in, but what or who had received me? The voices of the accused became more than a historical record. It was as if they spoke directly to me – to us. Even if it would take hundreds of years, someone would hear them… I travel to places of execution; I write to them. I take the measure of the archives and read between the lines of the kirk sessions’ scribes. Every morning, I tap away, making words stand in for physical space, for a true memorial to the atrocity. New cases and monuments come to light as I write, and no doubt this will continue after the writing is complete… True memorial is more than the legal gesture of a pardon, apology or designated heritage location. It is emotional, intellectual and spiritual work… History isn’t just a distant mirror – it’s a fractured one. For women and non-binary people, the shards are particularly ill-fitting and sharp. Many pieces are missing or deliberately destroyed. The impulse to wholeness is human. We invent and fill in the blanks, courting ghosts and making do in our reparations… The stones, hills, mazes and menhirs I’ve gathered in this book form another map of the dead.” 

Almost nightly, for about a month starting at the end of June, three juvenile barred owls made their presence known, perched on low branches around our house, making their distinct screeching / whistle-like call to each other and their parents somewhere in the nearby woods. We watched them from the second story windows in the trees, and we stood in awe in the twilight as they bobbed their heads and called out into the darkening night, sometimes just ten or fifteen feet or so from us. Each night we waited for their return, and night after night we marveled at their beauty. Summer visitors to our upstate house got to see them, too! As the weeks progressed we witnessed their first practices of swooping from one branch to another tree a short distance away, and next, hunting practices with more precision, flights to the ground and back up again with greater distances achieved. It was an honor to witness the wild beauty of the land so manifested in the presence of these great winged beings. 

It was a summer of great art opportunities for me, that kept me anchored to the studio sewing away, trying to balance time for home and time together, with important deadlines finding me just a little more behind than I’d hoped, while creating work I am super proud of creating. This summer, after several years dreaming of creating affordable, one of a kind art fashion, I launched my first small collection of pieces at the Upstate Art Weekend. At the start of August, after four wonderful months at the Museum of Arts and Design, the 2021 Met Gala garment I designed for Jordan Roth finished its special installation. I got invited back to the Dressed podcast to help them celebrate their 500th episode! 

It was a summer that brought dramatic changes to the election barreling towards us all. Upstate, the towering sunflowers have not yet bloomed, and last year’s climbing white roses are finally reaching across the porch columns to start the bower we’d envisioned. Tomorrow I start the first school day of my 35th academic year, my 7th since I returned back to Brooklyn as Head of Arts and the campuses of my very first teaching years. I’m evening out my chapters of experience – 17 total at my current school with the earlier ten from the 90’s added, and sandwiching the 18 years at the school in Baltimore. I’ve been a senior admin now for the last 15 years between the two schools. To paraphrase that Alice in Wonderland meme that sometimes resurfaces: “I’ve seen some things.” 

On Wednesday, the actual first day of classes, I will install sculpture and 2D work at the VOLTA NYC art fair with The CAMP Gallery! Grateful for the all the opportunities and especially for the delight of this summer of the owls. With care ~ Sylvan

I was thrilled to join such a great group of artists at The Barn on Berme in Kerhonkson, NY for Upstate Art Weekend 2024. I showed new sculpture and 2D works, and launched, “River Deities,” my first clothing collection in the #UrbanFey line of wearable art / art fashion pieces. We had great weather, even with one day of sudden storms, and so many wonderful visitors over the four days. Thank you so much, Manju, for inviting me!

The sculptures in both my oracles and mystic’s hand series are inspired by recent visits to Pompeii, Florence, and Rome. Working entirely by hand, I drape the small pieces of fabric directly onto the repurposed display forms, and then hand-stitch the pieces together, adding beading and sequin embellishment, also. These works reexamine gender and art histories and consider the role of the artist navigating the tensions of societies under duress. These new fiber art sculptures embody protective talismans as structures of support for community-engaged rebuilding.

One of the highlights of the weekend was launching, “River Deities,” my first clothing collection in the #UrbanFey line of wearable art / art fashion pieces. It was so wonderful to see people wearing my clothes, and two special garments went home with the perfect collectors. These garments are one of a kind, handmade from a small batch-printed original textile designs with my embellished beading, sequins, and embroidered details. Big thank you to my collaborators on these pieces: Kim Griffin, Stitcher, and Ashley Kong, Textile Design Collaboration. There’ll be more clothing coming soon!

In addition to the clothing, I had available for the first time small textile collage “patches” with hand-stitching, sequins and beading that are intended to be added to the back of a jacket (or framed). Their titles come from poems and song lyrics about the ocean: A Deeper Love, The Tide Is High, Promises, Ocean Deep, Ocean Eyes, and “The sea can do craziness…” (Thank you, Mary Oliver).

We got nice press in both Hyperallergic and Two Coats of Paint – Karlyn Benson’s recommendations list included an image of my “Green God’s Midlife Rites of Passage.”

I recently shared a social media post that began “I’m always surprised by how disappointed I am when I’ve put time, vision, and effort into a proposal or submission – met the deadlines, followed the instructions, shared my best work – and I get the ‘we didn’t pick you’ email.” It was the most engaged post I’ve ever shared, met with wise comments and lots of identification. I was developing a piece about wrestling with disappointment when I got the opportunity to share some of my reflections on Zak Foster’s Seamside podcast in a conversation about tending disappointments with Zak and other artists. (Here’s the link for the podcast https://www.zakfoster.com/seamside episode: How to Say YES in the Face of NO ) I so appreciated the thoughtful experiences of the other participants, and I’m expanding upon what I shared on the podcast. 

Francis Weller, grief activist and author of the book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, describes five gates through which grief enters our lives, and the fourth gate is what we expected and did not receive. 

The truth is, for much of the past year, I was envisioning a very different new chapter, and I invested an enormous portion of my time, care, art energy, and service in places and partnerships with people that didn’t match, or weren’t able to share the building of relationships and the opportunities as I’d hoped. 

As a full time school administrator trying also to be a mid-career artist, and an engaged activist (with a loving home and midlife health practices to nurture), I’d worked hard to be the best me, carefully squeezing commitments into my challenging calendar, trying to be upfront about what I could or couldn’t manifest, and turning my attention to what I believed would help solidify the work and way forward. 

I know this about myself, that I put in extra effort to avoid being disappointed in others, and that this old coping strategy leaves me sometimes failing to ask the out loud questions that might have helped me better reckon with the disconnect, unavailability, or even disinterest that I am steering to avoid with hidden hyper-vigilance. The more I care, the harder it is to risk the ache of having them disappoint me, or reject what I am offering, preparing. 

In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown further examines the connection between disappointment and expectations. She writes, “Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment… When we develop expectations, we paint a picture in our head of how things are going to be and how they’re going to look… We set expectations based not only on how we fit in the picture, but also on what those around us are doing in the picture… Researcher Eliane Sommerfeld explains that we come away from the experience of disappointment feeling bad about ourselves and the other person. Our negativity is tinged with astonishment and surprise, and, at the same time we’re trying to forgive, we’re concealing the emotions.” 

Some of what I’m sorting through is how the news of rejection was either inflamed or mitigated by the quality of the communication process. In one situation, there was the ghosting I experienced as a finalist at an institution at which I have a long relationship, while I was actively on campus working with students, followed only by a polite “we selected someone else” email after six or so weeks. Without the direct conversation I would have expected, this was a tough outcome for a pretty amazing year of important engagement and care.  I certainly understand that many considerations impact the final decisions of hiring as I’ve years of experience as a manager and as a faculty member participating in search committees; in my own administrative work and hiring process any candidate that spends a day on our campus would receive a direct phone call in recognition of the time and professional investment such finalist days demand. Around the same time, an organization that I serve on the board of directors handled a tough situation that felt really personal around a rejected submission with some relational efforts to sort through the circumstances from multiple perspectives; though the outcome still felt unfortunate, I appreciated the ways in which an attempt to clarify process and partnership guidelines was held. In both these cases, I had no expectations that being selected was expected or that these potential opportunities were “mine,” and I’ve reviewed, perhaps belatedly, my own hidden and explicit expectations and relationship patterns. As someone involved in the challenges of academic hiring, especially over the last several years, I also want to acknowledge that many individuals are doing the best they can within institutions that are struggling to provide the necessary resources needed to “do better,” but also that these experiences also revealed a more realistic view of departments and institutional leaders. Certainly these disappointments felt different because of my personal connections, and making any further commitments for the future does require a reevaluation: should I keep investing in this group, or is this a sign that my efforts would be better applied elsewhere? 

I know I’ve had some stellar opportunities over the last few years, and so I can feel this ache as also a lack of gratitude or even character weakness, but there is a relief in saying the hard part out loud, naming the feelings of being let down or excluded, and acknowledging the ways in which the time and effort felt like such a set-up for disappointment. By sharing in that social media post, and as part of the podcast conversation, transparency and truth telling brought the most generous and thoughtful connections with other artists in many different fields. 

A former student described advice she’d received to call this “collecting rejection letters” as a way of showing your work. And I’ve been reflecting on how to better “budget” for disappointments – to build into the processes of applying for shows, residencies, and career opportunities that are, of course, highly competitive and offer few actual acceptances, a recognition of what I can realistically afford to risk in terms of energy and potential outcomes. The old “you can’t be selected if you don’t apply” is true, but there is other labor that might yield better potentials that I want to make sure I’m prioritizing. 

I think what I am trying to establish as a personal practice is the middle way that Brene Brown describes in Atlas of the Heart, she writes: “There is research that shows that one way to minimize disappointment is to lower our expectations. True, optimism can sometimes lead to increased disappointment, and I believe these findings are accurate, but there is a middle path – a way to maintain expectations and stay optimistic – that requires more courage and vulnerability. Examine and express our expectations. There are far too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointed.” ~ Brene Brown 

I certainly want to reach my artistic and life goals and I know that is going to require resilience and a healthier approach to the risk of disappointment. 

In the process of contributing to the podcast, I pulled myself together for another round of submissions and some preliminary efforts to foster new professional opportunities for my artwork. I did receive some “thank you for applying, but you weren’t selected” messages, but then there was the kind of email one always hopes to receive: a solo show in April 2024 at the Iridian Gallery in Richmond, Virginia.

And finally, one of my best personal practices, when I find myself feeling under seen or missing out on what I wanted to achieve, is to increase my care and attention for others; I step up in my commitments to activism, take time to highlight the work of other artists, and that usually reduces the sting or slight I’m trying to weather. I remind myself that the artist I am is generous and community-engaged. 

There is an annual realization after the July 4th long weekend that often finds me, as a school administrator, still completing the academic year that finished several weeks earlier, and my delayed actual start of summer races by until it collides at the end of July in a recognition that I didn’t really do much vacationing, or complete my ambitious goals for art and restorative practices, and that the end of summer is really almost here. This upcoming school year is my thirty-fourth academic year, and this summer marks my thirty-fifth year since I was first hired to direct children’s theater at an incredible, life-changing summer at a special camp in Massachusetts. Summer has always been a transformative season for me; I have several big rites of passage milestones that are marked annually during the summer months, and I am often surfing the reminiscences and nostalgia, tugging at the ley lines of a wide personal web of memories and places. 

It has been the first sort-of-normal summer since the pandemic began, although it isn’t at all normal like it used to be – from the changed circumstances of working in education to the country’s political turmoil, but I finally have a little bit of space to start unpacking the several years of survival strategies and upheavals I shouldered through, sorting through the culmination of struggles that trampled right over the last few summers without a pause. With shadowy humor I keep comparing this year’s spring into summer to when you fall asleep on your leg in a weird way, and try to stand and walk on it, and the whole experience is painful and destabilized until you manage to get the ground back under you again. 

All that is true, but also masks the progress and the achievements that I wish I’d been able to hold and celebrate with more embodied joy, and though I’ve been able to name gratitude and sometimes tender a kind of grace in all the changes, I’m mostly managing a fairly full menu of fear, anxiety, and even some disappointments I tried my best to avoid. Despite the advances, I’m unsettled. Good news, I’m bringing it to sitting practice, personal inventory and reflection writing, and looking to see how my important relationships could be strengthened, reengaged, and deepened. I’m tending the change. 

I want to name areas in which I really see progress and growth:

• Over last school year I had a tough first time covid experience in the fall that really took a toll on me, and the winter brought some discomfort and midlife body stuff that I’m still working on better life practices to address, but I gave up coffee in January and after a pretty restrictive diet that unearthed me, I’m on a low dairy, adjusted food plan that is mostly working. 
• I taught my first college classes this year, on top of my admin position at school, and returned to Bennington, my undergrad college, as a visiting faculty member to teach two really awesome courses: I taught an advanced level Wearable Art: Intersections of Art, Activism, and Fashion with a big reunion weekend culminating fashion show event in the fall, and in the spring I taught a mixed levels Clothing Beyond Binary course with a Greer Lankton art doll-inspired tea party event for the final session. The current Bennington students amazing, and I loved the opportunities to share work and histories that are so central to my own practices and art-making. 
• I’ve had a really productive art studio summer with new projects, a return to art fashion including working on a mini-collection and making some special hats, with a great studio support team: Kim and Luciana! After a strong gallery and exhibition 2023 season, I’ve got great new sculpture, clothing, and 2D works all developing steadily!
• Home life: we bought a gorgeous stone house in Dutchess County this year, and we’ve been going back and forth from Brooklyn; the beauty of the land and the varied wildlife there has been a real inspiration. We’re getting to know the area better, starting to have visitors, and last weekend attended several of the Upstate Art Weekend’s events, connecting with artists in the region. 
• Slow reupping of social connection and engagement – this summer we’ve started to go back out to events like the Ali Forney Oasis Night fundraiser, and reconnecting with long time friends (even those long distance), and starting to make new connections, too. 
• I noticed that I’m reading again, and that in some ways revealed how long its been since I was really “myself” – currently in both houses there are several stacks of books I’m working my way through on a number of topics, a combination of research as well as fiction and poetry. 
• And finally: a blog post again after soooooooo long, I’d like to be writing more regularly, maybe starting to pull research and art viewing and into more regular sharings.

(1995) Burned Out City: Housing Works Theatre Project at Theater for the New City, NYC. My first professional costume design work, beyond the school setting in which costume design was part of my teaching position, brought together community work and AIDS activism with an opportunity to design costumes for an original musical created by the participants in the Housing Works Theatre Project. I joined Victoria McElwaine (Director) and the production team which included Elaine Sabal (Set Design), Joe Saint (Lighting Design), Gregg Guinta (Video Design), Choreography (Daniel Banks), and William C. Tinsley (Music and Lyrics). The cast, individuals experiencing homelessness and living with HIV and AIDS, wrote and performed in a production that shared their voices in a dystopian circus tent of a set in a mixture of Theatre of the Oppressed Augusto Boal meets Brecht-inspired serious clown play. Elaine Sabal’s immersive set with video design by Gregg Guinta playing on monitors found in shopping carts and other sculptural details, all hauntingly lit by Joe Saint, provided an evocative landscape for the cast wearing my war zone clown troupe themed costumes.

From an HX Magazine article about the show: “McElwaine says this is the Theatre Project’s edgiest and most politicized production yet. ‘All the stories come out of the cast member’s everyday experiences of fighting with the DAS, the government, their neighbors. The last song is called Wake Up Call. Hopefully the audience will stand with us, too, and engage with us in the fight again. We’re looking for the kind of energy of ACT UP in its early days.’” 

Some of the cast were in permanent homes, some were without housing, and some in various stages in-between. The show, as result of six months of work together as a “harm reduction” program provided consistency of support, developing autobiographical material through writing and improvisation, stage work and meals together before rehearsal, culminating performances at Theater for the New City for a limited run in 1995 to receptive audiences and praise in news media.

As costume designer for this show, I worked very closely with each cast member to represent the archetypal role they had developed. The costumes were created with repurposed clothing from the Housing Works Thrift Store collection, working with a red, white, and blue but “dust covered” or “charred” color palette; additionally, each performer wore custom designed giant clown shoes, which I had to maintain and also make sure were “slip proof” as the physical theater comedy of the piece was very active. 

Looking again, all these years later, at production photos and my sketches of the cast, I am remembering each of these incredible performers and the challenges they faced, their empowered actions of making it to rehearsal each day, and the struggles after the show opened when attention and success pressed hard against realities of their daily lives. I remember that not all the cast managed to complete the run of the show, with addiction being a tenacious foil for months of progress and effort. There were trans cast members that faced intolerance even in places that should have been a refuge from the violence encountered on the street. I worked on one more of Housing Works Theatre Projects, a fairy tale styled-work performed at the Irish Rep Theater in 1996, telling the stories of HIV-positive parents and their children. I don’t have any photos from “Mom in the Moon,” but my experience as an educator greatly helped me approach that project with care and skill in supporting the younger performers in the production.

In one of the interviews for Burned Out City, McElwaine noted: “Unlike most of Off-Broadway, ‘where friends and family are always in the audience,’ Housing Works clients are often bereft of a personal support network. Thus, the audiences who come see them are generally total strangers. By the time they leave, however, they are friends.” I am grateful for the learning this community-engaged design work provided younger me, and for the ways in which activism is still, for me, very much about the caring for others. Almost twenty-years later, I am remembering these determined people, their efforts to survive, and the art-making that provided opportunities for support, truth-telling, as they fought to make changes for themselves and for society.

The words like a quick drawing for a painting that never ends on the canvas, an internal reflection I marked with astrological patterns, a now-past Venus retrograde and an overlapping mercury retrograde, but mostly the realities of work and the covid-impacted winter left my words like a whispered echo rather than an a coherent account beyond some social media musings and scribbled lines in my journal. I’ve been writing (“not” writing) this reflection for months; there was travel and challenges and the instability of change that I tried to tend as movement forward even as the weight of anxious hypervigilance left clarity fleeting. At the start of the new calendar year it felt like an extension of an unending pandemic-impacted academic year that began in March, 2020, and all the usual cycles of school life continue to be upended. I noticed how hard it was to celebrate what an incredible professional art year I’d manifested, but the challenges of trying to manage work and life obstacles and exhaustion continued to erode the sense of accomplishment or progress. 

As I started to feel more on the ground again, I unexpectedly ended up directing another show at school, rehearsals quickly filling my already crowded schedule, just as the violent invasion of Ukraine filled a global newsfeed with fear, grief, resistance and trauma, while the anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion rights legislation across the US sought a disturbing escalation of hatred from the same population that raged about masks and “cancel culture” and other hysterias, but now turning the policing of other people’s bodies to renewed extremes. 

During the Venus retrograde period, we’d escaped the omicron wave in New York with a previously scheduled trip to California; I’d not been on a flight since we’d postponed, and postponed again, and then finally canceled our honeymoon in those first months of the pandemic. Vaccinated, boosted, and masked we navigated the flight, for me with raised anxiety as school had closed early for winter break due to the steady increase of positive covid testing. The return to Brooklyn brought news of losses, deaths in community circles and family. There were viewings and newsfeed remembrances and a cold but sunny graveside funeral in a short cycle of days followed by a delayed and complicated return to school. 

At the end of the Venus retrograde, my “Venus Rising: a Contemporary Invocation” returned from Italy where it had resided since before the pandemic started, and is now exhibited in “Adorned: Inspired by Fabric and Fashion” at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center (Feb. 11-May 7, 2022) in an exhibit curated by Scott Andersen. This sculptural garment explores the rising Venus presence needed in our activism and healing trauma stewardship during this time of injustice and environmental crisis, embodied through a lifetime commitment to feminism and Queer community-building. Hand-stenciled poetic text fragments both within the garment on the lining and on the outer textile collage surface name intentions and affirm a call to loving action.

In 2019, “Venus Rising…” broke a drought of opportunities and was sent off to Felicity Griffin Clark for my first international exhibition during Rome Art Week 2019. It resided in Rome throughout the first two years of the pandemic, working its healing magic, and showed again at the Palazzo Velli Expo in Rome Art Weel 2021 with the Society for Embroidered Work. We weren’t able to get to see the piece installed either time, and are likely to miss seeing the current showing at Annmarie, but today, we leave for a trip to Italy including several days in Rome before heading to the Amalfi Coast and a day trip to Pompeii.

We arrived in the shockingly cold howling winds, discovering the realities of the retreat location in the just-about-winter darkness, but the sun-filled morning opened with an incredible panoramic view of the deep blue horizon. Throughout the first day, the tremendous movement of the constant shifting surface of sun-tinted blues flowed left across the entire field of vision as the force of the powerful winds pushed waves cresting as far as one could see, a kind of bias pattern repeating from shore to sky only occasionally interrupted by the silhouetted flights of seagulls directly at eye level from the second story as they sailed the upper currents from the bay far below the bluff; until everything was lit with the dazzling end of day, an edge of the world illumination, and all around the shingled house twisted autumn-bare trees swayed and shaked at the tattered margins of land that drops suddenly below to the lapping high tide as the sunset descended.

Artist Journal: 11/16/21 I start to reach the peak of the last giant climb of a long surprising journey from summer into winter. Ahead I anticipate the vacation that failed to manifest as the start of July crashed with the pandemic wave and work demands into the giant heavy lifting of the commissioned garment, as I carefully tread the end of my rehearsal cycle at work back in educational theatre for the first time in five years. I feel the ache for the lack of space and care and time to reflect on the toil and unprecedented achievements that feel now so long ago since the Met Gala triumph. I moved right into the show responsibilities that, in many ways, is actually the best show experience in decades of theatre despite its pressures and challenges; I’ve paced the tech week in ways that could not have been done before, a combination of my leadership, a stronger team, and organizing efforts that also valued healthier models for this work. It didn’t all succeed to the degree that I’d hoped, and unexpected obstacles ekked away the salve of short-lived joys throughout the process.

Old patterns shed and clinging. One I let go, letting the show devour my entire life with over-worked hours on site, now significantly mostly fitting within a “work-day” experience. When last I was in rehearsal for a school show, I needed friends and lovers to lend their hands to overblown design plans on minimal resources, and the current version includes collaborative partners compensated for their skilled work. I take mornings at home during tech week, keeping up with emails but also spending some quieter time, even a little studio work, prior to walking to campus for rehearsals. 

The second day is milder. Joseph heads out for a morning of bird watching, and I finally manage to scribble some lines of reflection I’d intended for weeks to craft. Today the bay is calmer, a more singular color palette with less of the varied graduations across the rippling textured endless expanse of water meeting a lightly cloud veiled skyline. I want to be writing, starting the process of reflection that mostly escaped me in the weeks since the Met Gala and then the show at work which just finished. An initial reflection is found at the horizon. 

In the culmination days of a successful return to educational theatre, and then the easing out of the production demands, I notice the resurfacing of my old production histories and can more honestly assess the entrenched work and relational patterns etched into the memories of those years. Institutions change, and including me, none of my previous production collaborators are still at the school in which making theatre was such dominant work for so many years. I regret the ways in which my own coping strategies and character traits were so embedded in our efforts and relationships, and recognize that the stage we spent so many long hours of creative effort that tangled into pressures on friendships is now tended by faculty I do not know. I think a lot about the ways in which all such institutions changed in the challenges of these past years, especially impacting the expectations and practices on in-person theatre. I’ve certainly done everything I can to tend the evolving protocols for safe live performance for students and faculty, and this fall, a slow return to audiences, as well. Stepping back after a several year break from directing shows, I was able to bring the values and inspirations that are the anchor for such collaboration, but with healthier, better resourced experiences and matured practices. 

I catch sight of old shows in the facebook memories and glimpse former students in their very grownup years. I’m grateful for the time we shared together. I used to joke that I always knew what the next years’ shows would be, and I’ve reawakened that kind of inspiration and visioning, which in the past often failed to budget correctly the time and cost of the realities of such undertakings, but in this current time I led with a clearer groundedness to support the realities of care, and skillfully engaged manifesting this production with a professionalism that comes from hard-earned wisdom. Here in the first days on the other side of a return to this work, I’m surprised that rather than draining me, this reenaged collaborative process has inspired me. It did still have an impact on home and my own art-making, but it didn’t leave the exhaustion of scorched earth of being so under-resourced nor muscled up beyond the agreed upon design work. Progress. 

Looking backwards from March ’21 to March ’20: a photo for each month – art, activism, mask-wearing, and a a first year of marriage during a pandemic. How incredible this exercise, letting each photo and the words of reflection document the journey of a year that included so many unimaginable cycles of challenges, growth, lessons in survival. As a Queer person in midlife, the year also brought up many many old generational histories of surviving the loses of NYC in the late 80’s/early 90’s and my activist roots that stretch deeply from those days

March 2021 – artist journal Queer figurative study, Loving Remembrance, Noir

Feb. 2021 – polaroid and Instagram story shared by Guinevere Van Seenus of wearing my “Priestessing the Work of Healing” (2021) sculptural garment for upcoming Vogue Germany feature (April, 2021). Guinevere Van Seenus photographed the stunning Saskia de Brauw wearing an incredibly personal, empowering wearable art gown of mine.

Jan. 2021 – Detail photo of “A Love Spell in the Midst of a Pandemic” (2020) this piece and seven of my sculptural garments headed out to the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts for the “Remnants” exhibition (till April 25th). It has been such an incredible opportunity, to be included in my first museum exhibition with artists I’ve long admired, as well as working with the wonderful exhibition curator, Emily Schlemowitz.

Dec. 2020 – artist journal inspired by Jimmy Somerville in Orlando, and documenting a month of daily “little dances” and drawing practice as part of healing (including recovering from a frozen shoulder) that also was a listening to my own understanding of my genderqueer identity 

Nov. 2020 – Transgender Day of Remembrance with Gays Against Guns wearing my memorial garment, “In Remembrance: We Honor the Lives of Those Lost in 2020 to Gun Violence,“ while marshalling an action with silent vigil where each of the transgender people killed in the US by guns in 2020 were remembered by a veiled activist holding a placard with the photo and story of the person killed. One of my contributions to GAG is the researching and archiving of the stories of those we honor and remember. This wearable art piece is currently exhibited at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts.

Oct. 2020 – early voting in the new neighborhood. Mask-wearing, high-pressure cycle leading up to the election, and then the chaos and trauma of the months until inauguration wrecked havoc on us all

Sept. 2020 – “learn” after months of remote learning, there was a return-to-school, the start of a cycle of returns which included mostly outdoors teaching in tents, remote and staggered in-person experiences, and finally in March 2021 an almost full return to indoors classes for almost all students and faculty. There has never been a teaching year like the one we just weathered.

August 2020 – we bought a home, and I moved for the third summer in three years (Baltimore to Bushwick, Bushwick to South Slope, South Slope to Bay Ridge). After months of living in a small one bedroom apartment, with me on long zoom work days without any time away from work, there was suddenly space and a major life goal achieved together

July 2020 – After pandemic delays, the first of the postponed art exhibitions opens, and my Pride at the Textile Center of Minnesota, curated by Tracy Krumm. Excited to be sharing my work in a Queer fiber arts show!

June 2020 – at the Break the Chains with Love March 6/19/21 (with Don Shewey) in a month that included multiple marches across the Brooklyn Bridge, and participating in the historic Brooklyn Liberation for Black Trans Lives March which started outside the Brooklyn Museum with 15,000 people

May 2020 – first covid testing, outdoor site after a tough winter of health concerns

April 2020 – the early days of isolation, covid fears and empty city, walks to Green-Wood Cemetery 

March 2020 – just days after the city started to shut down, we headed off (unmasked) to City Hall to get married, and our dear friend, Daniel joined us as witness. Afterwards we found an open restaurant for lunch, and I’ve not returned to an indoor restaurant dining situation since. We postponed our honeymoon to Ireland that was supposed to start the next day (then postponed it again, then finally canceled). Our first year of marriage has certainly had its challenges, but our love and home together are such a blessing!

May there be many many more anniversaries together, dear beloved, and hopefully we’ll get to that honeymoon trip and a special family and loved ones ceremony in the near future.