You Are a Garden

A field of tiny white flowers at dusk. Those closest to the camera are in focus.

We’re constantly bombarded with messaging about how we can be better, more efficient humans. Defy aging with this eye cream! Optimize your SEO for maximum views! Use this app to reach maximum productivity!

It’s exhausting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be human. At one time, I thought that there a perfect version of myself that I needed to strive for, someone who had no flaws or feelings or difficulties. I thought that to be human was to reach the most unmarred of myself. If I could just TRY harder, I’d get there. And if I couldn’t bring myself to try hard enough, then there was something inherently wrong with me.

With time, my perspective has shifted. I’ve given myself grace. I am learning to lean into being a messy, inconsistent human who feels things deeply and makes mistakes and changes her mind and has good days and bad days. I’ve remembered that the urgent chant of “more! more! more!” is a toxic characteristic of white supremacy, and I’ve complained about being told to do more in the midst of a pandemic.

Perfectionism is poisonous

There have been two pieces of writing that have deeply influenced me this year. The first is this:

You are not a machine. You are more like a garden. You need different things on different days. A little sun today, a little less water tomorrow. You have fallow and fruitful seasons. It is not a design flaw. It is wiser than perpetual sameness. What does your garden need today?

If you expect a garden to “produce” things with the same regularity and sameness as a machine, you will be disappointed. If you try to maintain a garden the same way you would a machine, you will destroy it. The same is true of your body and emotional life. Give into your garden.

Joy Marie Clarkson

The second is Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

What both have in common is a recognition that striving for perfection — a mastery of everything, all at once, unendingly — is not only completely impossible, but will break us. We cannot achieve everything, and we can achieve no one thing perfectly.

Embrace your humanity

You and I are not machines. We were never machines. We are “child[ren] of the universe, no less than the trees and stars.” At one point, our ancestors spent all of their lives creating, whether it be shaping pottery or cooking or telling stories or making music or sewing. At one point, we remembered who we were.

You and I, we’re human. We are full of contradictions and limitations, and that is what gives us character and substance. That’s what makes us everything we are and, in a paradoxical way, perfect.

Remember to slow down. Embrace your full humanity. Tend your garden.

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ICAD 2022

Here they are: all 61 index cards created over the past two months as part of the Index Card a Day (ICAD) project. I used the same materials as last year: 4×6″ index cards, collaged papers, acrylic paint and ink, tempura paint sticks, oil pastels, and various mark-making utensils. Visit my Instagram to see each card in more detail.

This project continues to challenge me, pushing me to focus on creating rather than judging or overthinking. And when you create consistently, with an emphasis on process over outcome and quantity over quality, magical things happen.

Read more about the ICAD daily challenge on Tammy Garcia’s website, and see some of my favorite 2021 cards here.

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ICAD 2021

Every year, Tammy Garcia hosts the Index Card a Day (ICAD) challenge. Here are a few of my favorite cards I created this year; see my Instagram for the whole set.

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Take Heart

Graffiti in a bathroom stall: a monster next to text in all caps that says "You look great!"

Every artist, in some capacity, wants to be seen. As artists (and as humans) we ask, “Look at how I view the world. Look how I express myself. See me. Acknowledge me.”

Any visibility, though, comes with vulnerability — to criticism, to analysis, to heartbreak.

I love that the word courage comes from the Old French corage, meaning Old French heart, innermost feelings.” See encourage/encouragement, too: it ties together courage (in the root) and hope (in its meaning). Heart originally meant soul, will, or courage (even though it’s derived from Old English, not Old French). Think of “take heart,” which is interchangeable with “take courage”.

You can’t really separate the two.

To create is to be visible; to create is to be vulnerable. Create anyway.

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Looking Back: ICAD 2019

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I’m a little over two weeks into this year’s ICAD challenge, Tammy Garcia’s annual index card creativity extravaganza (learn more about this two-month project here).

Today, I’m throwing it back to a few years ago, my second time around with ICAD, when I threw all the rules out the window and stumbled on a loose, intuitive, energetic mixed media process that I loved.

I always wanted to know what my “style” was, but it took letting go and playing for me to discover it.

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