learning to see
Join me at my beloved community garden Patchen Community Square for casual, drop-in artmaking on select Sunday afternoons this season! We’ll have materials available so all you have to bring is yourself. Open to all ages, kids and adults. I hope you’ll stop by!
Patchen Community Square is located at the corner of Patchen and Putnam Avenues in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. [map]
Last week, I answered these questions for an instagram feature curated by artist and teacher Veronica Aranda.
I am a visual artist who makes paintings and drawings, and enjoys playing around in other mediums when given the opportunity. I have been keeping journals and sketchbooks since I was a child, and consider daily writing or sketching to be a crucial part of my practice. My work uses observation of patterns as a framework for considering attention, embodiment, and communion.
Art is learning to see more clearly, and responding in a generative way. I think about “learning to see” in the senses of honing my skills of observation, growing in the ability to remain connected to the present moment, and of paying attention to reality in the world and in myself, even (particularly!) when it’s difficult. For me, this is a spiritual practice.
This week, I’ve found inspiration in: cherry tomatoes ripening in our container garden, the book “Enduring Lives: Portraits of Women and Faith in Action” by Carol Lee Flinders, colleagues across the museum field who continue to call leaders to account for institutional racism and unfair labor practices, writings on pregnancy by Amy Bornman and Caitlin Metz, and conversations with a dear friend about the false divide between art and craft.
