books (2020)

Posted on February 11, 2021February 11, 2021 Posted in readingTagged annual reading list, anxiety, books, covid-19, learning, pandemic, poetry, reading, readmorewomen, repetition, stay at home, writingLeave a comment

The stereotype of bookish people being homebodies always seemed true, except that after a year with nearly 10 months worth of home-bodying what really strikes me when typing this list are the visceral memories I have of the places (not at home) that I read the first seven or so books of 2020: Now, Now, Louison at The Commons Chelsea – drinking a latte from a mug, indoors in a tiny cafe around the corner from work on a break. How Should a Person Be? in a mostly-empty afternoon pub on a day I got off early after working an event late early in the week, where I stopped for lunch on the way to my studio. The food was bad but the bartender was nice. Say Nothing sitting or standing in the subway, drawing me in so much that I hardly noticed packed and noisy train cars on my commute.

Little Woman was a book I read (and loved) multiple times in elementary school but hadn’t read since. Like many others, I re-visited it in advance of Greta Gerwig’s film retelling which I then went to see/cry through by myself in a movie theater at a matinee showing, which was the last time I was in a movie theater at this point. (Little Women bonus content: this podcast episode, and this one built around these essays)

In the peak of early spring anxiety and non-stop sirens outside, I turned to poetry when my attention span couldn’t handle more than a line at a time – Mary Oliver, paying attention as liturgy – and novels or memoirs written staccato-like with short chapters or shorter paragraphs that kept things moving briskly along (Dept. of Speculation, Ongoingness). Scriptorium was my favorite poetry collection I read this year.

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books (2019)

Posted on April 29, 2020 Posted in readingTagged annual reading list, book, books, learning, learning to see, pandemic, poetry, process, reading, readmorewomen, writingLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking about what I read and why. Maybe this at its broadest: I am trying to understand the world, and myself, and the ways everything overlaps and intersects. Right now, though, it feels sort of difficult to focus on reading. I’ve been turning to poetry more than usual which feels manageable and grounding (midway through a Jane Kenyon collection currently), and am also finally getting around to posting my list of books read last year.

In mid-2019, went through a several month period of not reading much of anything but decided to let it happen and not try to cram in a ton of books at the end of the year to meet my GoodReads goal. Similarly, I only sort-of kept up with the “write something about every book you read” practice, and that’s fine. It’s back in progress for 2020, though! I missed having it to look back through at the end of the year.

Something else which feels significant in reflecting back on the year-in-books is that both Mary Oliver and Rachel Held Evans died in 2019. This interview (“Listening to the World“) with Mary Oliver from the On Being podcast has held up to multiple re-listens for me, and I returned to previously read books by both them (Searching for Sunday, Why I Wake Early). These women helped shift and expand my vision in meaningful ways and I am grateful for that. ♡

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books (2018)

Posted on February 18, 2019March 9, 2019 Posted in readingTagged annual reading list, books, learning, poetry, process, readmorewomen, writingLeave a comment

It’s mid-February which means I’m overdue for my year-in-books post. It’s been about five years now since I started keeping track of each book I read, after a friend recommended GoodReads to me. This year, instead of just keeping a list of titles, I had a goal to practice writing about what I’m reading. I set out to write something, at least one sentence, about each book I read in 2018, and now have a google doc 30+ pages long with notes, observations, etc. I do think it helped with remembering the books I read; I can read a bit manically at times, and this practice served to counter and calm that a bit.

Another reading goal for last year was to read more poetry, and serendipitously an acquaintance introduced me to Pome*– a daily newsletter by Matthew Ogle that contains just one poem in your inbox, at the start of each day. (Which helped me to read many more poems!)

And finally: for the first time in my (adult) life, I read as many books written by women as by men, and they surely did not disappoint me. So crucial, so obvious. I feel like I’m catching up, stocking up on women’s voices to return to and recommend and reference moving forward.

The list of books I read in 2018 is below, with some that I particularly enjoyed and learned from in bold. (Past reading lists here: 2017, 2016, 2015)

books (2018) | Lynnette Therese Sauer — (one day I read at the beach)

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Fine Lines

Posted on April 25, 2016June 11, 2019 Posted in artist statements, exhibitionsTagged art, art practice, BFA thesis semester, books, collaboration, college, drawing, friends, grace, gray, Indianapolis, learning, learning to see, line, line drawing, painting, paying attention, practice, presence, process, sketchbook, sketchbook practice, text drawing, thesisLeave a comment

This spring, I worked with Etta and Aaron (both seniors in the printmaking department) to create our joint thesis show, entitled Fine Lines. Completing a painting thesis at Herron includes several elements: an exhibition, oral review, and paper; the pieces displayed at Fine Lines represent several years of (conceptual and visual) idea development. Creating this show helped bring together components of my art practice which I’d previously seen as separate and difficult to reconcile. It provided space to consider the works in relationship to each other, the typically unseen elements of my art-making process, and real people who interacted with them. In the end, this portion of the thesis work was simply an extension of the rest of my years of Herron – art as process, as teacher, as connector.

The photos / statements below recap the visual part of my thesis work as seen at our show, which took place on April 15, 2016 at The Oilwick.

Show Statement: Marietta Miller, Aaron Green and Lynnette Sauer’s thesis exhibition is a celebration of line in drawing, printmaking, and painting. The work is thematically varied but unified by their love of mark making. Fine Lines references the idiom “There is a fine line between x and y.” It is in the fragile in-between, the gray areas, that Marietta, Aaron, and Lynnette find inspiration for their work.

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