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Hey-o! Here is a lot of the stuff I drew this month and some thoughts about it all. I will organize it in nature/garden, friends, and baseball (stay with me on that one).

Nature/Garden

In late April I made a little day trip to Black Partridge Woods which is a favorite spot here in Chicagoland. I get pretty depressed living in this city and long for the type of hike where you don’t hear the interstate nearby. Chicago has a lot going for it, but people don’t move here to immerse themselves in nature. I do what I can. Visiting Black Partridge Woods in the Spring is a special treat, because all of the spring ephemerals are popping off, and no one else seems to really care (I went on a Sunday afternoon and encountered only three other people in this paradise). Toad looked especially cute among the fleeting blooms - we found geranium, trout lily, wood anemone, and more.

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watering/ taking care of the garden:

Now that April is upon us, seedlings are popping up under their grow lights, the radishes are finally standing strong in the vegetable beds, and the tulips blooms have popped and now are making their way out til next year. My urban veg and perennial gardens are small but enough to keep me incredibly busy - there’s always something to tend to. I’m feeling extra tender towards everything as I become more and more inclined to capture the garden through painting/illustration/whatever it is that I do.

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Muji Pen

Uniball Signo

Pilot Juice Up Black

Pilot Juice Up Brown

Tombow Fudenosuke

Kakimori Pen from St Louis Art Supply

Canson XL Watercolor Pad

Arches Hot Press Watercolor Block

Arches Watercolor Travel Jour…

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This piece is the first finished piece (!!!) for my solo show in May. This one is a sculpture and not a sculptural lamp like the rest of the work, so I unloaded it and it was … finished, what a relief! To be honest, I’ve felt a bit anti-climatic about this one. I unloaded it from the glaze and it needed some touch-ups and a re-fire, so when I unloaded it in its final form, I already knew what it would look like. Sometimes unloading a kiln is a big surprise, people often liken it to a Christmas-morning feeling. With these sculptures, I’ve felt more dread than joyful anticipation when unloading. It’s very scary to spend so much time on a piece and then fire it, knowing that it has a transformation to undergo that you can’t control.

I brought it home to live with me for a bit to grow more acquainted, and she’s winning me over. Her timing is perfect. On her grass mound it reads, “I’m not just gardening, I’m submitting to primordial rhythms.” It’s à propos:

I started my veg garden seedlings on Saturday. This is my second year starting the veg garden from seed. Now that I have my set up down, it’s cheap! I’ve found that heating pads are the secret to successful seedlings. I had much faster sprout-times this year. I always start too many - I have 16 tomatoes going and I’ll only transplant 4-6 into the garden. But it’s nice to have extras to give away. I also did zinnias this year so I can save money on my container gardens. I’m planning to plant pink and red zinnias in all the pots and maybe supplement with some cute things at the nursery.

Speaking of flowers, last November I planted 400 tulip bulbs over the course of one very muddy weekend. Seeing them pop up and now bloom has been thrilling. Gardening serves as proof that hard work pays off - it is one of the few examples of this belief I must hold on to. If hard work doesn’t pay off, then what is the point of all of the work I’m putting into this show?

And what better way to explore this belief than to submit this piece for the Ultimate Bake - to let it journey to 1,920 degrees in order to undergo its Final Transformation (plus or minus an extra firing or two if necessary). I’ll open its tomb (the kiln, I’m being dramatic and also Easter-y) tomorrow morning to reveal the answer. Will the hard work of fussy modeling, tedious glazing, and gesture obsessing pay off? Will this piece have bloomed (forgive me, but we were talking about the tulips too and I must close the metaphor) during its glaze firing? Stay tuned…

Last month, in the throes of a cold that just wouldn’t quit, I decided that instead of taking the weekend off I would tackle a little studio improvement project. Above my desk, two plywood shelves supported by ugly big-box-hardware-store brackets held all my sketchbooks and art books. I’ve been working hard to make my studio as cozy and cute as it can be, and this shelf situation was… not the vibe. My assistant Amelia had bought me nice floating shelves during an Ikea run. She had hauled them into the space in December, and since then they leaned against the wall, shrink-wrap untouched, waiting. What better time than a cold-turned-sinus-infection to cross this small task off my list? If not now, when?

After pulling off all of the books and unscrewing the bracketed plywood, I assessed the anchor situation. Anchors are a big deal in my life. I have both a studio and a home that necessitates an alarming variety of them (ask me about toggle bolts, hollow wall, self-drilling…). While inspecting the massive holes left by the anchors previous, I really got ticked off. This wall had been covered in splotchy colorful paint marks from the previous tenant and it’s been bothering me ever since I moved in. I pushed the irritation down. It’s a studio, who cares!

As I was beginning to install my new Lack floating shelves, I heard a voice in my head.

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If this video looks extra professional, that’s because it is! My friend Joe Goudreault filmed it and made me feel extra comfortable - which was important while sharing this extra honest review of my 2025 goals and setting the intentions for next year! He also did the beautiful editing. If you make videos, you know how challenging and puzzle-piece-feeling editing is.

I am making lots of videos for Substack - a new vid comes out once a month behind the paywall - some of them feel a little personal. It’s cool to make videos that only a few people will see, and in that way they are serving as little personal recorded journals. Feb and March’s are all about checking in as I prepare for an upcoming solo show. They show some process of building sculpture and slipcasting mugs, but if you’re not interested in that, there is a lot of talking about inspiration, personal fears, and my plans (and dreams). Anyway, March’s will drop later this week but please enjoy this nice vid that is for everyone!

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Two Saturdays ago, I threw a party at my house.

This article made the rounds on the internet a yearish ago and with it a conversation about our social responsibility to host, to create reasons to celebrate, and to take our turn in our friend groups as party-thrower. This is something I have believed in for years. If you want to be invited to parties, you must also host.

I was quite touched when many friends showed up with gifts. My friend Molly wrote us a card that said “thank you for getting us all together.” And here I was thinking no one would want to come!

It is lovely when your friends become friends with one another. As a party-thrower, we become rotating ambassadors of each sub-group of our personal social sphere. With this comes a lot of responsibility - something I take too seriously, stress out about, overcompensate, and often resign myself to drinking too much.

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In ceramics class in college we had an assignment to make a functional ceramic piece that wasn’t pottery. I’ve been so into this idea ever since. It’s actually a bit hard to think of things to make when confronted with this challenge, but anytime I present myself with the prompt, I come up with funny ideas, some to make and some to just noodle on. Fresh out of school, I spent a year in Montana at a ceramics residency and explored this concept further with such masterpieces as “Back Scratcher” and “Football Finger Puppets.” For years I’ve been meaning to fire a solid brick of clay very slowly to make a ceramic door stopper.

Enter, the ceramic lamp. I bought this one on eBay during the pandemic. I love to trawl through the search results for “[insert specific thing] lamp” or “[insert another specific thing] wooden sculpture.” Often the [specific thing] is a maltese, which can lead to poodle as I cast my net wider. This lamp brought me so much joy, and every time I looked at it, I knew I had to try to make my own. But I was too afraid!!!!!

I hate experimenting in front of other people. I feel exposed and vulnerable when I try new things in the studio, and because of this, I take fewer risks. The ceramics residency in Montana that I mentioned above was really difficult, I felt like I was a magnet for unsolicited feedback and it gave me a fish-in-a-fishbowl feeling. Many of my friends who make art also feel this way about sharing studio spaces. I wonder if you relate?

Ceramics studios require a lot of infrastructure (mostly just a kiln - maybe a vent/spraybooth/slabroller if you’re fancy), so a private ceramics studio is a luxury. In June of 2024, I made the leap to my own space. Having my own private studio has been world-opening. I can experiment without any outside feedback, and when I’m ready for critique, I can control who it’s coming from.

Shortly after moving into my new studio, I had the opportunity to visit the V&A, which may be the absolute greatest museum of all time ever. I spent a lot of time with the ceramics on the top floor, especially drawn to the figurative things (with function and without). They reminded me of my poodle lamp back home. I love to draw figures, why not see what they look like in 3D? Of course the idea had occurred to me years ago, but I was too scared to start. With my own space in which to try and fail in privacy, I returned home and built Eric a figurative lamp for his birthday.

I’ve been humbling myself with ceramic figurative lamp sculptures for a year and a half now and have learned a thing or two. Mostly I have had many, many problems.

ALL THE PROBLEMS I’VE HAD WITH THESE FRIGGEN LAMPS:

1. They are hard to construct from an engineering perspective. They’re a combo of hollow and solid. They have thick parts that take forever to dry, and limbs that dry out too quickly. The require external supports during building. Refining small areas puts pressure on the whole thing. It’s a mess.

   

2. Did I mention I have no idea what I’m doing? I didn’t have much handbuilding instruction in school and I’ve never taken a class in sculpture. The only instruction I’ve had has been from this incredible book. (Seriously recommend this if you’re looking to learn about figurative sculpture - Cristina Cordova was incredibly generous to share this stuff and in my experience books like this don’t have a huge audience and go out of print quickly!)

3. When I make functional pottery, I paint a layer of white slip on red clay (my friend Joe and I made a video about this and it’s coming very soon!) I can’t do this same slip technique on these sculptures because it will cause cracking… or maybe I could? Maybe someone better at sculpting than me could? It’s a challenge to keep the whole piece the same level of dryness (making things out of clay is all about moisture content management) which is necessary for slip application.

   

4. So because of that little issue, I started to apply white underglaze “basecoat” after bisque (the first firing) before underglazing (the adding color part) and glazing (the dipping it in liquid so that it fires into a glass clear coat part).

5. The underglazing process started to pull off the white underglaze “basecoat.” I treid to solve this by firing the piece after applying the white underglaze as a way to fuse it on. This meant that each piece would require three firings, but, we do what we must.

6. Once I thought I had all my problems solved - three firings, nbd, I realized that this weird intermediary firing was causing my glaze to flake off, which we call “shivering” in the ceramics world.

   

7. I decided I didn’t even like the way the pieces looked, even if they weren’t flaking off glaze pieces left and right. The underglaze+shiny clear coat glaze that I use for my functional pottery made the whole thing look wet, and not in a cool way. The underglazes were washy and it just wasn’t “it.

   

   ”

8. I decided to try a completely different glaze - a matte white - and applied the underglaze on top. This is now causing a weird “crawling” - the pottery term for when glaze pools into itself into little islands leaving bare valleys on unglazed clay. Based on past experience, there are a number of reasons to solve this, each with their own problems:

   1. thin out glaze

   2. pour/dip glaze instead of brushing it on

   3. bisque fire to a lower temperature

   4. change absolutely everything about this body of work🙃

Well, reader, I will persist. Perhaps the seventh, eighth, ninth time is the charm. Right now I have a shelf full of work needing to be glazed, but when glazing has perosnally hurt you so much, it feels like punishment. I need to figure this all out though, because I have a SHOW in May and I’ll be sharing this work with the world for the first time in a formal setting (at the least formal, most comfortable and special gallery in Chicago - Lot’sa).

I have a video for coming later this month about building these figurative sculptures, in which I will share a bit more about the concept behind them and less about the technical slog. Thank you for reading this, and supporting me! It’s very fun to complain to you!!

Molly’s World: Some Recommendations

I’m a Pomodoro Freak (25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of break) and I’ve been loving these Nia Technique 5 minute dance videos for my little break reset. Dancing in the studio gives me the I-am-cringe-but-I-am-free feeling that is another benefit of having my own studio space. The only person who knows that I am dancing is my downstairs studio neighbor and i DGAF because the feeling is unmatched. Some people call this a “movement snack” and I’m on board with that branding.

I really liked this article about Epstein’s influence on the rise of right-wing extremism globally. I’m truly disheartened by the lack of reporting from major news outlets on the latest DOJ drop of the Epstein Files but I’m so impressed by grassroots journalists who are doing important work sifting through all of this!

I’m a freak for someone to break paintings down for me and this book is incredible. This one is out of print but this book from the same publishing house looks very promising and would be a great birthday gift for me!! My birthday is 7 months away but whateva..

Ok Ciao! Talk to you next week babes!

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I have a copy of Martha Stewart’s Christmas, a book published in 1989 which reads like a slightly braggy editorial documentation of Martha’s 1988 Christmas and all its fanfare (multiple trees, big party) mixed with aspirational how-tos for elegant Christmas crafts (covering pinecones in gold leaf) and ambitious recipes (cassoulet for 150).

The book is filled with beautiful photos of Martha’s Turkey Hill home, which is immortalized in a gingerbread house centerpieces (of which Martha says, “each year I vow never, never, never to make another gingerbread house. And each year something makes me break that vow” 😈 I relate). She had a modest three Christmas trees in 1988. The first one is decorated with gilded cookies - gingerbread shapes she’s covered in metallic leaf. Martha warns, “Gold leaf of at least 23 karats is edible, as is silver leaf. Copper is not.” Another tree, in the barn, is covered in popcorn balls - for the “kids.” The hero tree is in the library, where the antique ornaments Martha has collected for the last 25 years are perfectly placed among the boughs. The photo she includes of this one is so warm and cozy (above, right - and the inspiration for the header illustration at the start of this substack).

In a story predating the classic Greek myths we know and love, a goddess Cybele falls in love with a mortal Attis - and he doesn’t return her affection. Short story short, he castrates himself, bleeds violets, and she turns him into a pine tree. Early worshippers of Cybele celebrated by adorning a tree in violet garland, “signifying nature’s endless cycles of death and renewal.” I love the image of a pine tree covered in violets. A sort of Springy Christmas theme. For other Classical (and sexy?) rituals involving proto-Christmas trees see: Origins of the Christmas Tree: The Pine and the Phallus.

Anyway, here is our tree - it’s a bit modest compared to Martha’s, but I love it. And now that craft fair season is officially over, I’ll be enjoying a lot of tree time.

Tree time is when you sit near the tree and just look at it. It’s a wintertime basking - soaking in the lights, admiring the ornaments, and smelling that nice pine smell (if your tree isn’t fake like mine is!). It turns out that conifers release phytoncides - these chemicals give the trees that wonderful heady smell and happen to boost immunity in humans. Tree time is scientifically proven to be healing.

My favorite time of year is the week between Christmas and New Year’s, where I do whatever I want (draw in my sketchbook) and try not to work at all. This is when I really get to enjoy everything Christmas has to offer, and plenty of time will be spent basking under my fake tree, sipping some coffee, and maybe even reading a book. Happy holidays to you, and I hope you enjoy as much tree time as possible! Maybe we should bake a yule log??