Category: Uncategorized

I hadn’t painted since I was an undergrad. Unless you count the painting I did alongside my kids when they were toddlers. So it as with a little bit of trepidation that I accompanied Leslie out for our painting date. I had campaigned pretty hard to get her to come down to Urbana—but it was mostly to enjoy her company, no so much the actual painting. We scouted for sites at the big prairie park, but it was boiling hot and too sunny for the prairie. We settled on the cool shade of the Japan House gardens at the UIUC arboretum, and the coolness of my own front garden, under trees. Those fabulous pots of paint, and the astounding magentas and brick reds! The shared conversation and quiet intensity of looking closely—what a lovely thing that was. Bliss.

July 13, 2019

Champaign Urbana Illinios

A dab of color
A gaze of contemplation
A little smile

February 15, 2019

Edgewater Pink Building Chicago

What can be better than spending time with a friend, painting, in nature on a glorious
summer day

September 2, 2019

Humboldt Park

I’m so grateful that Leslie shared this meditative, creative and social practice with me! I’ve since moved to Los Angeles, but I love the idea of carrying on this tradition as a way to nurture imagination, build community – and of course stay connected to my thoughtful friend.

October 21, 2017

Humboldt Park

: dust, dirt, mud, air, heat, sun

February 20, 2020

Tucson Saguaro National Monument Arizona

For four years I watered and cared for a gifted perennial to no avail. I became used to the plant as an unblooming specimen, acclimated to its bright green leaves and stems as the only color expected from the healthy and stubborn plant.

It lived with me and my two roommates, and when I decided to move out and into an apartment on my own in March of 2019, I left the bloomless flower behind, my attachment apparently not warranted without the promised blossom. Within two weeks of my departure from the apartment, twin blooms slowly began to develop, light pink buds darkening into blood red as their stamen pushed out like tongues from slowly parting lips.

I don’t remember what I painted with Leslie last March, but I do remember the curiosity of bustling onlookers within the humid Fern Room, her deft classification of the my stubborn and sudden bloom (amaryllis), and that we sat side-by-side on a bench dedicated to Ann Marie Pianka with the inscription “May Her Love Bloom Eternal.”

April 20, 2019

Garfield Park Conservatory

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

-Wallace Stevens

December 13, 2017

Garfield Park Conservatory