Reappearing
Notes on place, memory, and making
I bought some acrylic markers a couple years ago in Denver, and they’ve sat in a bin since then. These markers survived the downsizing and the storage-unit decision-making, finding further rest in bin after bin, and reappearing in a cabinet of our Cincinnati apartment.
Something about Cincinnati has me remembering bits of all the places I’ve been, corners like Rome, brick like St. Louis, color like Mexico City, people like New Orleans. Nearly six months in now, I feel more at home than I’ve felt in a long time. A fresh start and yet familiar, somehow.
I find myself making art more. Trying to enjoy the process, and being okay with painting over it. Trying again. Moving slower, and being okay with that. Getting around to things I’ve wanted to—things I put off for years. Trying new things, and quitting and trying again. I finally painted over a thrifted canvas I found in Denver a year ago—another thing survived the journey.
Cincinnati’s hills spring up and back down as quick as they came. When the sun sets, the house lights rise along the horizon. Five-point intersections with one arm raising toward the apex of one hill and another leans down toward the river. Another kinks back toward some brewery and another hairpins somewhere else. Train yards and a quiet river, bridges you can walk across, more hills, and colorful homes.
There’s a sense of home—and many homes. An accumulation of places, directions, and versions of myself. A mirror of sorts that’s let me hold them all at once. I feel myself emerging more playful now: a dance between this deep remembering of moments passed and a deeper presence in the moments being made. A reintroduction of myself, to my self.
Seeking Silver is my little virtual studio—a space to play, experiment, to reflect, and connect. A newsletter of sorts, to show up up as I am, in process, and invite others into that process too.
Exposure 01: An Introduction
I've been extra reflective these days as I approach my 10-year anniversary of moving to New Orleans, a city that impacted every inch of me—sacred years of exploration and growth in that special city, and meeting the love of my life there, too. In August 2015, I left for New Orleans to start university. Somewhere packed haphazardly was the camera my gran…
The Showing Up and the Doing
I often find my personal photography practice lives in waves: there’s months in a row I’ve got myself overbooked and shooting all the time, and other times I don’t even want to look at a camera.
Exposure 04: I get it from my momma
My grandma’s gift of a camera unknowingly launched me into this photo career. I’m starting to think she manifested it for me—calling that gift an “investment” from the start. My first portraits were of my family on vacation in Rocky Mountain National Park, in the summer of 2015. A couple months later, home on my first school break in Cottleville, Missou…