Creating What I Love: The Joy of Making for Myself
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between making art for external reasons—shows, sales, expectations—and making art simply because I love it. As much as I believe in the value of creating for joy’s sake, I still catch myself falling into the trap of shoulds: I should work …
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Embrace Joy in Your Creative Process
My life is filled with “shoulds,” laundry that I should fold and put away, work that I should be doing when I really just want to curl up with a book, and any number of ways that Instagram makes me feel like I should be living. (Did you know that …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Breaking Out of the January Rut with Creativity
The holiday rush is over and it’s back to business-as-usual. Am I the only one who finds it hard to get moving in January without the adrenaline-fueled To Do list of December? I’ve tried motivating with a crop of New Year’s Resolutions, but those never last long. Now instead, I …
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Finding Joy in December: Embrace Creativity Amidst Chaos
December has always felt like a whirlwind to me—a time filled with holiday gatherings, year-end commitments, and the sense that there’s always just one more thing to do. For years, my approach was to push through, head down, determined to handle it all. But I’ve realized that this often left …
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Creative Play Newsletter-Creating in Tough Times
In my last newsletter, I told you about a series of work that I called my “Accidental Protest” series that I began in January of 2017. It wasn’t planned—I hadn’t set out to create “serious” pieces with strong social justice messages outside of my Victims Quilt Project. But as the …
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Arlington Open Studios – November 9th
It’s that time of year again! Arlington Open Studios has arrived just in time to begin your holiday shopping so why not support a local artist with your gift-buying budget this year? DATE: Saturday, November 9th TIME: 11 AM – 5 PM LOCATIONS: Town Hall on Mass Ave in Arlington, …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Art and Politics
Politics. Don’t stop reading! I promise this newsletter will not veer into policy debates or end with a fundraising request. Instead, I am thinking this month about the ways politics and elections have often inspired creativity. Our current Presidential election is certainly inspiring some impressive TikTok videos, but long before …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Burnout
I’ve been writing a lot on LinkedIn lately about burnout. It’s something that I have dealt with twice in my working life and it seems rampant these days. You may not spend your days in a 9-to-5 job, but that doesn’t mean you can’t experience burnout. What is burnout? The …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Create Your Identity
Nearly a decade ago, I went through an identity crisis. At the time, I decided that I would make myself a quilt for my birthday using 40 pieces of cherished purple batiks.. I also decided that I would make it represent me in some way, other than just having the …
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How Have You Failed Today?
I went to a conference last week where the keynote speaker was Dr. Sarah Lewis, Harvard professor and author of The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. In her talk, she shared that the parents of Sarah Blakely, billionaire CEO and founder of Spanx, asked …
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