Post-Open Studio & Compounded Grief

Feeling crushed and humbled like the sand on the beach

Collective grief and despair compounds with my own personal grief in such a way that I must pause and write so that these feelings do not harm my body and can be released into the world. I have two other unfinished posts in the queue, waiting for the muses to unfold them, but the urgency that informs this one takes precedence right now.

After a long hiatus away from my studio due to my caregiving duties as well as the demands of a bountiful garden, I returned to my 3rd-story, walk-up space in the Merlino Art Center in Tacoma, in early August and started to move the brushes and pencils around on paper to see what would emerge. Looking at last year’s mini-retrospective on my studio walls gave me visual fatigue, so I slowly began to remove things and tuck them away, unsorted, in my old, clunky flat file or in the closet of chaos.

Supplies, mostly colored inks and ink pencils sat waiting to be used, so I began to pull out packages of expensive rag paper that had been a parting gift from the university and laid them out on tables and the floor like neatly prepared beds of soil ready for new seeds. I pinned some sheets of paper to the wall, and looked at them expectantly. I knew that it was time to process the deep grief I was carrying, that of a life changed forever by my partner’s death from cancer, the wrenching daily witnessing of our son’s struggles with mental health, and the continual grief of an artist whose antenna is too finely tuned to the world’s suffering.

I filled empty jars with water, wet my brushes, made a few marks, and soon big, messy images came flowing out, gorgeous splotches of colorful ink, pierced by bold capital letters spelling words like “CRACKING OPEN.” I didn’t fuss with what emerged - I’ve had a tendency periodically to overwork my pieces, especially when my inner critic is overactive. I can get confused and filled with self-doubt about the actual making of them. Thankfully, the past few years have been filled with so much intensity that all self-consciousness about what and why I do what I do as an artist has been composted. I rarely look in the mirror before I leave the house (much to my chagrin when I notice food stuck in my teeth or part of breakfast on my chin). In the studio, I just allow myself to play and use practices that cause accidental mysteries to be revealed. As an artist who was once known for elaborately conceived, audience-participatory installations, I take great pleasure in giving myself permission to do whatever the fuck wants to come out.

Once I was accepted on the Tacoma Studio Tour, I realized that these new images might have an audience. The trick then was not to get too self-conscious while I worked and to stay with the feelings provoking the imagery. By the end of six weeks, I had 21 images ready for hanging on the wall. I started photographing them to share in other ways. I don’t have a name for the whole series yet, but I’m not sure they need a name. What’s important is that they have helped to ground me through this difficult period.

9 of the 21

A few days before the open studio I was completely hammered physically. The last two years of caregiving have taken a toll on my body - so much stress and labor that had been in Bob’s domain before he became too ill to do domestic chores, and then there’s the task of keeping our son emotionally stable which had been mostly Bob’s, since he retired in 2018. Since March 2023, all of those tasks have been mine, and my adrenals are depleted.

The violence in the Mideast has added to the personal grief and exhaustion. I deeply feel the collective heaving in pain, rage, and powerlessness, like a keening in the cracks and shards of everything. The devastation is happening in places I know and have connection to, and these are issues that I have worked on for decades. Some of that work was exhibited in the early nineties and early aughts, and I have watched all these years, demonstrating, writing letters, and feeling helpless, as policies have exacerbated misery and fear. The current conflict is so brutal, and the trauma response is beyond anything I’ve seen before, so no matter how hard I’ve tried, I’ve been unable to avoid the visceral pain screaming into my news feed, claiming emotional terrain. How can I not feel this? I am not so numb.

Still, as my body took note, thinking that this was a way of expressing solidarity with those who are suffering, I was reminded again that I am currently too vulnerable to take in all of this. The disabling environmental illness that I contended with in my late 30s/early 40s was partly caused by taking too many of the world’s problems into my body. Joanna Macy told me many years ago that it was important to exhale. I was holding too much in. With such porous shields, I needed to ask for help.

Another 9 of the 21

I reached out to my meditation group and to other friends for support; thankfully several folks came through with lots of suggestions and offerings to help me through what felt like too much for one body. It’s so important to remember that we are not alone.

And alone is what I wasn’t during the two days of the Tacoma Studio Tour. I am always struck by the trajectory that has taken me from what might have been perceived as a seemingly prestigious, highly driven, and passionate art career while living in NYC, LA, and elsewhere, traveling to international venues…..to what is now a very slow moving, deeply reflective, mostly under-the-radar career. When you open up your studio to people who have never heard of you or your work, you have to do so with curiosity, humility, a bountiful sense of humor, and no expectations.

It was fascinating to see and meet who showed up. There were a few friends from my dance community and my meditation group, a lovely Australian comedic writer from the London Writer’s Salon (my international writing community), a friend from my days with the Backbone Campaign and his husband, some recent transplants from Seattle, a few former students from my 17 years at UW Tacoma, and lots of intriguing people I’d never seen or met before. Some of them came a distance, and were eager to learn more about my work and as well as the growing arts community in Tacoma.

Many visitors were particularly engaged in my pieces about body image (The Fat Book and One Size DOES NOT Fit All are over 30 years old now) so I’m glad I created an arrangement of the original ink drawings and collages for folks to ponder. One wishes, as one does, that the issue of body hate was no longer such a relevant and burning issue for folks, but I’m grateful that so many were open and inspired by the healing messages that this series offered. I encouraged those who wanted copies of the artist’s book to look for used ones, online. Signed copies are a bit pricey (nor do I receive a bit of compensation from the purchase of one). Once my manuscript for this fractured memoir is complete, I might find the motivation to find a new publisher to revise this early attempt to heal body hate.

After many meaningful conversations, I sent those who asked for recommendations to the studios of others. Unfortunately, I still don’t know enough of the artists (or their work) in town, and many of the folks I do know, are not on the tour or don’t have studios, but I was glad to make a few suggestions. Always the dilemma is that if your studio is open, you can’t tour the studios of others, and that makes it hard to know your peers unless you have a very active social life and my social life has shifted dramatically in the past 4 years.

Many visitors to my studio were unafraid to discuss the content of my work, particularly those who were moved by the vulnerability of emotions expressed. Given the current world situation, where grief, rage, frustration, and overwhelm, are daily visitations, I was glad that there was an opportunity for us to have even brief, embodied discussions about the themes surrounding by my work. If I had had more energy and wherewithal, I might have asked folks circle up and share what they were carrying inside (like an impromptu “despair and empowerment” session). I didn’t think of offering something like that at the time, and am only now considering it, in retrospect. As it was, I barely had enough emotional and physical capacity to stand up, move around the space, and hold court with strangers.

Still I was glad that I made the commitment to create a new body of work and lined the room with a bunch of altars to dearly beloveds. I have left the work up for folks who wander to Tacoma in the coming months. If you are going to be local, just ping me to make a date to visit the work in my studio.

Beloved spirits beyond the veil honored by altars in my studio.

After the open studio weekend, I had another art career commitment, for a group exhibition that opens soon at the University of Puget Sound’s Kittredge Gallery. In the Flow was hatched by a team of artists and scholars almost 2 years ago to offer students and. community members some portals into ecoart that addresses climate change and other issues related to the ecocidal moment we are living in.

“In the Flow: Art, Ecology, and Pedagogy embodies and demonstrates place-based and land-based ways of knowing through art, artifacts, and interactive projects by artists, educators, and students from the Cascadia region. It serves as the nexus for the Flow: Art and Ecology in a Changing Climate symposium.”

I hung up three pieces from the series, “The Dead Ocean Scrolls and Other Possible Futures” and will co-lead a walking meditation workshop with Pan Yixuan (the new art professor at UW Tacoma). Here’s what they look like installed.

Here’s the statement about this series: “The Dead Ocean Scrolls and other Possible Futures.”

“The Dead Ocean Scrolls and other Possible Futures” is a series that speaks to the precarity of this moment on our planet and imagines strategies for responding to many of the challenges we currently face.

The large hanging “scrolls” are made from a handsewn patchwork of scrap plastic, tracing paper, thread, digital prints, and paint. Previously these scrolls were known as “trauma curtains” and were part of the installation “We Almost Didn’t Make It,” exhibited at COCA in Seattle and ONCA in Brighton, England in 2018. 

During the Pandemic time, Naidus spent time reflecting on the impossibility of healing those traumas and was reminded that thinking things were impossible to solve was part of the problem. She took inspiration from lots of speculative fiction, the Emergent Strategy Institute, and recent findings by radical anthropologists (like David Graeber) and archaeologists, and began reimagining antidotes to the current dystopia. This practice required writing, meditation, working in the dirt of her garden, lots of discussions, and processing complex layers of emotions via painting and sewing.

The use of plastic as a material is laden with significance for her.  Her late father was a chemical engineer who designed and manufactured plastics. He was also a lifelong gardener who sprayed the fruit trees with pesticides. As a result of her early exposure to these toxins, as well as the aerial spraying of Malathion in southern California during the nine years she lived in Los Angeles, she became disabled in her late 30s and early 40s by an environmental illness. Even though she identified as someone concerned about the environment before the illness, the experience of being profoundly touched by ecocide and meeting others similarly disabled changed her forever. She was one of the fortunate ones who recovered. Her healing process included a combination of modalities and protocols that shifted her body’s chemistry and immune system, and art making was crucial to that process. The project, CANARY NOTES: The Personal Politics of Environmental Illness that investigated the origins of pesticides and the corruption involved in marketing them, along with her Healing Deity series helped her connect to her spiritual and creative strengths and catalyzed a profound shift that lifted her out of her disability.

Although she continues to navigate the modern world of industrial chemicals with caution, this somatic experience of ecocide deeply influenced her creative voice. The ability that her body has had to heal and transform, despite what could have been a permanent limitation, has informed her imagination in a powerful way. While she is not at all certain that the worst aspects of ecocide can be avoided, she has been looking at the neuroplasticity of the brain (another fascinating use of the word plastic) and attempting to reimagine our future with a trust that often seems irrational.  Since that which cannot be explained logically has informed aspects of her art for most of her life, she will continue to believe that solutions to our current problems may exist in realms currently unknown. She has tried to depict some of these questions and reflections in the “Dead Ocean Scrolls and other Possible Futures.”

As Naidus was reworking the curtains into scrolls, she found that the motif of the web spoke most vividly of the necessity to see our current problems as interconnected. A new series of digitally painted, Pandemic Healing Deities peek out of the plastic folds, bulges, and blisters, like change agents emerging to shift the energy and create transformation.” Tacoma, 2021

This series was exhibited with a Prologue and an Epilogue. You need to imagine yourself as an archaeologist of the future, discovering these plastic scrolls under the rubble of modernity.

Prologue:

It was a time to shed behaviors, habits, and expectations so that we could quickly adapt.

For some, there was endless scrolling and swiping to avoid feeling the wretchedness of it all; online streaming for those who could afford the time and the cost was at an all-time high. 

Many fought this process and used all sorts of subterfuge to dodge the grief. Others had been preparing for such a collapse for quite some time, maybe because they had already experienced various forms of ruin and falling apart, and as a result, had patched to together some hard-learned skills to manage the pain.

So, it went; days when it was just about survival strategies, finding new ways to overcome the isolation, reevaluating life goals in relation to this new reality, and moving through daily life with as much grace as one could muster. Yet for more than a few, this wasn’t enough.

It was clear that what had passed as normal was a nightmare for many. For those without power and critical thinking skills, those who were easily seduced by various snake oil salesman and the rabid racism available at media outlets, their fear genes were pinged 24/7 into hoarding and hate. As mobs, they ran helter-skelter into whatever beckoned their adrenaline-soaked systems and terrified many others. They chose violence as their medicine. Their blind capacity for chaos began to alarm those who had been gliding by thinking that they were protected by money or position. Smugness won no safety.

Yet, in many cracks in the seams of the collapsing structures, one could find those who had honed their rage at injustices with clear thinking and imagination. They were not so easily manipulated. Their marginalization as OUTLIERS & QUESTIONERS of all things in dominant culture, SURVIVORS & RESISTORS of all sorts of oppression, those who were queer-identified, those who could not inhabit or were questioning “whiteness,” folks who defied neurotypicality and whose emergence from the rubble of capitalism had made them not only skeptical and cautious, all of them, were IMPERFECT EXPERTS at weaving together the threads of what was happening even when it threatened to overwhelm. THESE BEINGS were more likely to organize into slices of culture that fermented dreams, zooming into each other’s spaces when regions needed to be traversed, and making embodied spaces in parks, yards, streets, sidewalks, and as fears of the variant viruses shifted, they celebrated at indoor gatherings. It was a diverse soup of actions and practices informed by mycelium as much as by James Baldwin and Grace Lee Boggs. The ancestors spoke through them and guided their actions. They managed their trauma with breath, rituals, and spending time with their more-than-human allies. They told each other to take naps and created brave spaces to feel the diversity of their feelings. They used whatever energy was available to imagine and enact visions of equity, justice, and joy. Their trickster practices made them visible to only those who might need their nutritional juice to inform their own subversion and creations.

Through this often-disturbing threshold we moved, a whole contradictory mess of us, hopes and fears pasted on our often-weary faces, not knowing what was on the other side, but the conveyor belt of time, speeding up and then slowing down, kept us in motion, even as some of us clung to old patterns. We were aware that conflicts of all kinds were unavoidable, and that violence of all sorts would be ever-present for some time. Due to the latter, those of us in those outlier cracks, found our ways to meditative practices, gardens, support groups, and families of choice. And in that world, WE GREW SOMETHING THAT WAS MAGIC, that was about healing the impossible, modeling it for others, asking them to jump on the bus. As they did, we moved into a world where oceans and soil could heal, people would respond to love rather than harm, and extinction was no longer inevitable.

Epilogue:

At this time when all can seem lost, we need to take heart

from those who have been most marginalized and oppressed.

Our neighbors of African and Indigenous descent

have long histories of resistance,

in the most hostile and brutal of environments.

Yet they persisted.

As have women.

As have queer folks.

And so many other peoples discarded and abused

who pushed through their internalized oppression.

We need to believe in a future,

despite the endless evidence that tells us otherwise.

And do our best to imagine what might heal these wounds,

many of which seem impossible to heal.

What would it look like if everyone could sit with the discomfort

of doing this work?

What would it look like if we recognized our interconnections

with each other, the ecosystem, and the cosmos?

What needs to melt inside us to see these deep truths?

What about our despair makes us blind?

It still seems possible to arrive in such a place

through fearless joy and gratitude that moves our grief.

Will you join us?

The future is yet unknown.

As I end this post, I have just returned from a short, private retreat in a small, cozy cabin on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to walk with Bob’s spirit on the beach on his 75th birthday. There was a full moon and a partial lunar eclipse, making for a very significant weekend both astrologically and astronomically. It was my first time away from home since July 2022, and perhaps my first ever, solitary retreat. Every day I walked on the beach, feeling the wind and the sun on my face, talking to fishermen who were surf casting for crab and perch, and every sunset, I explored low tide, meeting clam diggers harvesting their bounty of razor clams. I felt blessed to be there, caressed by the beauty and steady waves of the ocean. This long awaited break from caregiving was thanks to my friend and former student, Patience, who gifted me with this time as a belated birthday present. Patience offered support to my son in my absence.

My initial intention for this retreat was to finish all my half-started Substack posts, but after feeling into the sticky knots in my nervous system, I decided to give my muses a break, too, and booked a massage. It was a way to honor Bob’s gift as a massage therapist on his birthday; his spirit conspired to give me one of the best massages ever.

With my body slowly relaxing after being on hyper-alert for years. I gifted myself with no agenda other than twice daily walks to and on the beach, taking photos and videos, soaking up the experience. On one of my walks and sits on the beach, I listened to Alixa Garcia being interviewed by the SAND podcast. This wise woman reminded me to stay true to the mysteries that are unfolding now. And before I left on Sunday, I attended my online course with Bayo Akomolafe who is always reminding us, along with the crew of visionaries he brings into the mix, to sit and dance with the unknown, and to recognize that the paradigms that have created the current sicknesses in the world need to be composted. I drove home metabolizing words about collective grief offered by Michelle C. Johnson. So much richness came through and towards me on this journey. I will get back to my unfinished drafts tomorrow.