If driving on a paved city road is just a means of getting from one point on the earth to another, walking on the sidewalk is for exploring and meandering through the space between destinations. The sidewalk provides a safe path to be slow and curious, while also allowing for spontaneous divergences. The sidewalk, different from a nature path or hiking trail, puts one in direct contact with how other people live, walking past their cluttered yards and open garages and glowing storefronts and cozy apartment stoops and raised front porches. To walk along a sidewalk is to experience the jumbled mess of being a human living next to other humans, and all the beauty and displeasure that comes with that.
I see this newsletter as being a sidewalk next to the busy road that is my art-making practice. Making art, to me at least, is getting an idea from Point A (my head) to Point B (a physical object) with as few detours or delays as possible. But during that journey from idea to object, there are always opportunities to wander and explore, roads that can only be walked down slowly and curiously. And so I am writing this, a look at the jumbled mess that is me making pictures and books about the beautiful jumbled mess I live in. Topics will loosely involve walking as an aid in my artistic journey, noticing one’s surroundings, and diving deep into obscure ideas that may or may not play a part in the grander project I am presently putting together. Writing this has as much to do with motivating myself as it does with sharing my ideas with others, but your support means the world to me. Art without an audience would be like walking on a sidewalk paved through an empty field, and I prefer a busier street.