National Letter Writing Month + the Recording of It All 🌱

dear glaciers, dear oceans, dear friends

Hi team,

I’m writing to you from spring break for us teachers and from Earth Week for us earthlings and from National Letter Writing Month for those of us who want some extra catalyzing to put pen to paper more often. I’m writing, more literally, from the couch while Sam and I sip coffee and watch waves crash on buildings in Planet Earth III. I’m thinking about how connection to our ecosystems leads to action on their behalf, and about how giant glacial wall hangings and little notebook doodles are notes to place. Or notes to you all, in community, about place?

I’m writing to share about the Shaped by Ice show, originals and postcards for sale, and the practice of journaling.

Last weekend was the Shaped by Ice opening in Seattle. I feel beyond lucky to have experienced the work and play and connection of this with an incredible team of mostly-women climate artists. Check out the website, check out the team’s work, and if you’re in the PNW, check out the show IRL; it’s open the next two Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

Professionally, this was my first real gallery show and I taught a workshop and spoke on a panel at a Protect Our Winters event. Personally, I jumped into city life for three nonstop days (if you’re new here, I live on an island in Maine), and I rode scooters all around and watched a Kraken hockey game and turned thirty-two.

My art “job” and community are really intertwined—my sister helped design the Current Textures Postcards, my mom quilted heroically to help bring my Impact Flags to life last-minute, and my friends showed up to my Seattle landscape embroidery workshop and panel and all. Sometimes I read advice from fellow artists about keeping the personal and professional separate and I just want everyone to know that a lot of the joy I find in this work is in creating with my people.

Anyway, here are the Impact Flags and the original flags—you can learn their backstory here on my blog and here on Substack. The news is: they’re for sale now!

I was asked recently about the process of recording ephemeral melting glaciers and I started thinking about how glaciers are this really obvious, urgent changing landscape but also: all of our landscapes are changing. All of our landscapes are threatened! All of our views are fleeting. My journals are my personal practice in recording my temporary place in the topography around me.

I make a point of journaling for myself instead of to share, but every now and then I take photos of my pages and after enough time has passed I feel like throwing them out into the internet void.

Here are nine examples, cut-and-pasted onto photos of their places. I hope this inspires you to write, doodle, and/or paint notes to the land in a notebook. If you’d like help getting started, I jotted down some journaling advice here.

I’m reminding myself in the urgency of climate action that slowing down and recording is sacred and cool and necessary. I hope you put pencil to paper for the earth or for your people or for yourself.

In this spirit, I made the Original Flags from the Current Textures collection into postcards. Send them to everyone?!

Up next, I think: really local Acadia art and more embroidery education.

Thanks for being here, all. Happy spring. 🌱🌱🌱

<3,

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