AFTER THE EXHIBITIONS, A TIME OF REST

This year so far has been full of making art, traveling to share it, engaging with strangers, reconnecting with friends and making new ones. A year of unexpected losses and a year of great strides.  Of deep connections and rich insights. It began with setting intentions for more collaborations, less "me" in the vacuum of my studio. The year has not ended of course, only the solo exhibitions have come to an end, but I still yearn for more collective working, sharing, imagining, envisioning. I'm patient though, and open.

My Santa Fe friend Kathleen in a Oaxaca mercado.

Emy, me, Ellen and Irene, or is it Irene and Ellen?

New friends inAntigua, celebrating the new Pancho Villa mural at Cactus Tacos

Now that I'm "home," for at least a couple of weeks, I've made a practice of unpacking slowly, rehanging each huipil on the walls of my studio, thanking them and honoring those whose lives and deaths inspired this work. I'm working on a 30-day journaling project with Lisa Sonora, which takes me into a new zone every morning. And I'm planning an opening in my studio, for friends and collectors who want to see the work that's come back from these last exhibitions. It feels like  many of these are ready to go someplace and settle down.

My studio, all filled up with huipils!

And as I work, listen to the news, sing along to music, talk to friends about what's been happening while I was away, I'm thinking about things like: 
What creates happiness or unhappiness?
Where does creativity and hard work take us? Who determines success or failure?
What defines fair, strong, right, wrong?
And with all that's happening in our world, near and far,
How do we contain all of it and still love being in the world?
And still be love? 
And be in the world but not of the world?

And I notice that I'm happy contemplating these ideas without being attached to the answers that may never come.

I love my life, I love each and every moment that I'm here,
But I am not attached to it, to life itself, and I think therein lies my happiness. I'm starting to get things like impermanence, like being a spirit that happens to live inside a body, being a small part of this great big universe that I don't have to understand. Maybe that's what traveling and getting outside of my comfort zone is what it's about, and I think it's rather good for me. How are you when outside your comfort zone?