a vernal pool

Demons for friends, front and back. Grief and fear meditations

[email protected] (zeros!)

Arretos

First try at linocuts

Next stuffie in the mental health series. This one is named NINSIE (Not inferior, not superior). I was listening to a podcast about Zen Buddhist teachings. She was talking about how we might find ourselves entering a social dynamic where we subconsciously assume we are either superior or inferior to the other person and how limiting that is to actually being present with the other person. How often am I assuming my own inferiority (and subsequently striving for superiority?) and how it keeps me closed off from the potential of real interaction. Feels radical to me to approach relationships with a baseline that we are neither inferior or superior to one another. Doesn’t mean either of us are free from fucking up, or that I might come to genuinely disagree with/dislike someone, but what space opens up when I’m not shoving myself and others into an immediate hierarchy.

A summer weaving

Feelings as water running in a river, and learning about the river stones underneath—moving with less reactivity

Fabric masks in the making for Fun A Day

Sketches for Fun A Day project—patchwork masks about feelings

Ghostie/demon to work through anxiety, despair, and fear. I call them OFFIE (Old Family Fears). A reminder that the all-consuming fears that keep me up at night aren’t just my own, not just a product of me, the individual—but that they are part of the functioning of my family system, passed down through generations. Finding some softness and compassion (and distance) for those fears through manifesting this little stuffie.

Journals: left, 2017-2024; right, 2024-?