May 2022.
My dearest readers, I can’t believe almost two years have passed since I posted here! So much has happened since Fall/Winter 2020 and my last watercolors.
Since then, more months of partial pandemic living, but the beginning 2021 saw me traveling to Mexico for an extended stay while teaching remotely, and seeing Italy and Florence ( twice! to make up for the Annus Horribilis).
This year I divided my time between Calabria and San Diego. Transformational times, all – and not always conducive to art. Yet, I learned something new every single day.
I teach History of Modern Architecture at the beautiful University of San Diego now. It was a quality leap for me, and I’m inspired and grateful everyday. I also furthered my studies this year and became a Mayo Clinic- trained Wellness Coach, completing the program in Summer 2022. This is something I have longed to study and practice for a while, and I would like to specialize in a holistic approach of mind-body-soul wellness. The idea is also to combine wellness and well-being with architecture.
Art has been at time languishing, at times proceeding in small spurts. Discipline, as my readers know, was never my forte.
What I did make in the past two years ( this summer I was almost back ) I published on Instagram, where I have been focusing on the growth of my account. I started posting all the work from the SketchBloom archives there, and now I have to catch up on my blog with work from my Instagram feed 🫣. Obviously this doesn’t make sense. The new workflow, as of today, is to post new work here first, then use Instagram for teasers and as a gallery. Hopefully my followers there will appreciate my words as much as my art.
I wish I presently had more watercolors from the classes I’m taking from my Maestro Luis Camara ( who zooms from Madrid) , but I’m slowly easing into that again, while I continue my “anthology of Visual Poetry” and collecting ideas for future series ( and there is some exciting stuff coming!) . Some people can churn out creative output even under enemy fire, because art is a lifeline and the non-negotiable to everyday. It is their daily therapy, prayer and supreme act of self-care. I am not there yet, and require a modicum of sustained homeostasis, care, and rest to show up to my drawing table, to my sketchbook, to my brushes and colors. Like a plant needs sun and water. The dream is to also have meditation and yoga equally dialed in daily. But I read, practice before inspiration/ motivation (or something like that) …and I get it. We want to have the good habits locked in for when the storms of life come.
There was never the final draft 🤦🏻♀️
But, I have been making enormous strides in the self—care and healing department and currently have lots of projects going on. You will see the branches, fruits and roots that have grown since you last read me.
They thought they would bury us.
They did not know we were seeds.
All along something was missing, though: my long form pieces, writing poetry and cultivating the garden, Sketchbloom, I so lovingly built twelve years ago. Instagram does not allow for a whole lot beyond the canned templates, and, while it was exciting to learn about reels, making videos with my amazing Canvas lamp, and focus on the ( slow,organic) growth of my page, I read about a famous IG personality making a point to post on her blog three times a week. This was the last push I needed to come back to connect and write in a more personal, slow, and mindful way, to take back ownership of my art and write poetry again.
There is something liberating in being able to be in this space without advertising, manipulative algorithms and big corporations. I hope this blog becomes a breath of fresh air to rediscover the quietness of the heart found in art and poetry, and to breathe. I feel like that when I visit DailyZen.
The past in the end, the narrative, the marketplace, as Alan Watts calls it, are all irrelevant, save for the lessons. The last three years have been full of them, and of setbacks both collective and personal. Ten long months of winter. Some brilliant moments and days of absolute joy and beauty stood out: diamonds amongst the thorns, you can count them on one hand.
What matters is this moment, what matters is that I picked up the blogger pen again. My digital studio was never dead but dormant, in hibernation while I solved myself and my life. What matters is that I have not felt this good and this free and this complete in myself since I was a young girl. I read that the prepubescent years are the most unencumbered, spontaneous time in a woman’s life, before hormones, society and the patriarchy begin their programming.
What matters is that I found my voice, and I’m back. Back to myself and here to stay.
sketchbloom.com 