The biggest adventure: forever, then all of a sudden

The winter stayed and stayed. Snow came, then fell again with a vengeance, white, whiter, small hills gathering curbside. Softer snow layered with frozen rain and sleet. Our own glacial record, keeping the things we lost: A single mitten, pocket change, our sense of permanence, the feeling of home. It was the coldest year on record. Biting. Sharp. I spent from November until April in Sorrel boots; wore my grey woolen beanie hat indoors; stopped smiling at strangers (not for lack of interest but because it required too much exposure of cheek and neck). The days grew longer, but the cold lasted. And along with it, a growing, restlessness, a gradual anxiety; a realization that this, here, might not be enough anymore for many reasons. Some more complicated than others. The least of them being the weather, but the most acceptable to share about here.
In retrospect the universe was probably conspiring. In the moment it felt like everything skittered right up against the edge. Things happened slowly, then all of a sudden. It felt like it feels when you almost fall on black ice, but catch yourself just before and walk away, your heart still beating hard.
Everywhere else spring arrived. I watched on Instagram. People had cherry blossoms, camellias, daffodils by the arm-full. Here, it was snow or days of spitting sleet. Temperatures in the low teens. Hunched shoulders. Worry. The feeling of having outgrown our circumference. Uneven footing. A flirtation with change. The idea of moving West. An inkling. A passing remark here. A half finished sentence there. What-ifs showing up in my morning pages; the words “spend more time on the Pacific” in my 37 before 37 list; and then we started looking in earnest. Then we flew out, fell in love with the city of roses and bridges, saw friends, ate so much good food, interviewed many places, and T landed his dream job.
Or something. Something like that. Sort of. Minus the hundred thousand anxious moments. Minus all the things beyond our control. Minus the anxiousness stitched together to make days, and the logistical conversations we had over and over again on repeat.
Now of course we forget it all. We forget the way we hunched against the cold because today there is sun, and sun, and sun. People are using leaf blowers. The neighbor's parakeets are flirting. Cardinals are making nests. The lake is melting, and the are is warm enough finally to sit in shirt sleeves, grinning.
And We’re moving.
Bittersweet. Wildly giddy. Thrilled beyond words. Tired. Heart-achy. Delighted.
And it’s all happening now, this very minute. We leave in 2 weeks. Hello Portland.
Finally I’m moving back. The Pacific is whispering. A new bungalow on a new street. A city to fall in love with. New paths to chart. New stories to tell.
And before that, goodbyes and then a cross-country road trip. The boys. The dog. A route mapped through Chicago and Wyoming and Idaho to see some of this big country for the first time. I can’t wait and I’m not ready. I’m over the moon, and I’m sad to be leaving friends behind.

---

Needless to say: I have added incentive to make the studio sale happen. I'm finishing a few pieces, and scanning them all. Fingers crossed it will go live tomorrow. Maybe Tuesday. Like always, it will be a pay-what-you-can sale, but I'll be setting a minimum this time just to offset materials and handling. I make all items available to my newsletter list first--then open up whatever's left to anyone who happens by this little blog after 24 hours. (Fair warning, last time everything sold in less than 12 hours.)

---

Ok.So enough about that. Tell me everything you know about moving. Cross-country trips. Portland. Everything. Love, C

*Studio Sale + An Update*

[gallery ids="15593,15594,15598"] Hello dear friends,
I'm so sorry I've been quiet here. Spring is gradually arriving, and with it, many changes and new directions that I'm excited to share, but can't quite share yet. I was traveling this past week, which put me behind schedule for when I'd hoped to have my studio sale at the end of March. But it will be happening mid April. (Jump on the list if you want first dibs.) There are lots of animals in this particular round--many pen and ink drawings and a few small canvasses. Lots of resurfaced original postcards.

If there is an animal that particularly speaks to your heart, let me know and I'll try to ink one up for the sale as well.

No promises, but when someone asked if there'd be a few red foxes in the mix, I got inspired and made a few sketches that I'm excited to finish.
Now that I'm back from traveling of course I got sick: A full-on head cold, paired with a stint of solo-parenting, and a tight project deadline. Oy. Still, the tiniest glimmers of spring around here have me giddy. It's been such a long time coming, so much cold, so many layers of snow I could hardly believe that after a few days of spring sun the ground is bare.
Soon, crocuses will show up among the litter of last year's leaves, and overhead in the tangle of bare branches that snare the moon every evening as it climbs the blueing twilight sky will become a riot of leaves and blossoms. Each year this happens, and each year, I'm in awe: That a seed unfurls into a plant; that bare twigs become the ruffled delight of greening leaves; that the light lasts longer and longer till the boys beg to go out after dinner and play and play well past when their bedtimes. I haven't the heart to call them in, until the final rays of sunshine slip beyond the edges of our world. Then they come, muddy kneed, smudge-faced, grinning like the rapscallions they are. It's been a long winter around these parts.
Tell me what you're up to, what spring adventures are underfoot, and if you've got something your heart is set on that you'd like for me to try to draw.
xo/Christina

Today, like any other day

Today, like any other day, We wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundres of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

---

--Rumi

The quiet is on purpose

           The quiet is on purpose. I've been gathering and holding close the moments as they come. Time for stillness. Evenings with books. The occasional afternoon when I can slip away at work and walk with my turquoise Hunter boots fingerless gloves down to the peer, over snowy grass or mud or pebbles, to watch the water move and feel the sky grow bigger there, unobstructed by things made by the human hand.   The quiet is my way of starting out the year: between the new year and my birthday, 26 days exactly to dwell and ruminate; to take inventory of where I've been and where I'm headed. What I've done, and what I long to do.   And maybe this year, more than any other year, I've needed the quiet. Craved it, like a hunger, all the way down to my bones after nearly four years of non-stop creating. First Sprout, then Kickstarter, then grad school, then writing A Field Guide To Now, then a new job, then the book launch, and now, finally here. A new year. I'll be 35 at the end of this week.   That feels significant. A year for becoming... in new ways. Hence the reason I've changed things up around here design wise. I've been wanting things to be simple. To be just enough, nothing more. Room for art and words photographs and enough white space also for some breathing room. I hope you like it.   I'm also planning some truly lovely, simple things for this space. A little daily collaboration with one of my dearest friends. The most wonderful interview series I could ever imagine, slowly coming together with some of the most incredible creatives I know.   And quite soon, quite soon indeed, I'll be having a pay-what-you-can studio sale, to make way in my small corner of the world for new work. If you'd like to be among the very first to know--and get a special sneak peak before it goes live for everyone else, sign up for my newsletter here. I'll be sending an update out before the end of the week, and you don't want to miss it. Really.

The wisdom of animal totems

I was with a friend recently who asked me what my animal totem was, and without thinking really, or hesitating at all I said, "A bird, because of the view that they have, because of the way they can lift off and see the topography from above. The bigness of it, and the smallness of it too: the way perspective shifts: the way the tree becomes minute, the waterfall insignificant, the sky infinite."

But if I were to get specific, it’s been the blackbird lately that’s been calling me. It's the blackbird's sooty feathers and silhouette that I picture in my head. And when I took the time to look it up, I really paused. Delighted and in awe of how right the meaning is for my life right now.

Every time I encounter this truth, I'm always wonder-filled again by the fact that there is such wisdom in everything if we stop to listen; if we pay attention to our selves, and souls, and inclinations and leanings.

“Blackbird awakens the mind with awareness as changes of perceptions are unfolding…. At this time there is a magic of the unseen worlds coming forth that is paired with the balance of grounding within the earth as you walk your path. Blackbird will guide this new awakening…. Blackbird will teach much and bring new surprises when you least expect it. Pay attention and listen carefully." >>

The blackbird knows secrets.

* * *

Try it. Quick, before you do anything else, what animal speaks to you right now?

Don’t think about it. Don’t hesitate. Just say the very first thing. Write it down even. Maybe here in the comments. Maybe you're rolling your eyes, but I say: everything is an indication. Everything is an omen if your eyes our open. What can you learn from your own heart?

A creative loophole:

That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over. Why? Me with my arms outstretched, feet in first position. The chromosome half of us don’t have. Second to last in the alphabet: almost there. Coupled with an L, let’s make an adverb. A modest X, legs closed. Y or N? Yes, of course. Peas sign reversed. Mercedes Benz without the O.

Y, a Greek letter, joined the Latin alphabet after the Romans conquered Greece in the first century—a double agent: consonant and vowel. No one used adverbs before then, and no one was happy.


~ From Y, by Marjorie Celona, originally from the Indiana Review, republished in Best American Non-Required Reading 2008.

How can you not be inspired, like I was, reading this, to pose and consider everything remarkable about a letter? Maybe your first initial, or your last. I'm on the lookout every day for opportunities like this: to slip through an open doorway, an imaginative loophole, a slight tear in the fabric of all that right now insists. Because everything is happening at once, as it always is. Everything converging. Projects, deadlines, discoveries, presentations. It’s easy for me to just put my head down and run hard without stopping, without looking, without pausing for a handful of moments to practice doing what I love the most. And I found this to be the perfect thing to do today, mid week, now, on the seventeenth of November, with the world blue and brown and quiet with the promise of snow, amid everything else.


At the back door there are leaves that the wind’s tossed up in heaps, brown and crackling under our feet as we make a bonfire with friends, roast marshmallows and press them between crumbly graham crackers with chocolate; drink cappuccinos, and watch the children play. They take rakes with bamboo tines and heap the leaves until one or all of them are buried, laughter rising up with the sparks toward the night sky that is full of ink and diamonds; such a mess of grandeur, are the heavens above us.


The children turn on the porch lights; four boys in hats, leaves eddying up in the dark. Their shadows are eerie and huge across the grass, and then up in the sky, the waning gibbous moon, a pregnant C up there with the spilled milk of the universe, the faintest shadow of its darker side also there, barely illuminated: a C in reverse.


C: The letter that is at once the contents and the container, the balance of negative and positive space, the curve of palms, cupped, holding a bowl, and also the shape of the bowl. It is curiosity, and the top bit of a question mark in reverse. The final slight line in a pair of parenthesis, the pause of a comma, the arc of a story, a a smile turned on it’s side. It is the consonant that invokes creativity, the third letter of the alphabet, the symbol for chemical concentration, the speed of light in a vacuum, the abbreviation for carat, century, constant, cubic. It is the first note in C major, and the way my name begins.

It's your turn!

***

Take 5 minutes. See what you can write about a letter. Or share a link an image or post and I’ll be sure to take a peak.

An inventory of things found on my studio floor:

Things found on the floor of my studio: A blue letter O; two puzzle pieces; a small rocket ship; a cardboard tile with the word COMETS on it; a very small sticker stuck to the floorboards that says "Road Closed" in black against orange; another sticker, artfully pressed into a knot in the floorboards that says "YES" in all caps; a small black wheel; a spool of turquoise thread; a solitary striped sock; a red matchbox car; 1 pacifiers; 7 hair ties; countless snippets. I can only trace the origins of the final two from that inventory. This is what happens when I work in my studio with children underfoot.

It's such good practice though, to slow down enough to take an inventory of the details around you. Try it: Can you notice five unusual things within an arms reach? What are they?

This is true:

Listen. What you hold with your hands is everything.

Possibility.

Opportunity.

Joy.

What you hold are hold the fragile wings of something that arrives in the night and then slips away, leaving only its slight carbon footprint on your sill; or the small body of a sparrow that’s just hit the window. Or maybe you hold the runaway tug of your dog’s leash; or the runaway tug of your heart.

You might hold the hand of the one you love; or your face in your hands; the heft of your child’s body, his head thrown back with laughter; or the weight of emptiness in your palms pressed together in prayer.

What you need to know is that what you hold can be a anything. What counts is intention. What counts is reaching out. Taking hold. Accepting. Offering.

DO THIS:

Spend today taking note of your hands: of the artful way they pick up a pencil, wipe tears from a cheek, flip eggs, type, caress, create. Of how they translate the world for you; the way they’re the bridge between what’s inside your heart, and what you make of it. Of the way they feel held in another’s hand, or pressed into dough, or submerged in water. Imagine the joy you can hold; the possibility you can ask for and accept, like a boomerang tossed and received.

Start with this.

Today I hold the last of autumn’s leaves; papery now, and wind tossed; my coffee frothy and warm; scissors for cutting Sprout’s long bangs; the excitement of new possibilities; a brush dripping with aqua ink; the soft cotton of shirts, ready for folding.

What do your hands hold today?

*

Daily Art + Unabashed joy

I watch my son sitting across the table from me in the golden afternoon light, drawing. He draws effortlessly, without thinking of it as a creative act. It is simply a means, a process, a discovery. Every morning before school he draws; every afternoon, he produces copiously, without caution, without expectation. He makes pictures because they are adventure: the representations of the story track running in his head. He draws in a way that is utterly his own. Complex lines: cogs, wheels, wires, motors. He draws pitched roofs and internal stairways, porch lights and door bells, cars with drive-shafts, oceanscapes with pirate ships, secret potion machines, fantastical creatures, and night skies filled with five pointed stars. These, he’s just mastered, and he draws them in everything now, along with words and letters, filling up secretive corners on every page where he practices invented spelling; summoning the magic of phonemes and consonants to make word sounds.

And he draws all of it, without even realizing the work, the effort, the certain shortcomings of his ability; he draws all of it joyfully, filling page after page with deep, wholehearted practice.

I’m in awe of this. Of him, now, at six and a half, before self doubt has any leverage at all; before there are any inklings of “perfect,” in his bright mind. Before this effortless creating slips away and the unwanted cacophony of standards, criticisms, expectations, and reviews fill its place.

Now there is simply the joy of drawing lines for the sake of it: Drawing without any critique at all, without any consideration for audience or perception. His art is the work of wholly self-absorbed wonder, and I am taking notes.

This week I have been asking: What do I need to do to allow myself to create as recklessly and easily?

What creative constraints do I need to put in place to quiet the analytical chatter at the back of my mind, ever full of commentary, critique, and doubt?

When I was finishing the illustrations for my book I discovered the immense power of creative constraints: Of having certain parameters that defined the scope of the work. I have found that for me, incredible creative force emerges under such circumstances, and in the context of daily practice, I’ve been experimenting with constraints as a way to short circuit my inner critic, and find my way back to the simple joyful state of art as play; of making as wonder; of creating as joy.

This week, I’ve been inviting myself to show up for 15 minutes to make a piece of art—and to be joyfully, gently, gratefully satisfied with whatever emerges from that process. As V-Grrrl commented in my last post, "I’m first and foremost a writer"... and I know this resonates with many of you as well. But there is something so profound about working with images. It’s good cross training, at the very least: to slip out of your comfort zone, and create with the pure raw material of image.

I’m going to keep doing this for the entire month of November, sharing my pieces every week in this set, and I am wondering:

What if you were to join me? What if you were to you accept this invitation, and explore your child-self; your creative, adventurer heart?

THIS IS YOUR INVITATION.

I’ve created DAILY ART flickr pool here

...if you’d like to join me on this adventure... I'll be posting more observations and discoveries about ways to get started this week...if this is something that you'd like me to share... I would SO LOVE to have you join me.

I'm also curious: When was the last time you remember being creative without worrying about meeting a deadline, or if you were "doing it right" or being "good enough"? When do you find yourself slipping into an un-judging creative groove?

On motherhood and messes, creative process and apple pie:

Today there is rain and the final splendor of leaves the color of the summer sun, sumacs flutter with fronds of flame, the poplars are already bare. There is wood for stacking, bulbs to be put into the damp, still-soft ground, and the last of autumn's apples for picking: small and hard, with thick skins and the sweetest nearly wild fruit, perfect for pies and apple butter.

Yesterday I made a pie with the boys: each one of them armed with a pairing knife; cutting the slices with gusto and irregularity. There simply wasn’t anything else to do, even though, like every other day, there always is.

Rain was falling and I took one look at the way they were spinning around the kitchen, after having arrived home from their various destinations and I could tell: things would meltdown all too soon if I kept on writing, hunching over my laptop at the counter like some long-legged bird. And so, apple pie.

So we set to work: the boys cutting up apples while I stirred the sugar and butter and spices in a pan. I’m always a little surprised and terribly pleased by how earnest they are in the kitchen! How they just want to be helpful, and how, given real tools and real responsibility, they both are. They formed a team almost immediately, Bean cutting the apples into manageable wedges, and then Sprout following through, chopping each into as many small pieces as he could, and tasting nearly every one.

I let them lick out the bowl of course. And later, when the pie was ready after dinner, we ate it warm, in bowls with a little heavy cream the way my father always used to.

This is part of it: each night as I gather Sprout year old to my chest in the dark, as we sit in the rocking chair in the room he shares with his brother, as I gather his small solid body close and press my nose into his sweet hair, he says, “I want Nonna.”

The first time he said this, I felt my heart hit my ribs, heat spreading across my cheeks with the anguish of this small betrayal.

But what I have begun to understand in the process of making this work, this book, this life, is how to inhale the ache and intensity of these moments, bitter-sweet, and then to release it on the exhale, and say yes to all of it.

To realize: yes, he loves his Nonna. How lucky are we all that this is the arrangement. That he has this tribe of love, and I do. That this work I am doing is possible.

And so I kiss his warm forehead and say, “You’ll see her again tomorrow, my love," and he burrows into my chest and hums along as I sing "Speed Bonny Boat" in the dark.

I’m telling you this because all of this is part of the process. This is the real, messy, frustrating, bittersweet stuff of being a mother and a pioneer/artist/writer/creator. And it is also absolutely the only way I would want things to be. This duality. This love. This creative life.

There are days I don’t see my boys until 4 in the afternoon or sometimes 5, and there are days that even when I’m here, I’m preoccupied with the work I’m in the midst of, and I sit in the middle of the stirring living room, in the middle of the ruckus, writing while they build marble towers or ride their plasma cars around like hellions. And there are days like yesterday, when the pieces all come together: apple pie, thesis abstracts, client deliverables, tickles, brown sugar and cinnamon licked off of fingers. And for the hundred-thousandth time I think to myself, Whatever way, this life is the only life I want.

Tell me, how many of you navigate this tenuous line? What is it like for you?

On making space for the work I am doing:

Hello friends!

My semester ended today, and fall is in the air even though it's August still. You can feel it in the way the breeze is cool coming through the open windows in the morning, and the light is golden and slanted as it angles across the mountains after dinner. Twilight is already coming earlier. The corn, even though it was planted late because of the rains, has grown and grown through the hot July days, and is shoulder high now: fat ears with silken tassels waving on every stalk.

Between now and the beginning of next semester I have just exactly ten days of time that have nothing in them save for my book. Ten brief late summer days to finish the chapters that still refuse to be finished, and to revise and revise until the whole manuscript sings; then I'll send it off to my most trusted readers for one last look through, with a week or two on the other side for revisions.

And somewhere in that time, all the illustrations that have been slowly gathering, piece by piece on the wires I have hanging above my studio desk, need to come together too.

And all this feels momentous and utterly amazing. I sometimes still need to pinch myself to confirm: this is my life. I'm doing what I always dreamed of doing.

Still, it also feels completely overwhelming and daunting... Because, oh my, I am finishing the essays and illustrations for my first book! And there's more than a wee bit of pressure around it all.

And now I have ten days of time now that are just for this glorious daunting work and I've decided that I must use that time as wisely as I possibly can. I have been feeling spread awfully thin, and especially so in the digital space where I spend so much of my time learning and creating and absorbing. And I know how distracted I become under the urgency of deadlines, to slip down one rabbit hole after the next here: filling my mind with the snippets of news and headlines and information and inspiration.

So I've decided to take the next ten days off from the internet.

I've never done anything like this. The last time I didn't have a consistent internet connection was in 2004 when blogs were things people only talked about in whispered conversations or not at all, and people had no capacity to imagine the iPhone and the way it would transform us into a culture of being "always on."

I'm actually afraid of doing this.

I'm afraid of disconnecting. There are already a host of voices clattering in my mind: What if you miss something important? What if you miss out on some opportunity? What if you're forgotten? What if your readers stop reading? What if your twitter followers stop following you? What if your friends stop emailing, commenting, caring? What if you're not missed at all? These are the voices in the head of a girl who is always on, always connected, always engaged in the field of digital media. This is where I do my work, share my stories, and connect to my tribe.

And because I have so many fears, I know it is exactly the right thing to do. I need to trust that you'll still be here. That the story I am telling matters not only when I'm here telling it, but in the quiet times too when I'm creating new work with every fiber of my being.

I need to trust that opportunities will still find me; that inspiration will come knocking on other doors; that connections will happen in other ways.

Because the work that I am doing to bring this book to fruition is really really important work.

So I'm asking you this: Will you hold this space gently for me while I'm gone for the next ten days?

I'll be back then, with stories to share and magic to tell.

All the love in the world, Christina

making it so

All weekend I’ve thought about your answers; pondered them, and wondered at their incredible honesty and longing.

There is such enormous power in putting into words the things you long for. I believe this with every single cell in my being. Things become, align, respond. Even when what we ask for is far grater than what we’re capable of manifesting ourselves: the universe moves too.

The thing that is hard, of course, is feeling it move.

We spend our whole life on an earth that spins.

Does that ever startle you? I used to be able to lie on a grassy hillside and feel the earth spin if I closed my eyes. Then I grew up and convinced myself I couldn’t any longer, and that is just exactly what we often do: we tell ourselves all the ways we can’t and won’t and shouldn’t.

It takes guts and nerve and passion and some kind of enormous trust to lean towards your longing. But mostly, it takes imagination.

We’re much more comfortable with considering what we believe is the impossible, than with actively dreaming it possible.

beautiful words + wondering:

Yes. Answer this. What do you want the universe to manifest?

And some words today to bring you closer to an answer, or inspiration, or delight:

Begin here.

So, how are you?

Everything is going to be alright.

Three little (big) words

{I want today to end with a chunk of progress made on the chapter outlines for the rest of my book}

A list from today:

Hello! It's so easy for me to slip back into not posting--having failed miserably at NaBloPoMo. But I refuse. So here I am with a few highlights from today:

* Alone all day to work on projects with only the cat for company * A phone call with my older sister whose little boy is 2 weeks old today. Love hearing his wee little fusses in the background. * A pomegranate * Starting to 'get' ActionScript 3.0 just a little * Filling this sweet elf house of Bean's with color

What are some highlights from your day?

Go Boldly

I'm sick and going to take a nap but I just wanted to check in and say hello and share this little bit of art (one of my mottos of late.)

Once I get caught up on sleep and get over this cold I have so much I want to share. Right now my brain feels echo-y. Does that make sense? My thoughts keep bouncing around in there. Kind of like this. (So cool, right?) I can't believe it's already October. What does fall look like where you are? What are you enjoying?

almost a list about today

There were things, hours, chocolate graham crackers, kisses, tears. There was a walk down the road stalking birds on telephone wires for an art project (I've been inspired by this theme. Do you like the new header?) There were storm clouds and hours spent reading, Ong and Havelock and Surowiecki, and pages filled in my notebook ideas bursting like sparks.

There was an afternoon self portrait session when the light was temporarily good. Three self portraits are due in another week, in deferent mediums, and I've settled on a theme I think, of how we occupy ourselves in this illusive way: we are beings being. I feel this particularly as a mother--the way so many different piece of me are occupying the same space with myself. Does that make any sense at all? I am interested in the way we converge with ourselves, and are at odds. The way the words mother | writer | artist | designer don't necessarily overlap in any kind of orderly way.

There was giggling on the bed, snapping more photos, twirling, and heading for the door. There were white rocks found and stored in pockets. Wild grapes eaten that stained our lips. Birds caught in flight, in pixels. Birds in silhouette, black over blue.

There was an evening sky filled with pink, and fallapart tired boys and more tears and bedtime snuggles, and then T and I found each other on the couch, soaking up the light, soaking up each other, our fingers running lightly along each other's limbs.

Now there is night, windows are mirrors, lamplight makes circles and words fill the page.

Tell me about your day... I love reading little glimpses into your worlds.

Still between here and there

' It has been stormy the past few days: dark skies, fierce winds, rain at the slightest suggestion, then tempestuous blue skies all over again, and this, friends, is where I am at too.

Earlier this week I got news that financial aid for school may be a question and it's such a complex situation, our lives, our finances, the lot of it...and so here I am again, in limbo, opening my heart up wide to the universe.

I want to trust, to believe that all will be as it should; that things will align and fall into place. But oh, must it be this intense, this tenuous, this thinly threaded? Must everything come like the rains, abrupt and last minute, tearing down dead branches, and leaving everything rinsed and and astounded and green? This seems the way now, that things unfold around here.

So. A little more wondering.

More fingers kept crossed.

More breath held.

It's their busy time in the financial aid office, and so I don't get my answers any faster than anyone else gets theirs. Seven to ten days, more or less. Damn.

Will you cross your fingers for me?

Love, C

PS: I hardly have the words, for grinning, at how all your lovely offers for my art made me feel. THANK YOU. I'll be shipping the pieces tomorrow--and enjoying more space in my studio to create new things.

Studio Tag Sale

Hi! So since I move my studio to its new yummy location I've been finding bits of my art here, there, and everywhere, and I end up just sticking it on a shelf and not doing anything with it forever. Which is sad, really, since art should totally be up on a wall or enjoyed, right?

So I have this idea: I'm going to be offering a whole bunch of small art in a studio tag sale from now until the weekend. This is your chance to snag an original piece of artwork---at a price you can afford. There are some absolute FAVORITES of mine in this bunch! Some diptychs that will look so beautiful in frames... some little pieces perfect for kids rooms or kitchens.

Here's how it will work:
1. Take a look at the thumbnails of the the art for sale below. If you see a piece you love and want to have, click on that image and leave a comment that says SOLD on the piece's individual page. (First commenter to write "Sold" gets first dibs on the piece. Should they for some reason change their mind the piece will go back up for sale.)
2. Email me with your price---you pick a price you can afford and that you think is fair---and your address at christina@mytopography.com
3. I'll ship the piece out to you! Shipping will be approximately $5.50 for all pieces.
4. I may be adding more pieces as the day progresses, so stay tuned.
5. SALE WILL END FRIDAY NIGHT AT 9PM. SALE HAS ENDED

(All images of small pieces are scans of originals. Bigger pieces were rather quickly photographed clipped to my inspiration wire. Click image again on individual page to see larger.)

UPDATED 7/22: I've taken down the paintings that have already been nabbed! (THANK YOU to all of you who have given homes to these pieces!).

UPDATED 7/23: 4 new pieces added! Sale ends tonight. Now is your chance to snag an original tiny art piece! These four are absolute favorites of mine.

UPDATED: Thank you to all of you! I am so, so happy to be sending so many pieces of art out into the universe, and so grateful for your generosity!

xoxo! Christina

An ending & a beginning

The world is suddenly green. The drenched trees lost their blossoms as quickly as they bloomed; petals fell like a party dress to the grass. Now everything flutters with the minute iterations of leaves. The grass is suddenly shaggy and surprisingly long; as though it’s from a Jack In the Bean Stalk fairy tale while hummingbirds zip among the rain drenched azaleas and lilacs fill the air with heady sweetness.

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This weekend big things are happening. A Field Guide To Now on Kickstarter is ending tomorrow. 28 hours left. (Become a backer if you haven’t. This is IT!)

I’m leaving on a weekend adventure today with my camera and some pretty shoes in tow. I won’t be here when the project time runs out, but I want to tell you how grateful I am. I am astounded, joyful, terrified, delighted, eager. This is such a big deal… and YOU made it happen.

Thank you.

xxxo!

An open doorway

Today, so many things seem possible. Blue skies, melting snow, joy.

At this very moment, I want you to share a dream that you want to see happen. If you could open a door and walk through it into any possibility, what would it be? One specific thing. Go!