Age is Not a Number

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Today is my birthday. I’m sixty-seven years old. And I’m here to tell you that age is not a number.

Age – aging – happens and by believing that age is simply a number bypasses the truth that as the years roll on we change. For example, the hair on my legs is now growing out of my chin and the hair on my head is thinning. My first step in the morning is more like a first limp (yoga hip). My skin is wrinkling, my eyes have gone dry, and over the past year I’ve developed the same hammer toe my mother was blessed with.

So age is not ‘just a number’. I know people mean well. I know the phrase is meant to comfort. But the words also imply that I should ignore reality. The words imply that if I repeat them like a mantra my body at sixty-seven will perform like it did when I was twenty-seven.

I’d rather embrace all the circles I’ve made around the sun. I’d rather embrace all the changes. The not so great changes but the good changes, too. I’m sixty-seven years old today. I have greying hair and I’ve put on weight but I’ve also let go of the envy that consumed me forty years ago. I’ve become more appreciative of the small moments in life. I laugh more. I go to bed early so that I’m awake to see dawn. I want to remember to accept it all.

Acceptance isn’t curling up in a ball waiting for the end. Acceptance puts me on a path of exploration. What can I do now that I couldn’t do forty years ago? What attitudes have shifted? Moving forward, what steps will I put in place to ensure good mental and physical health? What will I do to commit to living a creative life of purpose – a life that has heart and meaning? 

This week I will reflect on these questions – I understand the answers will change over the years as I continue to grow and change. But where am I right now, in this moment? And how can I use the insights I gain by reflecting on these questions? How will these insights impact my art practice? My yoga practice?

Nests & Vessels

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It’s funny how one word can change everything. Until a few months ago I wore the label ‘mixed media artist’. But it never felt right. Did that mean I was a dabbler? Unable to settle? At best it was an easy way to not have to talk too much about specifics. At worse it made me feel at times like a dilettante. I’ve come to realize that, for me, ‘multidisciplinary’ is a much better fit. It’s a word that grounds me. It’s a word that denotes serious dedication to the work.

Being an artist is an evolving process. Re-framing how I identify as an artist is moving my process forward and bringing me closer to something I consider my authentic voice. 

My work has experienced a dramatic shift over the last two years.  Despite this I remain compelled to explore the energetic imprint we leave behind on the objects we touch and the moments we share with others. Through that exploration I am drawn toward themes of impermanence and fragility.

In 2024 these themes were represented by images very personal to me: my grandmother’s silk hankies, the vase left to me by a late friend. But over time the photo-encaustic work became too literal. At the start of 2025 I began adding encaustic paint and oil pastel over photographs to suggest what I call the ‘ash of memory’. These pieces engage the viewers curiosity as they study the image. They encourage the viewer to find the story I am trying to tell or to create one of their own. 

My latest body of work, however, moves away from story-telling. All art is personal, of course, but I’m tired of my stories. I feel drawn to create work that is less anchored to specific moments experienced and more tethered to feelings for which there are no words. 

I’m releasing my attachment to the artist I believed I should be. I’m learning to trust my intuition, to embrace happy accidents and to break rules.

We are living through unusual, precarious times and I believe my work has been transformed by this new world. The work is my coping mechanism.

And so, for now, I’ll continue to build nests and vessels. Little containers to hold our hopes.

Moving Day

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Some people thrive under pressure and chaos. But I’m one of those people who prefer order. I like routine. I perform best when there’s a place for everything and everything is in its place. This isn’t limited to the objects I choose to keep around me. I need a place for my thoughts and feelings, my reactions to the world around me. I need a place for unfinished conversations, my hopes and my fears.

The home we loved. Until we didn’t.

Order is a little tricky to find right now. My beloved and I moved house over the weekend. We’ve downsized and our new home – a late 1990’s duplex on the other side of town – is lovely but it is also much smaller than the townhome we left. And it lacks a garage which is, of course, the space in every house that collects the detritus of life. That being said, our new home is much larger than the five hundred square foot condo we shared in California with our dearly departed cat Bruce (naturally Bruce took over most of the real estate). We lived there for almost a decade – even through the pandemic – so if we managed that small space I’m certain that with a bit of determination and perhaps more than a little compromise we’ll manage this space, too.

Besides, trading square footage on a high trafficked main street for a quiet cul-de-sac and a back garden was an easy choice. Right now that back garden is more a dense carpet of weeds and broken branches but you ought to see what it looks like in my mind’s eye.

But it hasn’t been an easy move. Is any move easy? This one – just two miles down the road – has been one of the most difficult I’ve experienced. My beloved agrees. It doesn’t make us less grateful. We’re just aware that the last few months haven’t been easy.

I’m reluctant to blame age and more inclined to blame circumstances that are too boring to get into. Let’s just say, for the time being, chaos and clutter reign supreme.  No matter. We both know that it won’t always be like this. At some point order will be restored.

I hope.

I hope because I have a solo exhibit in four months and then another just five months later and of course I’m excited and grateful but after a week away from the studio the deep unease of slow rising panic was beginning to overwhelm me. 

But today, after seven long days, I got back to the work. And in doing the work I found a place for my thoughts and feelings, my reactions to the world around me. I found a place for my hopes and fears.

My beloved and I will be living with a few more weeks worth of chaos and clutter in our new home but for now, for me, a little bit of order has been restored. 

Small Change

‘Swampy’. That’s the word a friend used to describe my palette. She wasn’t wrong and I wasn’t offended. I couldn’t be offended because as a stained glass artist her whole world is about clarity and color. Besides, she was right. My last body of work leaned toward variations of sepia with a smidge of mud thrown in for good measure. But still. Swampy? A gauntlet was thrown and I accepted the challenge, purchased a few blocks of pigmented encaustic wax and as I watched them soften into puddles of bright, primary colors asked myself, ‘what the heck am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Superior Quality’ 16×20 inch encaustic collage

I’m learning as I go. It’s not easy. I’m not a painter, and the pigments want me to paint. And so I regress back to what I know I can control. I choose papers similar in chroma to the melted pigments. The result feels garish and unsophisticated. I long for my swampy neutrals! I might be learning as I go but it’s a very steep curve. But I guess, on reflection, it’s also a metaphor for life. Every day we’re alive is another day of ‘learning as we go’. Somehow I find that comforting.

Nevertheless it has been a bumpy few weeks as I consider the work I need for my show in October. I know I’m over-thinking. Trying too hard. I need to relax. To stop striving. To have fun and to learn how to play again. Creating isn’t about me hoping the next piece of art is better than the last. It’s about me being in the moment. It’s about problem solving. There’s no doubt creating is hard work but when we step out of our own way it is joyful hard work. Creating requires proper technique – or in my case, a close proximity to proper technique. But it also requires a fearlessness that allows us to trust our intuition. Creating asks for us to believe that the story we are trying to tell is worth telling. That the changes we are trying to manifest are positive.

Every moment of our too short ‘learn as you go’ life is an act of creation. Every choice is a catalyst that sets in motion the conditions for change and the opportunity to create something new. 

What choices will you make today? What will you create?

As I wrote those words I realized that the body of work I’m attempting to create will hang in an October exhibit that ends days before the next chapter of this beautiful and flawed country begins. So the choices I make today are not focused on art alone. As we race toward November I want to make choices that build my reserves of strength and resilience so that the overheating chemical soup that is my brain’s mosh pit doesn’t boil over. I want to make choices that keep me steady. Grounded. Even-tempered. And if those choices support the creation of art – great. But that’s not my priority. My priority is figuring out how my choices can become a catalyst for change. I’ll settle for small change. Because collectively, our small change will add up. 

To that end, I’m going to choose to remain informed by reliable sources so that I have facts to back up my beliefs. I’m going to choose to support Vote Forward, either by writing letters or contributing funds to help cover postage. I’m going to choose to listen to others speak without interrupting – even those who may have beliefs that differ from my own.

We are living through a period of time where others are pushing us to become untethered from our truth. Treating us like frogs in a pot of slowly heating water, the voices that have hijacked one of our country’s political parties want to see us lose our ability to separate fact from fiction. They want to see us blind with anger. This is a time to remain calm and to live by the courage of our convictions. 

So again I ask, what choices will you make today? What will you create? What act or conversation will be a catalyst for change? And I’ll remind us all: small change matters.