What Do Gardening, Health & Art Have in Common? Kinds of Kindness.

There was a time when the level of happiness I felt in a day was determined by the number I saw on the scale upon weighing myself each and every morning. As I aged I saw the futility and ridiculousness of that ritual and stopped weighing myself. For many years I lived without a scale in the house. If I’m being truthful, however, to this day, on those rare occasions when I do check in on my weight the number I see still has the power to set my mood.

Something similar happens when I am in my studio. If the work is going well then I’m all smiles. If I’m struggling with the materials, or if I’m certain I’ve ruined a new piece I was enamored with just the day before, I question why I even bother. Then there’s the mental baggage that accompanies me when I’m headed to the studio. If by chance I open that baggage and spill it’s contents then navigating my studio and doing the work my heart wants me to do is made more difficult by the messy mental stumbling blocks I’ve placed in my way. Like my ever-present impostor syndrome, for example. Or the envy I sometimes feel for another artist – their gorgeous work, their incredible success. And when there is envy, shame for feeling envious is not far behind.  

As I write these thoughts I can look out the window and see that the team of gardeners we’ve hired have arrived. It will take some time to clear out decades of overgrowth, to repair a stone wall and to remove the non-native ivy climbing the trunks of our trees. But when the work is finished I will begin to prepare one small bed at the base of the largest tree for planting in spring. Which reminds me of something someone told me a few weeks ago. They told me that gardening is not a project, it’s a process. Indeed.

Two and a half decades ago I joined Weight Watchers and lost sixty unnecessary pounds. I lost the weight so quickly that I gained more than a few gallstones and a nasty case of disordered eating but we can save that story for another day. The mistake I made at the time was thinking of my weight loss journey as a project. And once those pounds were dropped the project was complete. Silly me.

Three years ago, when we moved to Virginia, I was determined to find the artist I abandoned when the need to have a steady income was more urgent than the need to create. Somehow the universe felt my determination and opened a few doors for me. She built a solid foundation for me when I was accepted into the Incubator Program at McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville.

In 2023 I took on the year-long residency at McGuffey as a project. Show up. Do the work. Exhibit the work. Sell the work. Repeat. What was I thinking?

Gardening is not a project, it’s a process. Holding on to good health is not a project, it’s a process. Creating art that resonates is not a project, it’s a process. I guess it follows, then, that life is not a project. It’s a process. 

It’s a process that begins with kindness. Being kind to my home. Planting seeds. Nourishing the earth beneath my feet. Hard and rewarding work. Being kind to others. Admitting when I’ve made mistakes or when my words have hurt someone. Showing gratitude for deep friendships. Remembering anniversaries and birthdays.

But being kind to my breathing heart? Being kind to my creative heart? That can be challenging.

Manifesting kindness towards myself when I’ve spent seven decades judging and comparing myself to my wealthier friends, to the skinny models I see in magazines, to the artists that speak with eloquence and passion about their work is a struggle. Maybe it requires breaking the habits that keep my self-care and kindness at bay.

Maybe it begins with embracing the truth that the process – whether it’s planting a garden, celebrating good health or creating art  – doesn’t run in a straight line. It meanders and curls and doubles back on itself and then forges ahead. It moves around obstacles, plows through roadblocks, climbs metaphorical mountains and charges down steep hills like a child on a Schwinn Stingray Chopper, bugs in her teeth from smiling too much and bright colored vinyl ribbons dancing from the handlebars.

Each moment of the journey – the bumps, the stumbles, the thrills and delights – they all require different kinds of kindness. Sometimes I have to be forgiving. Sometimes I have to be honest. Sometimes I need to put my nose to the grindstone and sometimes I need to rest. Figuring that out is exasperating. And kinda fun.

Don’t forget…Practically Twisted is disappearing in a few months. If you appreciate my musings, join me at Mimm Patterson Art.

Nests & Vessels

Reminder: Practically Twisted is going to practically disappear soon.

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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.

Creating as a Contemplative Practice

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As a young girl I spent weekends at my grandmother’s narrow red brick row home, the one at the end of Poplar Street in Allentown, Pennsylvania, while my mom and step-dad went on the road with their country and western band. To cure my boredom, on Saturday afternoons my grandma would take a small bottle of Elmer’s Glue, some colored construction paper and a pair of child’s safety scissors from the metal cabinet tucked in a corner near the back door and put them down in front of me while I watched at the kitchen table.

Sometimes she poured all the dots left in the bottom of my grandpa’s hole punch into a bowl. Even better was when she gave me the hole punch so that I could make my own dots from the pages of a well read McCall’s magazine. Sometimes my grandma crushed the egg shells she’d saved from breakfasts that week, separated them into three or four Dixie cups and adding a few drops of McCormack’s food coloring to each one.

And then she left me to my own devices. I was free to create textured mosaics with the egg shells or to follow the outline of a pencil drawing with my pile of dots in all shades of color and tone. I sat at that table for hours while my grandma worked around me, grilling sliced onions, mixing horseradish with catsup and frying my beloved Minute Steaks while rolls toasted in the oven for my favorite Saturday dinner. 

The act of creating – whether it’s an egg shell mosaic or an egg filled soufflé, a loom knitted beanie or a black bean burrito – can be a balm that shifts our focus from ruminating on the past or worrying about the future to the moment in which we are living. This moment. The present. There is, however, one caveat. While our intent when we’re creating may be to produce something that we’ll gift to others, the act of creating must be something we gift ourselves. Because creating is a mind-freeing act of self-care.

It took me half a century and a global pandemic to figure that out. 

I think what catches us up when we consider creating something out of nothing is our predilection for wanting to make something perfect. Wanting to create precisely what we see in our mind’s eye. The perfect portrait. The perfect flower arrangement. The perfect layered cake. The perfect dance. When we abandon those ideas of perfection and decide instead to lean into the question ‘I wonder what would happen if…’ creating becomes contemplative play. As the chaos we’re living through continues to storm around us, creating as contemplative play becomes a gift of self-care that reduces anxiety, changes perspective and sparks joy.

Right now I’m spending my ‘creativity time’ playing with needle and thread, fabric and photographs. I’m learning new skills like felting and sashiko and boro and remembering old skills that I loved as a child like embroidery. 

When was the last time you dug out that set of colored pencils you keep stashed at the back of your desk? Or finished the blanket you began knitting two years ago? Or made your grandmother’s lemon bar recipe? Or dusted off that guitar? Or done any activity that lights up a different part of your brain and moves you from the routine to the sublime?

It’s time.