January 2026

If you’re reading this, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Right before you are about to put pen to paper, brush to canvas, hand to clay, the moment you're ready to start, there’s a gateway of uncertainty that you have to leap through to move from thought to form. Depending on the day, the time, the way the creative wind blows, the space beyond can feel like the murkiest pit of despair or on a gentler day, maybe more like a kiddie ballpit where the colors say fun but you’re wondering who has touched what and how deep is this thing really. 

For me, that gateway into the creative feels very much akin to this particular moment in this country - an open-ended question of what comes next, but not a gentle rhetorical way. It feels like getting pushed off the diving board whether we are ready or not and the question is, when, not if, chaos comes knocking on our door, our neighbor's door, how do we want to respond?

I think the actions themselves are different for everyone - there are five hundred million talents and skills among us, both named and unnamed and we should use all of them all at once.  The images that have stuck with me over the past few months of escalating violence have been of the inflatable unicorns (and other brethren) in protest in Portland and the man playing a full drum kit in snow outside a Minneapolis hotel.  People showing up in their full humanity, in joy, in humor even in the darkest moments. 

To move forward on paper, you have to be open to catching whatever comes next, in whatever form it takes and then decide move with it, to improvise, to dance with it a little.  You have to say yes. And so you don't lose your way through all the twists and turns, you have to carry a lantern of conviction that tells you everything will not only turn out alright, but amazing.

Life as art, art as life. Or I guess, in the much pithier words of Coach Taylor, "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." That works too. 

Grace + the SfCL crew