Ending and Starting

I’m putting the finishing touches on the artwork for Dust to Apples: Colors of the Eastern Plains, and it feels terrific. This project has been years in the making, and soon the work will finally be on the walls. I can’t wait to share images of the exhibition once everything is installed.

Next week I’ll hang the majority of the show, marking the beginning of the end of this long journey.

The creative life moves in cycles, much like the plants I’ve been harvesting. A project begins like a seed—small, uncertain, planted with care. It takes patience to tend something that doesn’t yet exist. When it finally breaks through the ground, you can see a shape taking form, though it may look very different when fully grown. Eventually, it blooms, and new seeds appear, ready to begin again.

A new seed is already forming for the next body of work, even as I harvest and clean up the last pieces of Dust to Apples. My mind is split between imagining what comes next—a process that thrills me—and finishing the work of this season, which demands focus and discipline.

I love this stage, and it terrifies me. I worry I won’t finish. I worry the next idea won’t work. And yet, the cycle continues.
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Yesterday I found a quote my sister Kim sent me:
“Don’t be afraid of being wrong or right about art…
Art won’t mind…
Be afraid of not feeling very much.”
—Wiley, 1984

I’m taking that as a reminder to be fearless, to feel my way through the uncertainty. That is exactly what I intend to do.

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I also finally visited Guffey, Colorado. This is the “Apples” part of Dust to Apples. When my grandparents settled in Giffey, they grew potatoes, which they would trade for other provisions such as Apples. There is not much left of this boomer town. But I did find some of my favorite things to photograph, OLD STUFF!