Well, I am not good at updating this. But good news: I am one of the 2024 SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellows!

To quote: "Since 1899, the SMFA Traveling Fellowship program, one of the largest endowed art school grant programs in the United States, has provided critical early-career support for SMFA at Tufts alumni. Selected by an independent jury, SMFA Traveling Fellowship recipients receive up to $10,000 to explore locales and visit communities that will inform current or future art endeavors."

My plan for this grant is to travel through Michigan's Upper Peninsula for a week (or so), driving from Marquette to Copper Harbor, visiting sites of geological and historical interest along the way. I'm looking at the geology of the region, including hopefully some killer banded iron formations - something I don't have the opportunity to see in situ in New England. I'm also visiting a variety of sites related to the mining industry in the region. Over the course of the trip I'll be looking at evidence of marks on the land (whether human-made or a result of geological or other natural processes) and thinking about how those marks happened, who (or what) made them, and how the land has been marked, used, owned, and occupied in the past and today. The more anthropocentric investigations will look particularly at who has been allowed to mark/own/occupy the land, and who is excluded from depictions of land use today.

I hope to make as many weird drawings of rocks as possible.

You can see more info about the fellowship, the rest of the 2024 cohort, and my project at the link here.

I'll have a bunch of new drawings (and some new drawing/sculptures) on display as part of Time and a Half, an exhibition at the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley College.

Most of the work I'm showing here is from the explore/survey project, in which I mine geology and the history of American landscape art to explore the lines between natural and human-made marks in the landscape, and to question what kinds of bodies have historically been allowed to own, explore, alter, and inhabit the land.

This project has mostly relied on site visits and specimens from Massachusetts, particularly the North Shore and the Holyoke range, but I'm working on incorporating some of the material and images I collected in Michigan's Upper Peninsula a few years ago. I'm pretty excited about this body of work!

I'm showing work here alongside Megan Cascella (printmaking), Farimah Eshraghi (photography), and Meghan Murray (painting). Although all of us have distinct studio practices and did not make work with any intention of showing it together, there are a number of conceptual throughlines in the show-- including topics of work and labor, as well as a multifaceted consideration of the passage, experience, and subjectivity of time.

Time and a Half is on view Jan. 22 - Feb. 23, 2024. There will be an opening reception 5:00-7:00 pm on Friday Feb. 2.

The Jewett Art Gallery, located on the 2nd (main) floor of the Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College, is open 9:00 am – 4:30 pm Monday through Friday and 12:00 – 5:00 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The Gallery is free to visit and open to the public.

Visitors to campus should park in the Davis parking facility or the small surface lot right before the entrance to the parking garage (see campus map-- visitor parking is near the west entrance) and walk to the Jewett Arts Center. Jewett's front doors are on the academic quad, and the Gallery is the first space you see when you enter the front doors.

If you require handicapped accessible parking and/or a stair-free route to the Gallery, or have any other questions about the show, please email spearls2.

It's been a blast to be a part of Edible Plants 2023, a series of exhibitions and events hosted by the Watertown Public Arts & Culture Committee. Pairs of artists and writers were assigned plants that grow in the Watertown area, and were invited to create artwork and pieces of writing that took inspiration from their assigned plant.

My plant was red clover, Trifolium pratense. I wanted the resulting painting, which is gouache on panel, to emphasize both the diagnostic physical characteristics of the plant and to create a sense of abundance.

The exhibition cycle started at the Watertown City Hall (Oct. 2 - 31, 2023), moved to the Watertown Free Public Library (Nov. 1 - 30), then to the Till Wave Gallery (Dec. 7 - Jan. 13). The final exhibition is at the Mosesian Center for the Arts from Jan. 26 - March 8, 2024. There will be a closing reception and an auction, with presentations by the artists and writers, on Thursday March 7, 7:00 - 9:00 pm.

I would hesitate to call this part of my practice, but it certainly is a thing that I did. The New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, MA is hosting Gnomevember this month. Local artists were invited to apply to paint a gnome, which would be on display in the botanic garden for the month of November, 2022. I will admit that I applied mostly because I found the name Gnomevember so ridiculous and delightful, but I did enjoy the process of coming up with a design and story for my gnome, and I ultimately did also enjoy painting her, although the fact that this gnome turned out to weigh approximately one million pounds led to some logistical difficulties.

My gnome's name is Mz. Milkweed, and this is her story:

Everyone knows that garden gnomes are important guardians of their domains, protecting whatever garden or vegetable plot they happen to call home. Mz. Milkweed has long dwelled in central Mexico, where she watched over the monarch butterfly breeding grounds and the end of their globally famous migration. Newly designated 'Endangered' by the IUCN in July 2022, the monarch population today suffers from indiscriminate herbicide use, deforestation, and climate change. This newly urgent danger brought Mz. Milkweed north, where she hopes to watch over the green spaces of New England to safeguard earlier stages in the life of her beloved monarchs.

In any event, if you're looking for something silly and fun to do in November, I do recommend making the drive out to Boylston to see the botanic gardens (legitimately beautiful, even in the fall) and all the gnomes (kitsch to the max)!

One of my drawings, explore/survey: at the foot, is on view as part of 'Figure in the Landscape,' an exhibition at the Sargent House Museum in Gloucester, MA.

The show is up Aug. 19 - Sept. 25, 2022.

Photo courtesy of Vanessa Michalak.

My experimental graphic novel about perception and failures in perception, Misrecognitions, is available for purchase! You can acquire it one of two ways:

Buy a signed copy here. Quantities limited. Once they're gone, they're gone.

Buy a standard copy here.