Make Something New

All creative work eventually feels onerous no matter how much you love it. When that happens - venture out and make something new.

This is a bit of a departure from the usual newsletter. I’ve been writing a lot lately, and I’ve also been drawn to visual art books. The combination has led me to write less and make more for this post. Check out these inspirational beauties.

John Hendrix is the head of the MFA in illustration at Wash U. Check him on Instagram! The other three books I found thanks to Maria Popova and her OG newsletter, The Marginalian. Joseph Pintauro is an ex-priest turned poet and playwright and Sister Corita Kent is a nun and abstract artist.

Also a shout out to Courtney Bailey, writer of Letters from the Homestead, who inspires me not only with her raw and reflective writing but her rad collages as well. This week I was inspired to procrastinate and make some myself. 👩‍🎨 I sprinkled them with a treasure trove of stumblings from around the interwebs. I hope there will be something here that will grab you in one way or another.

I call these first three, Analog Afternoon with an Atlantic Assemblage.

About Tracy

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

Ascendancy

The New Female Ascendency

by Mary Harrington

How will society be changed by the over-production of female graduates?

“The optimist might say, with 19th century American feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that such a sex asymmetry can only be for the best. Stanton asserted in an 1868 essay that women are not just men’s equal but in fact morally superior, due to the naturally higher qualities of the “feminine” soul. “If a difference in sex involves superiority, then we claim it for woman,” she declared. 

But it’s by no means settled consensus that the feminine soul (if such a thing exists) is possessed only of “harmonising influence”, or (as the nursery rhyme has it) sugar and spice and all things nice. Evolutionary psychologists such as Sarah Blaffer Hardy and Harvard social scientist Joyce Benenson argue that on the contrary, women are every bit as competitive as men. We just go about it differently.”

A Moment to Unplug

“TODAY” BY BILLY COLLINS

“If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze…

…that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.”

Eventually I realized…

I could make these ten times faster if I made them digitally. I have thousands of pictures I’ve taken and collected on my phone. These next four are only a few. I focused on creating Digital Icons of a sort.

Momento Mori

The Black Madonna

This poem blew me away. If you do nothing else.. click below and read the whole piece and watch Valentine’s video responding to Megan Kelly calling Jesus a white man.

“Black Madonna” by Crystal Valentine

Hunger is a
kind of sermon; to see a lonely thing and want

to make it a part of yourself

Whose Life?

“Women afraid of dying while / they are trying to find their life.” Poetry of Abortion by Alissa Quart

Stand By

This is a picture of me, my mother and my grandfather who I never met all taken about 25 years apart. My grandfather, Donald Kelley was a news reporter for a time at WLS in Chicago, the same station my parents would meet years later. Most of my mother’s life though he was unemployed spending his time down at the corner bar while my grandmother worked at Owens Illinois Glass Company as the women’s personnel director making $8400 a year. My grandfather died when my mother was 18. The age I am in this picture. When I found this magazine cover on the internet, I was elated to discover this bit of history and saddened to be reminded that his disease robbed him of so much potential.

The Changing Place.. sign is a picture I took of an art installation in Venice at the Guggenheim. And the dolls — they just weirdly sit on my desk at work. The idea of “standing by” while “everything changes” feels a little too salient right now.

Thanks for indulging me friends. If you want to see what I’ve been writing lately check these out.

Learning Amidst the Chopping Blocks, The Globe - Clayton High School Newspaper’s issue on The Death of Nuance. (Read the whole series of teacher and student essays!)

A Prayer Practice - podcast @The Gathering

And a blog coming out next week that might 🤞🏼 be titled, Jesus said, “Nope, not today, Karen.” Based on Jesus’ parable of the laborers.

Be well friends. Hope you’re moving into some new and summery rhythms that feel restful and free. - Kelley