what blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty

Mar 01, 2024

Sneak peak of my 2024 Spring Equinox bandana feat. Dutchman’s breeches (might be my favorite ephemeral after skunk cabbage), the Eastern comma, and a hint of sumac and false hellebore. This bandana will be in my Equinox shop update on 3/19.

Greetings, earthlings.

I’m zipping through this email because I’m (gratefully, oh so gratefully) overwhelmed with work.

I’ve been a full-time freelancing since October of last year. It’s been a harrowing four months, as one might expect when you leave the warm and cozy comfort of a good job with benefits for the mysterious unknown of self-employment.

I’m finding my groove, but more notably: the people I want to work with are finding me.

I’ve had a dozen or so meetings in the past few weeks with inspiring art directors, change-makers, and business leaders who want my help telling their stories. It’s too early to share details, but the connections alone indicate that I’m doing something right. Now, when I tell myself, “This is going to work,” I believe it with my whole body.

If you’ll allow for this level of tenderness (it’s in the fucking name of this email, after all): I cried while washing the dishes this morning, overwhelmed by excitement and a sense of security. I can’t believe that I get to be part of and supported by this broad mycelial network of amazing people working together to take care of one another and their communities.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that “all flourishing is mutual,” explaining how the reciprocity of mycelial networks in forest communities keeps all beings nourished:

“The mycorrhizae may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected. These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree. A kind of Robin Hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor so that all the trees arrive at the same carbon surplus at the same time. They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival.

All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.”

I’m grateful to be in this mycelial network with you!

Here are three things that filled my cup this week:

1. This is the Kit

My friend Reese is a big fan and got a group of friends together to go to the show last night at UVM’s Recital Hall. This is an easy band to fall in love with. Watch their Tiny Desk, or watch them perform my favorite song of theirs, Stuck in a Room, in perhaps the most beautiful venue of all time.

2. A primer on graphic journalism.

I’d like to make more work that squarely fits under the umbrella of graphic journalism– telling timely, personal stories visually. Wendy McNaughton’s work for The New York Times is a well-known example of graphic journalism.

I also want to create longer form work that doesn’t fit neatly into the 10-slide format of Instagram, or the 8 panels of a single-page zine.

I went on a deep internet dive this week searching for inspiration, wondering how this work might look and where it could live.

I found Drawing the Times, which is completely dedicated to featuring works of graphic

I love Eva Hilhorst’s primer on graphic journalism, as well as Tânia Alexandra Cardoso’s A Short Tale Of Ash And Fire and Axel Claes’s Wind on the Water.

3. Skunk Cabbage by Mary Oliver

And now as the iron rinds over
the ponds start dissolving,
you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and new leaves unfolding,
upon the brash
turnip-hearted skunk cabbage
slinging its bunched leaves up
through the chilling mud.
You kneel beside it. The smell
is lurid and flows out in the most
unabashed way, attracting
into itself a continual spattering
of protein. Appalling its rough
green caves, and the thought
of the thick root nested below, stubborn
and powerful as instinct!
But these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again - a miracle
wrought surely not of mere turning
but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not
tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn
pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.
Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle
refinements, elegant and easeful, wait
to rise and flourish.
What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.

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A few months ago Bag Balm asked me to be part of a limited edition artist series commemorating 125 years in business and the work was published this week!

Bag Balm shared 125 years’ worth of amazing vintage ads and packaging to inspire these collectible posters.

I love vintage ads, especially in the arena of agriculture and Vermont: