07.20.2026
When I’m in my studio working, I’m constantly thinking and processing and asking myself questions. Very existential but not a crisis type of situation. I’m a Capricorn, after all.
On my mind recently:
What happens when an artist stops measuring their life by external validation and starts measuring it by aliveness?
What deserves my attention?
What does devotion look like?
How do I measure time?
I’ve been reading a little about the philosophy of hedonism lately, but thinking about it more in the sense of staying with what feels good. These are such interesting concepts to me because they challenge the way we measure time as a modern society: productivity, milestones, deadlines, achievement. I’ve been thinking about another measurement system: attention + pleasure.
I’m currently working on a piece that requires a million little steps to get to the final form and I don’t even know if it will work out. And I think there’s something beautiful about committing to a process before you know it will succeed. This is the entire logic my studio practice is based on.
Every step is a small act of faith.
With this new piece I’m creating, I don’t get the immediate feedback and satisfaction of seeing it come to life like my yarn paintings. I’m making decisions that only make sense through time and accumulation. I’m learning what it feels like to work on something when the value isn’t measured by how quickly it’s finished. And I'm also learning how to trust myself and my process in a different way through sustained attention.
Staying with what feels good doesn’t necessarily mean that every moment has to feel good. It could also mean the overall experience feels worth it, even though the individual moments are tedious. Pleasure isn’t the absence of boredom. Maybe it’s trusting that the mundane parts are part of something bigger.
And maybe that’s another way of measuring time. Not by how quickly I finish something, but by how willingly I return to it.
xoxo