The Studio Journal

I’m writing to you from my studio in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s a gray February day. I’m so happy to have you here.

On the way to school this morning, my daughter said there’s that moment in winter where you’re officially tired of it. You know there are only two weeks left, but somehow those two weeks feel like forever. She sounded exactly like me when I was a kid.

And it made me realize how much I’ve changed. At 15, you have momentum. You want the next season to hurry up. But at 47, as a single mom juggling a commercial design business and a newly launched art business, living in the middle of everything happening right now, I actually don’t want it to speed up.

I want it to slow down.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote down thirteen goals on paper and cut them out. For thirteen days, I removed one paper goal each day. I composted the first 12.

And I was left with one piece of paper with the words:

Slow living.

We’re in Pisces season and at the threshold of a Mercury retrograde. A lot of people tense up at that, but to me Mercury retrograde is about revising, reevaluating, and revisiting what we’ve already been building. Which feels very aligned with slowing down.

I’ve been intentionally building more of a presence on LinkedIn, and I recently wrote an article about using the cycles of the moon as a project management tool: Article is here:

Using Lunar Cycles as a Practical Tool for Project Management

One of my new Linked In followers challenged me and asked if following the moon cycles was actually working. So I decided to test it. And I started with the new moon back on 2/17. Here are my notes/action items for working with the moon:

On the commercial side of my business, we’ve come really far on the Granville County behavioral health project. I’m designing two facilities based on trauma informed design. There were funding issues that had to be worked through, so right now we are doing a lot of revising and reevaluating. Which, honestly, feels very Mercury retrograde. Going back and having the absolute luxury of refining a project takes time and effort but is always worth it.

One of the parts I’m most proud in the clinic design is the trauma informed art collection we’ve built for the behavioral health center. I’m working with local artists, which feels important. We commissioned Jane Cheek, the artist in residence at Artspace, to create two custom wood flowers that will hang in the waiting room. We are also working with an artist named King Godwin, an artist with autism, born in Raleigh, whose work brings a completely different energy into the space.

I love that this public health project is rooted in the local creative community. I’ll be sharing more images over the coming months, but for now I’m including some of the concept boards I’ve been developing.

There is also some exciting news. I’ve partnered with Megan Molten, a residential interior designer in South Carolina with both an online shop and a brick and mortar storefront. She’s picking up some of my artwork for her store. As soon as it launches on her site, I’ll share the link.

One of my strategic goals for this lunar cycle and beyond is to place my artwork with more wholesale retailers, whether online platforms or showrooms that interior designers use. I’ve been taking very intentional steps toward that.

Creatively, I’m also collaborating with Sherene Vismaya, the astrologer I traveled to India with. I’ve been working on a series of paintings of Kali, who, for those unfamiliar, is a powerful Hindu goddess associated with destruction and creation. There’s something about her energy right now that feels present in my work. The divine feminine rising, not in a soft way, but in a clear and uncompromising way.

And recently, I saw the documentary Prickly Mountain at the Rialto Theatre with the NC Modernist group. It’s about experimental architecture and creative risk taking in Vermont. Building something unconventional and standing by it. It felt aligned with everything I’ve ever done in my life, especially building shit without a plan, that part made me cry. Like it gave me permission. And I felt seen.

Let’s end with a little poem I wrote this month:

Does anyone else feel it,
this threshold feeling?

Like something is coming,
and somehow
you already know
and don’t know at all.

I’m writing letters to my therapist,
arriving prepared,
bullet points of healing,
trauma patterns laid out neatly
like folded clothes, while somewhere
they’re talking about nuking civilizations.

We’ve been saying it for years,
toxic masculinity,
like something we understood
was building toward this.

An Aries sky,
young warrior energy,
fire in the blood.

And here we are,
listening to Ram Dass,
pulling tarot cards,
trying to stay inside the body,
inside the breath,
inside something sacred.

Last night there was a countdown on TV.
A literal countdown.
Like a movie.
Like something unreal.

The astrologers said it would get weird.
They said it gently,
carefully,
they don’t do doom.

But still.

Aries is an act.
And an act can cut away darkness
or burn everything down.

And I keep wondering,
when we end one civilization,
what happens to ours?

Or is there only one?
Have there always been
just us?

On the edge of Uranus in Gemini,
mind on fire,
thoughts like lightning, and me, a Taurus,
eight years deep in survival,
breast cancer,
grief,
raising two girls
inside a world that won’t slow down.

Not knowing what to do.
Knowing exactly what to do.

Slow down.
Harness the mind
before it becomes the weapon.

Be the warrior,
but the humble one.
The one who bows.

My favorite pose.
Humble Warrior.

And lately my neck is tweaked,
and it hurts to bow.

Of course it does.

So how do we stop this,
this edge,
this violence,
this almost?

Maybe we don’t stop it.
Maybe we stay conscious through it.

Stay in the body.
Stay awake.
Stay here.

Because everything is everything,
like Everything Is Everything,
and maybe that’s the only thing
that saves us.

See you in Summer babies! XOXO Heather