After some deliberation, I've decided to post a segment of a short essay I wrote years ago about the Bend area. This intro sets up the essay's main theme of place and change over the course of years, and I think it's appropriate to post it here as I begin my work on *the Bend Project,* which I hope to start telling you about in more detail soon...

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­Bend, OR.1979. Population: 15,000.

I’m four years old, crouched close to the sticky hardwood floor, watching my mom fill a two-quart container with honey from a wooden box sitting on an empty milk crate. I love to watch the slow process of filling the honey jar. It flows from the spigot a little differently every time depending on how fresh the honey is or how full the bulk bin is, and you need to close the spigot at the right moment before the jar is full to make sure there's room for the drizzle that squeezes through as you push the lever closed. Sitting on the floor like this, I catch a glimpse of the treetop just beyond the curtained window near the ceiling, and bask in the glow from the sun filtered through its leaves.

At our tiny, small town health food store, my mom would replenish jars of buckwheat flour from a large wooden barrel, fill satchels of dried herbs from a supply of fragrant glass jars sitting high on shelves, load up her basket with the freshest vegetables available in town, and if the weather was hot I was almost always allowed to indulge in a yogurt push-up from the old-fashioned freezer near the front of the store.

These were the days in Bend when its little cottages sat on dirt streets, and the dusty ranchers who'd lived in the area for generations graciously co-existed with the young folks who were moving up from California to lead a simple life. These were the days in Bend when there still existed a handful of eccentric characters, like the man who wore an aluminum foil hat to deflect radio waves emitted by sinister government agencies, or the couple who (I'm not making this up) were both mimes and chimney sweeps - simultaneously. These were also the days in Bend when a handful of people living in the same small area seemed to strive for the same ideals. Bartering and trading for goods or work were not uncommon among the people my parents knew. We had fresh goat’s milk from one family, and my brother and I wore moccasins hand made by another, and there was the little mom and pop health food store, residing in a boxy building with old wooden floors. Its quintessentially western storefront sat along a dirt road ending below a hill of juniper trees and volcanic rock. Its wide front porch was flanked by ponderosa pines and sunflowers sprouted from planters near the door.

I was too short to be able to see over the wooden checkout counter, but I would always ask if there were fresh coconut macaroons which I knew were often there. A miscellaneous merchandise area filled the corner near the front door - rainbow stripped candles, incense and incense burners, small wind chimes, and my favorite to look at - the colorful, translucent mylar stickers that graced the windows of any number of hippie van windows. One day I got one for my bedroom window at home - a white unicorn in front of a brilliant blue sky complete with rainbow.

alone stranger

*from my sketchbook*

Today I am a city girl, from Elsewhere. I no longer feel ownership of this place. I'm older, more urban, an interloper. Today I'm the stranger in this place that used to be mine.

The campsite I find is perfect. Just before a little creek crossing, a turn-off, a wide circle, a clearing with a huge fire pit. Boulders have been strategically placed to prevent drivers from going into the creek bed. There is also a two-by-four nailed across the span of two ponderosa pine trees, the type of thing for stringing up game. There's a green metal smoker someone has left behind, obviously with the intent to be back to use it once again. This is public land, but it feels like someone else's space; well-used but spotlessly clean. Again the feeling of being an intruder creeps up on me.

I stay, trust the wilderness, trust the dry, dispassionate nature of the Central Oregon fisherman to let me borrow their camp spot for the night. The tiny creek is not for sitting by; its banks are overhung with trailing sagey-green willow branches, but it burbles nicely against the buzz and chirp of crickets.

I hang my red chinese lantern from a manzanita branch. Dusk plays with my eyes and there's a distant tree stump, white with stripped bark, that looks like a person emerging from the woods every time it crosses the periphery of my vision. I'm too tired to start a fire. As darkness falls completely I feel, ironically, more comfortable. By this time I doubt anyone will come along and I know this campsite is mine for the night. I turn off my lanterns and the stars begin to pop out of the trees. I can see the orange glow of the campfire of my closest neighbors - down the road and across the other side of the creek. Funny how I came here to be alone, completely alone, but the sight of that fire glow reassures me. What I really want is privacy and sanity.

One beer later, I crawl into my sleeping bag, and before I know it, I'm waking up at dawn with a day on the river ahead of me, and my old desert feet already feeling the land seep back into my soul.

the not work

I've been working a lot lately. Job work, letterpress, bindery. Work in my own studio, and work at Oregon College of Art & Craft.

This makes me hugely thankful, actually. I feel so incredibly lucky to do what I do for a living.

But sometimes the work-work takes over a little, and the art work suffers.

Part of the art making process is what a friend of mine describes as the not work. The not work is what's happening when we do the dishes, fold the laundry, space out, play guitar on the back porch, cook pork ribs. The not work is actually a necessary part, an essential part of my process.


I've been in the planning, germinating, seeding stage of a project that's been held in my mind for over a year now. I'd love to start telling you about it...but I'm not quite ready. It's still in the not work stage. But this week I've been sitting on the back porch more, thinking about the work more, sensing that subtle tickle telling me it's time.

This week I'm going to throw my sleeping bag and my drawing supplies in the back of my subaru and take off for a few days. I hope to return with a little more not work under my belt, but who knows. It's about time, anyway.