smagik

My grandma had an art studio in a converted bedroom in her house in Denver and in that studio, pushed up against her drafting table and a wall filled with family photos, was a stool that spun 360 degrees. There were also windows that looked East into her backyard and shelves filled with books, a record player, and art supplies. Throughout my childhood and teens I spun on that stool for hours and looked at that room.

Down a short path from my mom’s house, past the clothesline and the grassy spot on the north side of the house that my dad (pre-divorce) used to flood and turn into a primitive ice rink, is my mom’s studio. Stepping inside reminds me of the feeling I used to get at her mom’s, of being invited into a creative world that is at once familiar and private, their own.

A few weeks ago, I brought two small houses made of discarded scraps of wood up to my mom’s. Offcenter, a cool local Albuquerque arts nonprofit, was accepting submissions for their annual Little House fundraising auction (https://www.offcenterarts.org/little-house ) and I convinced my mom to join me in making one. I had just finished a long movie job and after six months in an office combined with too much news consumption, I was in dire need of time in a studio with paper, glue, paint, and scissors. As I drove the one hour drive north to Santa Fe, to my mom’s studio, I listened to an Astrology podcast in which the astrologer reminded me to look back to my lineage for guidance. Who and where do I come from? What did they pass down to me and how have I integrated that into my life? As I sat in my mom’s studio, the building of which was originally my dad’s carpentry workshop, I could still smell sawdust from the 1990’s mixed with oil paints and ink from yesterday. It was deeply familiar. We began to work after a quick cup of tea and chitchat and both quickly fell into focused quiet with the local radio station playing the background. Three hours passed.

My own house is now part studio, part vintage shop, and part home. I bought it twenty years ago, two months after my Grandma passed away. The bookshelves from her studio now sit in mine and several of the fashion illustration books from her days at Parson’s School of Design stand on the middle shelf. Multiple paintings and prints by she and my mom line the walls.

The little houses my mom and I collaged now sit in my kitchen, ready to be delivered to the site of their upcoming auction. My mom’s is covered in hand dyed indigo paper, from indigo plants she grew, and is called House of Blues. Mine was inspired by an image that came to me last month of a large feminine eye in the sky. Big Sister. Under her eye; she is intuitive, kind, and generative, all that Big Brother is not. Back in the day she taught me about Depeche Mode and mascara, but now she is that nudge to turn off the news and dig in my garden or to pull out the crayons, glue, and scissors. When the world spins like that stool in my grandma’s studio, Big Sister is the protective and creative lineage I return to over and over.

If you are in Albuquerque, NM, on May 9th, 2025, please come to the Little House Auction! https://www.offcenterarts.org/little-house