The child I am privileged to be raising is a sculptor. They do not know what sculpture is. They do not have memories of being in museums or galleries. But they leave a trail of delighted-in things behind them everywhere they go. There is no mistaking rooms they have been inside.

I grew up around people who were mean to themselves. This is the air I breathed and this is what I learned how to do to myself. But I have been sitting lately with the truth that: no one can stop being mean to me...but me. This has been tied in for me with the ways that being "critical" is often conflated with what it means to be "smart."

In my experience, however, it is easier to tear something down than to build something different or new. I am learning this the hard way as I trust that extra-mural teaching and learning is deeply aligned with the world I want to live in. But teaching outside of institutions is more challenging than seeing why teaching inside them can be problematic.

What I know is that making things: words, piles of wood, paintings, sweaters, a dishrack of clean dishes, a video installation, a script, a score, a dance, a jump, a game, a fire, or a water bottle with a holed up stone fitted onto it and a small golden agate balanced just so--this is where joy is. And spending time in this spark making place, just a little, each day week month...this is an integral part of the salve. And doing this together creates waves.

Creative Response starts in a week. I hope you will join me in building new sculptures (words yarns textures toys tastes) and in working together to decolonize the traditional response models and make space for new stories, stories that must be told differently.

I hope your Venus Day is full of sun peaking through rain or warm blankets behind frosty windows. Please email me with questions, wonders, musings or hellos.

With love,
Litia

we start in one week: c r e a t i v e r e s p o n s e