From Me, To You.

If you tell me (or anyone for that matter) that you dislike receiving letters in the mail, chances are, you're lying. 

Letters are special. They are something to physically hold in your hand, to read over again, to carry with you and to collect. 

It's an intentional act, letter-writing.  

It requires time and willingness - to take a break, to sit down, to share thoughts and inquire about those of the recipient. 

The correspondence demands patience.

No part of the process can be rushed.

Writing a letter is rarely the most convenient way to communicate, and for that reason, it is one of the most heartfelt. 

Apart from face-to-face meeting, I can think of no other manner of interaction that relays such intentionality and care.

I have a goal to make my conversations with other people more personable.
For me, this currently looks like giving up text messaging (at least for the Lenten season).
This may sound extreme for some, but in my case, the urge to text is indicative of my wanting instant gratification, a quick remedy for boredom, and the desire for immediate responses to issues that often are of little urgency at all. 

Because of the choice to do without this, it also looks like making more phone calls and allowing myself the time not only to ask quick questions with the hope of receiving a quick answer, but to have a real exchange with another person in which we hear each others' voices.
And finally, it looks like setting aside more time to  close my laptop, step outside, and write more letters. 

So here's to phone-tag, voicemails, forever stamps, and our friends at the USPS for keeping this ship sailing.  

P.S. If you want a letter in your mailbox, send me your address and it just may happen.
-L

[Screen-printed stationery, via my Etsy Shop]

Explored Unknown.

Drawing is one of my top activities.  I consider it to be somewhat a labor of love.  It is the basic framework to most anything that is considered as visual art.  The more I do it, the more I grow to appreciate it, but every so often I find myself rushing through the process to move on to the next creative layer.

Experimentation is required in drawing in order to make any sort of progress, so I learned in the rendering of my most recent project in my advanced drawing class.

The subject: weather.

In the midst of my beginning stages of experimentation I learned something about myself as an artist and visual thinker; I gravitate to the geometric form, specifically in the categories of line and space (Hard evidence of this is apparent in my sketchbook).

The idea of weather and how it plays into my geometric doodling discoveries is really what got the ball rolling.  Weather is something that is perpetually changing, therefore, change was a theme that I needed to fuse into my line drawing and mark making.

Spiral and curve.  Forms that hypnotize.  Forms that weather patterns adopt in the activity of the eye of a hurricane.  Natural disasters generally happening during a specific season.  Thus, creating concern and interest.

Goals: create a hypnotizing atmosphere, one that is dangerous yet beautiful.  In essence, explore an atmosphere of the beautifully unknown.

Seventeen Days.

Seventeen. That is how many days that I, Anna, had to make my presence known before my cousin, Lucy, decided to make her elevated entrance.

Seventeen. That is how many days my cousin, Anna, was alive before I came along and stole her thunder 
(thunder = the attention of my extended relatives).  

Over the course of the twenty years since, We have grown from cousins to friends to pen-pals to conspirators and now, to sharers of this space we intend to fill with the artistic, culinary, and literary musings that color our thoughts and conversations.

Glad you folks could stop by for a bit!