2020 – a year in review

2020 has been a gruesome year for the whole world. In the small town of Sandpoint, Idaho, in a tiny house studio, these were the reverberations made manifest.

Backwards in time, December saw a fresh heartbreak, November was spent away, October was marred by election anxiety, September saw a large scale woodcut printed with an asphalt roller in thick wildfire smoke.

The Pod – Woodcut in MDF on fabric.

August saw me adding loving details to the fresh construction of the interior space of my tiny house, like backsplash paintings of local Sandpoint flowers picked from alleyways. I started work on the cabinetry at the beginning of May, and used reclaimed and leftover materials, including breathtaking cuts of a local butternut tree harvested and milled a couple decades ago.

Sandpoint is full of fruit trees. This June and July saw countless hours of picking, processing, and canning fruit in between building, sketching, and the rituals of food and drink.

April and March were spent mulling an intermingling of personal and worldly mishaps in a fog of insomnia.

February was spent on a long road trip hunting for hot springs and canyons, before the virus locked down the country. And January faded into 2019, as they usually do.

The opportunities to show work in a standard, brick and mortar, white cube are limited in Northern Idaho. And taking the work out of its local context sterilizes it (not to mention how impossible it is to move tiny house studio built within a collaborative community). I remember how much context made itself apparent when I visited the Hunderwasser museum in Vienna. In a white cube, the work was overwhelming and quirky. In its natural environment, it was a way of life. And this is mine.