Category Archives: LIfe Outside the Studio

{hand lettering on a photo taken Sunday in my new bedroom}

Two weeks ago, I moved to Oakland. I first wrote about my feelings here, and a little bit about the move right after it happened here.

I knew I would love my new house & neighborhood, and I really do. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the deep sense of disconnection I would feel once I got here. Moving into adorable house in cute neighborhood ≠ instant happiness.

In fact, it can be very confusing when on the outside everything looks perfect (new house! new furniture! new studio! beautiful new neighborhood!) and on the inside you are feeling depressed and lost. Maybe some of you have been there.

Friends in whom I confided about my anguish reminded me that moving (even a move in the positive direction toward more desirable circumstances) can feel extremely jarring, and that breaking up a life of routines and familiar sites and sounds can completely throw off one’s equilibrium.

I am happy to report that about two and a half weeks in, however, I seem to be emerging from my dark place. I am starting to build new routines and feel more familiar with my new spaces (home and studio and neighborhood). I am starting to wake up again feeling excited about my day and not feeling a sense of dread.

So needless to say, I’m relieved.

Today I am heading into San Francisco for the day to work. Every time I go there now, I feel something I never knew existed when I lived there. I know that someday I will feel a deep love for Oakland (it’s a pretty cool place), but that it’s just going to take time. Which brings me to the topic of patience. But that’s another blog post.

Have a great day, friends.

{a little table with some of my favorite things in front of the giant window in our living room}

“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This past weekend we moved to our new home in Oakland. It was a gloriously warm weekend, and our new house was filled with light. It is so quite and peaceful here. So far I’m pretty smitten.

Our cats were pretty freaked out the first couple of days, as cats get when you move. On Friday, Ms. Margaret went missing for about five hours and we couldn’t find her. Turns out she’d crawled into the chimney and made a nest for herself in a tiny alcove about two feet up. She was looking for a dark place to hide (poor, scared thing!) and wasn’t coming out. We heard her meow when we brought out food, and I managed to get in there to pull her down. She was covered in soot! So she had a little bath, which I am sure didn’t help her anxiety.

But by Sunday she was settling in and enjoying the sunshine alongside us (see below). My other cat, Barry, didn’t leave the safety of the closet until Sunday night, but now he’s discovered the birds outside our ample windows (a treat he didn’t have at our old apartment), and he seems quite content.

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As you can imagine, my pup Wilfredo is in heaven with all his new found space (inside and out). Here he is on moving day on our front porch (sitting on the moving blanket no less!).

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Happy Tuesday.

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What better way to pay homage to the city I’ve called home for two decades than this?

Yep, I’m moving today! See you on the other side Monday, where I’ll be back with the next Reconstructionist.

{A rendering of the house in Oakland I’ll be moving into in two weeks}

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Twenty-two and a half years ago, the day after I graduated from college, I moved with a suitcase of clothes and two boxes of belongings to San Francisco. Everything I owned fit easily into my parents’ car. They picked me up in the East Bay town where I attended college and drove me over the Bay Bridge to my new home — known affectionately by locals as “The City.”

San Francisco is a City (with a capital C), and while it’s not a huge city (it’s only 7 miles x 7 miles wide), it is far larger and more urban than any place I’d ever lived. I was arriving on my own to make a new life here. I had no job, no idea how to get anywhere, and no concept of the lay of the land. I rented a room in the basement apartment of a friend of a friend at Taravel and 22nd Streets where I stayed for the next three months until I moved to another neighborhood.

On my first evening in San Francisco, my new roommate Beth and I took the bus to the Bridge Theater on Geary Street to see Cinema Paradiso. In one evening I did three things that I’d never done before: 1) took a city bus 2) went to a historic Art Deco theater (and not a suburban cineplex) and 3) saw a foreign film.  As I laid in bed that night, I was literally euphoric. A whole new world was opening up to me. I’d only been here 8 hours, but one thing was true: I was already falling in love with San Francisco and my new life here.

Over two decades have passed since that evening, and, as you may have guessed, I never left. Until now. Two weeks from Friday, I’m packing up my Mission District apartment to leave my beloved city for Oakland, back across the Bay Bridge. I have been known to say emphatically to friends over the last 20 years, “I AM NEVER LEAVING SAN FRANCISCO. I LOVE IT TOO MUCH.” Clearly lots of other people love it here too — and that’s not surprising. It is utterly beautiful, diverse, rich in food, art and culture, gay friendly, colorful, wonderfully weird. The economy is good here, too. Lots of people have money. The tech industry thrives here. Facebook and Twitter and Google are either here or a stone’s throw away.

Four years ago my partner Clay moved into the apartment where I’ve lived for almost 10 years. And now as we enter our middle years, we are ready for a slightly larger living space, a yard, a quieter street. But the problem is, we can’t afford that in San Francisco anymore. The wealth of this city has driven apartment and home prices up and up — especially in neighborhoods that are quiet and tree-lined. So we are heading over to Oakland, a larger but slightly lesser known city about eight miles across the bridge. Oakland has a lot to offer — more affordable housing, fantastic parks and outdoor space, farmer’s markets, great restaurants and galleries, beautiful shops, diversity and warmer summers.

I am really excited to try something new. In some ways this feels like a new adventure. I am thrilled to have a slightly larger place to live (though many people would call our new house tiny) with a big yard in a nice, quiet neighborhood still central to urban life. I even found a studio space that is 1/3 larger than my current space for $600 less a month than I pay in San Francisco (!!!). And Oakland (when there is no traffic) a only 20 minute drive from San Francisco, and a few train stops away.

But this is a double-edged sword. I love San Francisco. It’s my home. I have spent over 1/2 of my life here. I became an adult here. Every major event in my life has happened here. Part of me feels like I am about to lose a limb. Truthfully, if it weren’t so expensive, I would stay.

And that is my story: part happy, part sad. I plan to make the very best of this promising life change, despite my heartache. But I sure will miss you, San Francisco.

♥

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I recall telling you a couple of weeks ago that I was sheepish about sharing videos and films in which I am featured, and today is no exception. Recently, two amazing (talented and kind) filmmakers from Amsterdam followed me for an entire day and made this short 5 minute film about me. It’s part of a series called Like Knows Like in which the filmmakers follow artists whom they discovered via the internet to find out what they are like in “real” life.” You can see some of the other films they’ve made so far on their site.

The film is beautifully shot and Bas and Marije were a joy to work with, and yet I’m still feeling shy about sharing the film. This is the furthest into my apartment I’ve ever let anyone with a video camera. You’ll also see a bit of my studio as well. The film catches my trademark “scowl” as I paint (which makes it look like I am mad, but is really just the expression I have when I am concentrating). I talk about my work, and love, and my relationship. But as I said last time, I am trying to get over my fears of feeling too exposed. So, here is the film! And, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you Bas and Marije for being so wonderful and for featuring me!

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At some point several years ago, I started to feel shame about my age for the first time. This was around the time I was turning 40, and it was a seminal year for me: I left a leadership position and career in the non profit world to take a stab at making art for a living. But while others were praising me for making a later-in-life career change into uncharted territory, I was secretly ashamed that I was just beginning at 40. Compared to most people launching their illustration careers, I was old. My insecurity had little to do with my physical appearance. I wanted to be 25 simply so I would fit more easily into the world I was joining.

Admittedly, it’s weird to think about having shame about aging. We have no control over aging, and it happens to everyone, every second of the day. Everyone who is now 25 will eventually be 40, and everyone who is 40 will eventually be 55. As we exist, we age. And we can’t always predict what twists and turns our lives will take. I happened to figure out pretty late in life that I liked to make art and that I was good at it. How could this make me feel ashamed? (Society? Our obsession with youth? Probably, but that’s another blog post). In some ways I had more internalized shame about my age during this period of time than I’d ever had about my sexual orientation.

In the end, I mastered turning 40 quite well. Eventually I conquered my shame about being the oldest person in the cohort of illustrators whom I considered my peers. I realized over time that all of the life experience I’d had gave me some advantages that I wouldn’t have had at 25. And no one seemed to care that I was older. I fit in just fine. I made friends. I got ample work. In the end, it didn’t matter.

Somewhere in there I also determined that I would embrace aging. I would talk freely about my age, and I’d wear it as a badge of honor. I wouldn’t stop dying my hair weird colors or mixing stripes in my outfits. I’d look to Advanced Style for inspiration, just as I looked at The Sartorialist. I’d celebrate the changes in my body instead of trying to fix them. I’d get more manicures. I’d wear weirder and weirder glasses. I’d continue to be myself, but with even more flair.

Today I turn 45. And this is going to be a good year. I’m getting married (for the first time) to someone I’m crazy about. I am moving from my small apartment to a house in a few weeks (more on that later). I am working on four books that I’m really excited about. I’m going to Paris this summer. I am embarking on my sixth year of being gainfully self employed as an artist. I am happier than I have ever been.

Let’s do this, forty-five.

{Untitled, 1960, Agnes Martin}

For years I wanted more: more work, more love, more friends, more connections, more opportunities. I yearned for my life to expand. And you know what? It did. Because when you are open to more good stuff in your life, you get more.

But recently I hit a wall. All of a sudden I want less. Not necessarily less good stuff. Just less of everything. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. Because it was like this: more work, more love, more friends, more connections, more opportunities turned into more obligations, more commitments, more pressure, more overwhelm.

So 2013 is all about less. I’m under-planning. I’m saying no, even when I want to say yes. I am saving time to do nothing. I’m not going to invent plans or projects just because I have an empty hour or day or month in my calendar. I am going to learn to be okay with less.  I won’t be busy, overbooked, exhausted, overburdened. I did that already, and it’s completely overrated.

When people ask me how I’m doing I’m going to say, Great! I’m enjoying my life and feeling relaxed. And it will be true. I’m not going to say I’m busy, because I’m not going to be busy. And, besides, I dislike that word and what it has come to represent in my life.

Other people are talking about this very thing. Erin wrote an excellent post about the topic here in the context of her own life. And I’ve referred before on this blog to this excellent NY Times article from last year called The Busy Trap. I’m absolutely sure others are thinking and writing about it too.

I’ve never been so excited about less.