State of the Fields 2023

My year in creative life (+ a middling review of The Artist's Way)

Jan 24, 2024

I write to you from my first-ever offsite day retreat for Found in the Fields. I decided to take a whole day to solely focus on reflection, vision casting, and goal setting for the new year, and I’m pleased to share my 2023 reflections with you!

A “state of the field” is a term in art history that generalizes current understanding of a topic, identifying gaps in the current knowledge, and casting a vision for where research could lead us in the future. I have loved reading states of the field ever since I came upon my first one in grad school, and now I write them each year for Found in the Fields.

What worked in 2023:

1. Making an exorbitant amount of art for my wedding.

Those of you who have been on the journey with me for a long time know that one of my earliest ventures into art business was designing custom wedding invitation suites. These days I limit this to wedding gifts for friends (but perhaps will revisit for the general public someday…), but I knew that when my own wedding came around, I would want to go all out.

So I did, and because I married a graphic designer, we got to collaborate on everything, making it more extra than my wildest dreams. We designed our own wedding brand, including a logo that incorporated elements of our venue (an apple orchard)! We made save-the-date postcards! We made letterpress invitations! I hand-calligraphed every envelope!

We also skipped the Knot entirely and made our own wedding website, complete with a custom domain, a travel guide for the area surrounding our venue, a detailed timeline of our relationship with photos, and custom RSVP forms.

I think it’s my favorite project I worked on this year. I LOVED it.

I could go on and I won’t, but having a space where it was my joy to go the extra mile in every creative avenue I could really, really worked for me.

2. Morning pages.

I started reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way this fall. I’ve been reading a chapter every other week and embracing the creative disciplines of the book in uncomfortable fits and starts, which probably means it’s the right read for me in this season of creative life. It’s to be read with a generous serving of discernment regarding some of her spiritual themes, but overall the wisdom of this work has been changing my creative practice in a good way. For example, today’s reading from chapter 8:

Small actions lead us to the larger movements in our creative lives…Take one small daily action instead of indulging in the big questions. When we allow ourselves to wallow in the big questions, we fail to find the small answers.

One of these small actions that Cameron suggests is the daily morning pages, or three full, handwritten pages of unfiltered stream-of-consciousness. I’ve been faithful to practice this, and I think it has done me a lot of good. I’ve nearly filled up a notebook’s worth of morning pages, and it is indeed the “brain drain” that Cameron claims it to be — an opportunity to get one’s trash writing out of the way first thing to let the better writing emerge.

3. Creative community and creative discipleship.

2023 was a good year for this. In early 2023, my friend Michele Bowden and I painted a collection of winter landscapes of our home state of Virginia, and got to sell some of this art in a collaborative collection release. It was a wonderful practice in placemaking for me — to pay attention to the landscapes in front of me and be reminded that beauty is not only found in a far-off land, but is near for those who have eyes to see it.

In March, I went to Square Halo Conference in Lancaster, PA and had the best time savoring creative community with old friends and new. (I’m going again this year! Will I see you there?)

In July, I got to run a second year of POEMA— a weeklong creative intensive camp for high school-aged artists. Back in 2022, my friend and longtime creative collaborator Josh Toth and I were both working for our church, and had lots of somewhat rambly chats about art and faith. These eventually turned into POEMA, borne of trying to answer a shared question: “what did we need when we were younger artists growing up in the church?” During our camp week we offered workshops in a different artistic discipline each day taught by Christian artists (including Josh’s wife Shannah, a dancer, and our children’s ministry pastor Matt, who is also a working actor). We also offered studio time, critique sessions, and a creative showcase at the end of the week.

In 2023, we ran POEMA’s second year, and our turnout was largely visual artists, with some writers and musicians in the mix too. The opportunity to walk alongside younger artists and encourage them has been a precious gift to me. Artists need discipleship beyond the art class, to sink into the spiritual dimensions of the good and true work they’re called to. I’ve loved being a part of that creative discipleship.

And now, what didn’t work in 2023:

1. Artist dates.

This is another suggested practice from The Artist’s Way, in which the artist sets aside some time each week to cultivate creative play in one form or another. I have gone on maybe four artist dates, and on each one had tremendous trouble with playing, exploring, or just generally faffing about creatively. This, of course, zooms out to a bigger picture. Celebration and joy are spiritual disciplines, and must be cultivated just as much as prayer, fasting, and solitude must be. And they are especially important for the artist at work, who indeed must embrace sometimes being an artist at play, too.

2. Taking on less creative projects.

This was somewhat circumstantially outside of my control, as this year I started a new job alongside planning a wedding, moving, getting married, etc.

All the same, it did not work for me. I missed making non-wedding art in a never again will I take this long a break kind of way. In 2023 I had several conversations with other artists circling their individual relationships with art making, and over and over I heard the same thing: “If I can’t make art, I suffer in a personal way.” I didn’t think that was necessarily true for me until this year. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron promotes morning pages so aggressively for this reason – under the assumption that makers suffer without their creative practice. After this year, I agree with her.

3. POEMA 2023 being one (1) week away from my wedding.

Sorry, Josh.

What’s Next?

I am a person who loves a new year’s resolution and a dense set of goals (I meet them much more successfully if I make them and write them down!), and the theme of my goals for this year round up to one word – practice. 2024 will be a year of practice for me — practicing presence, placemaking, and painting. This looks like cultivating my spiritual life, building community in place, tending to a garden that Jake and I will plant together in the spring. And making, now that I know how much I need to. :) And Substack is part of this practice — for placemaking, and for creative play.

Thanks for being part of this place, friend. Happy new year!