His work features puddles of paint, solidified into formations that resemble smooth pebbles or porous lava rocks, all in hyper-vivid hues that practically shine with their own vibrance. Years later, these hallmarks of Richard’s work remain and have expanded to new realms.

I visited his studio in December, now as Curator at The Bankers Alley Hotel in downtown Nashville, TN. Being in his studio, I could see just how expansive Richard’s work has become. To paint as large as he wants to, he’s created a way to prime burlap to hold the weight of the paint he builds off of the canvas, and as a fiber artist I appreciate the way that his work hangs like a tapestry. The photos, taken in the creeks and streams of Middle Tennessee, depict the fantastic beauty of nature, straddling the line of what is real and what is surreal.

The overlapping language of various mediums are ever-present in Richard’s creative practice, which includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and mixed media. He is able to explore all of these mediums seamlessly because they all support his exploration of the concept of time.

The Ghost We Live By, the title of this exhibition, speaks to Richard’s dive into the unknown in his work— what we know and what we don’t about time itself. Speaking with him about his work and this concept excited me to no end as it’s something I enjoy exploring in my own creative practice and curatorial projects. Dimensions folding in on one another, existing parallel to each other, the differing realities of individuals, all juxtaposed against the physical manifestations of time present in geology, especially in water and rocks.

During my first studio visit with Richard, he shared his photo paintings with me. He described where he had taken the initial photos that sparked the project, which was in my beloved home state of Southern Illinois in Giant City. I was thrilled to encounter such a coincidence!

I grew up in Southern Illinois, just three hours northwest of Nashville, Tennessee. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how close these two states really are, as they seem worlds apart in landscape and culture. The tri-state area of Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky is on a fault line, a phrase that very well represents the specific strangeness of the region. Not quite the Midwest, not quite the South, and just out of reach of Greater Appalachia, it exists as its own mythological place.

The Shawnee National Forest covers most of the bottom tip of the state, and the area is hilly and full of cliffs, waterfalls, large boulders, and the shallow streams that connect them. The rocks there are rotund and smooth, like they were dropped from a giant’s rock collection.

Giant City State Park, where Richard’s series of photographs titled Water Time and Rocks was taken, is a place where the veil is thin. This park has a landmark rock formation called Fat Man’s Squeeze, which I’ve written about before.

As a child I wondered if it might be a portal to another world — another dimension. One that exists parallel to ours but perhaps isn’t as cruel. Or perhaps it is even more cruel. There is simply no way of knowing unless you choose to pass through.

And many people have. I would wonder if some have died this way, gone forever through another portal. You can feel a chilly dampness there, maybe there are spirits at the entrance of the rock.

This is how it is in Southern Illinois, and I constantly find connections to that place in unexpected ways. Through the recognition of an area code, the subject matter of a photograph, the sweatshirt that reads COLLEGE, and art about water, time, and rocks. It feels a bit like a vortex, always trying to bring me back into its tide.

Richard Heinsohn’s solo exhibition The Ghost We Live By is on view at The Banker’s Alley Hotel’s Main Gallery until July 31st, 2026. *

Mood Board #21
Featuring Detail of The Bridge by Richard Heinsohn, 72” x 120”, Archival Polymer with Sand and Sawdust on Primed Burlap, 2017

Photo of Giant City State Park, found on The Southern Illinois Tourism website, 2023

Detail of Jet Stream of Consciousness, 72” x 140”, Enhanced Archival Polymer on Primed Burlap, 2017

Detail of Water Time and Rocks, 30” x 40”, Archival Print on Stretched Canvas, 2026

*Special thanks to all who helped to make this exhibition possible, including Robert Overton of Mangoe Arts who helped me tremendously on the installation of this exhibition, adviser Caitlin Blomstrom, the artist Richard Heinsohn, and my amazing team members at The Bankers Alley Hotel Nashville.

**Corrections made on March 24th to reflect that the photo paintings I viewed during my studio visit with Richard Heinsohn were taken in Southern Illinois, but the photo paintings exhibited at Bankers Alley were taken in Middle Tennessee.

This year, my goals are different and less focused on my image of success and more focused on building the foundation that will allow creative expression — community, connection, and joy.

The world is falling apart, but for the sake of my children, I need to be at least somewhat sane and joyful. Funny movies, podcasts, artwork, and karaoke have been a staple for me so far in 2026, and it has greatly improved my mental health.

After the passing of Catherine O’Hara, a shock that brought me to tears in the breakroom, I began to reminisce about how I fell in love with comedy in high school, watching movies with my friends, dressing up in costumes, and coming up with characters and storylines. We loved Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries which often featured the same cast of improvisers, and our favorite of these was the 1996 masterpiece “Waiting for Guffman”.

I rewatched this recently, and my goodness it’s just so good. The characters care so deeply about what they are creating that you kind of forget that what they’re creating is a low-budget musical about their small town’s history. The film plays out as a high stakes documentary drama about something that is, decidedly, low stakes and certainly not something that is going to impact the creative careers of these individuals living in rural Missouri, even if they believe it will.

The main characters believe so earnestly in their project. This is THEATER this is ART and as Corky says in his iconic speech to the city council, “This is my life we’re talking about, we’re not talking about something else, we’re talking about my life!”

They have delusions of grandeur, but it’s charming. You find yourself laughing at how ridiculous these people are, but never in a malicious way, and all the while you’re falling in love with them. During my re-watch, I started feeling misty eyed about the bewitching nature of the creative process — the vulnerable courage it takes to make something that others may not fully understand.

I thought, for the first time in many months…

I think I’m going to go to an open mic tonight.

***

The first time I ever tried stand up as an adult was in 2018. I had just started going to therapy where I confessed that I didn’t know if I liked making visual artwork. I felt like a failure and was incredibly embarrassed to realize that after thousands of dollars spent on a Bachelor of Fine Arts, I was uninspired and unhappy with my nearly nonexistent creative practice. We began delving into my childhood, identifying that, perhaps, I wasn’t in touch with who I really was, what I wanted, or what I enjoyed doing. I was having a very hard time making work that felt authentic to me.

My therapist encouraged me to think about moments of joy in my childhood, and I discovered that nearly all of them had to do with performing. Growing up, I was a theater kid raised by theater majors, and I realized that I longed for my hammy days of high school musicals, speech competitions, and theater camps.

My first time doing stand-up was at a comedy camp for teens run by the staff at Second City Chicago. The workshop was only a few hours long and was taught by a big man with a big voice who gave a quick rundown of what a setup and punchline are and then put all of us in line to perform one minute of comedy for him and then he would give each of us feedback immediately after our minute was up.

This is a brutal way to introduce any child to an art form, though it was an incredibly real and appropriate first taste of the constant, jarring failure of the medium.

There were about 30 of us in line and all of us vied for the back spots so that we had time to figure out what we wanted to say. When it was my turn, I was overwhelmed with joy to make the man laugh when I told a story about my elementary school aged brother. This was my first experience on stage making someone laugh with my own words and it was exhilarating.

The instructor gave me very generous feedback and asked where I was going to school. When I told him that I would be attending Belmont in Nashville, TN he was appalled and told me I should be moving to Chicago.

But I didn’t want to move to Chicago because… well I’m not exactly sure. My teenage Catholic (OCD) self was obsessed with the idea of fate and God-led superstition, and I had got it into my head that I was meant to move to Nashville. Also, I didn’t understand how to read graphs and therefore bus schedules, maps, and other things that required the right side of my brain.

For my school talent show that year I courageously and stupidly decided to do a stand-up routine. While on stage, I felt the rush of an audience of people laughing at my jokes and my stories. I dreamed of the next time I’d be on stage again, but when I started college, it felt impossible to be that vulnerable again. Art school was humiliating and I couldn’t stand the idea of adding more kinds of embarrassment and failure to my life.

So, after spending a silly amount of money discussing this in therapy, my therapist suggested that I try a comedy open mic.

My first night at The East Room my name was miraculously drawn out of the bucket and added to the list. While on stage, my words started spilling out of my mouth, and I quickly realized that none of the things I was saying were jokes — a horrible realization when you’re holding a microphone on a stage. The audience stared blankly at me while my friends who were there to support me laughed with enthusiasm. My friend Tony, a journalist, recorded the audio of the set and sent it to me. I have never listened to it.

But for some reason when I got off the stage, I wanted to do it again… and again… and again.

I’ve been lucky to become friends with some truly hilarious people, some of whom have made great strides in their careers, released albums, moved to bigger cities, and tour nationally. For a while I felt sad that I wasn’t progressing, and likely never will progress because of my lack of consistency. When I go to open mics, fresh comics often introduce themselves to me and give me advice about the scene.

But I always let them give me the advice because these people are in it and I’m not. And that’s okay! I’m not going to a mic every night, not hanging out at The Lab to hear if my name gets called, or wiggling my way into green rooms, and I’m definitely not making crowd work clips. And, you know what… I don’t want to.

I know who I am now.
I’m a writer and a curator.

I was right all those years ago about my exhaustion with making visual artwork, and I finally feel free of that. My curatorial practice has become my main focus, with my writing being my most beloved mode of creative expression. I have poured myself into these creative efforts, trying and failing, getting a little better every time I get up.

I give daily tours of our art galleries, and I love ardently telling the stories of our featured artists and the work that they create. I love attending writing events like Freehand and Tenx9 where I get to read my work aloud, to hear the immediate reaction of the audience, which I consider to be the best gift the audience gives to you. It’s like having thirty people read your work all at one time, and it is riveting, and sometimes brutal. Performing is an important part of my creative practice, and stand-up is a fantastic complement to that.

I’ve been taking small steps to build the foundation I need to have a healthy and joyful creative practice, and one of those steps has been to attend open mics again.

At these mics I get to talk to other writers, watch them work on their craft, and sometimes I get to go up too. But I am often gob smacked by what people say on stage — sometimes because it’s good, sometimes because it’s bad, but mostly because they thought of it with their weird brain and said it out loud. And they say it again and again and again. I stare with my mouth wide open, beaming at this singular human experience.

Sitting in the front row, I nod my head like a proud mother listening to her kid say, “hey, mom! Watch this!”

In a time where it seems like everyone is afraid to look like they are trying, these comics really are.

Please, always remember, be a Corky St. Clair.
Put your whole self into something and believe in what you say, do, and make.
try hard.

I promise that it’s worth it.

Mood Board #20
Featuring Christopher Guest as Corky St. Clair in Waiting for Guffman, 1996

The Cast of Waiting for Guffman, (from left to right) Eugine Levy, Parker Posey, Christopher Guest, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard, 1996

Astrologers call this your Saturn Return, and for me at least, it predictably shook my understanding of myself and the world around me. Growing up Catholic, I felt I attuned to the spiritual landscape we exist within, never doubting that my living body was the vessel in which my soul was using to travel through worlds.

When I had my first child in February 2020, I witnessed the birth of a new life, my son’s life. In the mirror positioned at the bottom of the hospital bed I watched him, and felt him, emerge from my body as my mother whispered into my ear, “open your eyes".

They placed my son in my arms, and I was transported to a different level of consciousness. A new world opened before me, and I passed through the portal.

Within two weeks our lives were turned upside down by a tornado that ripped through our neighborhood of East Nashville, and just two weeks after that our family began our life at home during Covid.

All hours of the day and night, awake nursing my infant son, I would scroll the internet.

I would read the most recent Covid statistics.

I would read about the dog whistles used by Proud Boys.

I would watch protests from the safety of my bed.

Already, 2026 echoes the unsettled world that 2020 brought us. As I write this now, my city has just survived another catastrophic storm with damage that rivals what the tornado brought us. I am thankful to be safe and warm in my home while thousands of people in my city have been without power, including people that I hold dear to me.

My children and I were cooped up, but not in any danger. I wish I could say the same for so many others throughout our city, our state, our country, and the world.

I now wake up at the dreaded 3am. Alone in bed, or sometimes accompanied by my clinging, sleeping daughter, I scroll the internet.

I read excerpts of the Epstein files.

I read legal analysis of the most recent executive orders.

I watch every angle of the most recent public execution.

I have been ritualistically reading Maggie Smith’s devastating poem, “Good Bones”, as if it were a prayer to start and end my secular Rosary. My mind cannot stray from these obsessive thoughts, though prayers are more welcome than the other haunting phrases and images that replay constantly behind my eyes.

Good Bones
Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

I alternate between this and the lifesaving prayer I learned the year I was confirmed in the Catholic Church. It is an excerpt of a poem by St. Teresa of Ávila, the Patron Saint of Writers.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you.
Everything passes,
God does not change.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.

The jolt to another realm happened again within the past few months. I have suddenly felt the steadiness that I always craved is now within myself. I feel more resolved in my own strength as a parent, my soul alive and present in my body.

My sorrow turned to rage long ago and has since burned down to a smoldering pile of coals in the furnace that fuels my conviction.

My conviction that I am a mother who must do what she can to protect her children. My conviction that mothers, that parents, that adults, are meant to protect all children.

Maybe this is the year that we all open our eyes to that.

Mood Board #19
Featuring Madeline Donahue, Window, Oil on canvas, 14” x 11”, 2021

Good Bones, Maggie Smith, poem first published in Waxwing, June 2026

Candy Land, Queen Frostine card, 1984

My grandmother had taught me how to embroider when I was just eight years old and from then on, I was always working on something. Sometimes it was a predetermined pattern given to me by my grandmother from her decor and craft shop. Sometimes it was a pattern I made myself, usually flowers made from pearlized buttons and lazy daisy stitches.

When I wanted a break from my creative work, I’d start up the GameCube and play Animal Crossing, casting my fishing line into the rivers that ran through my neighborhood which was populated with big-eyed animals and thrashing wooden totems.

These nights were some of the happiest of my childhood, holed up in my brother’s nursery that wasn’t being used as a nursery because my brother wouldn’t sleep unless he was in our parents’ bed. So, I’d work all night with the light on, the low sound of conversation amongst the Banks family keeping me company all the way from Bel-Air.

My senior year of college I read a book that gave a name to that feeling I had been chasing my whole life. Do I remember what this book is called? Of course not. Why would I remember something so significant? In this book, the author described flow state — that magical experience where you’re making something and you exist in a liminal state of time and space. Nothing matters except for your work. You blink and hours have passed by, and you focus your eyes and see you’ve made something.

Flow state changed from a mysterious state of being, to a goal that I was pursuing, and as my practice changed over time, I have been happy to be able to find a flow in many mediums including writing. I have stayed up all hours of the night making quilts, paintings, poems, handmade journals, and one miniature cardboard replica of a banjo.

I became obsessed with making work after having my son in 2020. It was the height of the pandemic, and I made work every moment I wasn’t tending to him, and sometimes while I was. It was invigorating!

The night that I went into labor with my daughter I had just completed a collection of works to mail out to a gallery in Chicago for a solo show. It was like the biggest exhale, breathing out a creative idea I had poured dozens of hours into, and just six hours later my water broke.

My creative goals have shifted over time, and I don’t always have a great track record of finishing things, mostly because I love the rush of starting a project, and then getting lost in the ritual of stitching, painting, or writing snippets of stories. Though, lately I have started to feel a bit uninspired as unfinished creative ideas pile up around me. I have felt nostalgic for those early, obsessive days of making things and long to get swept into the current of my own making again.

Nowadays my creative flows are usually thwarted by my social media use. Earlier this week while doomscrolling in the early morning hours on Threads, I saw a post by a woman who said that she uses AI to write. She explained that she hates the tedious process of writing and as a mother she has no time to create something from scratch. She is strong in her conviction that her ideas are the crux of her creation, and that it doesn’t matter that the word parts are created by an algorithm and sourced from literature written by authors who did not consent to having their work used as the blueprint for a large language model.

She said she doesn’t call herself a writer, she calls herself a “Literary Propagator”. I had a visceral reaction to this when I read it —my shoulders shrugged and my face grimaced.

Literary Propagator

As if the act of creative writing can be compared to the act of mass fertilization, the rapid growth and spread of horticulture.

I am not denying that, like propagation, the creation of a book by way of bot-powered language prediction does take time and care. Crafting the prompts, copying and pasting, the careful splicing of stems, the hand pollinated flowers to ensure optimal crop yield.

I imagine The Plant from Little Shop of Horrors, growing larger every day from the blood of its victims, its meaty vines creeping across a tile floor.

The Literary Propagator insists that they have poured over every word generated and agonized over plot points and character arcs. The illusion of earnestness in these posts is broken by the obvious tell that these, too, have been written by The Plant.

“Here’s the thing: ___”

“I’m not just a ___ I’m a ___”

“But here’s what they don’t realize…”

The stuff of viral LinkedIn posts.

The stuff of a writer’s nightmare.

Her most recent posts call her critics mean girls, gatekeepers, and my personal favorite, rainbow-bullies. A hilarious take considering she intentionally reached out to her own audience of Christian homeschooling “Mamas”.

*A side note: The word “Mamas” is perhaps the easiest way for me to see that an account, a blog, or a product is just not for me. I don’t know you, call me Mother, dammit.

The Literary Propagator felt forced to make a thread explaining her book generation process, attempting to justify it to the “rainbow bullies”.

Reading this honestly broke my heart. Because that workshopping she’s describing is the part I do with my writers’ group, a collective of women who have changed my life for the better. These women believe in me, cheer me on, challenge me, and have never steered me wrong in their careful criticism of my work.

It made me think that maybe what the Literary Propagator wants is a friend, a community, a writers’ room, but instead she has The Plant.

And The Plant and those who brought it here, have convinced her that the good part of the project is being done, not the doing it; and that the good part of making something is being a Creator, not the act of creating.

So, I stopped doomscrolling, my daughter now back to sleep in the crook of my arm after her routine 5am wakeup, and I started writing. I wrote about being a kid and making things and falling in love with the creative process. I wrote about falling in love with writing, falling in love with being alive and sharing my progress with my friends, giving my creations as birthday presents, gifting my prose as hugs and kisses.

Why would I want to speed along the process if it means skipping the flow state? Can you experience flow while prompting a bot, or does it feel more like pulling the lever on a slot machine?

Are we at the point in our society that we as creatives are more interested in being perceived than we are intoxicated by the process of art making?

I reflect on this as I prepare to hit publish on a social media platform. I reflect on this as I struggle with the crushing disappointment of receiving over 40 rejections for my writing in 2025. I reflect on this as someone who is working on falling back in love with inspiration, with creating, and with myself.

Maybe I’ll make something tonight.

Mood Board #18
Featuring Animal Crossing, for Nintendo Game Cube, screenshot by unknown player, 2001

DMC Embroidery Thread

Blanket Stitch, How to Sew the Blanket Stitch by Allison Murray for “Dream a Little Bigger” blog with Allison Murray

Thomas Kinkade Puzzle, circa 2000

I was struck by the hazy beauty of her paintings. which depict floral stems within the squares and rectangles of a checkerboard. Sometimes the checkerboards are traditional black and white with dramatic red blooms and buds. Other times the checkerboards are dusky pastels or moody neutrals. Both lovely and mysterious with a bittersweet edge, Amanda’s work conveys a deep sense of longing.

I have had the privilege of spending a lot of time with her work as Amanda was part of the first series of shows that I curated for The Bankers Alley Hotel back in 2023. I got to tell her story to guests from all around the world and with each telling, it felt like I could see the hazy flowers just a little bit clearer.

Her work is deeply personal, the checkerboard being a reference to her grandmother’s kitchen flooring and the flowers a metaphor for her grief. After losing her grandmother right before the birth of her daughter, Amanda began painting these checkerboard flowers as a way to process her loss. The florals vary in bloom and decay, reflecting the cycle of life. The blooms also vary in opacity as some memories are stronger than others. Even the title of “Heirloom” suggests the idea that we inherit stories, traits, and memories whether we want to or not. These family gifts and traumas are passed down and linger, or they slip away with no regard for our wants, needs, and desires.

This is why it is so frustrating to see her work copied with no shame by influencers across the internet.

The flattening of fine artwork and art movements is not a new phenomenon. As the general public, and even artists and art historians, seek to understand and explain artwork, context and meaning can be lost. Things become oversimplified and the artist’s story and intention fade away.

In the age of the internet, that flattening happens more quickly than ever before. Because Amanda’s work has an air of mystery and nostalgia to it, it has been easily coopted by art influencers, illustrators, and even textile designers to convey *vibes*.

But art isn’t just *vibes*

Art is story, love, joy, grief, and pain.

Self-expression is a reflection of the reality of the artist, and that is incredibly evident in the Amanda Nolan dupes I’ve encountered. A preppy Christian illustrator sells her saccharine, strawberry checkerboard wrapping paper alongside a pattern which features a golfer in an old-timey uniform. Both prints would be at home in a little shop in Charleston.

Another influencer copycat paints a jewel toned checkerboard mural in her home, selling her brand of artsy Mama to her followers. I’d give this copycat a pass since it’s in her home and for private use, except it isn’t at all because she has commodified her life to the point that even her home isn’t private. On Instagram the comments are full of women begging her to make the design into wallpaper and she responds, “Omg that would be so so fun!!” without acknowledging that she copied the design in the first place.

On TikTok the comments on the video are mostly in defense of Amanda, making sure the viewers know that this influencer didn’t create this design. The others insist that Amanda “isn’t the first to do it”.

Which got me thinking. Is she the first to do it?

Checkerboard patterns are some of the oldest known patterns in architecture and textile design and have been used in nearly every culture. Ancient Egyptians tiled their palaces in checkerboard as did Persians, Romans, and Medieval Europeans. The pattern has shown up in textiles and furniture in Scottish Clans, American Colonizers, and just about everybody else too.

So, to say that checkerboard has been around for a while is an understatement.

The checkerboard floor became incredibly popular in the United States in the 1920s and 30s as tiling your kitchens and bathrooms became all the rage because guess what there is this thing called germ theory and it’s actually a big deal and you should consider making the places where you eat and poop really easy to clean.

In the 1950s linoleum was all the rage which made customizing flooring easy and affordable. Black and white checkerboard flooring became popular in homes as well as public spaces like hospitals, diners, and schools making it an iconic staple of the decade.

Then in the 90s there was a resurgence and nostalgia for two things at once:

1. The 1950s which I talked about in last week’s installment about Burlesque,
2. Colonial, Country, or “Primitive” Americana.

Checkboard flooring gained popularity again and antique early American game boards became popular in the “Primitive” and Country aesthetic. This nostalgia made black and white checkerboard synonymous with the American Kitchen.

Enter designer Victoria MacKenzie-Childs who founded her ceramics company MacKenzie-Childs with her husband in 1983. Her checkerboard pattern first appeared in her original designs as a way to break up more complex patterns. At closer look you’ll find that this check is nuanced, always including a variety of colors within the black and cream and comes in many variations including Mocha, Emerald, Rosy and more. MacKenzie-Childs’ checks were originally called “Roasted Marshmallow” and was introduced as its own pattern in her 1995 “Camp” collection, and it soon became her staple. The name was updated to “Cortley Jester” in response to the comment that she was “the court jester of tabletop”.

Funny enough, I cannot find the origins of this lore. It is repeated in the story of MacKenzie-Childs though it is always accredited to “an editor” or “an article” with no source. This hunt is what delayed me in my publishing of this Substack — and for what? For whom!

I started this writing practice with the parameters of the “Mood Board” as a way to remove self-judgment and overthinking, but the concept has only activated my desire to get it right, show all sides, give the fullest picture possible.

But y’all, I am not writing a dissertation. These are fun facts, musings, thoughts that come during the witching hours of the night, drunken conversations at parties where I alienate myself from the other party goers who are hitting their vapes repeatedly, drifting away from my nerdy rabbit hole where I’m digging deeper and deeper into the earth.

The popularity of MacKenzie-Childs’ punchy floral and check designs coincided with the rise of Rachel Ashwell’s Shabby Chic, a more youthful and cottagey offshoot of the Primitive/Country trends which spawned a thousand copies of Ashwell’s work. This trend is mirrored now in the Cottage-Core trend and is also deeply related to the commodification of Amanda’s work.

I’d be remiss if I left out an additional checkerboard reference that I find important to this conversation and that is the punk and skater checkerboard of Vans and skateboards and all the other cool kid accoutrements of the early 2000s, which was of course a throwback to the 1990s which was a throwback to the 1970s. As a millennial, and as Amanda is a millennial, I find this is an important aside. That checks are in our spirit as art kids, and it isn’t all sophisticated tenderness and vibes. It’s something angsty and outsider and just a little bit (a lot a bit) dramatic.

There is immense grief in this work, though there is beauty too.

From what I can tell, was Amanda the first to do checkerboard? No. Florals and checkerboard together? Also no. But she is the first to meld all of these things together from her personal history, time, and place to create something unique to her. It’s not just an aesthetic, it is art. And that’s what artists do.

Mood Board #17
Featuring Amanda Nolan, Heirloom XXXI, oil on canvas, 45” x 40”, 2023

MacKenzie-Childs, Camp Collection, 1995

1950’s American Diner, Florence, Italy, photographed by Georgette Jupe for her blog Girl in Florence, now Honest Conversations with Georgette

Amanda Nolan, Heirloom XXVIII, oil on canvas, 36” x 42”, 2023

When Beyonce released the visuals for Cowboy Carter my corner of the internet was buzzing about the history of denim in the United States and its significance as a symbol of empowerment and activism for Black Americans in the 1960s-70s. When she released the music I was delighted by the first track, American Requiiem, which felt like a contemporary take on For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield. The rest of the album was so layered with musical and cultural references there should be a book about all there is to discover.

I am holding out hope there is similar substance within this Taylor Swift album, but am already prepared to temper my expectations and just enjoy the album for what it is — a wonderful distraction from the current, well (gestures broadly) everything. More on that next week when I talk about Cabaret.

But before Cabaret, I would like to talk about Burlesque.

No, not this Burlesque which actually does not feature any Burlesque at all. No, I am talking about Burlesque as in over-the-top, rhinestone-studded, theatrical strip tease which originated 1920s and was popularized in the 1940s-50s.

I talked a little bit about this in my previous post where I delved into the history of The Showgirl. Our contemporary understanding of Burlesque comes from Neo Burlesque, a revival that happened in the 1990s. This revival was tied to a counterculture movement that grew from the 80s obsession with mid century Americana and the optimism of Post WWII America. We’re seeing our own nostalgic trend now with a resurgence of early 2000s fashion and films and the desire for “simpler” times.

So, in this case think 80s does 50s classics like Back to the Future (‘85), Grease (‘78), and Dirty Dancing (‘87) and how that evolved into a sexier, darker version in the 90s with classics like Twin Peaks (‘90), The Mask (‘94), and Cry Baby (‘90).

This cultural trend was very popular in LA and Vegas and it brought about a renewed interest in mid century fetish films starring icons like Bettie Page, pin-up illustrations by artists like Gil Elvgren, and classic strip tease by performers like Gypsy Rose Lee.

In 2002 Dita Von Teese appeared on the cover of Playboy Magazine and the interest in Burlesque as a performance art form exploded into the mainstream.

While I didn’t discover her in Playboy, I was absolutely enchanted by Dita Von Teese’s classic look in my teenage years. I think the first time I saw Dita Von Teese’s porcelain face it had been cut from a magazine and pasted into a friend’s sketchbook in art class. Her iconic red lip and dramatic dark hair were just my style.

And I’m not the only one who fell in love with the red lip trend.

I was drawn to her dramatic look, especially as I was absolutely obsessed with the film Chicago. Yes, that film is set in a different time period, but it certainly sparked the curiosity of many a dramatic teen.

To the point of this Substack series, films like Chicago have been absorbed into the cultural definition of “Showgirl” just like Burlesque has.

And after this Friday, Taylor Swift will be added to that complicated history.

At least we can stop talking about sourdough now.

Mood Board #16
Featuring still of Natalie Wood starring in Gypsy, 1962

Pinup by Gil Elvgren, circa 1945

Dita Von Teese starring in her Martini Glass act — yes the same oversized glass in the Bejeweled video!

Bettie Page, photographed by Irving Klaw for his mail order pin-up photography studio, circa 1953

Taylor Swift in an alternative album cover for The Life of The Showgirl, 2025

Singing’ in the Rain, and its companion film An American in Paris, combine Hollywood lore with Broadway musical tropes, incorporating dream sequences which feature iconic dance numbers by Gene Kelly. I could make an entire other post about the origins of the dream sequence or “Ballet” in musical theater, revolutionized by the production Oklahoma!, what many historians consider to have established what we now understand as the American Musical.

Before Oklahoma!, most Broadway musicals were review-style theatrical productions, the most famous of which were the Ziegfeld Follies.

In the early 20th century, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. popularized the Parisian style of theatrical reviews called Follies for the American audience. These were more elevated theater experiences than were popular at the time which included Broadway Reviews, Vaudeville circuit, Burlesque, and the lowest of the low-brow productions which were simply titled Variety.

The costuming and acts for each of these styles of review productions had everything to do with social norms of the time. Variety was bawdy and crude, with sexually suggestive material and costuming. Vaudeville was a more tame version of the Variety showcase specifically made to be more family friendly for middle class audiences. But Ziegfeld was all about opulence and spectacle.

Ziegfeld Follies were incredibly expensive to produce, and the subject of the cost of the costumes and set were often used as marketing ploys for the shows. You can see just how colorful and elaborate these costumes were in the original Ziegfeld examples in this week’s Mood Board.

This is perfectly encapsulated in the Broadway Melody sequence in Singin’ in the Rain, where you can see a Gene Kelly’s character rise up through the tiers of these review style shows all the way up to the Ziegfeld-esque version of his act, complete with feather-clad showgirls also known as Ziegfeld Girls and a full tuxedo with top hat for Kelly.

Ziegfeld’s lavish style was also referenced in Kelly’s An American in Paris and earlier Hollywood films like 1941’s Ziegfeld Girl with stunning musical numbers choreographed by Busby Burkeley, and the visually delicious, star-studded Ziegfeld Follies film of 1945.

The nostalgic love of the showgirl in the 1940s and 1950s didn’t just show up in film, it also showed up in the remote desert city of Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Vegas Showgirls came straight from the Follies circuit in Paris, France, just like the inspiration for Ziegfeld’s productions, though they had a novelty that Ziegfeld’s shows didn’t have — nudity.

The statuesque style of the Vegas Showgirl was due not only to the immense weight of the costumes but also the importance the performance style placed on the beauty of the feminine body. The style of dance is slow and precise not only to bring attention to the nude body of the dancer, but also to accommodate the strength and concentration it takes for the dancers to balance headdresses that are sometimes four feet tall and bustles that can weigh forty pounds or more.

This style of performance would have been a completely different objective than Burlesque, a term which had evolved to not only describe a type of variety show, but to describe a very specific style of erotic performance influenced by modesty laws/codes, strip tease, and fetish trends.

As I continue to think about the visuals of Taylor Swift’s upcoming The Life of a Showgirl, I am becoming more interested in the flattening of the history of the showgirl in contemporary culture. What was once a broad category has become a single niche topic.

It’s not to say I don’t LOVE the idea of Showgirls coming back to Vegas in the form of Dita Von Teese’s burlesque review show. She was, and still is, a pioneer in the Burlesque industry, and a key figure in the Burlesque Revival tradition popularized in the 90s. The contemporary understanding of Burlesque is heavily influenced by this movement, which strangely countered the rise of more vulgar Vegas Showgirl acts during that time period and overlapped with other countercultures like Rockabilly and Swing Revival.

It is fascinating to dig in and try to understand how all of these separate styles of review shows (Variety, Burlesque, Cabaret, Follies) have merged into one subgenre.

How will Ms. Swift incorporate these compelling visual elements and cultural context into her new era of performance? Or will she at all?

The thing that fascinates me the most about this conceptual choice is the anonymity of the Showgirl. She is one in a line up of beautiful women meant to compliment the lead performer and to be ogled by the audience.

Featured performers are another thing entirely, not really showgirls at all.

Showgirls are the idealized woman, but easily discarded and replaced in the industry. The physical demands of the job are strenuous and gravity defying, but are seen as effortless and simple to the viewer. There are certainly parallels to be drawn here, and I’m curious to see where and how far she’ll take this.

Her Eras tour number I Can Do It With A Broken Heart heavily references Ziegfeld with those signature tuxedos and top hats, but there’s also quite a bit of 70s showgirl in there, specifically legendary Broadway and Vegas performer Lola Falana.

As usual, I’m reading way too much into this.

This imagery has been so exciting for me and has reignited my interest in this niche bit of pop culture which I have loved for many years. I’m on a roll now and you can expect more posts like this as I’m still thinking about all things Showgirl which is now branching out into burlesque, Lola Falana, pin-up, Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, Charles Dana Gibson, the musical Chicago, how much I hate the 2018 best picture winner LaLa Land, and of course Bob Fosse.

I didn’t mean for this to become a blog about Taylor Swift or a blog about showgirls, but I guess here we are and I’m breaking my one rule of Mood Board which is — do not spend too much time on this.

Mood Board #15
Featuring still from Singin’ in the Rain, film directed by and starring Gene Kelly, 1952

Colorized still from Ziegfeld Girl featuring Hedy Lamarr, 1941

Original Ziegfeld Follies costumes circa 1910, The Museum of Broadway, currently on display

Colorized photograph of Lana Turner from Ziegfeld Girl, 1941

On the day of the album release I raced to find TTPS on my phone and hit play while I made the kids’ lunches. And like the half-n-half I had poured into my coffee, my mood began to sour.

Do I… not like this?

We listened on the way to preschool.

Do I… hate this?

I checked the kids into school and on my way back to my car I received an email.

“Your order has shipped!”

My vinyl record of The Tortured Poets Society would arrive by the end of the day. I thought of all the things I could have bought with those forty-eight dollars and forty-eight cents.

Practically eight lattes.

I sat in my car for a moment, grimacing at the self-referential lyrics blaring through my car’s speakers. The clumsy poetry gave me secondhand embarrassment, and I thought of all the times I hid my journals or ripped stories out of my notebooks in fear of someone reading them.

The album is pure stream of consciousness, and it seems like we’re at the point where no editor would dare cross Ms. Swift’s creative intentions. She does not care if people read her journal or her email drafts or listen to her voice memos.

Beyonce said, “Here is a collection of carefully selected songs that together create a genre-bending listening experience.”

Taylor said, “Here’s everything in my notes app.”

I know that that rawness is sort of the point of the album(s). Maybe I would have loved that about it if it weren’t on the heels of such thoughtful works from other artists. Or maybe my mood has changed and I’m looking for something fully baked these days instead of my usual mushy cookie dough.

Which is why I was so excited when the visuals to Life of a Showgirl were released. This feels fully baked.

She is reaching out and harnessing something powerful, hitching herself to the stars, making a statement about her connection to “showgirls” and all of the cultural and historic juiciness that brings. She is immortalizing herself using Camp imagery.

This Showgirl motif isn’t new for Taylor Swift — she collaborated with Dita Von Teese on the music video for Bejeweled which then inspired the dance number for Vigilante Shit. So, while this progression didn’t come out of nowhere, this is certainly the most intense visual narrative that she’s pursued for the concept of an entire album or “era”. Most of her other album covers have been a simple photo of her; her lips red, her eyes obscured, her hair blowing in the wind. Not this album. She’s wearing a bikini made of rhinestones, bathing in a tub, signature red lips, and her eyes looking directly at the viewer.

It feels like she’s ready to try her hand at what Beyonce does so well. Rich visual cultural references — references that are outside of the persona she’s carefully crafted.

But will her fans allow her to expand her mythology?

The internet went wild after the announcement of Life of a Showgirl and my explore page filled with content picking apart the potential meaning of the released images. But, to my confusion, nearly all of the content created by Swifties did not reach out to explore the new territory for the pop star, but instead dove even further inward to pick apart every word the “Mastermind” herself has uttered over the past three years.

Every time she wore orange.

Every reference to the number 12.

Finding secret messages in the patterns of the light cues at the eras tour.

Speculating that her mention of enjoying sourdough was actually a hint she’d be performing at the Super Bowl.

Swifties are so obsessed with the self-referential indulgence of Taylor Swift’s “Easter Eggs” that they completely miss the rich film, theater, and artistic references that the visuals of this album promise.

Why in the world are we talking about sourdough when we could be talking about Busby Berkeley?

Why are we talking about light cues translating to Braille instead of the genius of Bob Fosse?

Why are we talking about the mysterious hidden meaning of the color orange when it was literally part of the color scheme for the Jubilee showgirls at Bally’s in Las Vegas and the costume she is wearing for one of the album covers was created by Bob Mackie for the original Jubilee Showgirls.

And yes, I know the theory of the oxidized copper is fun, but did you also know that mint green color is the complimentary color of that coral orange and is a standard color combination in film and photography?

I mean yeah, the color combination could mean anything and also, most importantly, it can mean a lot of different things at one time.

Oh, and why the hell are we not talking more about how the costume she’s wearing in the photoshoot was designed by BOB MACKIE for the original Jubilee Showgirls?

Bob freakin’ Mackie!

And the only way I found that out is because I did a Google Image search for Bally’s Showgirls and about 100 results down, I saw a photo of Taylor Swift in the gorgeous stone studded bikini and crown next to a photo of the feather clad Jubilee Showgirls. I clicked on the image, and it took me to this People Magazine article about it.

See what a treasure trove this is already? Why are we talking about her boyfriend’s podcast?

I really don’t find it fun to try to decipher how far back she’s been teasing this. I think that Swifties give her way too much credit for all the “hints” she’s dropped over the years. Though let’s be honest, who’s accidentally worn orange? So… yeah, I believe anytime she’s worn orange it has been on purpose as an Easter Egg for this album.

But at what point is something a mastermind hint and not just the natural progression of creative expression?

Slowly incorporating new elements into your work is how most artists work. It’s doesn’t mean the artist is an omnipotent God, but that doesn’t make the creation of artwork any less miraculous.

I honestly feel like a jerk for ranting about this. Swifties love patterns and history, just not the kid of patterns and history that I necessarily enjoy. I’m not a Taylor Swift Scholar and good for you if you are. But if you’re interested in her, you might also be interested in what she’s referencing.

I’m excited for the conversation to broaden outside of Taylor Swift’s own words and brand which she’s created for herself so that she can reference and recycle her own work. The history associated with this imagery is something I find really interesting and inspiring, so I will enjoy all of the sparkle we’re sure to get.

Expect more Mood Boards inspired by it including the history of the Vegas Showgirl, the rhinestone-studded world of Dita Von Teese, Bob Fosse, David Lynch, and how Cabaret is the perfect movie for the end of the world. We’ll just have to wait and see what else comes up!

For now, enjoy a collage of my first impressions of the album which immediately made me think of Vegas, of All That Jazz, Sweet Charity, Busby Berkeley, Ziegfeld Follies, Singing in The Rain, Dita Von Teese, and because Taylor and I are both Millennial women, Baz Lurman’s Moulin Rouge.

Mood Board #14
Featuring still from Sweet Charity, film directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, 1969

Dira Von Teese, behind the scenes photograph during a quick change during her Vegas Review at The Venetian in Las Vegas, wearing vintage Jubilee Showgirls costume, captured by WWD, 2024

Still featuring Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge, Baz Lerman, 2001

Jubilee Showgirls, promotional image from Bally’s Las Vegas, 2004

Taylor Swift, Cover Art Option for Life of a Showgirl, wearing vintage Bob Mackie, 2025

During the process of laying and incubating eggs, female flamingos lose their pink color and turn white, their body prioritizing the growth of their babies. As their chicks a hatch and gain independence, the mother bird’s saturation slowly returns.

Lots of mommies out in the Mommy-verse are using this analogy for gradually feeling more “like yourself” during and after your postpartum period and the mommy in the video goes on to say that she feels like she has 80% of her pink back but she’ll never be 100% again because she’s forever changed by being a parent. She even says that her daughter will always have 5% of her “pink”.

While I appreciate the analogy, and I think it’s great for other parents and birthing people to identify with, it’s just not how I feel.

It’s like I was a pink flamingo and then I had two babies and now I’m like purple or green or not a bird at all. Like I was a flamingo and now I’m a horse or like… a Pokémon. Maybe Eevee?

In her poetry memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith writes,

I think about this a lot. About the way we grow and change.

My mind has all of me within it, and my body does too. It more than just remembers the weight of my pregnancies, the searing sharpness of birth, the desperation of sleepless nights. It feels them.

I was an Eevee and now I’m a Leafeon. Most of the girly Pokémon only get to evolve once, but at least I know I’m not really a Pokémon and this isn’t even my final form.

*I know, I know — not a Pokémon reference but still anime*

In the meantime, I am enjoying life with my two small children. Whether I’ve got my pink back, whether I’m a horse, a Pokémon, or an alien, I know I’m a mother.

Mood Board XIII
Featuring Blossom, Erik Thor Sandberg, oil on canvas, 2018

Flamants, Maria Frodl, photograph, 2012

Twilight Masquerade, Scarlet & Violet—Twilight Masquerade Expansion, Kuroimori, illustration, 2024; original illustration was landscape, AI illustration portrait frame adaptation done at some point by internet rando I could not identify.

A couple weeks ago I watched Finding Dory with my kids. Only a few minutes into the movie, I began to sob. Little Dory is swept away by a current. Her parents unsure of where she goes, if she’s alive, and little Dory grows up alone in the big blue ocean.

While watching those first few minutes, the realization that every bit of news I've read in the past few years has been about missing and murdered children or kidnapped parents and pregnant people crashed down on me. My heart breaks for every child and parent and I am overwhelmed by the thought that if there is a God, they must be powerless to stop these atrocities or absolutely cruel to allow the free will of evil and negligent humans. All at once I know that my inability to act is also negligent, and I am struck with dread wondering what it all means.

At a show once I read a story I wrote about giving birth to my son. I read aloud…

I screamed in agony as even the medical professionals around me seemed so uninterested in the impossible magic of childbirth – desensitized by the divine physics of a camel being threaded through the eye of a needle.

And the audience laughed.

I wasn’t expecting this. I had written the line in earnest and while I usually love a laugh, I resented the audience for misunderstanding my intentions.

I wrote it for:

My son who broke me open, my body never to be the same.

My daughter who shot from my body like a bullet from a gun as I hemorrhaged on a triage bed.

My mother, who’s womb calcified inside of her and was sawed open to miraculously birth my magnificent brother.

My friend who lost half her blood birthing her precious son.

My teacher who buried her unexpected daughter at 28 weeks gestation.

The baby my family said goodbye to on a hot summer morning, his father, my cousin, reading a poem he wrote in agony while lying on the delivery room floor.

My childhood friend’s 4-month-old daughter like a doll in a casket.

Earlier this summer I took my children to the cemetery to visit the grave of my great grandmother, and we explored the grounds with my grandparents.

My son observed, “this person must have liked teddy bears,” and asked me to read the name on the head stone.

It says “Baby” I explained.

There was a pause. He stared at the headstone intently while his sister danced nearby in the wet grass.

“Mama, why do babies die?”

And I first gave the pragmatic answer, that sometimes things happen that we cannot predict. That bodies are strange and mysterious and unpredictable, but we can do our best to prepare.

And then I told him the truth.

“I do not know.”

Mood Board XII
Featuring Woman's Hands Threading a Needle, George Marks, photograph, 1950

Fat Man’s Squeeze, Giant City State Park, Illinois, photo from blog titled “Chuck’s Adventures”, 2017

The Baby, Frances and Mary Allen, photograph, 1900

She has a similar problem that I had when I was painting — a beautiful woman problem. She’s really interested in painting portraits of beautiful women staring off into space, and there doesn’t seem to be a reason why.

So, I have been reflecting. Why was I painting them? Because I think women are beautiful and at the time, I couldn’t quite articulate or visually communicate my fascination with feminine beauty.

Why is she painting them? I can’t quite tell, but she talks at length about how this romantic style of art is superior to modern and contemporary artwork that relies on abstraction or conceptual presentation. She says that her style of art is superior because it requires such intense skill, and is so gorgeous, that it transcends pain and trauma.

She uses this word a lot — transcendence. Her feed is full of references to holy vibrations and escaping emotional pain. She believes that most contemporary art is about wallowing in personal suffering which traps the artist emotionally. I find this interesting, specifically her disdain for abstraction, which does mirror the Neoclassic idea that Gothic art was ugly, primitive, and stupid (I’m paraphrasing here). So, I did what you should never do on the internet — I read the comments.

I find one that says “Art historically declines when the civilization is heading into decline. We’re seeing lazy art with a sensationalist bent. Shock, vulgarity, pornography, depravity. It’s a signpost indicating a breakdown of morality, integrity, empathy, care.”

So, I did the most reductive thing you can do on the internet — I responded to a comment.

“I find this comment really interesting as most of her art references 18th century French painting styles. Was that not a society in decline?”

Her response “Ah, but it ended in a revolution.”

And to that I replied, “And you missed the entire point of my comment.”

I felt really annoyed. The paintings this artist was referencing were commissioned by people in power to serve their own vein desire to be immortalized. Has an oil painting ever really been for the people? I mean, the most famous Rococo painting The Swing, is a smutty work featuring an up-skirt shot and a peeping Tom. The piece is by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and was commissioned by a rich guy that wanted a hot hot hot painting of his mistress. The rich guy presumably enjoyed the painting very much until he was guillotined during the revolution.

Maybe I’m just sour over not having a clear enough reason to disagree with a comment because I don’t have the historical knowledge. I don’t have an art history degree, but should that even be necessary to enjoy or not enjoy a painting?

I asked the artist what she thought of the work by someone like Artemisia Gentileschi. Her style is Baroque and softly painted in exquisite detail, but is also preoccupied with revenge, pain, and suffering. The artist replied that since she is using a naturalistic, representational style, her work transcends the pain and is therefore beautiful and superior. I thought of the brutality of Judith Slaying Holofernes and shuddered at the idea of seeing a work like Guernica painted in the same excruciating detail. I do not see this as the transcendence of pain because communicating the pain is the point of these works.

Recontextualizing art isn’t new. The Neoclassical movement is literally a reference to Classicism and was used to signify a shift to a less gaudy display of wealth during the French Revolution, especially compared to Baroque aesthetics. The shift captured the political drive of the moment, simpler forms and a drive toward a more equitable society.

I’m simplifying of course.

OF COURSE.

One of the most famous artworks of that time is The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David in 1793 and depicts the assassination of the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. Earlier I opined if an oil painting has ever been for the people, and maybe this one really was.

There’s an artist I love named Kate Parnell who paints a Garfield every day and runs an Instagram called Garfield from Memory. Not just any regular old cartoon Garfield, but an unhinged, hedonistic display of Garfieldianism that brings new meaning to I Hate Mondays. Parnell usually paints Garfields onto found vintage art prints, but she also has a series of Classic Garfs, and The Death of Marat is a reoccurring motif.

Why is this crude Garf better than the artist who painted gorgeous, ethereal, imaginary women with empty eyes? Well, because it’s funny and I like it. The Garfs have a secret sauce of irony that I, personally, really enjoy. They feel full and meaningful and cheeky.

There are many artists I still need to learn about, movements to understand, and galleries to know. It’s overwhelming to feel the need to know the name of every artist and how their work fits into the greater story of their moment in time. How is everything connected, and does it matter? I think it does, which is why I feel overwhelmed to learn it. It’s something that I feel self-conscious about.

I really don’t know what point I’m trying to make other than it’s really hard to make something original and maybe the goal shouldn’t be originality, but thoughtful use of context and visual language to convey your idea.

Maybe I am a “low vibration” person and so what! It’s nice to laugh.

I introduced many ideas in these last two essays, and I didn’t expound upon any of them in a way that leads to a neat resolution. There are many questions here that I’d like to explore more.

In the meantime, I’ll keep following the curiosity I encounter when I hear a “new” song or see a “new” piece of artwork and wonder…

What’s that remind me of?

Mood Board XI
Featuring The Death of Garat, Kate Parnell, 6”x9”, 2023

Garfield is a Fancy Boy, Kate Parnell, 12”x16”, 2022

Judith, Kate Parnell, 2022

Art is the door that leads to a door that leads to a door, trapped in a liminal space of perpetual discovery.

In the current world of short-form content, references can be a way to pack long-form meaning into sound bites.

But first, you have to find an audience that wants to unpack the box with you.

You have to have an engaged group of people that understand the references or at the very least are curious enough to investigate further.

Artists like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are masters at hiding these “Easter Eggs” for their followers, with Beyoncé being particularly adept at it as her work expands beyond the self-referential.

Sabrina Carpenter is trying her hand at this and churning out every blonde starlet reference she can muster, including constant references to Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Britney Spears, and Goldie Hawn. I love her Hopelessly Devoted to You dupe titled Couldn’t Make it Any Harder which, yes, I do belt in the car.

This referential thing isn’t new, especially for blonde celebrities. In high school when I saw Gentleman Prefer Blondes, I felt embarrassed to realize for the first time that the video for Madonna’s Material Girl was a shot for shot remake of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.

Sabrina Carpenter also referenced this dance sequence at the end of her VMA performance, where she also paid homage to some of Britney Spears’ iconic VMA moments down to a reference to the Madonna kiss.

Her most recent “Approved by God” cover art for Man’s Best Friend is especially sneaky, referencing a photo of Marilyn Monroe dancing with her then husband Arthur Miller. This album cover was a pivot from her original concept which garnered her heaps of criticism with people wondering aloud “is this satire”?

The answer? We don’t know.

And can something be satire if satire is dead, which, to be clear — it is.

If young men can watch American Psycho and think “Patrick Bateman’s skincare routine is goals.” Then… yes, satire is dead. And no I didn’t like the original Man’s Best Friend cover because it so directly references old magazine ads of husbands beating their wives but it has no twist to that imagery. She’s not secretly holding a knife or giving any sort of physical or metaphorical wink to the camera.

But does this “Approved by God” cover art solve anything? Monroe and Miller had a complicated marriage and their conflicting lifestyles prevented them from having a lasting relationship. Their story is really quite sad and included miscarriages, public betrayal, and intense interpersonal criticisms. On the set of The Prince & The Showgirl, Monroe found notes Miller had written stating he was embarrassed to be married to her.

The “Approved by God” image obscures the man’s face, making Carpenter the focus of the photograph. Is this an attempt to remind us that, after the way Miller spoke about Monroe after her death, Marilyn Monroe is still the “star” of that story? She’s now considered the misunderstood hero. Or am I giving Sabrina Carpenter’s team way too much credit here?

After spending lots of time with art like this, I, like Carrie Bradshaw, have to wonder… do people have the media literacy to process these things? Because I don’t know if I do.

When engaging with these referential works you have to understand that the artwork is a sum of its parts, and that the original works referenced existed in a way that is not possible for us to really understand unless we lived during that time or have studied it at length. In these new interpretations they give depth to the new artwork, but they can also lose their original meaning.

I have a very hard time parsing out what is a smart nod that enriches the piece, what is a desperate attempt at gaining brownie points and getting press, and what is downright plagiarism.

Mood Board X
Featuring Still from Twin Peaks, 1990

Still from Cowboy Carter Tour, 2025

Photo of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller dancing at the premier of The Prince & The Showgirl, 1957

Sabrina Carpenter, alternative album cover for Man’s Best Friend, 2025

Still of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953

Still of Madonna in her music video of Material Girl, 1984

I sank down deep into my emotions and my physical pain, bogged down by the weight of the world and saddened by troubling news from friends and family. I have felt completely overwhelmed by the waves— the needs of my family this month. Arthur got his tonsils and adenoids out, I struggled to find childcare, and I’ve been making classic Anna mistakes like misremembering dates, times, and even months.

This chaotic energy, along with my usual summertime sadness has made it hard for me to get my head above water.

I made some art which helped a little.

I cut my hair which helped a little.

I got a new tattoo which helped a little.

I did comedy which helped too.

I wrote a lot, and didn’t publish any of it.

What has helped the most is talking about it with my friends, who buoy me when I feel this way.

“I think you need to go to therapy,” one friend said as I cried to her on a two-hour long video call. This became another line on my to-do list.

Decision paralysis took hold as my thoughts moved at light speed, adding up all the things I needed to do, and I sank down deeper.

On Tuesday night I put my children to bed and began cleaning. I had made a map in my head of what items I would pick up first, where I would put them and what surfaces needed to be decluttered and wiped down.

As I stood up from sorting beads on my living room floor, my son was standing in the doorway and, surprised — no, terrified — I screamed.

I caught my breathe and apologized. We both laughed at the situation, my son saying to me that he did not know how to approach me without scaring me because I am easily surprised and therefore easily scared.

I explained that he did nothing wrong and put him back to bed. He asked me why I was cleaning, and I told him I often clean after he and his little sister go to bed.

“What?” he said, wide eyed. “I did not know that you did that! You should be in your room in case I need you. That’s a lot of work to clean at night.”

Yes, it is.

After he fell asleep for the second time, I stepped back into my kitchen and resumed my work. I followed the map in my head, as I already knew what needed to be done, I had just lacked the gumption to do it until that moment. I lit a candle and spoke my intention. It is a new moon now, and it’s time to swim to the surface.

Mood Board IX
Featuring Les Idées de l'acrobate, René Magritte, 1928

Present Company, Rebecca Chaperon, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 24”, 2022

The Hold (morning glory), Anna Pugh, Oil & acrylic on canvas, 24” x 18”, 2023

He said that he wanted to fall asleep in his bed and wake up in my bed.

I told him that when he wakes up in the morning he can walk to my room and get into my bed with me. He usually does this every morning around 5:00am.

He said no, he wants to fall asleep in his bed and then wake up in mine.

“It would be like magic,” he said.

I smiled, “It would be like magic to wake up in my bed without walking to it? Like if I picked you up before you usually wake up and brought you into my bed with me?”

“Yes,” he beamed.

When you have a baby, they need you in a way that is impossible to describe. It is called the “fourth trimester” because unlike most other mammals, when human babies are born they are utterly helpless.

A foal can walk within an hour after birth. A kitten weakly crawls to their mother for their first meal. A human newborn? They aren’t known for being independent.

They give you clues of what they need. They cry, they root, they toot. They need skin to skin with their parents to stay warm and to bond.

They need to be close to you.

That closeness continues in ways that mystify you because you all at once want to burst from the intensity of love, and to crawl out of your skin from being touched out.

When Arthur was born I used to say, “I wish he could be even closer to me,” and his Daddy would reply, “He’s sleeping on top of you!”

I wanted to absorb him somehow or to carry him around like a Kangaroo in a pouch. He would grab my hair and twist it between his fingers and strands would release from my head as my hormones shifted from pregnant maiden to doting mother.

The only way that Roz would sleep was in the crook of my arm. At only a few weeks old she’d stroke my hand and pinch the skin between my thumb and pointer finger as she fell asleep, a habit that continues to this day which has caused nerve damage in my hand. But the moments when we were lucky enough to get her to sleep on her own, I cried in bed dreaming of holding her.

As babies become toddlers, they lovingly and harshly brush your hair. They make you anklets out of sharp pipe cleaners and give you unexpected bear hugs with the weight of their whole body. They put makeup on your face as you play dress up and poke you in the eye with your eyeshadow brush which leads to an eye infection that requires antibiotics.

And you love it and you hate it and you write it down because you never want to forget it. You tell your family because they’ll say, “I remember when you did that when you were little,” and you tell your coworkers so they can tell you about how their kid called them “the most beautiful old person” and you revel in these contrasting feelings that everyone seems to experience in one way or another.

In the early morning, my children arrive in my bedroom and surround me. My son twists my hair between his fingers and my daughter holds my hand. I lay there with them, longing to be free from their oppressive touch, but I hold them in my arms and bask in their abrasive affection.

Mood Board VIII
Featuring The Dream, Madeline Donahue, Oil on Canvas, 2020

Breakfast in Bed, Mary Cassatt, Mediumoil on Canvas, 1897

Ange and Henrietta, Lisa Sorgini, Digital Photograph, 2023

Nested, Allison Chen, Photography & Digital Collage, 2020

Chronic pain is so sinister because it lives within you, deep inside of your subconscious but it also lives in your here and now. It influences your life in ways that are deeply unfair, it infiltrates your thoughts and relationships, and it, of course, limits you physically.

The grief that I have about my body, my disability, is immense and constant.

I’ve been experiencing joint pain and fatigue since I was 14 years old, but it took 20 years for me to be correctly diagnosed.

Pain in my hips and lower back were my first symptoms. I stopped riding horses at 13, unable to steady myself on the back of the mare at the stable where I took lessons. At 15 I stopped playing piano because the discomfort in my wrists and hands was unbearable. I was misdiagnosed with carpel tunnel and instructed to wear wrist braces which only exacerbated my pain.

Doctors told my parents I was dramatic. That I was faking it. That I had psychological distress because of my chaotic home life. That I was trying to get my dad’s attention. That I was trying to get my mom’s attention.

I was first diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis when I was 19 years old, a diagnosis that taunted me with the promise of relief with drugs which, after an initial placebo effect, left me with no change in my symptoms.

As an adult, I became convinced that my doctors I had in high school were right — I was just imagining it. I was a fake for my subconscious, greedy desire for attention.

I do have a desire for attention, of course, but thankfully it is satiated by constant oversharing on the internet, in publications, and on stage. It turns out my physical pain has nothing to do with this desire at all.

I gave birth to our beautiful son in February 2020. My pregnancy had been physically painful, but I pushed down my discomfort because I honestly felt like it was normal and that no one wanted to hear me complain. The birth was excruciating. I screamed in agony as medical professionals moved around me not looking me in the eye and jabbing me with needles in the middle of contractions.

The relief I felt from the epidural was a blessing. It was as if God Himself had performed a miracle, even though I was still able to feel the pressure of contractions and urgency to push. I barely felt my gorgeous 9lb 10oz baby boy crack me open like an egg, but after the birth, after it all wore off, I felt a pain I had never felt before. My tailbone, my pelvis, my hips ached with a fiery blaze.

The nurses came to check on me, “Hey, mama how are we feeling?”

“Uh, I’m okay but my butt really hurts… like really really hurts,” I replied.

“Okay, mama bear, let’s take a look… Hmm, looks like you’ve had some tearing, and you’ve got some hemorrhoids, but everything looks normal. We’ll get you some cream for your bottom,” she said in sing song voice.

I interrupted her, frustrated, “No, it feels like inside my body. Like the inside of my butt, like my tailbone.”

“Hmmm, okay, we can get you an ice pack.” she pursed her lips condescendingly.

So, I sat on a cold ice pack for hours while I breastfed and pumped and Troy fed our baby supplemental formula to counteract the low blood sugar he was born with due to my gestational diabetes. Our diligent, constant effort to feed him kept him out of the NICU and allowed us to return home after a couple of days at the hospital.

At my six-week appointment my doctor examined me and said that I was healing well and attributed my pain to a broken tailbone — a result of the traumatic birth of my “big baby”. We didn’t realize that this was only part of the story.

Getting pregnant again just 11 months later, my mobility almost immediately deteriorated. I often felt like my legs were being swept out from underneath me. It felt like my lower back had a fire poker inside of it, burning red hot with no relief.

My doctor agreed there was something wrong, but there was no way to determine what exactly was going on because I was pregnant and imaging wasn’t safe. I went to physical therapy which helped me tremendously, but the therapists, while massaging my sacrum would call their supervisors over and they’d scratch their heads wondering why it felt like my pelvis was twisted. I did exercises to try to counteract my wandering bones, but we were all in agreement that it wasn’t safe to do anything very targeted until we could get imaging.

Then our daughter barreled into the world in October 2021. The labor was precipitous and incredible. The relief that I felt from her birth was immediate. I felt free.

Then came a litany of postpartum issues that I don’t care to get into much at the moment. Depression, anxiety, dysphoric milk ejection reflex, overproduction, and sleep deprivation nearly destroyed me. The fact that these issues overshadowed my physical pain makes me shudder. The burning sensation in my right lower back was worse than ever and my abdomen felt like it was being pinched from the inside. My right side above my hip bone felt a similar, clunky pinching, surprising me with a jolt as I bent over to pick up my baby or while I was preparing lunch for my toddler.

My sisters recognized that I needed a break. We rallied together and planned a girls’ trip to Vegas where we planned a day at a spa and sauna where we each got massages. I told my message therapist about my back pain and asked for her to focus on my lower back. At the end of the session as I was leaving, she clasped my hands in hers and said, “when you get home, you need to call your doctor immediately. See an orthopedist. Please. There is something wrong with you.”

I did as she said. I made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon that my OB/GYN recommended.

Below is an excerpt from my essay Braces:

My orthopedic surgeon, who specializes in pelvic reconstruction, referred me to Vanderbilt’s Genomics and Therapeutics Clinic. I waited a year for my appointment, but it was worth it. Decades of pain were explained by an acronym on a crisp November day in 2023.

hEDS

Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that causes a constellation of symptoms. When the geneticist gazed into the night sky of my pain, she was able to chart the connections.

You can read more about EDS and the various subtypes on the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome Society’s website here: ehlers-danlos.com.

Since my diagnosis, I’ve been able to access treatment that has improved my quality of life. I went to intense physical therapy and have been able to communicate the quirks of my body to the team that helped me re-learn how to walk.

I was finally taken seriously about my neck pain and was able to make an appointment with a neurologist where I was diagnosed with Cervical Spondylosis, Occipital Neuralgia, and Cervicogenic Headache.

I am able to explain to my dentist “I have hEDS which means I am less sensitive to anesthetics” instead of doing the trial and error of prodding for more numbing in the middle of a procedure.

I am able to spot certain exercise trends and supplements marketed to women as the misinformation that they are. Not all bodies are the same. Your constellation is different than mine, even if we both have hEDS.

My orthopedic surgeon recommended me for a surgery to fuse my pubic symphysis together and to screw my pelvic bones to my sacrum, a surgery that is extremely invasive and would require three months of painful recovery in a wheelchair with no weight baring on my pelvis.

After multiple opinions and weighing my options, I know that surgery isn’t right for me right now. Fusing my pelvis won’t solve all of my problems and that it may, in fact, create more. I am stable now. This likely won’t last forever, but for now I am able to move and live in a stable way. I still have pain, but it is manageable.

I’m finding the right way for my body to be strong, and I am preparing for aging in a different way than most people I know. I am fully aware of how tenuous mobility is and that awareness compels me to overwork myself creatively today. I know this isn’t healthy for me. I know I need to slow down.

I have had to claw my way back from the depths of debilitating pain and depression and I’ve had to learn how to live with my body.

But I am thankful. I am thankful for my family, for my children, for my friends. I am thankful for my joy. I am thankful for my grit.

Mood Board VII
Featuring Danse, “Yva” aka Else Ernestine Neuländer-Simon, 1933

X-ray of my pelvis, 2024

X-ray of my neck, 2024

Grit, Life Paint: Series 6, Mark Liam Smith, 2023

Springtime makes me think of the floating white blossoms of stinky pear trees and fancy dresses and trying to sing the loudest during mass. I decided to read two pieces I had written about my Catholic upbringing, one that I had written specifically for the event.

I was still deep in contemplation about my Catholic childhood when I learned that the Pope had passed away on Easter. My family chat was firing on all cylinders. Since then, I’ve continued my reflection on Catholicism and death and what that meant to me as a child and what that means to me now as an adult.

The art of Catholicism is likely the single biggest artistic influence of my life, and I am not alone there. There’s a reason The Met had an entire exhibition and Gala celebrating the influence of Catholic iconography in fashion. The beauty, glamour, and gore are forever imprinted on my mind.

And here’s an excerpt from my personal essay…

The story continues on to describe my first Confession. It gets funny I swear, but I don’t really feel that funny right now, so you’ll have to wait until I read it again sometime.

Mood Board VI
Featuring The Apostle St. Bartholomew, Matteo Di Giovanni, 1480

The Last Judgement, Hieronymus Bosch, 64.4” × 95”, c. 1482

Pietà, William Adolphe Bouguereau, 91” × 59”, 1876

St Lucy, Francisco de Zurbarán, 30” × 40”, ca. 1635-40

My mother and grandmother asked if I was coming home for Easter and I didn’t have the heart to say no so I just said maybe until a few days ago when I was forced to make my official decision.

No.

I’ve been feeling a bit melancholic and sad lately. Just a little pouty and bratty and missing my grandmother’s home and her coffee, which is strong enough to give me an ulcer.

Do I already have a stomach ulcer?

I wonder as I write this and sip my cold coffee.

I dream of sitting at the table in her yard, surrounded by the flowers she and her son planted, the flowers that my brother tends to, and I let the sun hit my face and I drink my too strong coffee and I would think about how many Hail Marys I should say and I know that would make me feel whole again.

Is that witchcraft?

“Maybe,” I think to myself as I strike a match.

I light a candle in my home and dream of pewter dishes that you can’t eat off of.

A whisper in my soul demands that I purchase an antique wooden bowl. I open a new tab and type “Ebay”.

Is this a message from an ancestor?

“Maybe,” I say aloud as I hit buy it now on a dry, chipped bowl listed as Antique Primitive Wooden Butter Bowl Shallow Farmhouse Country Wood 1800s that is almost certainly not from the 1800s.

I add oranges to my shopping cart at the grocery store even though I don’t like to eat them. I pour them into the antique wooden bowl and smile. I make a plan to pierce them all with cloves and dry them, but I let them rot in the bowl.

Mood Board V
Featuring a still from Disney’s Pinocchio, 1940

A photo of my Great-Aunt Anna Lou’s home, Southern Illinois

Kathleen Ryan, “bad lemon (tart)”, 2020 | citrine, amber, agate, turquoise, fluorite, prehnite, magnesite, ching hai jade, quartz, amethyst, garnet, labradorite, white lip shell, serpentine, sesame jasper, zebra jasper, grey feldspar, marble, glass, steel pins on coated polystyrene | 19 × 16 × 17 inches; 48.3 × 40.6 × 43.2 cm

Photo of Pewter and Pears, Primitive Place Magazine

Still Life with Fruit and a Chinese Porcelain Bowl with Strawberries - Harmen Loeding (1637 - 1673)

I loathed Carrie Bradshaw, a needy, boy-crazy writer with no real understanding of how she fit into the world around her.

To my children I am always saying “Your Daddy and I are teaching you how to be in the world.” I don’t think anyone ever taught Carrie how to be in the world.

And so, since my teenage years I have always seen myself, and have been labeled as, a Charlotte Sun, Miranda Rising.

But now as a single (single???) woman in my mid-30s I am seeing myself differently.

As I sit in my bed writing this, glass of wine in hand, my children asleep in their beds I couldn’t help but wonder… am I a big fucking phony?

I Google “Carrie Bradshaw” and the questions Google thinks I want to ask are:

What was Carrie Bradshaw’s diagnosis?

What is the Carrie Bradshaw problem?

What personality type is Carrie Bradshaw?

The brilliant Broey Deschanel made a video about SATC that gets to the heart of Carrie’s character. Perhaps the reason I have finally seen myself in Carrie is due to my own brutal realizations about myself and how I exist in the world.

In this video Broey Deschanel quotes Joan Didion, “People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things […] In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract sometimes does ground to other more instantly negotiable virtues [...] Nevertheless, character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs."

I think the reason I do not love Carrie is the same reason I don’t always love myself. I am a needy, attention obsessed writer who is grappling with how she fits into the world around her.

Always picking the scab, reopening the wound, looking for reassurance, begging for forgiveness. But forgiveness must be voluntarily offered, and self-respect can only be found within oneself.

Woof.

Here I am unlearning insecurities this late in the game, but I am also much more than this — we all are. Something about I contain multitudes or something like that.

Mood Board IV
Featuring still of Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City

Leah Gardner, Rose and French Classics, oil on wood panel

Phat Dog Vintage: Pencils 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle, Galison Puzzles

Rikkianne Van Kirk, You Sentimental Idiot!, ink on found paper

This is true. We’ve never experienced this exact combination of factors, specifically the technology at our fingertips and looming over the future of humanity.

But, there have been many end times before this end times.

This past weekend I went to New York to see the play Oh, Mary! starring Titus Burgess as the titular Mary. I went with my dear old friend, Lawrence and I am ecstatic to say that I have not laughed that hard in a long long time. I was crying at the end as the show devolved into an unhinged one woman show, the madness of Mary laid bare to the tune of She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain.

There was something particularly interesting about this show, whose writer and originating star, Cole Escola has joked they did no research on Mary Todd Lincoln in preparation for the play. I’m calling their bluff.

The real Mary was, in real life, was reported to have been a very difficult person to be around. But wouldn’t you be if you had lost three of your four children before they reached adulthood and had an undiagnosed head injury from a carriage accident? Lincoln was really very active in trying to rein her in to prevent embarrassment to his presidency — she redecorated the White House during the freakin’ Civil War and spent enormous amounts of money on expensive jewelry. She really did have alcoholism and really did have dramatic public outbursts.

Historians believe that she likely had bipolar disorder or a series of nervous breakdowns due to the grief she endured during her lifetime. In her later life she became increasingly paranoid and walked around with money and bonds sewn to the inside her dresses. Her only living son institutionalized her, but later moved her to her sister’s home where she lived in a sort of house arrest situation. She died of a stroke at age 63.

On the way to New York I listened to Sarah Hoover’s book The Motherload: Episodes from The Brink of Motherhood. Sarah describes her experience with Postpartum Depression and birth trauma. I have my own experience with Postpartum Depression and Anxiety and listening to her story brought up a lot for me. I have only begun to unravel what the past five years has done to my mind and body.

Part of my curiosity with Oh, Mary! was — is this a story about Postpartum Mental Health Disorders? As I watched Titus flounce across the stage, pout, spit, tantrum, and sing I saw myself in those first two years of Pandemic Parenting.

I visited MoMA the next day and found myself drawn to the collection of Surrealist artwork on the fifth floor. I listened to the hum of the busy room as the other museum goers chatted to one another. While I looked at Meret Oppenheim’s Object. Paris, 1936 a woman and her children examined the fur lined china on the other side of the pedestal from me.

“Mom, why is it like that? I don’t get it,” her daughter whined.

Frustrated, clearly exhausted from the specific task of walking and answering your children’s’ questions for hours, “I don’t know, I don’t get it either.”

I smiled and remembered that that’s the point.

When the world is ending why should anything make sense?

Pablo Picasso said to Meret Oppenheim that anything could be covered in fur.

She responded with a joke, “Even this cup and saucer?…Waiter, a little more fur!”

When there is mass loss, grief, and uncertainty why would art be anything but absurd, wether that absurdity is funny or not.

I thought of the play again. While Oh, Mary! is about a “mad woman”, it is more about absurdity. It is madcap historical fiction, revisionist history, and most importantly so very very wonderfully and ridiculously stupid and it’s perfect. At the end of the show we gazed in awe at Mary laying on the ground like Judy Garland, singing an indiscernible medley of songs, embodying the raw despair of existence, reveling in her stardom, and I cried laughing.

Mood Board III
Featuring a promotional photo of Titus Burgess in Oh, Mary!

Photo of the curtains at the Lyceum Theater for the production of Oh, Mary!

Still of Liza Minelli in Cabaret

Promotional photo of Judy Garland in Summer Stock

Meret Oppenheim’s Object. Paris, 1936

In the search to give appropriate credit to artists I went down several rabbit holes to find the origins of these images.

Some of these references were easier to trace than others. I love this decadent and silly photograph of Spam and red wine by Christopher Amat, a perfect pair to the flamboyantly fuchsia photo of Shirley McClaine on the set of the stylishly macabre dark comedy film What a Way to Go.

Adding the iconic pink feather healed house shoes (???) from The Barbie Movie felt appropriate to contribute to that uncanny feeling in the other referenced images.

The imagined book was easy to find — originally created by Andrea Hickey in 2015 for a Buzzfeed article that featured her illustrations of satirical book covers titled 28 Honest Memoir Titles That Everyone Can Relate To. The article is very of its time, but the illustration itself is timeless. Maybe I can collaborate with Andrea for my memoir (publishing deal nonexistent publishing date TBD).

The image of the cocktail was a bit harder to find. After my best sleuthing, I finally found an Instagram post where a chef was tagged and scrolled way back to July 2019 to find the original photo and credits. UK based Chef and stylist Iain Graham and photographer Julia Kenedy of A&R Creative Agency are responsible for this absolutely gorgeous photograph of a cocktail which I can only guess is long gone from the menu where it was originally featured.

You might ask — why does it matter? Other than making sure artists are credited for their work, I think it’s important to understand where these images come from because it brings important context to the images and it may reveal interesting connections that were otherwise lost. It’s important to know that your creative practice doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Everything is connected and stems from somewhere and that history is what makes the art what it is and it makes you who you are. You are what you consume. Coconut tree and all that, ya know?

For instance, in this mood board there is not only a connection of color and texture, but also concept. The images reinforce the theme of decadence juxtaposed with darkness, creating an absurd and comedic vibe. Just my style.

It’s not a perfect collection of images, but I tried not to overthink it and of course I did.

Mood Board II
Featuring a photo of Shirley McLaine on the set of the film What a Way to Go

Still of Margot Robbie from The Barbie Movie, costumes by Ann Roth

Crying in Public Places: A Memoir imagined cover art by Andrea Hickey

Spam Photo by Christopher Amat

Cherry Cocktail Photo styled by Chef Iain Graham and photographed by Julia Kenedy of A&R Creative Agency