Fast Forward to Summer Residency + Graduation!

Graduation - Saturday July 2, 2022

 

 

My graduating cohort! || Reading from my thesis

A typical day at the residency || I taught a class this particular day !

I was proud to serve on the thesis committee of Molly B. Collins.

I read her thesis several times and did my best to provide crucial feedback.

She is going places, that woman! So excited for her to be published in the future!

(She is my bestie!)

 

Between classes we found time to hang out with each other, staff, faculty, and guest artists!

Our residency hosted 4 cohorts and was hybrid (in person + online)

HIGHLIGHTS:

Generative workshops with guest artist K-Ming Chang !!!

Faculty talks by Alison C. Rollins, 

Jay Ponteri, Alejandro de la Costa, 

Tanya McQueen, and Vi Khi Nao !!!

Readings by faculty, as well as Joanna Kaufman, Sara Jaffe, 

Brandon Shimoda, Jess Arndt, and K-Ming Chang !!!

Spending time with all the cohorts --including dinners, drinks, and a night of karaoke!

My graduating cohort--Attending their thesis committee meetings and readings!

Zine and comics workshops!

The LRCW Alumni Fellow, Joanna Kaufman, and her time and wisdom

and phenomenol art exhibit!

Graduation of course. I love you guys.

ocean ocean, Russell Hill, Molly B. Collins, Rachel Keller,

and our cohort's thesis award winner, Manya Orescan Campos!

Only One Semester To Go!

There was a summer residency, my third semester, and a winter residency. Now I have one semester to go and a final residency in June/July when I will graduate! Where did the time go???

Grad school books. I've read about 90% of them. Guest artist works,

faculty works, anthologies, fiction, lyrical nonfiction, poetry, and critical studies.

Residency memories:

Winter 2022 those of us who were in person at the school 

were able to participate in art workshops!

Where it all happens in Portland - Pacific Northwest College of Art (@ Willamette University)

Winter 2021 on Zoom

2021 Graduate, my friend Janna                                My buddy Russell

2021 Summer post-graduation karaoke

JP!

One of many dinners at cool Portland restaurants

Molly, bonafide best roomie ever

***

SNEAK PEAK!

My thesis, "Blankets"

 

B L A N K E T : noun : a large piece of woolen or similar material used as a bed covering or other covering for warmth. Etymology : Middle English (denoting undyed woolen cloth): via Old Northern French from Old French blanc ‘white’, ultimately of Germanic origin. A blanket can be made of woven acrylic, knitted polyester, mink, cotton, fleece, silk, and wool. Synonyms : cloak, cover, cover-up, covering, curtain, hood, mantle, mask, pall, penumbra, robe, shroud, veil, wrap.

White covering 

for warmth.

 

|||

The earliest memory I have of death isn’t a memory. It’s a fluid thought-image of white walls and curtains, a sterile hospital bed with white blankets, my Grandma Ethel, my mother’s mother, and a specific moment that I was given to say goodbye. Is it real? I’ve shaded it out and erased it so many times. I wish I had a better sense of it because I was almost ten years old. I know for sure that when I saw her body later in a casket, despite her familiar white wig and silky turquoise blouse,  I couldn’t understand why her lips were formed into such a thick, tight pucker. 

I also think I have an older thought of her husband, Homer, lying in a bed of pale, thin white sheets in his home. I felt special because I was tall enough as a toddler to help him move his limbs to keep his muscles from atrophy. Easily the bones moved, the muscles hung heavy.

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When I fell in love with my husband, Dan, I visited him in Chicago and stayed at his apartment, in his room with a small window next to the bed where he hung blue Christmas lights and ran a fan. I loved lying in his bed of soft, worn-in blue sheets. Later, I confused my memories and began to believe that my grandfather actually had been cocooned by blue sheets.

In college, I created a sculpture to represent these confused memories; a shelf covered in those blue sheets and white polymer clay bones. The fabric hung from the shelf, even, with some of the bones cradled in the draped folds.

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Mary Martha (Hendricks) Hodel || Circa 1965, 1980

 

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As a child in church one evening, the pastor dropped the lights and showed a film on a projector screen. There was a cemetery and a person raised from a grave; shot up quickly to the sky, bound for heaven. It was sending a soul to heaven to await the resurrection. That body speeding, upward hurtling through the air terrified me.

 

||||

After her death but before the doctor placed a sheet over my mother’s body, I held her hand–the hand I had known all my life; admiring how it felt and how it had held my hand, the nesting and the pressing of the soft pads together. I tried to comfort my mother, kissing her cheek and caressing her forehead. I was 36 and she was 69 but I had become her mother by helping my sister with caregiving. I touched her body, a body no longer having warm blood or breath. Her skin was cold and purple but I kept telling her in my mind that she was beautiful. If I thought/said it to her enough times, didn’t it make me a better daughter than I felt I had been? The truth was her eyes were paused in a yellow pale gloss, her scalp exposed without her wig-only partially covered with feathery patches of short, white hair, and her mouth slacked, revealing an absence of teeth, only gray gums.

.......

PNCA Winter 2021 Residency

This involves a lot of reading to be prepared.

Workshop group - We read each other's 20 page excerpt of nonfiction work and give feedback.
Genuine, amazing folx here.

The most exciting moment? Finding out who your mentor will be for the term!
I lucked out with Alison C. Rollins!

By the end of the residency, I create a bibliography and plan of attack for the term.
Of course, I always add more books as the term goes on!

Follow me on Goodreads!

Interested in LRCW at PNCA? Contact Jay Ponteri!

Hoping Summer '21 Residency is in person in Pdx. Cross your fingers!

It's Official! I'm Going to Graduate School!

                       

It's a dream come true.

PNCA, here I come! 

The virtual school

Two residencies a year

Invaluable mentors

The hard work

***

Thank you to my supporters. You lift me up and help me work hard and do my best!

I can't wait to share more of my poetry and prose with you... Cheers!

New Adventures: Jobs and ... School!?

As a follow-up to this old post ...

In October, I had a chance to be a barista at our hometown coffeeshop. (I worked the bakery/cafe, the main cafe, and the express drive through hut). I LOVED it but I was really BAD at it. What can I say? I am slow and have a terrible memory...? So replicating every drink on the menu and not being able to write down orders really didn't work for me. I felt too stressed out and anxious over it all.

However, I had a great time tasting espresso and learning to pull shots, which lead me to the whole wide world of drinking coffee, which I had never really done. (I was a mocha or vanilla latte kinda girl.) Learning the craft of being a barista was invaluable. It was great timing because I had read The Monk of Mokha for fun, and it taught me the history of coffee and more. (I great, riveting read that Dan and I both recommend. It's specific to Yemeni coffee history and current challenges.)

The people I worked with were great, too, and I still love chatting with them when I get drinks!

When one door closes, another opens, and that's the most tired cliche, but it was true in this case.

A few days after I decided to leave the coffee shop, I got an interview for an office job at Illinois Central College. I was offered the job quickly and traded in my coffee t-shirts and jeans for proper office pants and blouses. (Dealing with my bed-head hair at 6:30 a.m. was a whole other ordeal...)

I noticed during my interview that the team of people that sat around the conference table with me were super kind and seemed to have a great sense of humor and great rapport. While I wasn't sure the job was perfect for me (I was looking for something a little more creative) and it was only the first company I had an interview with, I couldn't help but sense that I would love working with those people. My hot therapist encouraged me 100% to try the job and I followed his lead along with the sense that you just don't get to pick the people you work with...So why pass up this opportunity?

I had orientation at the end of February and began work in the Coroporate & Community Education department at the North Peoria campus that week. Who knew a stay at home/shelter in place order would occur right after that? I only had two weeks to settle into the job but I have to say they have been amazing trying to find work for me to do at home. This week, that includes creative work designing a new logo for the department. I feel SO fortunate and my hot therapist definitely said "I told you so."

In other news...

After contemplating graduate school options, I applied to Pacific Northwest College of Art's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing and I WAS ACCEPTED! 1 of 10 for the summer cohort! See above my acceptance letter with a merit scholarship award. :) I framed it because I always dreamt of the day that maybe I could make it into a graduate program...? The fact that it is PNCA is also ironic because I visited the school when I was 19 (Hattie--remember?) during a quick trip to Portland for a friend's wedding. I was already at school in Indiana at Goshen College, but considered transferring to PNCA. But it was a bit of a fairy tale dream at the time...

Anyway~ !!! I am waiting ANY DAY now to recieve my financial aid package so that Dan and I can determine the best course of action ... There's a possibility that we just won't be able to make this happen. HOWEVER, I am full of hope. So keep your fingers crossed for me!!!