Some notes on return.
Thinking about fall harvests and proximity.
I love the cool desert mornings at the end of summer, where I live. It’s been a while since I’ve allowed myself to enjoy them. To sit still with the door wide open and a cup of coffee and a novel in my lap, the cool air drifting in past the clowder of cats that sit at the screen door chirping at the barn swallows that are learning to fly from their mud nest in my covered porch: the cool air signals the fall, which has always felt like a new year to me. A fresh start.
I started a job in March of 2022 and have mostly let this newsletter languish since then. But—somewhat mysteriously to me—Studio for Tomorrow has been steadily gaining subscribers, even people who are not my (obligated!) friends, signing up for my wayward letter to artists. Thank you for finding me, for remaining here, for reaching out to ask about past newsletters! You surprise me, and you are on my mind, and I am grateful for your interest in this archive of notes. I have been aching to return to this writing.
By the time you receive this, news will be public of my next steps, professionally. I will be returning soon to the city where I lived, off and on, for about a decade before the pandemic began. When I left, I felt so much grief and anxiety: it was hurricane season, the pandemic was in its first summer wave, the murder of George Floyd was resetting so many conversations and possibilities around how we organize, how we listen, how we make visible our national values. I packed up everything I had and drove away, no ritual for saying goodbye to the city that I loved so much; but no way to stay.
I haphazardly made my way to the desert, to a town of about 100 people, where I bought my first home and holed up in quiet isolation. I planted roses and tended a garden left for me by the previous owners of the house I bought; they lived here 40 years, Manuela y Rafael. I know they’ve been watching over me during some of the most challenging years I have yet lived. I thought I had retired from The Art World. I adopted the most wonderful dog, Miz Zadie Pancakes.
There’s more to say—much more—about the lessons the desert and the border have offered me, about making exhibitions in a contemporary art space at a university that looks out over Ciudad Juárez and is governed by the former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, about what artists are doing here, differently than anywhere else I’ve lived. I’ve been thinking for a while about returning to this newsletter, but have been worried that I will fail to keep it up. What I would tell someone working with me, though, is to remember the long timeline of the work. The way writing (or perhaps your studio practice) stays out there and haunts you until you return to it, the way it is a patient grouch, knowing that you have a lot to do and that you will return to the page or canvas when you can, even as it needles you to get back to it, and makes everything else less enjoyable until you do. In any case, I can now, at least for now, write to you. Failure isn’t the point; the point is the return.
In these years since moving to the desert, I’ve grieved the unexpected losses of family members; my beloved friend Vinod who left this world much too soon; my living space and artist residency, Yvonne, in Guatemala City (shuttered prematurely by the pandemic); friendships that I ended in a fog of depression; my dear feline companion of a decade, Dumpling Beyonce; and most recently a mentor and friend from my youth, who I reconnected with last year after almost 20 years, and who left this world this summer, Mark Ledbetter.
In August, I opened an exhibition that I have been creating for a decade. At the center of it, the artist James Dean Pruner sits like a wise trickster. Jim was the cousin of my mother; an artist and organizer in rural Kansas, who died in the mid-1980s when he was in his late 30s. I found a painting of his in a closet when I was a teenager and dusted it off. The painting stayed in my room throughout my youth, and I still live with it. It was the first time I ever saw a painting close up, in a domestic space. My family didn’t visit art museums and until I was in my 20s, Jim’s painting was a cipher for understanding my family, my interest in art, my connection to artists, and the grief of inexplicable loss. On the morning after the opening, as I gave a tour of the exhibition, I stood in front of his paintings, in front of a group of students, colleagues, and friends, and wept. It was the first time I gave myself the space to grieve his death; a loss that has haunted my family for nearly 40 years. I have been thinking about this exhibition as the closing of a cycle.
I’ve been picking up and putting down Kaveh Akbar’s first novel, Martyr!, for months since I first saw it at the Barnes & Noble in the Mesilla Valley Mall in Las Cruces, weirdly reluctant to buy it, I don’t know why. I’ve read Akbar’s poetry, of course, but lingered before buying this book, a story about a young man coming to terms with death and with addiction, through the specter of his parents’ absence, their decisions. After opening the exhibition, I finally bought a copy and struggled to peel myself away from Akbar’s pages. The young poet protagonist wants to understand what makes a death—and therefore a life—meaningful. When I began studying Jim’s work, his friends and lovers began to circle around me, to describe him to me, and to share his letters and photographs. They told me the good and the bad, the dreams and their memories. This summer another old friend of Jim’s called me out of the blue: Jim has a way of showing up, whenever I think about him. As his friends age, they are also thinking about the paintings, prints, drawings, and letters he left behind: where will they go? who will protect his legacy and remember him when they are gone?
I am writing about grief, but thinking mostly about love. I am so hopeful about this return to Houston, about the love I feel there, about attending my friend Maggie’s softball games, about taking coffee to Edi for Sunday mornings in the garden, about Halloween with Jenny, about sitting on Michael’s porch and watching the foxes come close, about meandering Fran’s studio, about reading about abstractions with Michelle, about holding my chosen family tight to me and feeling rooted again in such a vibrant artistic ecosystem. I look forward to Astros games with my sweet new husband, Rocco. I look forward to ramen with hand pulled noodles, salted tofu, banh mi, jiggle jelly, soup dumplings, and so many foods I have missed. I am thinking about return, about what has been lost, and about the great gift of a new start.
In the exhibition I mentioned, I included work by Salvadoran artist Lorena Molina: she hung bundles of dried corn plants from the ceiling of the gallery in a space intended to offer reflection and ritual. On the floor, she wrote the words: Cuando el sueño es la semilla, y la cosecha es el regreso (or, in English, When the dream is the seed, and the harvest is the return). I love the idea of the harvest being a second chance, a return to home, a nourishment. As the fall begins, what are you returning to? What are you harvesting? What have you lost in these recent years and how has it offered you new insight? I hope you are well, and I am grateful that you are here. Wishing you all the richness of return.
Warmly,
LA
Laura August, PhD makes essays and exhibitions. She is a writer and curator, wayward gardener and dreams of throwing pots. In November, she will begin her term as Jane Dale Owen Director and Chief Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. Studio for Tomorrow is her occasional letter to artists.
I love thinking about this- return-seeds and harvest so timely and so meaningful. So beautifully written, thank you for your art.
Welcome back, Laura. We are so glad to have you.