Artist Statement

The Show & Tell Residency at the Halfway Point

Apologies for neglecting the Noglesque Substack! I have been very busy and cycling through a range of emotions as well. In November, I began the Show & Tell Residency, a joint venture of The Common Well and the Alexa Rose Foundation. The residency allows twelve artists to spend six months disrupting our processes and honing our artist statements—reminding me something of Project Runway without the competitive elements (or snark). We have visual artists, performance artists, writers, and more. I would love to feature some of these artist in future Substacks, but right now as we are now at the halfway point, I wanted to offer some reflections and consider how I will spend the rest of my time here.

I’ll talk about the residency first, as a lot of people have been asking about it, and then I’ll get a little more personal about my own work over this time. Maybe I will also explain the teeth painting.

My writing room at The Comon Well has become a place to display my books, anthologies I have contributed to, and recent paintings

THE RESIDENCY

I was overjoyed to be accepted for Show & Tell early in 2024 and was able to preview the residency by attending some events of the first wave residents such as a leatherworking workshop taught by Walter Gerald, a clothesline sale where I bought a drawing by Brecken Bird, and a writing workshop with Aurora Stone Mehlman, William Guy Miller, and Jeffery Oliver. I was also introduced to The Common Well itself, a warm and inviting creative space in an vast factory filled with artist studios, classrooms, and meeting areas.

“Located in an old factory in Garden City, Idaho, The Common Well is a dynamic community of artists and entrepreneurs who share space, collaborate, network and play.”

The second wave began in November with a meeting of the residents (all pictured here) and the wonderful Common Well leaders Katherine Shaughnessy, Amber Lawless, Katie Johnson, and Grayson Lawless (all introduced on this page) as well as the fabulous Alex Davis from the Alexa Rose Foundation. We’ve gone on to meet nearly every week, discussing our creations and artist statements as well as participating in a variety of events such as a short film festival hosted by Jeffery Oliver, a glass workshop with Brittney Gehrig of Verre Boise Stained Glass, and a number of visual art exhibitions such as Benny Merris: In Love with the World and the current Caroline Earley & Kate Walker: Interchange show.

Many events are open to the Treasure Valley community, if you’d like to check out the Calendar. I just signed up to attend Lars C Larsen’s Hand Made Animation Worshop after viewing it on the calendar, for example.

If you’re in the area, please also keep an eye on the calendar in April and May 2025 for events from the current residents. We are planning a group show, artist talks, workshops, and more!

MY WORK OVER THIS TIME

It’s been an interesting time!

My published books: Beulah; Beulah in Spanish, The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future; Promise, and One Eye Opened in That Other Place.

I entered the residency as an established short story writer an emerging novelist. My initial goals were to revise a completed novel, Half Acre of Stone, and complete a draft of a new novel, Rose Milk. These were ambitious goals, but I had been suffering from a lack of focus for a few months, so I thought it would be good to get down to work.

At the halfway point, I have already completed my revision of Half Acre of Stone and sent it off to a good friend to read. I am currently at 38,000 words on the next novel, which is not quite as far as I would like to be, but I still see plenty of time to finish the draft. A couple of short story invitations and blurb requests have come in since the residency started, so I have also been working on those, as well as a secret project with a friend.

So, I am definitely back into a focused state—thank goodness!—and making the progress I expected to make. What I did not expect was that I would also be so motivated to do more artwork during the residency, or that it would bring back so many memories of my time as an art student as well as my reasons for not painting more since then.

Here are four of the eight paintings I have finished in 2025

Acrylics on 12 X 12 board

And one that I completed at the end of 2024

Acrylic, 24 X 36 on board

If you follow me on social media, you may know that I post new doodles from time to time. If you ever sat next to me in a meeting, you know I am constantly drawing patterns, sketching people, etc. Still, even though painting was once my main focus, I had not painted anything in a number of years, or ever created a full and coherent body of work.

When anyone asks why I stopped painting, I tell them that I injured my hands right as I was graduating from the BFA program at Boise State. I didn’t think I could either keep up as a visual arts grad student or create enough work to sell, so I went into a funded MA program in literature, which led to a twenty-year stint as a writing instructor.

The injury was from repetitive stress. I was double majoring in studio art and English, which meant I was working with my hands a lot for school. During the week, I would commute about an hour from my home in Emmett to the campus and then spend many hours painting and cleaning apartments for a property management company, and then on the weekends I’d drive a couple hours down to Buhl to spend many hours painting and etching designs on pottery for my grandparents to sell at their business, King’s Pottery. Repetitive stress, and just plain stress, and I could not keep doing it.

That is all true, but it’s not the whole story. There were so many factors: the conflict between what my professors considered art and what my family considered art, my constant approval-seeking from people who would never approve, the combination of shockingly bad teeth (Dentinogenesis Imperfecta) and debilitating shyness that made me terrified of interacting with people.

Maybe it was also that becoming a teacher felt safer and more of an accomplishment than trying to survive as an artist: My childhood had been far from normal, I’d dropped out of high school at fifteen and when I went back, it was to an alternative school and then a GED program. Teaching seemed to promise some kind of respectability as well as the chance to finally overcome my fear of public speaking.

I did enjoy teaching for many years. Because I always felt like I had to over-prepare and compensate for weaknesses, I poured all my creative energy into it and stopped doing a lot of the things I enjoy. As an adjunct, I was teaching a full course load one semester and then 3/4 the next, just enough so that the university was not obligated to provide any benefits. Full-time positions were very difficult to get, but I was especially keen on the idea because, every time I visited the dentist, the hygenist would say how I ought to get a job with benefits because then I could get insurance to pay for implant-supported dentures instead of trying to patch-repair my breaking-off teeth every few months. At several points, I was teaching while struggling to cover for missing bridges, missing teeth. (And LOL, I did get the position in 2014, only to find out that insurance does not cover the work I needed at all, as it is considered “cosmetic.”)

After so many years directing all my energy to literature, teaching, and writing, I thought it would be too hard to start painting again, and I am so happy to find it comes naturally—probably more easily and pleasurably than it ever did. I am older now, and calmer. Discovering this has probably been the very best part of the residency so far. I am very grateful!

As for the rest of the time at The Common Well, I want to finish my novel draft and continue painting. Maybe more goals will come to me at some point, but for now this seems like enough.

WHAT’S NEW

As always in Noglesque, I’ll end with some recent publications & upcoming events. These are also always at My Linktree

NEW PUBLICATIONS

My story “The Project” appears in And One Day We Will Die: Strange Stories Inspired by the Music of Neutral Milk Hotel from Patrick Barb

My story “The Halls” appears in between doorways: explorations into liminal space from Salt Heart Press and TJ Price

EVENTS

Reading at Star Library Annex February 11 6:00 p.m.

Publishing Your Work: How to Get Started Cole & Ustick Library February 19 6:00 p.m.