beginnings and urges

February 10, 2025

Rural Notes - a set of handmade notebooks inspired by the rural matrix.

After an almost 15-year hiatus, I find myself wanting to make things again. The last time I made things creatively, I was passionately embroiled in an ongoing fight with my upstairs neighbor’s noisy kids. Never in a million years would I have imagined myself losing that battle, selling off all of my artmaking equipment and supplies, and enrolling in school to earn a doctorate in environmental health.

Life has an interesting way of twisting our heads toward the direction we should be facing. I have long abandoned the will to fight that. So, when the urge to break away from the highly stressful life of an assistant professor presented itself, I listened. This look back into my former life is, in many ways, one of several new beginnings—a marriage of old ghosts and new haunts. In addition to bookmaking, I am also trying my hands at ceramics. I’ll mostly make small, useful objects like bowls, cups, and plates. My roots, as a child of the United States Deep South, inspire everything you’ll find here.

This first collection of notebooks is inspired by the various vistas I experienced during my frequent visits home to Mississippi and the larger rural south. Every aspect of these notebooks, from the photographs to the glued book spines, is constructed from my own two hands.

Functional homewares such as plates, cups, and bowls to come soon. I am still quite terrified of my kiln!