After concluding a year of Pandemic Epistles in mid-March 2021, I took a break from daily practices. At the start of a new school year, though, I felt inspired to start again. Since my intro-level students were all learning how to work with ink, I took that as my medium and spent time each day in September making, writing, and mailing off daily Pandemic Postcards. I once again appreciated the prompts and the demands of a daily drawing and writing practice, something that I plan to return to in new ways in 2022.

The September drawings have also taken on another form, as images representing a new podcast, Renewing the World, which I have launched with my dear colleagues Elena Marchevska and Charles Reeve. We describe the project this way:

Times of crisis demand creative thinking. The podcast Renewing the world: creative discourse on care, time, and the maternal will offer provocations and discussions on the impacts, consequences, and potentials of maternal artistic voices on the central issues of our time. Our topics range from contemplation of the relative absence of maternal bodies and experiences in so much of art history, to musings on reproduction, care, ecology and politics of the maternal in times of immense crisis. As we now seek to consider possibilities for rethinking the state of the world, we started this podcast as a way both to stay connected and to carefully nurture discussions on care and the maternal over a prolonged period of time and over geographical and emotional distance. 

We have recorded several episodes and released the pilot at the end of 2021. More episodes coming soon!