I started my first garden, and my studio at roughly the same time. I thought it was important for myself and the people around me to see abundance and have sustenance with so much uncertainty. I learned to grow, and care in ways I hadn’t before. And I found the studio worked just like the garden.

With both, you make plans. You do sketches. You make more plans and more sketches. You figure out what will come where, and hopefully, when, and you’re prepared. You get plants. You plant seeds. You wait. Every day you take care, every day you work on it. There is growth. The habits become a self-supporting ecosystem, and it all grows together. There are unforeseen challenges, some things die, and you make adjustments after finding out some things just won’t grow where they are. There are joys and successes; you hand small tomatoes to your neighbor.

It’s spring, then summer. You worked with a neighbor to weed, til the soil, and replant. Three months ago, you planted purple amaranth and forgot about it. “I guess it didn’t work.” Shifting the soil around stirred it up. It pops out of a pot with some purple kale, purple on purple. A great color combination and the amaranth provides soil coverage, keeping everyone happy, symbiosis. This mutually, this symbiosis in both the studio, and the garden, has been the result of planning, daily work, and a bit of fortune.