stink city
grief gardening, alt mothers day, and marinating
helloooooooo and happy spring!!
I had every intention of keeping up with this newsletter once a month but you know life happens and I chose to let things marinate for a while. how’s everyone feeling? what’s shaking?
Last month Juan, Lottie, and I took a trip out to the coast for a night. Felt good to see the ocean and breath in the salty air.
These photos are right before she chowed down three heaping wads of seaweed that later gave her a weeks worth of diarrhea. We love you Lottie, even though you eat the stinkiest grossest things.
Juan and I hit up the arcade while Lottie took a long nap. We became obsessed with the game Fascination. Apparently the one we went to in Seaside was the only remaining traditional one west of the Mississippi. It’s a magical game that’s a cross between skee-ball and Bingo (2 of my favs!). I could’ve kept playing for hours honestly, plus the machines are gorgeous!
I took a staycation back in April. Taking a week off and not feeling pressure to do anything but set up the garden might become an annually tradition honestly. Lottie and I went for lots of walks during her diarrhea spells, and on one of these many strolls I finally met a neighbor of mine who happens to have a podcast with a friend of hers about being DINKs (dual income no kids), great to know someone in the neighborhood who is also creative!
Nobody Loves Your More, Kim Deal, 2024.
IYKYK Ok soooo, I may have a slight obsession with Kim Deal. I’d say she’s in my top 3. Typically I try to pick older albums and movies for these posts but I’ve just listened to this album an embarrassing amount of times in the last 3 months… there are, no skips. Just always effortlessly cool, I mean how many female alt rock artists do you know that are still putting out incredible albums in their 60s???! Once I listened I knew I had to see her if she came to town, I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to her show at Rev Hall back in March and she played the entire album from beginning to end along with some Breeders tracks. As Deal sings on Come Running: Give me poetry and magic/and I’ll come running.
Sinners, Ryan Coogler, 2025.
Since I did a more current album, why not a current movie too? Have you seen Sinners yet?! Highly rec seeing it in a theater if you haven’t!! It was fantastic. I loved the way this film begins almost like an old western and then does a complete 180 into a vampire movie. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie in the theater where there’s a lot of audience engagement and verbal reactions. Great acting performances, beautiful cinematography, and those music scenes <3 Would absolutely see again.
With the warm weather and processing the recent death of another famiIy member, I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors in the garden processing grief and thinking about death in the last couple months. I planted a full bed (not pictured) of lettuce, kale, arugula, and rhubarb. Got some raspberries and strawberries going as well as herbs like dill, mint, cilantro, basil, nasturtium, and thyme. Deb mailed me lots of different kinds of vine seeds so I planted some red cardinal vine that’s been popping up! I also planted some sunflowers from seed as well as something called fairy meadow flowers (v excited to see what those look like!). There is something truly healing when it comes to gardening, it gives me some momentary mental peace in these trying times.
I did a last min thing and organized an Alt Mothers Day event on Mothers Day. It ended up being an unpredictable rainy day so we moved it to my place indoors, ate snacks, and played a game. It was a lovely time! I would love to keep it going as an annual thing and get the word out more ahead of time. If yr interested, keep it on your radar for next year! And if you wanna host an alt fathers day I’m totally there!
My day job has felt pretty intense lately…lots of staying after 5 and starting before 9, I’m hoping things calm down soon. There’s also so much new technology to take in that is developing at a rapid pace and it all feels difficult and overwhelming to keep up with. I listened to the first episode of Sarah Beth Morgans new podcast Ghost Frame and I really related to a lot of what her and her guests talked about in relation to the motion industry and just being an artist in general. I also love the narration direction of the podcast vs a sit down one on one type of interview.
In the studio…
Been cramming in so much during work hours that I haven’t wanted to mess around in the evenings as much as of late, less screen time is feeling better right now… again, letting. things. marinate. However I did help out with some character animations for Flummerynacht, a holiday my coworkers created and actually registered as an official holiday- it’s very monty python coded and is “the holiday of second chances.” My coworker Mark designed these goofy characters and I had a really fun time animating them!
As far as personal work goes… here are some stills I’ve been conjuring up, they are looking a little too realistic and not stylized enough for me at the moment, but a WIP of what’s to come of my animated short. I created these mostly in cinema 4d, the matchbox design was created in Photoshop.
Tuned into the 2025 Pictoplasma conference (with my membership), and loved the talk Angela Kirkwood gave about her process/how she came to be an animator. She also spoke about a board game she designed, Magical Athlete and I ended up pre-ordering it because of how much I loved the art.
Trying to make reading more of a habit in the mornings and/or evenings, so I subscribed to the print version of Lux Magazine. They only do 3 a year but I’ve enjoyed a lot of their prior articles and looking forward to getting a thing in the mail…
That’s all for now! I signed up to take a self defense class next month, and I’m headed to The Painted Hills in a couple weeks. More things to come in June <3 <3 <3
