My dear friend, Priscilla, lives across the country from me. But sometimes, we exercise “together”—via headsets and smartphones—while she walks her pup in her neighborhood on the East Coast, and I amble through my neighborhood in the Midwest. Recently, while talking on one of our walks, Priscilla texted me one of her first watercolor drawings…
“Identify someone different from you; then the two of you go serve someone else. The best way to have reconciliation is through service. Not through racial seminars,” said Dr. Tony Evans, a famous black pastor, in a radio interview after the unjust and brutal killing of George Floyd. Dr. Evans’ quote stood out to me,…
When I was young, my family spent a lot of time at the beach. My husband and I have continued that tradition with our own children. Last summer, while walking along the Atlantic Ocean’s edge, I thought about these nostalgic childhood memories. Although most beach-combers may look for perfect shells, I found a rough, broken…
My elegant grandmother, the middle of ten children, was born in 1903. Her father had to clear the land in northern Michigan before he could farm. So, like others from her generation, she needed to quit school after the ninth grade to work the farm. Her favorite subject was math. As a young adult known…
Twenty years ago, the Columbine High School tragedy happened. America sat in shock, frozen before the television. Kids were gunned down. At school. The killers laughing. Like playing Fortnite. In real life. Sadly, history replayed. A few years later a milkman locked ten Amish girls in a Pennsylvania school house and pulled the trigger. Again.…
Over the last decade after creating large healing art installations for ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan, serving tens of thousands of visitors, managing around fifty volunteers a year, figuring out how to financially sustain my art business, struggling to secure a venue to host my work, and buying over 335,000 interactive supplies for the ArtPrize…