12 Months of Growth & Gratitude
Throughout 2022 I leaned-in to creating by experimenting, making decisions in my own way and time, and accepting and sometimes celebrating my unconventional ways of doing and being. Little by little I’m learning not to allow perceived pressure (often self-imposed) to overwhelm me. Making space for mindfulness and gratitude is also part of this process, especially amidst challenges, conflict, disappointment, illness, pain and loss, some of which we also experienced in 2022 as well.
Below are twelve celebratory monthly gratitude reflections. It was difficult to choose just one point of gratitude each month. I am beyond grateful for all the opportunities, conditions, people, places, plants, creatures, and things that bring fullness to my life and practice, both acknowledged and unacknowledged here.
January
I started 2022 by making a little video about my arts practice and in particular my daily drawing practice and five pen and ink drawings I sent off to Ireland in 2020. I was invited by Drawing Box International to contribute a 2-minute video as part of a collection of artist videos. The purpose of the video was to give background on the artists that participated in the A5 pop-up exhibition launched in 2020 in the thick of the pandemic as an international artist-led, grass-roots effort to support artists when opportunities were slim. Since that time, the exhibition of over 500 small drawings has toured the globe for more than twenty exhibitions, including one that I curated at the Questa Public Library in 2021. This small, but significant video opportunity gently forced me to put myself “out there” in a new way and hone the words I use to describe my work and approach to art. You can see the full video HERE.
February
Thanks to the generosity of my family’s sponsorship, I participated in the Artist-Mother, now Thrive Together Network Crit Crew program. It was transformational! - So affirming, so full of growth and connection. I met my wonderful mentor, artist Danila Rumold and three other kindred spirit artist-mothers, Sarah-Lu Baker, Whitney Aguiniga, and Erin Boake. My central focus was transferring my 2021 library of Daily Drawings from Motherhood onto fabric and then hand-sewing them into a wall-quilt. I chose one of our cast-off white bedsheets for my fabric and learned to dye it with black tea and tumeric to get the tone I wanted. Finding the right drawing transferal method required extensive material experimentation; eventually I figured out how to use my very basic inkjet printer to print directly onto fabric. Each step had repetitive meditative elements that required patience and perseverance. I am eternally grateful for the motivating and supportive structure of the Crit Crew, for Danila’s excellent and inspiring mentorship and for the relationships formed in our cohort.
March
There are many difficulties in life, so we must identify nourishing antidotes, ways to “fill our cups.” One way for our family is to pack a good lunch, snacks, art and fishing supplies, a couple sand toys, then we head West on dirt roads, for solace in the beauty of the Rio Grande Gorge and the big changing sky. There is a Rio "beach" just a few miles, and a fun, rock-scrambling hike from our home. This past March this beautiful equation happened:
gorgeous spring day + family + friends + sand + water + play + fishing + swimming(!) + art experiments (a personal favorite) = MAGNIFICENT DAY.
All our cups were filled.
April
With inspiration from my experience with the Artist-Mother Crit Crew, I continued to loosen, widen and expand my arts practice with daily experimentation, new processes and materials. I began using my morning tea as fodder for abstract “paint” dripping and materials. When the tea bags dry, I open them up, dump the tea into the compost and flatten the tea bags for collage materials and art-making surfaces. This transformation of tea has become a favorite morning art-ritual and has become an essential strand in my practice.
May
In May, I was delighted to establish my first ever, out-of-the-home Claire Coté Arts Studio in a tiny off-grid space at Virsylvia Farm’s Hope House property! I chose to move in slowly and only bring in the supplies and projects that I am currently working on. It has been such a gift to my arts practice and growth as an artist to have this space to work in and share my work with others. I hosted my first Open Studio Day on May 28th. My tiny studio continues to be a supportive place to create, view works side by side and host studio visits. I’d love for you to stop by if you’re in Northern New Mexico! (Photo by Gaea McGahee)
June
Deepening connection to place is a through-line in my arts practice. In another, related part of my life, I am the director of Questa Stories, a project created to gather & share stories, oral histories, music, conversations, sounds, & images from people & places of the Northern Rio Grande. This summer, we launched the weekly Voices de Aquí series featuring voices and stories from local community members. For four months, I selected and edited a piece recorded through Questa Stories and played the short audio vignette at the Questa Farmers Market on Sundays. It was an honor to share people’s stories and to experience the resulting conversations and connections. You can hear all the Voices de Aquí episodes at QuestaStories.org
July
Chris and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary this year. In July, we took a post-anniversary overnight getaway, sans kids to Joyful Journey Hot Springs a couple hours North of us in Colorado. The time away and change of scene was relaxing, fun and a sweet way to connect, celebrate and “reset” our appreciation and dedication for the life we continue to build together. Chris supports me and my work in innumerable ways and I am profoundly grateful for our life-partnership.
August
It was a treat to host people in my own tiny studio for the 6th annual Questa Art Tour in collaboration with the Visylvia Farm crew! It was the perfect venue to show some of the new cyanotype works that I’d been experimenting with since May and they were well received! I shared the space with friend and local artist Betsy Peirce and we had lots of visitors, sales and conversations.
September
We raised and released monarch butterflies for the first time in September - a wonderful way to kick-off our third full year of homeschooling for Amber and preschool year for Olivia! When we observed the caterpillars disappearing from our large milkweed plant, presumably from predation, we were compelled to protect them. We ended up with eleven caterpillars in two gallon jars in our livingroom. Amber and Olivia picked fresh milkweed leaves daily and disposed of their frass, as we watched them grow and grow. One by one they picked a spot and hung upside down in a “J” shape and transformed into a jewel-like, green chrysalis. The actual “chrysalizing” was so much faster than we ever imagined that we only managed to see it once; it was incredible! Then one by one, after about 10 days, each chrysalis became dark, then clear and we could see the monarch wings tucked inside, then a monarch butterfly emerged. What a miracle to behold!
October
The annual winter squash harvest is a favorite family tradition at our Sky Berth homestead. This year all the squash plants were volunteers that sprouted during the unusual rains that arrived in July. Squash plants popped up all over our yard as germinated seeds from our compost. We watched the plants in awe as their vines wound around, eventually flowered and formed fruit, then swelled green, yellow, then orange. This was the year of the volunteer pumpkins, and we’re still eating them!
November
Though seasonally beautiful as always, this fall we experienced serial viral illnesses, including a round of Covid; it was a slog and we were all beyond grateful when we all started feeling better! A bright spot was having "Resewn Motherhood Memories,” the daily drawings quilt I made this spring in the Arte de Descartes XXII exhibition, at the Stables Gallery in Taos. It is one of my favorite local annual art shows and I’ve always wanted to submit a piece. Having this particular work shown felt significant, as its origins stretch back to 2008, when I began my daily nested drawing practice during graduate school; this practice reemerged again in 2018 with the birth of our second daughter as a way to return to my arts practice.
December
The last day of 2022 was bright and sunny in Northern New Mexico, an invitation for cyanotype experiments! The holiday hacticness had settled and it was high time to get the creative juices flowing again; I’m finding that when I leave them dormant for too long I feel stagnant in other ways, less emotionally resilient and generally less like myself. I treated some of my processed teabag papers with cyanotype chemicals and exposed them in the sun with “negatives” of my daily drawings, played with cyanotype layering on some watercolor process paintings and tried the wet cyanotype process for the first time. So. Much. Fun. Such a good way to end the year! I am so grateful to have the space and time to let creativity nourish my being. Getting to share this here with you is such an honor!
