Trickiness with time
“Of course, little sparrow,” said the Witch. “You only needed to see farther." - The Witch Tower, by Júlia Sardà
Before we dive into my musings on time, let’s look at some amazing shows and exhibits you should see!
SEE | FEBRUARY
Vermont-based photographer (and dear friend) JuanCarlos González’ photography project Vermont Female Farmers has been traveling North America over the last few years. JuanCarlos recently announced another chapter to the project—Puerto Rico Female Farmers and the Impact of Climate Change. As someone who has worked with JuanCarlos for Vermont Female Farmers and witnessed the early seeds of this expansion, I’m so thrilled to see JuanCarlos bring this important work and his talent at storytelling home to Puerto Rico where he was born and raised. This project centers the women farmers of Puerto Rico, as they live and work on the frontlines of environmental climate change.
Please support this valuable work and give JuanCarlos and the projects a follow: @juankasfoto, @vermontfemalefarmers, @pueroricofemalefarmers and stay tuned for project updates and exhibition dates.
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Interdisciplinary artist Edra Soto’s solo show Edra Soto: the place of dwelling is currently on view at the Kemper Museum in Kansas City. An excerpt from the exhibit description: “the artist alters and recontextualizes common functional objects—wrought-iron screens, plastic lawn furniture, and electric fans, ubiquitous in her native Puerto Rico—to create objects and environments that celebrate the voices of working-class communities.” One piece that will truly resonate at this moment are Soto’s “BB (Bad Bunny) Chairs.”
On view through March 6, 2027. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Kansas.
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My alma mater Connecticut College is currently hosting the exhibit Borderlands: Soft Margins, Hard Truths, curated by the brilliant nico w. okoro in collaboration with Connecticut College’s Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Go see a collection of work by 13 artists that, “dismantles social constructs of race, space, and place, imagining an end to the living legacies of colonialism that bind the three.”
Featured artists include: Ophelia Arc, Nic[o] Brierre-Aziz, Alexis Callender, Adger Cowans, Lewis Derogene, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Shabez Jamal, Fidelis Joseph, Nsenga Knight, Ron Norsworthy, Theda Sandiford, Toby Sisson, Dina Nur Satti, and Amanda Russhell Wallace.
The opening reception has been rescheduled to March 2, 2026. On view through March 6, 2026. Cummings Art Galleries, Connecticut College, New London, CT.
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There are two brilliant exhibits on view currently at Welcome Collection in London, a free museum and library that I’m eager to visit next time I’m in the UK.
The Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection display explores non-medical protective practices and beliefs around pregnancy, childbirth, and infertility existing form medieval times and through until today. On view through April 19, 2026.
1880 THAT brings together work by one of my favorite artists Christine Sun Kim and her collaborator and husband Thomas Mader. The work explores sign language and the right to communicate through the work, along with the concept of language as home and belonging. The exhibition title refers to the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf held in Milan in 1880, and its disastrous impact on Deaf education around the world. “The term THAT is an emphatic expression in American Sign Language (ASL), which adds weight and significance to a preceding statement.”
On view through April 6, 2026. Welcome Collection, London, NW1 2BE.
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The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA has their Manifest Destiny exhibition on view through March 15th. The title of the exhibit refers to the 19th century belief that the United States was destined to be expanded across North America—conquered by white colonizers and subsequently capitalism. The (white male) artists of that time often depicted the land as wide open and available for the taking. Of course, as the exhibit description points out, “such images concealed the realities of dispossession and erased the enduring presence of the peoples and cultures who had long inhabited these lands.”
The exhibit also includes a solo show of work by photographer and friend Austin Bryant. An excerpt below from Austin describing his body of work:
“Where They Still Remain is a photographic project that serves as a memorial to the African American and Wampanoag indigenous communities on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. These two groups have had their histories intertwined on the island as they have faced centuries of displacement and oppression—often finding stability only in each other and the land on which they persist. Through my own photography alongside archival photographs and texts, I aim to evoke the countless lives and stories lost to time and systematic erasure.” - Austin Bryant.
You can see more of Austin’s work on his website.
On view through March 15, 2026. Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA.
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Containing Multitudes is a photography exhibit exploring the diversity of the American experience in a way that only photographs can hold and portray. “Photographers “have sought to ‘contain multitudes,’ in the words of the 19th-century writer Walt Whitman, by maintaining an expansive ecosystem of images celebrating the contradictions of American life, culture, and history.” - excerpt from the exhibit description.
The exhibition features 95 works by an incredible group of artists including Dawoud Bey, Catherine Opie, Deana Lawson, Stephanie Syjuco, Carrie Mae Weems, Laura Aguilar, Brittany Nelson, Anthony Hernandez, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank along with contemporary artists working in Minnesota, including Jaida Grey Eagle, Xavier Tavera, Pao Houa Her, and Alec Soth.
On view through August 2, 2026. Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” - Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself, 51,” Leaves of Grass (1855)
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Solo exhibit Roksana Pirouzmand: everything was once something else is on view at OXY ARTS in Los Angeles. Multidisciplinary artist Roksana Pirouzmand is currently the 2025-26 Wanlass Artist in Residence through OXY ARTS. Her solo exhibit explores an “ongoing inquiry into transformation, interconnectedness, and impermanence. Working with clay and metal, materials born of the earth and shaped by fire, Pirouzmand explores their contrasting qualities: one absorbent and porous, the other resonant and reverberant. Across her practice, matter becomes a conduit for thinking about cause and effect, fragility and force, and the ways energy moves between bodies, materials, and environments.” - excerpt from the exhibit description.
On view through April 12, 2026. OXY ARTS, Los Angeles, CA.
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Little Black Boy & Cousins is a virtual exhibit with jdc Fine Art, featuring photography by Rashod Taylor and Kristen Joy Emack. “Little Black Boy & Cousins speak in quiet tenderness, offering a visual testament to Black childhood that is both sacred and radical. In a time when systemic erasure threatens cultural memory, these works affirm the power of the image to author personal legacy on its own terms. Through intimate portrayals of familial bonds, Taylor and Emack present narratives that resist stereotypes. They celebrate affinity and resilience. Their photographs are vessels of love and agency.” - excerpt from the exhibit description.
On view online through February, 2026 with prints available to collect.
READ | FEBRUARY
The brilliant Chenoa Baker—arts writer, curator, and adjunct—recently wrote about Puerto Rican-American multidisciplinary artist Beatriz Amelia Whitehill for Boston’s Observer. “Beatriz Amelia Whitehill, Papier-Mâché and the Fluid Cartographies of Borikén” is a thoughtful exploration of Whitehill’s work, specifically her papier-mâché vejigantes (folkloric characters in Puerto Rican festival celebrations). Baker observes Whitehill’s use of a fragile material as a tool of defiance, “[Whitehill] deconstructs and reconstructs mid-20th-century maps of Puerto Rico with sketches of vejigantes and unknown figures and painted flames on the horns, demonstrating an embodied colonial, imperial and folkloric cartographic palimpsest. These fragmentary forms suggest that maps are psychological and not fixed, which is in tension with mapping indigeneity and Blackness.” - Chenoa Baker
Give the article a read and explore Beatriz Amelia Whitehill’s artwork.
MUSINGS | FEBRUARY
My recent birthday brought me one more year into my 40s, and one more year reckoning with time. And with all the joy that living my life with the people in it brings, for every birthday I have, I always think about the birthdays my brother will never have.
There is a misconception that if you lose someone in your life too soon, that you subsequently have this insatiable zest for life, “living life to the fullest’’ in their honor. Knowing that every minute matters and is a gift . . . that knowledge and pressure can be crippling. At times I’ve struggled to see farther than the immediate future. Maybe this is why I feel slow to arrive at the destination.
I don’t fully understand astrology nor am I devout follower, but I dabble with it and am captivated by those who have this divination. I like to say that I’m a “bad weather astrologist,” as in, I refer to it when I’m in a muck mentally or emotionally. Astrology also tickles my youthful dream of becoming a witch or cosmic traveler. Someone wise beyond their years who can see through time and space. Who (namely someone femme) could bend time and summon spirits. After the death of my brother I had fantastical dreams of traveling through time to find him. Rescuing him from the liminal space where he was lost. A Wrinkle in Time was (clearly) an influential book for me.
The week before my recent birthday, my chart reminded me of this “trickiness” with time I have. “An overwhelming anxiety about time, about losing time,” Chani’s voice resonated in my ears as she read out the week ahead for Capricorn Rising. “About not being able to function on a timeline that you think you should be able to function on.” At this, I exhaled. The muck was gaining clarity.
This “trickiness” led me to pick up a pen and notebook, something I rarely do anymore. I wrote down what I once thought I had time for. I wrote down the childhood vision I had for myself at this later age. I wrote down my grief for this envisioned person I haven’t yet become, or maybe never will. I wrote down the timeline I had made up . . . or society had made up for me. I wrote down my envies. I wrote down the grief for losing time on things that didn’t matter.
A friend shared something recently that I wish I had learned 20 years ago. When your inner critic / saboteur starts in, ask yourself: “Who profits from this?” Surely I don’t profit when I bemoan the eyelid that is heavier than it’s sister in my parenting-induced exhaustion. How much time have I lost over the decades worrying about my thighs? Time lost worrying about being accepted by the “cool kids.” Lost to the feeling of not having it all figured out—miraculously succeeding in career and motherhood simultaneously? Time lost to not feeling smart enough in order to feel deserving?
One of my favorite new children’s books is The Witch Tower by Júlia Sardà. This book is a world rich in detail, color, and heart. After borrowing it from our beloved library, I read it to my son on the sun dappled rug in our living room. Both of us pausing at spreads to pour over the details in the illustrations. The protagonist Carmela finds herself walking into an enchanting world where mermaid grease washes away envy, a giant’s hair helps her face bullies, a circular library holds secrets, and a dome of crystal prisms opens a view to the cosmos. As she unravels the knots of loneliness, hurt, and self doubt with the witch’s help, she finds strength in herself.
Carmela descended through the misty rain, now radiant like the sun.
“I have powers now!” she said, hugging the Witch tightly. “I have powers like you!”
“Of course, little sparrow,” said the Witch. “You only needed to see farther."
Maybe, I only need to see farther.
To see farther beyond the limitations of time and the limitations of my self doubt.
LEARN + JOIN | FEBRUARY
I am so bummed I’m not in LA to attend the artist panel discussions in conjunction with the exhibit Defending Ethical Integrity: The New Degenerate Art at the Torrance Art Museum. Saturday, Feb 21, 2026. Art, Censorship, and Academic Freedom will be 12-2 PM, panelists include artists Elana Mann and Tanya Aguiñiga of AMBOS Project whose work was censored in our exhibit Hold My Hand in Yours last year. And Degenerate Art will be a panel from 2-4 PM.
In person an online workshops via Assets4Artists are available for residents of New England. I’m catching up on several of the digital ones.
Robin Cembalest has several workshops coming up, including Art Writing for Professionals and Crafting Your Elevator Pitch.
Designing Motherhood is currently on view at Museum of Arts & Design in New York. In conjunction with the exhibit, MAD has been hosting virtual conversations. Next up is with two artists included in the exhibit, Corinne May Botz and Ani Liu, and moderated by the exhibition's co-curator, Elizabeth Koehn. Tue, Feb 24 / 12 pm EST via Zoom. Registration required.
Anyone taken courses with Off Assignment? I’m very intrigued by the writing group Writing Motherhood, led by Erika Morillo with guest authors Quiara Alegría Hudes, Nicole Graev Lipson, Jazmina Barrera, Rachel Yoder. Note this is not a workshop as in you won’t receive feedback but plenty of learning and writing will happen.
Watching the recording of “In Her Own Words: Joan Mitchell and Second-Wave Feminism,” a roundtable conversation hosted by AWARE with leading scholars and curators. PS I love a roundtable conversation. I want to be part of MORE roundtable conversations, even if it’s just at the local library or coffee shop.
Boston area folks, join Flow State: Sketchbook Sessions hosted by artist Victoria “Thirteenvic” Delvalle at East Boston Public Library. I wish I could join these!
If you’re in the Chicago area, the University of Chicago is hosting a conversation, Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Care, and the Medical Imaginary. Presented by Amanda Cachia who will introduce key ideas from her book Hospital Aesthetics. Followed by responses from artists Riva Lehrer and Sandie Yi. February 19, 2026, 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM. Address: University of Chicao 166 DHSP, 1640 W Roosevelt Rd., Chicago, IL 60608. Access Doulas, ASL Interpretation, CART, and Visual Description will be available.