Summer’s End ( and now back to work!)

What is it that’s so nostalgic and sensorily rich about the back-to-school season? Even in California, where school starts early and it’s far from sweater weather, the light is a little more golden, the air just a bit crisper, and the world takes on a fresh-notebook feel. I get the urge to organize my life and be ready.

I got the daughter off to her first day of high school this week (!!!), the house is finally quiet, and I took a few moments to look back at the past few months and plan out the months ahead. This has been kind of a monster summer – a fit-it-all in, give up on routine kind of summer. It filled me with beautiful images and moments, and also took over any hope I had of a regular schedule, quiet focus or productive work weeks. We didn’t do a big trip this year, but did a lot of California exploring (Occidental, the Lost Coast, Ferndale and Eureka, plus a spring trip to San Diego), and I got a good long visit to Minneapolis, which included one of the absolute highlights of my year, the ICON Conference for Illustration, along with a reunion and lots of visits with family and old friends. Then we had a week at home to get the final inspection for the studio and get it furnished for my brother’s family visit, which just ended last week. I feel so grateful for all the important moments and connections we had this summer, especially as I feel time speeding up now that our girl is off to high school.

I’m now turning my focus back to work, and trying to carry all the inspiration I found at ICON into my projects. I have a few tweaks to make to the next fabric collection for Windham Fabrics, I’m putting together boards for the upcoming deliveries, I am plugging away at my medicinal plant series, and I have a few new projects percolating. I was super inspired by the work of Piotr Szyhalski of Labor Camp, who spoke at ICON, and his practice of synthesizing the daily news and current events into a daily graphic – I would love to do something like that, especially with everything happening in our world right now. Getting back into a routine is always hard for me, but I am really ready for it. Here goes!