✿ Hello friends ✿

I hope you’ve been embracing the warmth of springtime, even if today as I write you, we are experiencing one of our hottest days of the year so far. Today, like several days this month, I’ve started my day off early and with a bird walk. Despite the early rise, these have been one of the most rewarding ways to begin my day or week. I’ve learned so much from these handful of walks and feel a heightened energy to use my binoculars all of the time. And I feel more connected with my sense of joy because of these moments where I get to watch a little bird flutter in a tree. It’s divine.

Not only are the birds giving me reason to smile—but the overall bloom and flourish of life all around me leaves me (ha!) in a sense of awe every day. The flowers are here. The ferns are popping up through the soil. The trees now rustle in the wind because the leaves have emerged on the branches. And I feel a lot of joy.

I am constantly questioning and rebalancing my time and energy so that I can embrace these moments more freely. Especially as I embrace these fleeting and ephemeral spring moments. The lilacs are in bloom, but they won’t be for long. The viburnum I walk by each day and stop to smell, has now begun to turn brown in the summer heat, with petals falling to the pavement and in the grass.

If only here for a moment, I must be sure to allow myself time to embrace the flowers while they’re here. This year, I was able to catch the forsythias in bloom, taking photos of them and in them. I felt so invigorated and oddly, seen by them. To witness these blooms towering over me, reaching proudly to the sky, is to witness myself leaning into the light.

Studio photos galore, snippets of inspiration, and works in progress in clay, and most excitingly: a SHOP UDATE and WEBSITE UPDATE with a special promo code for my newsletter readers.

This month has already been so full. I’ve received news that the Indigo Arts Alliance team nominated me for the Medomak Fiberarts Retreat Fellowship, and I have accepted. I’ll be traveling the first week of August to Washington, Maine for a weeklong fiber arts retreat. And I am so grateful for this opportunity that came to me from the Indigo Family.

This year is a year of learning new skills and learning the ways in which I work. I began two online classes at SMCC just this week—one as a foundational course in Adobe Softwares and another in Illustration. I am a bit nervous and also excited.

Balancing my time has always been something I’ve written about, particularly the struggle with it, or the overwhelm from fast moving days. Managing my focus should be easier, but our societal structures and devices are not meant to allow us those moments so freely.

For the last month, I’ve embraced scheduling studio time. This rigidity was at first something I was resistant to. Why should I schedule my free time towards something I wanted to do anyways? How free is that? In some ways, not much. But what is freeing is the intention built around this practice. Despite the counterintuitive concept of scheduling my “free time” for the things I actually want to do, this practice has allowed me to see my commitment and devotion more tangibly. It has allowed me the moments to claim my time and focus in a world that is built to distract and exhaust us.

I have also begun interstitially journaling as I work in the studio, the ceramics studio, and even at work. Where I simply write out what I am doing as I do it. Seems kind of silly. But this process is another way I can see the work I do more tangibly, and recognize all the work and effort I put into a studio session, particularly when I am short on time. I do more than I give myself credit for, and it’s two simple things that have allowed me to lean into new ways of working.

Altars at the darkest edge of space, 2026. Acrylic ink and watercolor on khadi paper.

Grateful for another year to share a piece at Buoy Gallery’s annual ARTPM. This past Saturday was the last weekend to view this monumental show. Flo and I visited two weekends ago and had a lovely time wandering through the gallery and chatting with Al. This framed piece is unsold and if it remains that way, will still be available, and for sale for $350. Reach out if you’re interested.

I borrowed from lyrics of Waxahatchee’s song St. Cloud, “I guess the dead just go on living, at the darkest edge of space.” She later sings, “If the dead just go on living, well, there’s nothing left to fear.”

A sweet ceramics friend, Cathleen, let me try out a chunk of red clay this past month and I coil built the pot above. I contemplated keeping the clay without slip, but I was itching to carve and see how this clay handled our white slip. My nights at the ceramic studio have been slower with one solid night each week, and quicker follow up visits, if any, later in the week. I finally braved glazing after a long stint…not. As always, pray to the kiln gods and our clay ancestors.

In the ceramic studio, and out, I’ve been very focused and exploring ways to use stencils and stamps to create compositions, and reuse a motif in repeated patterns and decoration on a pot. Admittedly, it also saves me time and pressure to hand draw each carved moment. It’s still very tedious, but eliminates a bit of the margin of error when it comes to communicating with these symbols.

I’ve noticed that the clay stamps allow me to adorn my handbuilt vessels, where wooden carvings that originally were intended for stamps have now become carved surfaces, and linocut stamps allow me freedom to explore compositions more loosely on paper.

The process feels slower than I intended but I know it’s moving towards something.

But first, the story: At the end of March, I randomly got a huuuge spike in traffic on my site, and I was genuinely confused. My mind pondered several different scenarios and all of them bad. But finally, I realized that a Substack account, The Secret Strategist, had shared my ceramic flower magnets from their purchase at SPACE Gallery’s Holiday Pop-Up, reposted my work and linked me directly. (Thank you, Zoë Sessums!!) This caused a flood of traffic to my website and Instagram. I was so offline, that I still had not updated my website with last year’s work, and I missed a story shout out on Instagram, and many inquiries to purchase magnets! For context, this account has 78,000 subscribers on Substack and…294k followers on Instagram. Hard to grapple with, but I realized… had my shop been active with this work, it could have been a real opportunity to share it with a huge following.

ALAS. MY SHOP IS NOW LIVE & UPDATED!!!!

Because I can’t just update my shop and not update my site…. my SITE IS ALSO UPDATED!!! YAY!

• HOME: My home page now holds all my work from last year —paintings from 2025

• CERAMICS: I now have a page for my ceramic work— sorted by year and a page to showcase some functional ware I’ve made in the past.

• DRAWINGS: New work in both the Graphite tab and the Recent Work tab.

• EXHIBITIONS: I now have installation photos from four of my shows—Memories to Give, Feastland, Seeds in the Soil, and Potluck (thanks Jenny Ibsen for sharing some install photos <3)

• SHOP: My shop now holds ceramic butterfly ornaments, ceramic flower magnets, pins, handprinted cards, postcards and packs, stickers, and more!!! All easily sortable.

CHECK IT OUT AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!?!

For my newsletter subscribers, and readers, I have a special promo code for you that lasts until the end of the month, as a thank you for your readership and support. <3

PROMO CODE:
FORSYTHIA for 20% off shop items.
Promo Code active from Wednesday May 20th to Sunday May 31st

Images (Left to right): My studio wall (above); a “sketch” for a painting or sculpture; my studio at night; the text "Ancient Ecuador” that I have been referencing; photo from my product photoshoot with Indigo Oyster Co. showcasing logo design by me for their new products and logo for their third year; a carved stamp of a smiling sun from “Ancient Ecuador” text; a forsythia flower; and lastly, another part of my studio wall with blue morpho references and stamp references (below).

Images (left to right): Isabella Rotman of This Might Hurt Studio during her artist talk at Backcove Books for her Oracle Deck launch; myself, Danielle Arroyo and Veronica Perez at the Indigo Arts Alliance Spring is in the AIR Fundraiser; Danielle Arroyo and Jordan Kendall Parks applying green lipstick at Spring is in the AIR<3

Above: Someday I am going to die, 2021. Watercolor on 140lb Hot Press Fabriano Artistico paper. 5” x 7”
Below: A photo of me in the forsythias at Laurel Hill Cemetery this year.

It’s funny how things come back to you. A lot of the signs and symbols from life in 2021, the first year without my mom, have come back to me this year. They once echoed a longing, a source of light in deep sadness, a reflection of my aliveness despite the deep ache of death and grief. My grief has reshaped itself. I’ve noticed more clearly the ways it appears in familiar, yet new and evolved forms. I always see myself connected and reflected in the trees, flowers, and skies. And as I make connections to them this year with past artwork and images, I see more clearly than ever that they have come back to me as a mirror and lens to witness my growth and my own reshaping.

Until next time friends. ✿ - Raquel