Studio Reflection April 2026

Studio news + Kinship Open House + updates from creating a sustainable creative life.

Studio News:

• Kinship Photography Collective is having our annual Open House 4/29 at 7pm EDT on Zoom-come hang out with us and learn about the rich ecosystem of our community.

• Join me for an Intro to Photo Zine workshop at Palm and Pine on April 30th (tickets reduced in price!)

• I’ll be a vendor at Pars Fortuna’s upcoming Yard Market on 5/3! Come talk frogs with me and buy a print or two.

• Punk Flea Market is back on May 17th at Fleetwood’s in Asheville! Very excited to attend this event again and listen to metal while chatting illustration and ecology.

• Thank you to everyone who attended DIYAbled’s Crippin Art: Build a CV workshop. We will be hosting this event again, so sign up to DIYAbled’s newsletter to stay in the loop.

Studio Reflection

The storm began in my dream, a bright flash of pink interrupting a conversation. Or perhaps it began outside the dream and then infiltrated as it slowly brought me to waking. I noticed Edgar wasn’t in the bed, unusual except that I recently moved his favorite cat tree and he prefers the new location. The thunder sounds odd to me, like the earth itself is laboring for the sound, but it could just be the altered state of consciousness that clings to me like a cloak as I fumble with shutting the window. The light blinds me for a precious moment, the lightning striking somewhere seemingly just beyond the house, heart stuttering for a moment.

I consider waking fully, it being 5am, but the antihistamine I’ve been taking at night and the gentle snores of my partner on the other end of our long distance discord call wins out. I wake 4 hours later, having lived through another of the winding sagas that have been my dreams for the past two months. My morning cubano hardly affects the fog clinging to me as I sit down to write-it’ll take half an hour before my adhd meds kick in and I’ll feel like a person for a little while.

I’ve been thinking about personhood a lot over the past 6 months, and the ways that disability, and particularly how neurodivergence and mental illness, is often cast in an unnatural light, as if the only “natural” bodies are the ones that are well and pristine. This calls to mind the colonial concept of the “untouched wilderness.” Yet, what is more natural than my DNA, than the body in relation with a microcosm of organisms, in all of its wildness and dynamism?

The more I become aware of the ways I’ve been taught to exist versus my gut-deep inclinations, the more I relate to my other-than-human kin. I walk carefully and with awareness here because of the chronic dehumanization of marginalized people, and I reject that idea completely. When I speak of myself as animal, it is done on an individual level in reaction to my own somatic experiences, and is in full recognition of human as animal, not as one category reducing the other.

The first time I told my therapist I feel feral in grocery stores, they asked me if I view myself as less of a person, cautious that this was a sign of internalized ableism. The truth is, there is a wild abandon, and joyful glee when I consider that part of myself, the part of myself that has been trapped in a corner for my entire life. It is a part that makes life in modern society more difficult, yes, but it is also the part that has drawn me to rivers and the wild spaces that I visit. It is the part that feels absolute pleasure when viewing a golden sunrise, when savoring an exquisite meal, when dancing with abandon. It is the part that allows me to photograph light that drips off of skin, that notices the details at the edge of a frame, that finds connections between things that seem wholly apart.

What does this have to do with photography? Everything, nothing, always. My work is so intimately born of myself, not as an individual, but as a body among infinite bodies. If I talk about myself it is to talk about my work. I was speaking with a friend recently about how different parts of neurodivergence are perceived, and the unfairness of how high levels of creativity are applauded and seen as disparate from other traits of neurodivergence, when from my view, they are interlinked (not that all creative people are neurodivergent, but there is a correlation between creativity and different ways the brain processes information). That I am able to photograph the way that I do and I am unable to tolerate the bright, overwhelming, loud grocery store is not separate to me-they are both signs of a nervous system that is fine tuned to stimulus. That I create emotionally charged and vulnerable work, and experience meltdowns and emotional dysregulation makes sense, I am often experiencing the world with the volume turned to the max.

I left my job this month. I got a new job this month. I’ve been writing about building a sustainable creative life recently, and had a goal of reducing my hours again this month. Then, the universe proposed a plan I hadn’t considered, and in one of those moments of cosmic alignment, I was hired for a part time, relaxed back of house position at a cafe 10 minutes from my house. My previous job as a DSP was incredible in so many ways, and I am grieving the profound shift in relationship-I am unable to stay in touch with my previous clients for a variety of reasons.

When you open Pandora’s box, however, it is difficult to stop the momentum, and in creating a life that I don’t have to recover from, I’ve been finding myself asking hard questions. I found myself over the past 3 months in particular feeling the strain in energy and responsibility between care work and art, and that inner conflict, alongside overriding my own neurodivergent needs for too long, led to significant burnout. I went from a 45 minute one way commute with an additional 30 - 60 minutes of driving per shift, to a 20 minute round trip commute.

The drop in work stress has been immediate, though transition and financial balancing has made this month feel especially urgent. I was able to teach a 2 hour intro to professional development for artists workshop with DIYAbled after working a shift at my new job-something unthinkable even a month ago. I’ve been deep in planning and admin tasks for Kinship’s Open House and New Call for Engagement and finding joy instead of dread. My garden is alive (and grateful for this morning’s storm), I’ve made significant progress on the woodworking project that has lived in my garage for months, and Edgar has been happy that I am home most evenings now.

And yet, burnout is not something that can be recovered from in a week. I feel the symptoms of it lurking beneath the caffeine and busy-ness, the low level fatigue, the agitation dancing in my chest, the two months of fully immersive dreams as my mind tries to process years of stress, the increased sensory issues, the inability to attend social gatherings, the complete lack of time and schedule awareness, the ARFID flare. In the past, I think I would have collapsed from stress, but this time I am so much more aware of what I need, when I can ask more of this tender bodymind, and when I need to sit with Edgar and read an entire romantasy novel in one sitting.

After a mid-morning freak-out (a chronic occurrence in which I question every life decision I’ve made up until this point and question if I should burn it all down), I drew tarot cards and had a good laugh. My deck (which friends can attest to) has the personality of an eye-roll personified, and I find that it often tells me precisely what I already know, but am too terrified to admit, without an ounce of sugar coating. I was reminded that building new things takes hard work, skill, and a fair bit of luck, and I have the agency to engage in two of those three things.

To end off this month’s studio reflection, I’d like to express gratitude for the wild, strange, chock-full life that I have. It is not lost on me what a privilege it is to even be attempting supporting myself primarily as an artist in these times, and I am so grateful for a community of friends and colleagues, who see and support me, and for the space that I have to try, and fail, and try again.

What Has Fed My Practice?

Every time I sit down to write about Kinship Photography Collective and the impact of not only participating in this community as a photographer, but participating as a volunteer to help craft and support the community, I feel like language slides off the actual experience. To have a virtual space to socialize in a way that feels nurturing to my nervous system and my photographic practice is invaluable. To feel like my work matters in relation to others has kept me at my photography practice even when I have felt most like walking away. My life would look radically different without this community. We are having a virtual Open House 4/29 at 7pm EDT and launching our brand new Call for Engagement 5/9 at 7pm EDT. I hope you’ll come hang out with us!

Photographing with Friends

Brennan and I trekked out to our shared favorite river and made a series of photographs together in the cold, spring water of the river. It is always special for me to make portraits of friends, and this day felt so nurturing.

Feminist, Queer, Crip - Alison Kafer

This book has been on my to-read list for years, and I finally bought a copy for research purposes. I’m slowly reading it, as I feel called to process it in chunks. Crip Time has been on my mind a lot lately (for reasons…) and I’ve enjoyed adding this book to others in my small disability studies collection in reference to that concept.

Cowboy Bebop

I’ve been sharing this piece of my childhood with my partner and remembering how much I love this show about broke bounty hunters in space. I’m rarely a nostalgic person, but this show feels like such a comfort whenever I return to it. How has it fed my practice? I’m not sure, other than offering me a reprieve from the world for 30 minutes.