Reset

I’m writing this from New Zealand.

Today we drove to the northern tip of the South Island and spent the afternoon hiking through a landscape that felt almost untouched. For most of the day, we didn’t see another person. The trail wound through dense forest before opening up to a beach that felt impossibly remote. Along the way we spotted native birds, crabs scrambling across the rocks, and a pod of dolphins moving through the water offshore. Standing on that beach, I realized how rarely I give myself permission to slow down.

June has always felt like an in-between month. The school year is over, the next one hasn’t quite begun, and there is enough distance from the daily routine to finally hear your own thoughts again. This year has been a whirlwind. For most of my adult life, I believed that constant motion was the same thing as progress. Work harder. Make more. Say yes. Stay busy. Repeat. The problem is that eventually your body starts sending signals that your mind refuses to acknowledge. Rest becomes something you postpone. Reflection becomes a luxury. The grind becomes your identity.

For a long time, I wore that mindset like a badge of honor. Now I’m beginning to understand that it isn’t sustainable. What has surprised me most over the last year is that slowing down hasn’t made me less productive. If anything, it has made me more intentional. The ideas I care about are still there. The artwork I want to make is still waiting for me. The difference is that I no longer feel the need to chase every idea the moment it appears. Some projects deserve time. Some ideas need space. And I’m okay with that.

Professionally, I’m in a place I’ve been searching for for a long time. I have the freedom to build something new, to develop courses and experiences that didn’t previously exist, and to work with students in ways that feel meaningful. Being trusted to create, experiment, and lead has renewed my excitement for teaching. That same shift is beginning to appear in my studio practice.

Over the past year I’ve been exploring a series of sculptures that combine wood and glass. The first piece, Pallet, was built around an object designed for a simple purpose: carrying weight. Pallets aren’t beautiful because of how they look. They’re beautiful because of what they allow other things to do. They are infrastructure. They support.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what comes next. A crate. A barrel. Maybe a scaffold. What interests me isn’t the object itself, but what it represents. A crate contains. It creates boundaries. It determines what stays in and what stays out. A barrel transforms. Things enter as one thing and leave as something else. Time becomes part of the process. A scaffold exists in a state of becoming. It supports growth and construction but is never intended to be the final form. The more I think about it, the more I realize these objects have less to do with industry and more to do with rebuilding.

Most people think rebuilding begins with the finished structure. The house. The studio. The life. But rebuilding actually starts with infrastructure. The unseen systems. The supports. The containers. The things that allow change to happen. Maybe that’s why these forms keep finding their way into the work. This year has felt less like a fresh start and more like a reconstruction. A chance to examine what deserves to be carried forward and what can finally be set down. 

There is still plenty to build. Plenty to learn. Plenty of uncertainty ahead. But for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel rushed. Standing on a quiet beach at the edge of an island thousands of miles from home, I realized that progress doesn’t always look like movement. Sometimes it looks like making space. Sometimes it looks like rest. And sometimes it looks like carefully rebuilding the infrastructure that will support whatever comes next.