Gratitude is a ladder to a better perspective.

On Thanksgiving Day, The New York Times published a piece called “I am thankful to be thankful.” Through a lens of gratitude, it offers a glimpse of this bizarrely divisive and unifying moment in history. Reading through the six-word sentences, there were so many with which I could identify. It was a simple reminder of the breadth of our perspectives, the possibility of resilience, and the invisibility of pain.

There were several reflections that lingered in my mind after reading them that Thursday, and I felt compelled to share some stories of my own.

as a visual communicator, i often feel that there’s something missing when I try to express something without images. I appreciate people’s raw, direct experience with art when in is not explained by words, but I also believe that a little information can compliment visual work, making it more interesting and relatable.

for six days, after reading that article, I worked on something I called Six days, six stories, six gifts. Each day I selected one of the 107 entries in the article that resonated with me, wrote a little story about a work of mine that I felt related to it, and created a six-word reflection of my own about the piece. In gratitude, I offered a gift of some kind on each day. You can selected work here.

Cutting out the middle man

Money can seem so arbitrary. How the market rewards some efforts and not others can be seen as elegant, but also fierce; starkly democratic and terribly unfair. As we maneuver through life, we are in a constant dance within the existing system and whatever our possibilities may be within it.

When my eleven-year-old son saw me cutting up dollar bills for this project, he freaked out—I have never seen him respond so viscerally to any art ever. I figured I was onto something.

In the space left from cutting out the portraits in the bills, I paint objects that are needed or wanted in my home. a kind of impossibly slow shopping list, the conveniences of cash are replaced by questions about worth, wealth, and the value of a dollar. You can see both traded and available pieces here.