I have just redone my website — please go check it out. Without a doubt, it took way longer to accomplish than expected but, ultimately, the project has been a positive instance of how taking a step back can help to sharpen one’s focus.

Concurrently and fortuitously, I’ve been slowly making my way through Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing — a gift from someone I admire, not least for the way she controls the technology in her life rather than it controlling her. It’s a dense read for me so I am absorbing it in small increments, but I am impressed by its message of resistance against the reality of 24/7 connectivity and data production.

The gist of what Odell has to share is that one can thoughtfully resist, not by doing anything specific, but by simply being present in our environment. She maintains that “only (by being) in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us”, which in turn is a way to find relief from the chaos and anxiety that have become a business model for the so-called attention economy.

Showing this image is a bit like thinking out loud. I rarely plan so much in advance before beginning to stitch, let alone show a working drawing like this. But, as I’ve begun to move ahead, this piece it isn’t materializing at all in the way I’d hoped, and I’m not sure yet how I’m going to dig myself out from the ditch I’ve landed in. There is going to be a lot of trial and error in my future. Yet, it’s just as important to share the challenging underside of making art as it is the successes, as the finished product is only a small fraction of the adventure.

Redoing my website has been something of a necessary evil that has cost a lot of time at the computer as I learn and adapt to new software. But the greater lesson of the experience has surfaced through the act of tweaking my various statements and in uploading new images. Via that exercise I’ve become keenly aware that, while not consciously intended as such, my work is also a quiet form of resistance. The making of it and the end result is an “under the radar” place of refuge, a slow and methodical means of centering on small things that have the potential to carry significance if one is of a mind to see them from that perspective.

Coincidentally, while I was digesting the overlap between Odell’s thoughts and my own, photographer Michelle Saffran’s seasonal studio newsletter arrived. In it, Michelle writes very eloquently about elements of her process as they’ve been unfolding lately. And, as you will see, her queries streamline seamlessly with Odell’s observations and my own inclination toward finding beauty in what might be overlooked as ordinary.

Michelle has given me permission to share her words with you here and I hope they hold as much meaning for you as they do for me. Please visit her website to see examples of her striking work.

Over the last year or more I have been walking the land, smaller than an acre, around my house and photographing whatever I notice. I wander without agenda, during all seasons, times of day and weather conditions. Often I am drawn outside by shifts of color from the waning sun or from an overhead bank of storm clouds. Other times I head outside because I want to see – see what? I’m not sure. The area is as familiar to me as my own face yet each time I approach it I see something new. There is something unexpected that comes from the routine of looking at the same thing over a protracted period of time. I wonder about the meaning of this work and why it is important to me. It does seem important, even if I don’t have the words to say why. The images that emerge from this act of walking and looking mean more than recording a specific piece of land. Yet when I try and pin down a purpose to this work my mind scrambles and can’t hold onto thoughts, something just beyond my consciousness is driving me. I can’t quite put my finger on it.     ~Michelle Saffran