So this year? My big goal is to STOP accomplishing and get back to the WHY underneath. I’m not going to stop making, doing, creating but I’m going to stop attaching deadlines, end products, and benchmarks to these things. I’m embracing this as a season of reorientation rather than striving toward the next big thing. I’m opting for steadiness and sustainable creative practices over performative outcomes. The doing itself is the goal. In other words, 2026 is the year of process over product.

My brain and heart are still full of other places, other moments. I’m surrounded by tea lights and flowers in the courtyard of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. I’m watching as the sun clears the pashmina of fog from the Welsh Hills on the porch of Tan-y-Deri at Taliesin. I’m sandwiched in a vinyl booth at a Quad Cities diner alongside three friends who worked there for a few summers back in the early 1970s. I’m racing the fading light back to my lodging at Taliesin West; the saguaros glowing an unearthly pink. I’m in your local indie bookstore, smiling fast, shaking hands, fixing my lipstick in some sliver of a mirror.

I was a footnote in other people’s vacations, an unexpected opportunity to kill an hour at  the local indie book store, or a chance encounter that set someone’s trajectory on a slightly different course.

After wrapping up my midwest mini-tour (three states, three talks, three days), I had about ten days at home before getting in the car and driving to Taliesin West. I spent eight days in Arizona doing book stuff at Taliesin West, squeezing in a family vacation, and attending a marathon 48-hour conference for my day job. I got home on Thursday, and then on Saturday gave a talk at a charming indie bookstore in Albuquerque.

At Taliesin, the ephemeral nature of life sits heavily on the land like the fog that mantels the Welsh Hills each morning. I learn how the brush is burned from the creeks and how to estimate the age of the trees; that even the massive, seemingly permanent weeping willow looming over the pond is maybe younger than I am.

I gave this short gallery talk on Friday, October 3 at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The text for this talk and the research in it comes mostly from the chapter Vessel & Void. I’ve left it largely as I delivered it with only light editing.

Ever felt like a ghost helped you write a book? The researchers behind a landmark Alexander Girard exhibition did — and I have to admit, I hoped for a little of that spectral magic myself.

Yes! And why art books cost so much and a spirited defense of biographical art history.

On TV and in books, archival research always feels glamorous, romantic, and a little dangerous. There are secrets lurking conveniently at the top of a thick pile of folders, some arcane illuminati conspiracy ready to be unearthed by a precocious grad student who may also be a witch and/or vampire. The reality is considerably less enthralling. Archives are routinely colder than you’d prefer and someone is likely watching to make sure you’re wearing your gloves.

How I spent a summer obsessing over Georgia O’Keeffe’s sitting room window.

The untold story behind Georgia O’Keeffe’s biggest painting, Sky Above Clouds IV (1965), featuring cameos from some of midcentury design’s biggest names.