Oaxaca Art Report & A New Thing

Paid subscribers: Join me virtually for 100-Day-Project Show & Tell

I spent the first week of February in Oaxaca with a group of 7 other artists, walking around and being inspired and painting and hanging out and learning from each other.

(From left: Michelle Allen,

Jennifer Orkin Lewis

, famous Mexican singer-songwriter Lila Downs, who owned our Airbnb,

Gayle Kabaker

,

Charlotte Hamilton

, me,

Samantha Dion Baker

, Mokshini, Lori Siebert)

When I was invited to join the trip last year, I was friends with one of these women IRL, I’d been Instagram friends with a couple of others for a few years, and the rest I didn’t know at all. We did a few Zoom calls throughout the year to get to know each other a bit, and then we all met for the first time when we arrived at the house.

During the last few years of existing in a liminal life space, part of my practice has been to stay open and say yes to different things. The painful process of letting go of a big chunk of your identity is also an opportunity to soften old and rigid ideas about what kind of person you are, and there has been a lot of beauty in discovering what kind of person I can be: a good cook, a weightlifter, someone who goes to Mexico with 7 strangers and loves it.

You never know what you’re going to get with a group. Sometimes it’s awkward, sometimes it’s annoying, sometimes there’s a weirdo, sometimes YOU’RE the weirdo, and sometimes—like this time—it’s just wonderful. Community can be built over decades, and I believe it can also be built with intention and care in two hours.

I think of myself as an artist… sort of. This isn’t meant in a self-deprecating manner, like OH I’M NOT AN ARTIST *paints a masterpiece*, more that illustration was part of my work for a long time, but in a secondary way. People bought my Em & Friends products primarily for the words; the visuals played a supporting role. I was the brand’s main illustrator up through all its 2024 releases, which I did as a freelancer, but the artist piece of my identity has been so low-key that more than one person in this group was like, “wait, you do art too?”

From 2014 to 2021, illustrating was just one more thing on my to-do list, and with 60-plus new products a year, I felt more like an art factory than an artist, squeezing in illustration whenever I could and feeling relieved when it was done. Last year, my only freelance work was Em & Friends’ creative direction and illustration, and for the first time in a decade, I had a blast doing art again, because I had enough space and time to breathe and think, and actually make work I felt proud of. But until now, I’ve struggled to return to art-making as a personal practice.

The colors, light, pattern, and layers of Oaxaca were incredibly inspiring— it was my first time to Oaxaca, and so far, it’s my favorite place I’ve been in Mexico. The food was bonkers. The buildings were declarations of joy.

One of my favorite things about traveling outside the US—which is my favorite thing to do—is to experience the ways people in different cultures approach the same things. Nothing helps me bust out of “this is the way it is” more than witnessing that thing being NOT that way, and it working just fine (or even better). Even something as simple as the way any given culture has decided to dress up for weddings is evidence of the arbitrary nature of reality, and any time I can step back and squint at all the things I take for granted as truth, I come away with more willingness to take risks, ignore “best practices,” and listen to my intuition.

Left: Hierve el Agua, a mineral spring a couple of hours outside Oaxaca city. Right: One of many vintage VW Beetles, alive and well in the city.

Left: doorway. Right: plant. So many gorgeous layers.

But, as inspiring as the city was, I was delighted to find I was even more inspired by the artists I was with. Each one of them exuded such genuine love and excitement for their craft. The table was filled with sketchbooks at every meal. We gathered inspiration out in the world, but drawing was the main event, and it struck me how happy everyone was to be doing the thing they loved. I was happy, too—but it was a bit unfamiliar. Painting and drawing on actual paper, instead of an iPad for production, felt like a return to a language I’d grown up speaking, but forgotten. I spent thousands of hours of my childhood absorbed in drawing on whatever I could find—sketchbooks, math tests, the backs of envelopes—but that version of me grew up into someone who put art on a to-do list.

Gayle Kabaker

,

Jennifer Orkin Lewis

, and

Charlotte Hamilton

all drew Mokshini at lunch. I forgot my art supplies (adds up), so somebody loaned me a pencil and paper to sketch them drawing Mokshini.

I took mental notes on everything, like Gayle’s black ink drawings in her cheap Muji sketchbook, the way Jennifer used Caran D’Ache Neocolor II pastels (my new obsession), Lori’s warmup pieces on Post-Its. Several people were working on portraits, which I’ve always wanted to get better at. Charlotte painted this one of me in about twenty minutes, in dive-bar-level lighting, while chatting with all of us. Mind blown.¹

Charlotte Hamilton at work: in progress and finished product (from a selfie I took in Bali).

I came away from this week with a strong desire to re-inhabit the girl who loved to draw, and to reclaim my art from the tentacles of commerce. So for the first time ever(!), I’m doing The 100-Day Project. If you’re not familiar, the premise is simple: commit to a daily creative practice for 100 days, and post your progress on social with #The100DayProject. It can be an easy 5-10 minute thing, or a bigger undertaking, but the deal is you do it daily.

I’m not posting mine on IG because I don’t want to be there, but I’m doing this instead: Paid subscribers, if you’re doing this project too, or if you’d like to start now and do it with me (I’m 11 days in, but I’ll hold the container for 100 days from now), for the next 9 weeks, I’ll be hosting a weekly 30-minute Zoom session where we do a progress show-and-tell and cheer each other on.

If you’re interested, please comment with your day & time preference. I’m pretty flexible right now, so I’ll choose what works for the most people. All info will go out to paid subscribers on Monday.

Thanks for reading! Looking forward to seeing you (and your projects) on Zoom.

1. More on the artists in this group, who are all ridiculously talented:

Charlotte Hamilton

is teaching an online acrylic portrait workshop right now and has a huge library of online courses and videos,

Gayle Kabaker

and

Jennifer Orkin Lewis

teach over Zoom and lead in-person painting retreats (together, and Gayle solo too), &

Samantha Dion Baker

has a fantastic Substack called

Draw Your World

that helps people see and sketch their lives, and multiple bestselling books on the topic. If artful, whimsical 3D and collage is more your thing, check out the master Lori Siebert! Mokshini doesn’t teach, but she has a shop, and makes an amazing ceramics collection with her partner in their Brooklyn living room-turned-ceramics studio. Last but certainly not least is my longtime pal Michelle Allen, founder & artist extraordinaire behind Allen Designs Studio, who’s alongside me on the path of figuring-things-out right now, as her company was also acquired in 2022.