Houston and a Warm Quinoa Salad

To start, I want to whisper to you about this new favorite of mine. It's a food. I got these new small size blue pyrex bowls a few weeks ago, and I can't seem to stop filling them up with warm quinoa salad with pinenuts & feta and spinach and raisins and in this case, caramelized leeks and avocados. Oh, and a fried egg plopped on top. Bloop.


It's been quite awhile since I could justify taking the time to cook myself a meal. For months now, we've scaled back on making things from scratch, opting for fast and easy and non perishable groceries instead of bulk grains and fresh vegetables. It's been really nice getting re-acquainted with the kitchen and with real food and with slowness.

I mentioned last week that I'm headed to Houston in the fall to start the Master of Architecture program at Rice University. And surrounding this news, I've been re-acquainting myself with some other feelings, a bit more distant, more unfamiliar than lazy cooking. The feeling of making a decision for myself and by myself, the feeling of moving to a new city, a new life, a new livelihood and the feeling of knowing and not at all knowing what my future will look like. This is a little vague, but that's sort of how I feel about this newly acquired life plan I have. I know the plot, but not the language and I've just taken the book off the shelf. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, this feeling of beginning, but it's been a long time. When I'm not terrified, I am really really excited about it.

It'll be hard to leave this city, of course, and the people who have helped it feel so very homey over the last year. But I am excited for the challenge of Houston. I'm excited to live in a place less likable, less saturated with people so similar to me. I'm excited to live in the middle again for a while, excited to experience again what most of this country is like. I'm especially excited to do so, while studying the way we organize ourselves through architecture. I really agonized, to be honest. Before I saw Rice for myself, I was so uncomfortable picking up again within two years of arriving here, to move my life again. As you know, I am instinctively a nester. Our move to the west coast was so much harder than I thought it would be. But at the same time, I feel like I'm about to commence such a terrific adventure. That feeling, for now anyway, has completely taken hold.

It has been a long time since I saw what I wanted, and had it.

The Biggest Project

Making my portfolio turned out to be the most fun and also most challenging part of my applications. No matter how many proofs I looked at, of course, something could always be improved upon. And the version I shipped out is not pefect, but it's pretty good. The contents include sewing, drawing, prints, spanning late college through present day. I'm particularly proud of the final enclosure, which repeats a pattern used in one of the included pieces through machine embroidered silhouettes and sewn binding.



It's scary when your life seems to rest on something that is in some ways, so accidental. I've always felt stifled by the pressure inherent to making art--the feeling that each piece must fit into a decided repertoire and express you perfectly. When a given project can't or doesn't do that, I feel crushed by the waste of time and resources. And then I get monumentally discouraged.

But in making the portfolio, for the first time, I looked at it all together in a series. And to my surprise, they held each other up. Where one print fell short and seemed overly simple, another object chimed in with detail and nuance. It was reassuring and liberating to see that they were related, if only through their common creation by my hands, and I feel really proud of the work--all of it--for the first time.

I've embedded a link to the PDF pieces here, in case you'd like to see what I mean. Though it's rather late for critique, let me know what you think.