It is September 7, 2023 - one year after I set up my Substack newsletter.
At the time, I was living in the Codroy Valley - learning from my friend and teacher, Megan Samms, living in my partner’s family cabin, and driving twenty minutes to shower and do laundry about once a week. The campground was conveniently a dead service zone, leaving me with an hour or two once a week to sit with my feelings on laundry day.
At the time, I wanted to share those feelings. Some days they were beautiful - like finding a perfectly preserved butterfly under my (v dirty) car seat while I searched desperately for another loonie for the laundry. Other days, rather grotesque, I’ll spare you those details. And then other times, it was somewhere in the middle. Like becoming accustomed to showering with spiders and paying $5 to do so.
Laundry day became a time for self-talk, noticing my thoughts and surroundings. I loved laundry day, but was also challenged by it.
In some ways, I want to just write a book for you about the last year - but there is too much to say, and that time has passed on now.
I’ve experienced big changes, and I’m still going through them. Sometimes it feels hard to write about the moment when what I crave is the retrospect. The completed version. I want to know how things will go before I share them, but it turns out the “completed version” doesn’t exist, and all we have are moments.
While it has taken me a full year to write to you, please know that I have thought of this newsletter often, what I could share with you, what might be too much to share, but that I will share it anyway.
One night in February, my partner and I walked around the Old Day’s Pond boardwalk in Bonavista, talking about what we want in life - and I wasn’t sure. But I was sure I never wanted to live in St. John’s. Two weeks later, he was offered a position with First Light NL that was immensely affirming for him and important to accept.
And so, I’m mostly living in St. John’s right now, which has been a non-linear transition. A “paradigm shift” as described by a new dog-mom friend at the local dog park. I still visit my home in Bonavista when I can, but I too have taken on a new job on the far east coast, making it tricky to get home as much as I’d like.
Moving to the city taught me why I love Bonavista so much. I’m easily overstimulated. Bonavista was knowable, it was quiet. I could hear my thoughts clearly and I could follow them.
For the first couple of months in the city I felt like I was living inside the internet, and numbed by that feeling. Constant pop-ups, ever-new faces, public disputes, self-checkouts. I felt place-less and spread thin. I was exhausted every day despite doing nothing but errands and dog walks. It has taken me some time to adjust, and I’m still adjusting. Making art has been difficult. What do I make art about now? Where do I start? I rented a studio to help, but I just don’t even want to go there. Idea-less.
I wrote a five-year plan in 2018 - late night on gigantic paper, wine-splattered with my dear friend and former flatmate Agnes Jones in Glasgow. I wanted to buy a house, get a dog, curate an exhibition, publish a piece of art writing, fall in love, and complete the hunter’s education course. She wanted to have a baby and make a gigantic metal sculpture. Over the past several years, I’ve ticked off almost every box on that plan - and also eliminated some things that no longer resonate. She’s had a baby and made many gigantic sculptures.
Plans have always worked well for me, but for the past few years I haven’t really had one, as the unticked boxes on my last big plan dwindled.
So I’ve been drifting around, imagining new paths forward - scrapping them, re-writing them, walking with people I love, wandering more than anything.
This past weekend I went home to attend the fourth iteration of the Bonavista Biennale, and the first iteration that I did not work on. It was liberating to attend without the responsibilities and worry that the biennale had previously occupied in me.
I rode along in the backseat of a dear friend’s truck, to a party I longed for, a party long gone. A version of me, and here, that has aged and evolved into something else. A lesson in nostalgia. That what 30-year-old Jane makes, wants, feels, and needs is going to be a little, or a lot, different. I witness myself defensive and resistant of my own changes, and on the drive back to St. John’s I wondered why. Is change only good if I’m ticking off boxes on five-year plans?
So here, on Laundry Day, of which I cannot guarantee the frequency, I will be sharing what is going on right now. Perhaps what’s to come, what I’m working towards, or what I’m wandering towards.
And while I don’t want to dwell on all the things that I haven’t shared with you over the past year, here’s some 2023 highlights:
Residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre. Swimming every day, weaving a curtain for my grandfather. Dinner every night with new friends. Turning 30 in Blönduós!
Adopting my sweet puppy Joni
Exhibition of New Works at Craft Council
Sewing Class at East Coast Quilt Co
Lessons from the Loom mini-doc by Andie Bulman and Rodrigo Iñiguez Becerril featuring Megan, my pop Lloyd, and me!
Codroy Valley Art Camp with Andrew Testa at Tuckaway Farm
Sharing my home in Bonavista with visiting friends and family
Walking more, way more
Friends Having Babies
My brother got married to one of my best friends!
Bonavista Biennale 2023 with my friends, enjoying as a guest!
Visiting the Union House Arts garden - a dream that has been growing for years but finally bloomed!
Working on the Public Art plan for the New Mental Health and Addictions Facility in St. John’s, set to open in late 2024.
Somehow I ended up working back where I started, in Portugal Cove - St. Philip’s, where I was born and raised. I’ve been working for the Killick Coast Food Hub, connecting local food producers with local residents. It’s a non-profit start-up in its pilot year, which apparently is my calling. It’s a shift, but not at all dissimilar to arts administration. Food producers are much the same as artists. Creative, resourceful, collaborative, bold, weird in a good way. Food growing and art making is creative practice in response to the conditions around us - environmental, social, cultural, economic. For the moment, as I settle into this version of my life, it feels like a good transition.
UPCOMING:
Residency at the Centre for Research and Innovation using the TC2 Loom as part of the Mainframe Residency Program with Eastern Edge. I’ll hopefully be heading to Corner Brook at some point in the Fall or Winter to learn on the digital loom! Dates to be confirmed!
Final chapter of onthemiddleofnowhere.ca - AUTUMN. Coming this autumn, exact date to be confirmed but I will let you know. It’s been a challenge to make this work about rurality while immersed in the city. Other factors have played into the delay - but I hope to share the final chapter with you later this year.
I’ve been selected to participate in the Empathy Squad program through FiXT POiNT based in Toronto. Empathy Squad is a program for youth (sliding on in there before I age out) to build audio story-telling skills. With a cohort of youth from across Canada, we will be learning the ins and outs of interviewing, recording equipment, and using editing software. Little known fact: In 2019 I recorded a pilot episode of a podcast about unexpected rural love/sex stories, with help from audio producer Luke Quinton. Maybe one day I’ll release that into the ether.
Lastly I’ll be in Halifax and Truro area in October for a friend’s wedding! Recommendations? Would love to hear them! Food, art, fun things, nice walks. All that good stuff.
I’m going to be trying out some different formats or topics on this newsletter, likely shorter and more focused. This first letter needed to be more expansive, because where do I even start? If I didn’t send it today I’m not sure if I ever would have. Consider it a start. Anyway, let me know what resonates.
If you have read to this point, thank you. Being in the city has ironically led me to withdraw as I collect myself. But that collection is happening, and I hope to share more with you soon. Whenever that may be, soon is relative.
Jane