the clarity of a manifesto
Before you dive in, rest assured this essay was written using 100% human intelligence. I do not use AI in my work. You can read my full AI Policy here.
art making is not compatible with optimization.
art making cannot be evaluated by a social media platform stats dashboard.
art making requires being in opposition with empire.
art making is a wellness practice.
This is a short excerpt from my manifesto for 2026. It feels apt to really root into this while typing the 100th post I have written here on Substack.
a photo of me holding a seed of a Coast Redwood in one of my favorite East Bay forests. this photo was taken by the amazing Joy Newell last August.
What began as casual studio update emails to a list of like, 10 of y’all in late 20231 has turned into something wild and an integral part of my creative practice.
In art school, I double-majored in creative writing briefly, but abandoned it to chase art criticism for eight years. I started and ran Informality, an art and culture blog for Kansas City, that still lives on to this day. This volunteer effort was intense and a big factor for dropping out of the traditional “art world” all together.
Writing back then was always an act of service to my community and to others. Now writing still serves you, the reader, while also being an important act of integration for my own work. Writing is how I found the reasons for making art again. It’s how I tend to the garden of my research that guides my work from a place of freedom and curiosity, rather than the expectations of my former mentors/professors/internet people.
It is here that everything gets seamed together and I can help guide others in their craft by discussing the struggles that I encounter in my studio and research.
If you’ve been here since the beginning, thank you. If you are brand new, also, thank you. By some strokes of luck and practice there are now more than 1000 of you here choosing to receive my writing in your email inboxes. That blows my mind.
It has been so wild to grow in front of you and find my voice again as an artist living my values. Some of you have taken my classes, others of y’all watch my little films and essays on YouTube, and many of you are just here for the writing. All of you I am grateful for.
To have an audience to write for in an era where tech oligarchy wants to bury artists like me and render our labor as irrelevant is phenomenal. Thank you for allowing me to reach you and opening your inbox to my words and art.
In between writing dispatches, I have been putting together the pieces of an alternative to art school on Patreon for folks looking to make enduring the present moment tolerable through craft and imagination. I know the act of making art and sustaining a practice long term is not something that you can do in isolation. We need to make in community. I will be discussing this more in depth in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
a watercolor painting of a Coast Redwood stump in the Arcata Community Forest made in my Sketchbook in March of 2026
With this 100th post, I rewrote and really clarified what my substack publication is.
Because I have been coming fully into who I am as a writer in these last 100 posts, it can be really easy to get swept up in the whims of metrics encouraging writing that performs well. This is something that I felt really pressured to do over on YouTube after my why art schools keep closing video exploded. I tried to capture the magic of that video, rehashing the format over and over with results that left me demoralized.
But remember that line in my manifesto for this year: art making cannot be evaluated by a social media platform stats dashboard.
I wrote that to remind myself I have to stop contorting to fit algorithms. Metrics would tell me I should only write about being AI sober all of the time because my essay on it performed well. In truth, I do not want to center my focus and energy on a technology maligned with my values. Sure, I’ll write about AI sometimes, but it is not the central focus of my work.
Reader, I know you have picked up your phone to capture an idea, and some notification or habitual app or other thing has distracted you fast enough to steal that inspiration and you forget. This happens to me at least once a month. The aspects of technology I plan to continue writing about are the ways it steals from us, and how to transform these devices from thieves into partners, putting them in their rightful place.
I plan to write more broadly than just “ai.” In between talking about creative practice you’ll read essays on algorithms, social media, and the design of the very devices we carry with us everywhere that keep us trapped in loops of distraction over devotion. I would much rather steer my craft in service to my end goal — helping folks bloom in their creative work despite these harmful and addictive technologies.
a photo I took holding my phone while outside, an action I often regret!
As a subscriber I want you to know what this work stands for and why you’re here.
I rewrote my About page here on Substack over the past few weeks. Here is an excerpt:
Persistent Bloom is for humans who want support making art as a healing practice and essential tool for survival.
Hustle-bros and tech oligarchs have lied to us. Art is not a solitary act done in the vacuum of a studio. Art should not be reduced to its productive output and profit value. Persisting in your craft requires balancing cycles of bloom and reclamation in alignment with the real weird, messy, tangled, feral reality of life.
Here you’ll read essays, prompts, and wobbly shaped dispatches to cultivate freedom in your imagination, and release the tendrils keeping you paralyzed and longing to connect to your art.
Before I was an adventure artist, teaching compassionate beginner art classes and creative retreats online and IRL, I learned the craft of painting at a traditional art school. Following all the rules of prestige (and free labor!) in the art world until it burned me out.
I thought I escaped patterns of working for lines on my CV by working at Apple, teaching the general public how to be creative with their products. Unfortunately, that was a short-lived utopian project that expanded my skillset. In late 2023, when the job fundamentally changed, I saw that as an invitation to go out on my own and build a retreat center for the work of making creative education more accessible and rooted in freedom.
My best work is in being an educator, and that is the primary voice I write from. Taking the lessons of my own practice, integrating them, and moving them outward, helping others along this path. I love teaching art to people who don’t think they are artists (yet), or reminding artists who have meandered in and out of practice the value of their work.
The biggest thing I have learned through all of this work? My best co-teachers are nature and community. Both are a wellspring of inspiration and guidance. Both will teach you the value of being in alignment with your hands, body, and beauty around you.
Nature taught me the beauty of companionship in order to grow well. I do my best work with others. I also work in companion practices as an artist, knitter, writer, photographer, and musician who is obsessed with the imperfect, spiralic reality of what it means to have and sustain a values aligned creative practice.
Thank you so much for reading this 100th dispatch. I hope you stick around for many more.
If this resonates, consider forwarding this dispatch or one of your favorites from the archive to a friend.
If this doesn’t resonate, I won’t be hurt if you unsubscribe. I actually think unsubscribes are a good thing. A realignment between you, my values (well-being, service, intuition, non-hierarchy, joy, boldness, and community), and what I’m putting out there.
Until next time, stay creative and find your own ways to persistently bloom.
With summer slowly approaching, are you feeling like you’re stagnating or stalled in your creative practice? What if you could have your own custom-designed artist residency for your unique needs?
I offer just that in the format of creative retreats to help you recover and reconnect with your personal practice. I’ll find out where you are struggling, build you a curriculum to support you, do some travel planning to find accessible nature spaces and stays to build an ideal weekend where you can deepen into your craft.
Retreats are where my teaching practice and nature itself work in tandem to hold your work with tenderness.
I am also now offering in-person retreats for folks and small groups on the West Coast of the US, driving distance from San Francisco.
originally this newsletter was about the art I was making after quitting my job at Apple. I wrote a longer essay reflecting on this if you need some more context here.
