I’m so excited to share these new studio portraits, taken earlier this summer by my friend, Seattle-based photographer Holly Stevens, better known as A Queer Photog. It was so much fun to chat work and parenting while she snapped film photos in my new space.
Having a studio space outside my house is all new to me— having only worked out of spare bedrooms until recently. It has felt like a huge blessing and privilege in parenthood to have a space that is all mine— a sanctuary, even if one not absent of relentless ‘to-dos’. My husband Peter, an artist and carpenter, built the space from the ground up, on the former site of a moldy old pole-building in our backyard. We tore down the old garage a week before Hazel was born in 2022, and the studio was finished last October. Peter has a woodshop and painting studio downstairs, and the have a bright and airy tree-house feeling upstairs, which I’ve already cluttered up with lots of colorful and essential junk.
One of the things I was (and am) so excited about in this new space is that it’s big enough for me to have a giant, comfy writing chair. I’ve only had one other work space that was big enough to incorporate a lounge-zone, but all I had at the time was an uncomfortable old futon. Now my green velvet chair-and-a-half feels extremely luxurious in comparison. In the winter, when the leaves have fallen from the trees outside my window, I can look out from my chair to the nearby mountains, a view that feels like it’s own kind of luxury.
My husband and I found the above giant window at a building salvage store, and incorporated it last minute into the space (and paint it bright red). I can peer down into his painting studio from it (I was hoping it could be open-able so that I could drop little notes down, but alas, we decided it was better to seal off his wood dust and oil paint fumes) and it lets in light from his 17ft-up windows, which lends a really lovely sense of openness to my space, that otherwise might feel a bit den-like. Eagle-eyed folks can get a blurry preview of one of the books I’m working on in the foreground above…
One of my favorite things in my studio are all the little bits of paper left over from my collage work, lacy remnants of left-behind negative space filled with tiny cutout shapes. I was so thrilled to see that Holly included them in their shoot. It never feels quite right to recycle them, but I have yet to think of a project to use them for. Chuck Groenink suggested I use them for book endpapers, but right now they just accumulate slowly on my bulletin board.
I tried to wear something in these photos that I would actually wear while working. In all my headshots so far, I’ve worn something cute and slightly dressed-up. Nice and professional but not exactly reflective of my day-to-day uniform. In my studio, it felt wrong to put on a nice dress or jeans, as if I can functionally do my job in those things. I opted for this “Workshirt” from Curator SF, which has been my uniform over leggings or linen pants or bike shorts ever since I got it last Spring.
Over the last few years I’ve found myself pulled more and more towards simpler, more comfortable clothes. But still feel for things like photo shoots, that I should “dress up”. And it’s not that I don’t find that fun sometimes— it can be! But I’ve also been questioning why it is that I’m less comfortable presenting myself publicly in simpler clothes. And the more I question, the more internalized anti-fatness and gender performance baggage I come up with…I have a lot more thoughts and want to write a comic about it soon when I have some time (lol, what’s that?). In the meantime, lots of related thoughts are explored in this
interview with and this piece by , if they intrigue you.Holly (the photographer behind these amazing film photos) and I have been on a similar trajectory over the last year or so; percolating our potential departures from social media, which is why it feels extra special to be sharing these for the first time here, in a space that already feels full of hope as a new home on which to share my work. Holly is co-launching these pictures today on her newsletter as well, which I highly recommend you subscribe to through her new site! Holly’s photos are so full of luminosity and warmth, and she is such a joy to shoot with!
Alright, that’s all from me right now. But before I go, I want to say a big thank you to all of you for bringing this Substack to life! I feel a sense of excitement about sharing things that I haven’t felt in a long time, and am grateful so to all of you for following along.
For anyone who missed it in my ig stories a little while ago, I’ve been adding some new patterns to my Spoonflower page here and there, which you can get as made-to-order fabric, wallpaper or home decor!
If you haven’t heard it yet, Adrianne Lenker’s new song is so so good
- ’ new book One Week in January is incredibly beautiful, and you should pre-order it now! Carson and I chatted years ago about our parallel but extremely different journeys of working on books based on our own diaries, and it’s so amazing to finally see it in the flesh.
My friend and Tulip co-creator Andrea Love is making a woolly stop-motion video game and it looks sooo neat. Follow her progress via the newsletter on their site or on their ig. And if you’re a Steam user, add Feltopia to your wish list!
Above my desk I have an older photo of you working in a former studio that I found on google images. You and several other artists I admire are up there as my creative north stars. I think I will replace the current one with one with the second photo from this post! Thanks for inspiring me from afar. I’m a preschool teacher and Little Witch Hazel is a foundational text in my classroom (but all your picture books are beloved).
Absolutely gorgeous, the lighting, the colors, the art, your outfit is perfect and you look amazing.