In between my introduction here, drafted on November 15, 2018, but unpublished until today, January 18, 2021, I changed almost everything. Twice.
First, I quit my job in NYC, left half of my family in Brooklyn, and headed to work in the Texas Hill Country. The rest of my family came six months later. For two years, I continued designing jewelry, but had to learn silversmithing, so I did. I worked with superb craftspeople who taught me everything I now know about metal-smithing. It was an incredible opportunity.
Over the summer of 2020, the political winds of the United States, which had been chaotic for several years already, began making me very nervous. The Coronavirus pandemic and white supremacist nationalism fomented into a sea of social unrest unlike anything I’d seen in my lifetime. My family found opportunity abroad and landed in Amsterdam just before New Year’s Eve, in the midst of the pandemic. Before we left, we were optimistic and excited to start a new chapter in a beautiful European cultural capital; a dream we’d longed to realize for over a decade. A week later, while still quarantined in our new home, I watched the U.S. Capitol insurrection unfold on January 6, 2021, ushering in the first violent transfer of power of the American presidency in history. It’s hard not to wonder whether we left just in time. January 20, 2021, two days from today, will be telling.
I now find myself within the arc of a historical cataclysm, and a personal one. Art will be the way through.