A Matter of Devotion
As this year creeps to a close and the gradual waning of daylight hours is reversed and begins to grow again, I can feel the pull of solstice in my bones. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, this symbolic death and rebirth of the sun is one of the most anticipated markers of time.
This year itself has been one of waxing and waning - of push and pull. We got out into the world in ways we hadn’t since the pandemic shifted the ground three years ago. We put on shows and visited friends and family. We went on studio tours and released new work. We joined the B Corp community. Our new website went up. We even finished the build out of our new studio space with some extra help from a bright summer intern.
With young kids in school, we also experienced our own version of the “tridemic” that so many families have been navigating. We continued to grieve gun violence and the loss of human rights. In the design community, after so much growth in 2021, the second half of this year felt comparatively quiet. It was an unsettling quiet rooted in our collective socio-economic uncertainty.
Needless to say, all the tools had to be pulled out and put to work this year. These included both the daily practices of grounding into the present moment along with the more expansive practices of using our imaginations to orient towards the future by taking a longer view.
I allowed the pull of curiosity to take me through a 200 hour yoga teacher training. After 20+ years of practice, I was drawn to go deeper into the history and philosophy of the Vedic texts as well as to learn how to hold a safe space for others. According to my philosophy teacher, it adds to your karmic debt not to share what you have learned with others.
I find so many parallels in my yoga practice to the creative practice. First there is the continuous opportunity to learn and then there is this idea of surrendering into what is - to never give up but to always let go of the outcome.
Most of all, there is devotion, which I think will be the word I center around in this new year.
Happy solstice everyone! We know this time of year can be full of contradictions. We are grateful to be moving through it together with all of you.
- Chelsea & James
PS In an effort to be more helpful to the challenges of this industry, we made a new in stock section of our site to share the handful of items (some pictured in this email) that we have available in the studio at the moment.