january
i ring in the new year with covid at our heels. it seems like everyone around us is falling sick, but it makes way for quiet contemplation for all the newness abound.

i move into an apartment with slanted floors and make a bed out of pallets i bought off facebook marketplace. my morning routine includes begrudgingly editing tiktoks for work in bed.

february
back in san francisco: one week of munis, overabundantly hip coworking spaces, an airbnb above burma superstar, and endless negative tests. i have a distinct distaste for this old life of mine but am forced to realize that it very much still is my current.

in atlanta, a lot of scheming occurs next to what we call ‘the smoking window.’ many dreams are written down on paper.

march

i start working part time at bakeries and move into a shared art studio space that eventually is home to our film lab. we build and build and life becomes naturally rhythmic.

my dark, empty apartment makes me feel trapped.

april
during a trip from denver to dc, i begin to understand that it is not my apartment but, rather, my career that is making me feel trapped. i solidify my decision to leave tech again... this time with more confidence that it will for good.

from there on out, my days are consumed by thoughts of the film lab, long walks underneath spring blooms, and connecting with family.

may
the city warms up and ushers us into the outside world.

june
sweet & sweat-drenched.

july
the days feel like they go on forever. we go to new york to soak in swelter + loved ones. in atlanta, i learn to pray.

august
august is a gentle cool down from the height of summer. a lot of atlanta firsts, like the high museum and eddie's attic and looking at houses we can’t afford.

september
there is so much excitement spilling over the edges of september that it falls right through my memory.

i am drunk off white wine & jaeger and chasing ducks along the dark coast. i say, i don’t think i’ll be able to remember all the things we’re talking about. and you say, it’s okay, it can be just for us for now.

later in the month, merlin the cat arrives from california.

october
there is celebration after celebration, from birthday paella to autumn foliage, halloween costumes to new homes.

november
an accident lands me in the ER with a left hand too cut up to use. elections happen, thanksgiving is full, opportunities unfurl, but uneasiness plants itself in the pit of my stomach and spurls into my dreams.

i lose my camera.

december
the fast-moving year catches up to me and all i yearn for is home while being anywhere but. i cry a lot. it takes me until the last day of the year to finally recognize how good i have it.

i often think of this dewy patch of grass beneath the palm tree-lined sky. and i often think about how lying down on it feels the same as being somewhere you belong.

artwork

wishes from the chrysanthemum: a retrospective look, one year later

Nancy Elle · November 30, 2022

my emotions have been particularly heightened, which is evident in my chewed up left inner cheek and the incessant wringing of my wrists before bed. that is to say, this moment is a horrible time to think... but! an opportune time to write freely. so here i am, sitting at a dining table that isn’t mine. inexplicably hunched over in a hoodie while the humid 90° air continues to threaten my already smudged makeup of yesterday. unromantically at the brink of tears every 30 minutes. barley holding it together.

and i’m thinking –– now!! now! is the time to finally reflect on the art show that was immensely momentous to my life!!!

so here it is. my reflections on ‘wishes from the chrysanthemum’, one year later.

it’s odd to think that this time last year, i was engaged in extreme hyper productivity; i was obsessively constructing a massive light sculpture and singlehandedly putting together an art show, all while maintaining a full time job that i was deeply dedicated to, keeping up with a rigorous yoga practice, maintaining a live streaming schedule, packing up all my belongings into boxes, and seeing as many friends as possible before my aimless roadtrip around the states.

nowadays? i’ve been struggling to finish the same book i’ve been reading for months. making work that i can’t bring myself to share. doing nearly nothing but feeling so, so tired.

there was something about the promise of what life could be in the autumn of 2021 that fueled my every waking moment. i had just turned 30, and, in preparation for that turn of a decade, had gone through 6 months of EMDR therapy that drained me emotionally but lifted me mentally. my days were filled with creating art that helped me understand how i wanted my life to be shaped, and my dreams were inundated with these unbearably vivid, almost kaleidoscopic images of how it would feel. everything was so vibrant, so magnificent.

fueled by this unbridled optimism, i began to set aggressive artistic deadlines for myself and put all my plans into motion. the contrast between my motivation back then and the present day brings up a question that has been simmering in my head: why do i feel chained to some impossible, romantic idea that art needs to come from a pure, internal place?

making work is often tethered to the assumption that art comes from an undeniable impulse to create, as if nothing else can possibly be right in the world if you do not bring it into being. it’s silly to imagine inspiration floating down from the stratosphere and myself, in true manic pixie dream girl fashion, whimsically capturing it with a fashionably vintage film camera and cottagecore-esque paint-crusted brushes

in reality, a large part of my ability to churn out so much work last year was directly related to two things: 1) setting pressure cooker deadlines to hold myself against and 2) meaningfully embedding myself amongst a community that cares about my work enough to generate expectations that can push me to have the discipline to work hard. discipline. that’s the keyword.

of course, inspiration is paramount, but life is ever generous in gifting that to us if we are open enough. what is lacking, however, is the discipline to create and the discipline to share.

and that brings us to my next curiosity: why must it be a necessity that the art is shared? shouldn’t the creation be enough in and of itself?

creating, sure, can be for the sake of creating. but i also believe that what makes something ‘art’ is in the sharing of it, in the release of it from being just yours. it becomes art by no longer belonging to you. it becomes art by belonging to the greater world.

the most memorable part of the art show was hearing people, of all walks of life, opening up their hearts to each other by sharing their own experiences with intimacy and loss through the lens of the work they were gazing upon together. in another corner of the room, i saw a group gathered around a girl who was teaching others how to fold paper cranes. one by one, they stood at the edge of the flower installation and tossed in their golden cranes. it was so beautiful that i felt like crying.

never in my life would i ever have thought this many people would come together to see what i made in my tiny apartment. and further —– never in my life would i have ever thought it could mean anything to anyone. it no longer felt like any of this art belonged to me, in the same way the attendees’ conversations could never be mine. the art took on an entirely new life of its own as soon as someone else beheld it, and it felt selfish to demand that it must mean one thing or another.

this convergence could only be possible through the act of sharing.

although most of my paintings and photo prints have found new homes, the flower is currently in my brother’s garage, its petals hanging heavy from the layer of dust that is now a permanent part of the piece. come to think of it, i can’t remember the fate of any of the other installations and sculptures i’ve made in my life. the hopeful optimist would guess they are bringing life into their new surroundings. the brutal pessimist would guess they have been destroyed in a dumpster somewhere.

how can something be worth making if it doesn’t end up being of “value”? and even more troubling, how can something that was all-consuming of my life for months, sometimes years, be this forgotten in my memory?

the physical object itself doesn’t seem to hold a lot meaning, as much as i try to pile on symbols on top of symbols. i can talk all day about what each petal of the chrysanthemum is meant to represent, how the meticulous unfurling from the core has an immensity as great as our sun, how 10,000 paper cranes are embedded in a culture that is not my own...

and yet, at the end of it all, the physicality of each these parts are no longer. the meaning is all we’re left with. the memory of the conversations we had, the way it felt to stand witness to it. but the actual piece itself? completely and utterly worthless.

this concept is still difficult for me to fully grasp. i constantly yearn for both permanence and nostalgia, always caught in the middle of creating something that can stand the test of time and creating something that illustrates the power of the present.

why do we strive to make these kinds of ephemeral pieces of artwork? like the perfect moment of a dance or musical performance, maybe this is the way for visual arts to emerge from a dimension of time that it was held captive. maybe this is how it can hold people captive. maybe… when art is released from the captivity of time, it is in turn able to hold people captive in a moment of time.

if i believe art is meant to be shared, why is it that i chose to create something that is painfully fleeting, meant to be experienced at a very specific moment in time, as opposed to building something that can last forever and provide meaning over and over again? why make a massive chrysanthemum light sculpture that no one will ever lie beneath again, that no one will ever contribute handcrafted paper cranes to again, that no one will ever watch twinkle in the darkness of a room filled with quiet voices of familiar strangers?

in a world where we are completely inundated with visual and auditory noise, scroll after scroll (worse now – flick after flick), maybe it’s these blips of finiteness where we can feel something most acutely. maybe that’s what it takes for us to look up, notice, and engage.

this project was something that was meant to mark the end of a massive chapter in my life. like i mentioned earlier, i had just turned 30, i was planning to leave a hometown that i have a complicated relationship with, and i was grappling with the 10 year anniversary of my mom’s passing.

for something that was meant to be cathartic, the elated feeling of accomplishment completely evaded me. i was just the same, if not more lost. i woke up the next morning on the concrete floor of an apartment full of nothing but boxes. though it was good timing to have so many chapters closing at once, it caused me to be ungracefully ushered into the unknown, and i didn’t have time to stop and reflect, to really, really have the catharsis i sought.

a few days ago, looked back at my journal and saw that i didn’t write a single thing about the show. i didn’t feel pride, i didn’t feel like i had done anything worth anything. i ended the year wondering if i had accomplished anything in 2021. a dark cloud continued to float above my head, and i fully welcomed it. the mind can be so cruel sometimes.

sometimes it can feel like you need to remain in that place of darkness to make good work. it’s as if you need to force yourself to resist healing. although i can’t claim to know what it means to ‘heal’, i understand what it means to have a healthier outlook on all that occurred.

for example, i don’t completely understand what it means to really heal from the loss of my mother. i miss her constantly. always at unpredictably mundane times. it’s not mother’s day, it’s when i get a mysterious bump on my skin and want to ask her about remedies. it’s not her birthday, it’s when i meet a boy and wonder if her intuition could cure my self-conscious doubts about love. it’s not the month of november, it’s when i go to a rundown food court in a stale mall where i can imagine us sitting, crying while holding each other’s hands.

i could keep on going, on and on and on. see? it’s much easier to linger on these thoughts. but i could also choose to do the more difficult task of putting into focus the 20 years in which her teachings and presence shaped me into the human being that i am today.

of course of course of course there will always be darkness, but i can learn how to think of the light, to seek the wisdom, empathy, and love within all of the awfulness that was carelessly handed to me. that’s where i want to be. that’s who i want to become.

but is that at the cost of creating interesting work? and does making work about this cheapen that experience in some way, especially if it comes from a place of indulgence?

i don’t want to be doomed to sadness just to make something meaningful. i don’t believe meaningful things must come from that place. i have to believe that there is a great capacity for my work to contain joy as well. after all, how can any work be interesting without constantly evolving? how can any work be interesting if it stays stuck in one single moment in time, without the opportunity to expand into infinitely more colorful emotions, moving along a spectrum that is beyond our imagination?

i don’t want to diminish the beauty of what it means to go through grief and put in the work of reflecting, understanding, and turning it all into something that can be meaningful, both for myself and the people around me. but perhaps that is why this installation and this show needed to be ephemeral. it needed to have a defined beginning and ending for me to move forth and exist in a much richer emotional space. perhaps the catharsis was aptly not in the accomplishment of making work, but in the ability to pack up my bags, get into my car, and drive away.

i want to keep living, and i know that i simply cannot if i continue to indulge in my rolodex of childhood woes. i want to demand more –– more out of myself, out of my experiences, and out of my art. i want it all to evolve and become more complex with age, not cycle through an endless nightmare of regurgitated emotions.

we all deserve more.

film

a return to longer form

Nancy Elle · November 17, 2022

it’s been a long time since i’ve updated this digital journal regularly, and in may ways i miss having this space to post without any expectations of “engagements” that go hand-in-hand with social media, no matter how many barriers you create for yourself to avoid caring.

this is an absolute nonsensical time to try to exercise the muscle of posting here again as my left hand is completely out of commission and typing is hilariously difficult. nonetheless –– here i am. to kick things off, here are some photographs from lately.

moving into this new space and slowly decorating it together has been such a rewarding experience. i’m grateful to have someone who can imagine, dream, and bring things to life with me.

the in between space between oakhurst porchfest and the gorgeous foliage in our neighborhood.

the only photograph taken during henry’s birthday dinner party. seeing such beautiful people in our life come together to share their love for him was the highlight of the entirety of the autumn season.

waffle house breakfast in avondale estates, right before a big development day (which is now actually just a typical dev day).

stumbled into this old bleach flyer on the corner of piedmont park! shocking that it’s still hanging in there. what a long way we’ve come.

henry beating eggs for the breakfast burritos we were about to construct. it took us a full season of burrito-making to absolutely perfect this part of our meal prepping.

hutchinson showcasing the haunted house he constructed in the living room. very spooky.

film, writing, photography

a year in photographs 2021

Nancy Elle · March 17, 2022

january
i ring in the new year in austin, texas but barely recognize the clock striking midnight. after being around childhood friends for two weeks, returning back to an empty apartment in los angeles was startlingly painful.

february
long walks in empty places is the only thing saving me from the depths of self-isolation. a construction worker yells to me, “you’re doing great!” and i feel an uncanny warmth that resembles something like a cheap, feel-good movie.

march
sleep escapes me. i relish in the pink blossoms lining the city streets.

april
henry, a friend i met during the pandemic, and i wake up at 5am to drive to bakersfield to get vaccinated. most of my time on interstate 5 was spent thinking about how we’ll likely never forget each other because of this. a twinge of sadness emerges, but i don’t allow it to simmer for too long.

the vaccination lifts much of the weight from my shoulders, and everything feels okay for a brief moment. the world opens up, and i find myself talking and hugging and laughing with other people again, just in time for summer to unveil itself to los angeles.

may
i turn 30 and fall deeply in love with new mexico.

june
my time in los angeles is quickly coming to an end - much faster than i had anticipated. what was meant to be a temporary stop in my hometown extended out to more than a year, and it is time say farewell once again.

as usual, preemptive nostalgia settles into my bones and i start missing things that have become regular facets of my daily life: merlin’s little face squished under the pillow every afternoon, solo dance parties in my living room in between work calls, the baby blue car i’ve watched park every day beneath the same lamp post outside my window.

july
i spend a long weekend in joshua tree with friends i haven’t seen in over a year. we sit around drinking whiskey, playing board games, and watching movies underneath the starry desert sky. it feels magical to be reunited with my chosen familia. i went to sleep every night resting with the knowledge that they’ll always be a part of my life, no matter how much time and distance separates us.

in the latter half of july, i fly out to atlanta to visit henry. we glide around in the sweltering, humid air in between thunderstorms, buying and naming plants, taking swigs of wine by a moonlit lake, and hoping that any of this will mean something.

august
my goal at the beginning of the year was to put on a solo art show to honor my mum’s 10 year death anniversary before leaving los angeles, the city where she raised me. the show finally happens on august 28th. it feels like the night came and went in a flurry of stress; i meet incredible people and have life-giving conversations, but i simultaneously have a difficult time celebrating how momentous it all is.

all my belongings gets packed into a few boxes, and i trade in my apartment keys for the open road. august brought chicago, new orleans, and seattle.

september
i return from a series of flights & vibrant musical experiences and head north towards san francisco where i’m reunited with people who have shaped me at vastly different stages of my life. it’s odd, to be confronted with so much change and familiarity all at once.

i think about how lucky it all is, to have so many lessons to learn and relearn as i get lost in the upheaval of routine.

october
i spend a lot of time driving through utah, colorado, and texas… feeling lonely but very much like i am moving in a direction i am meant to, whatever that means. something ushers me forth despite my hesitance. the few moments i have with friends along the road are savored bittersweetly. i recognize all of this marks the end of something, but i can’t quite put my finger on what exactly that is.

the world is far colder than i anticipate. i wake up to snow often as the plants i brought steadily shrivel up in my car.

november
the road tires me. i fly back and forth between san francisco for work, making me realize being in the air tires me even more. i honor my mum’s 1o year death day with a small celebration in austin, texas with her best friend. we attempt to make bánh tiêu together but instead gather around our deflated pastries wondering how on earth my mom managed to make them so effortlessly.

henry flies out to austin to join me for my drive through the south. my favorite holiday, thanksgiving, lands us in hiawassee, georgia where i’m surrounded by a lot of warmth. what a welcome change from the cold.

december
i find myself in london at the end of the year. we wake up close to sunset every day and bundle up to waddle through the cold evenings, going park to park, museum to museum, bridge to bridge.

somewhere in between sips of cabernet on a sleepless night, we agree to be each other’s and i cry because nothing seems more frightening than choosing to love and be loved.