Jx Farms Residency

The Jx Farm Residency has opened back up and we’d love to have you out here. Applications are free through December - check it out at jxfarms.com or @jxfarms on instagram.

Snapshots from Summer 4

Snapshots from Summer 2

Snapshots from the Spring 3

Snapshots from the Spring 2

Snapshots from the Spring

Mostly photos from an enlightening weeklong stay at The Grateful House in Cedar Bluff, Mississippi. It was a beautiful chance to see another part of Mississippi, and i got a good schooling on the Hill Country & farming/composting/being a good steward of folks & the land. You can learn more about the Grateful House and High Hope Farm here: http://highhopefarm.com/

Snapshots from Almost-Spring

Notes from the Past-Present-Pre-Resurrection

Delta Dispatch #2

Driving Friday down to Itta Benna, always chiming “little ol itta bin” with Taj Mahal in my mind to where I don’t know how to say nothing right no more. The side roads dirt and gravel, pebbles and soybean carcass, the gps directing “continue straight for 2 miles” and looking at the road cut up like a ditch after a hard raining hard drinking Saturday night, and knowing this old Toyota Camry ain’t got it in it, opting left or right because a phone call to AAA sounds like, “well…y’know…i’m out at Shaw-Skene Road in Cleveland, Mississippi, and I need you to pull me out the mud,” and two hours later we’d both be stuck and the driver looking at me and my dog with more questions than he could ask and the Toyota trunk deep in delta dirt and the road looking for all of it like the river’s many paths down the states and,

Headed to itta bin and passing fields of brown with black and white horses against a pale blue sky, through Shaw, to the town for lunch which was very cold out in the shade of a January day with my dog, under an oak, against the shadows of grain bins, taller than castles and rusting, the bb king museum adjacent and I guess they pipe his music out into the air so he can live forever, his voice carried into the sky like a paper lantern, blowing clear to Cote D’Ivore and Cannes, Cambridge and Clarksdale, gentle same as Mississippi John Hurt, roiling with feeling like the Mississippi. 

There was a small pond, a little bayou, filled up with cypress and Christmas lights, a post electric taped over as a power cord drefted into the depths, those old knees bigger than a dog or myself, I guess, curious to see it when it’s dried up in the summer and crackling. The water bright green, trailing clearer water in movement and wind. 

Lunched and gone and glad to be out traveling, just little jaunts out into the land, following Township road to that rutted end of Shaw-Skene

(i never been whisky mean but I have been drinking mean) 

Turns out the road leads to Beulah, to Beulah, Mississippi, then eventually and windingly to the river, oxbows and log-loaders and all of that, this land seems stranger and stranger and truer and truer to me. Thinking of the land where I would have come from a century or two or three ago, it’s not clear, I have no good memory - the people where I came from if they had a better knowing of the land, knowing that disconnecting from one social media app lets me see better, imagine a world of no - phone no - music - on - demand no light - on - demand, no heat - on - demand, no food - on - demand, here we stand next to the land; connected, practically ear-to-earth at times, this incredible understanding of it all, mostly, at least the earth and sky, which is better than I have now, which maybe is why God came out down back then, better than now, the disconnect all connected; those monks and nuns fasting and praying and never seen social media practically, different still but all the same; the masses surging forward feverishly and acceptingly and not saying no one is better that no one else because we are all humans with hearts but  - some folks got the privilege of rolling around in red clay and wet grass and under a blue sky in the winter and spring and summer and fall and no one knowing but they come out with their hearts full to burst and eyes brand new on the land and 

“If the light has gone out in your soul,” 

Same as mercy and forgiveness, light is never ending, and your soul setting out to get renewed, every season along with the collards and the cauliflowers and corn and every sort of bean and flower and tree and creature; we are so lucky. Amen. 

Delta Dispatch #1

New eyes are all there is, the thing is in possessing them. When every day is wholly beautiful, in both the starting and stopping of it, takes some luck and takes a good set of eyes to see it. 

Here it all is, this is all the fruition, working towards no fruit, just life done like my own garden, seeds sowed, transplants, going-to-the-store, planting with hope and dumb luck. When those Georgia collards unfurl they are beautiful, more beautiful than most things I could think to compare them to - frost passes over them and they are still green, untouched, reaching skyward thankful for the sun and - they don’t need anything. Sun, water, some good dirt, they go on and on, into the spring they grow glad. No flower, no fruit, just carrying on. 

Then it is all there; life is all there, those paintings dreaming of the delta, all that writing and singing, all of those blues, 

Washington Phillips on the road today off of the 61 highway, singing with his angels and cloud-guitar says

“take your burden to the Lord, leave it there … your soul is almost sinking in despair, He can save, He can heal, oh leave it there; if you can trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out - God in heaven will answer prayer, He will make a way for you, He will guide you safely through, take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. Now if your useful days are gone and old age is stealing on, and your body sinks beneath the weight of care, Jesus will never leave you then, He’ll go with you through the end,” 

The greens get cut leaf by leaf and boiled down and they keep growing. Folks used to eat poke sallet for poverty, and here I am letting those greens grow wild and growing poke for it’s pretty colors, too. The greens grow bigger than my old head, hands, shoulders, grow and grow, taking up their garden box, stretching happily every morning further towards the sun and, the credit is all theirs, I just carried them home, ancestors growing flowers for their beauty, greens for their produce, an old old old bachelor uncle, so old I don’t know his name, potted flowers in coffee cans on the road to his house, and here I am, growing collards because they are  just so happy. 

The all in all is, I am glad and I am grateful, in the strange hibernation of 2020; the very highs of the beginning of the year out barefoot on the coast in the old oaks and beneath it’s loving sky, to the sleeping that began in the summer, some days more awake than others, moving through but lazy; been hesitant all year to call it lazy, but that is it’s name. Once I am in the studio it is always good, when the work begins, like writing or singing or doing the thing in your ultimate soul; once you are living in the doing it feels awful good. Life drops away and the task at hand brings the mind to it’s heavenly cloud, all those burdens left back on earth or with God but they are left there. The eyes got old and tired, burdened, body burdened to where I hate the shape of my own shadow, forget mirrors, and silly burdens, carpenter bee burdens, daily road and old soy field burdens, old could have should have burdens, and then - 

The clouds break; I am writing this to ensure that they break; they broke on my sleeping eyes, sleeping heart, sleeping mind, sleeping soul is what it is. Watching everything kudzu up with darkness and fear and anger, kudzu all over, not flowering and kind, just crawling and mean.

The clouds break, even in the cold of the delta land, I can type delta land here on it, the clouds broken over it in sunshine and I can’t be barefoot out here for the cold but I can still be glad and new-eyed and 

On the trip here I worried it was too easy, each good trip marked and marred with a good toil or toll to earn the magic ahead, but I will take the cold, I will take the toll of self-appointed, self-carried burden, the task of shaking it off and moving forward into the light of the year and of life, here in the strange magic of the delta, that is the fee - 

I can see the changes in myself over the past year, enacted I believe because of fear, 

Other changes from the same laziness of self I don’t fight; so many years of self-hatred to the awakening of self love, last spring plunged back into the darkness of self hate seeping into interactions with other folks; that if the way forward is running it will eventually be running, but now it is walking and not changing the things I should change because eventually it will be changing. Too much of both, then both at once, left me here at the crossroads and

Here I am at those crossroads, or that night church yard among the gravestones,

Among the sleeping snakes and bright fake flowers, so many the churches with new graves piled in red orange dirt, and

Miring myself in myself is never anything; I have so much, I am so grateful, even the troubles of 2020 were not the troubles of sickness or death for the people that I love and I am thankful - reasoning and puzzling self-image is so small compared to the grandness of life, for the greatness of new eyes in a good world. 

And I don’t know it seems like if a person gets risen up we all get risen up together, hand to hand, or smile to smile and 

Lord help my hard luck soul / sorry old soul /

Autumn Snapshots 3

Autumn Snapshots 1

Sketchbook Pages

This small pocket sketchbook was started back before my residency at Azule in 2019. My sketchbook practice usually involves several sketchbooks and journals at once. This particular sketchbook was completed while at Twelve Oaks this year, and served as a sketchbook and journal together, so many ideas surging and bucking at once during that inspirational period. While digging through sketchbooks mining for ideas, i unearthed this one and it seemed like it might be interesting to share it with y’all.

Summertime Snapshots 2

Early mornings, golden spiderwebs, maypops, the donkey up the road, a kingsnake the cats caught, and more snapshots from around the house.

Summertime Snapshots

Snapshots with my phone from around southern Louisiana. They are mostly from morning walks, the yard and studio.

Sketchbook Pages

Sketchbook Pages

Whenever i get stuck, and increasingly now before i begin really painting during the day, i’ll start sketching. It helps explore ideas and techniques before they become paintings. It also helps me loosen up and get more confidence in the mules i want to paint that day, it takes fewer mistakes if it begins in the sketchbook.

This year i’ve begun using water colors more often, and acrylic on paper instead of only on wood or canvas. India ink has always been a part of the sketchbook process. Growing up, these were the tools i used when playing in my sketchbook. Full-fledged paintings weren’t really something i did, instead it was mostly sketchbook sized and i was really increasingly more interested in photography.

It’s been joyfull and playful to be back working in the sketchbook this way. Hoping to one day rebuild the bridge to the creativity and imagination i took for granted growing up.

These have for the most part all been made in June or July. When i sell work, i usually try to include a lot of lagniappe, including sketchbook pages. Sketchbooks represent periods of time in an artist’s practice, examining what they were interested in at a certain time, what themes and colors and compositions were being explored. When i send the pages away, that work goes with it, which sort of signals a moving on and a full circle, or completion. But it’s good to be able to look back on the past to see what will inform the future, so i’ve begun scanning as much “good work” as i am able to - hopefully that means keeping up with it and sharing more on here.