I love being playful with ideas of inside/outside or above/below, contrasting and overlapping these opposing concepts. I draw or take photographs of images through the surface of water, for example, embracing what plays subtle tricks on my eye. I love incorporating the re...
Iris Cushman
Posted on December 22nd, 2021
Sometimes I'm a bit of a hoarder. I'm afraid of losing memories and I hold on to objects to hold on to those memories. I watched a documentary that showed at one point an African artist’s studio. There was an area where he kept larger supplies and because of the warm clim...
Iris Cushman
Posted on December 22nd, 2021
The thing is, I have and have always had a problem with our mainstream’s cultural entitlement to and spiritual disconnect from the creatures they eat.
When I was old enough to understand that what I was eating used to be a living creature, I became sad in what felt like...
Iris Cushman
Posted on December 22nd, 2021
I'm making a new ceramic piece. It's not what I planned because once I started working my plan felt heavy and boring. Instead I felt moved to create something else. I'm not sure that it's the "safest" method to use for the firing technique I want, but I also don't really ...
Iris Cushman
Posted on December 10th, 2021
I had my first experience tweaking my back today. At 40 years old, this must be a rite of passage.
I'm lying on the floor with my right arm draped exaggeratedly across my chest in an attempt to discourage future spasms, watching clouds drifting by through the large bow ...
Iris Cushman
Posted on December 10th, 2021
I identify with dirt, the earth, the ground that roots stretch through. I identify with the dark, quiet everywhereness. I extend outward, nowhere in particular, already everywhere, soothed in darkness. Listening, sensing. Mingling with rocks and burrowing creatures. Being...
Iris Cushman
Posted on December 10th, 2021
This rabbit feels the sun and the wind and the rain. She watches plants and flowers growing, bending, stretching, fading, and falling. She's stirred by the cycles of seasons and by life and death and renewal. And she expresses everything she feels by moving and stretching...
Iris Cushman
Posted on June 14th, 2017
Finally home in the last hour of sunlight. I procrastinated until the grass was almost 3 feet high before rolling my eyes and dragging the mower to the backyard. Now there are thick, itchy clumps of grass cuttings to gather up. With only gloves and a recycling bin as my t...
Iris Cushman
Posted on June 2nd, 2017
Today has been one long promise of a walk, "later." A surprisingly calm promise with full intention to follow through, lacking the normal guilt that lurks around if we miss a morning walk. Maybe it's the on-again-off-again rain that prolongs my equilibrium even as it disr...
Iris Cushman
Posted on May 29th, 2017
I'm opening the refrigerator after a long day, about to start cooking dinner, and a pure feeling sneaks up suddenly in my heart: "Ahh... I just wish for calm." And a startling connection to this man, to his own single-minded pursuit of calm. All this while experiencing a ...
Iris Cushman
Posted on January 30th, 2017
