I was born and raised by Southerners in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My father’s family has lived in the same county in west Tennessee for generations upon generations. We went to Vanderbilt; that is just what we did. I had a brief foray above the Mason-Dixon line, while I pursued graduated studies in Art History at the University of Delaware and later worked in Philadelphia. After about ten years I returned to Louisiana, where I remained for twenty years. It was comforting being surrounded by what was familiar and people who understood what you meant without much explanation. I was fortunate to be able to travel often and explore some interesting parts of the world. The rigorous intellectual training of graduate school combined with the familiarity of living in the South and my travels have all informed my work in different ways.

About 15 years ago, I was invited to be a studio assistant for a workshop in textiles at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. I’d never been to Maine. The landscape knocked my socks off. I dreamt of driving round one of the causeways and getting a glimpse of one of the little islands surrounding Deer Isle for years afterwards. I began coming to Maine often, with increasing frequency and staying longer. Four years ago, it was time to make a change and if I was ever going to be more than a summer resident, the time was then.

I didn’t know what a huge cultural transition I would be making. As I described to one friend, it has been like moving to Paris with only high school French; the first year I managed to embarrass myself at least once a day. And that profound feeling of being "from away" (not to mention the winter learning curve) has been sometimes lonely, sometimes thrilling,  and sometimes delightfully scary: there is just nothing outside of an amusement park like driving/sliding down the River Road with 3' high banks of snow on either side, obscuring all landmarks in the dark, while bumping one's head on the top of the car as one "celebrates" frost heaves. The last  four years have been a time of growth and about learning that good old Yankee strength of self-reliance. Now I keep microscopic track of the weather and  have come to know the tidal chart in the summer almost intuitively. I live at the headwaters of the Pemaquid River in a little village which sits above the Great Salt Bay, a lovely body of water with its own moods.  We choose to stay here because of a commitment of small things: almost daily glimpses of moments of beauty-sunset on the Great Salt Bay as one rounds a corner in the road, the reflections of clouds on the days of still water, the smell of the ocean. It is a rich world.

"Islands are microcosms of life encompassing elemental tensions
between rock and water, between fish and fisherman,
and between 'from here' and 'from away'."

From Islands in Time by Philip Conkling

From The Ritz of the Bayou by Nancy Lemann

“How old are you, honey?” said the man. Then the man spilled a glass of bourbon on me. It was the train from New York to New Orleans, the Southern Crescent. The man started coming apart at the seams in Montgomery, and the rest of Alabama somehow just seemed to make it worse.  “I just want to be somebody’s hero,” said the man.

At the risk of being repetitious, I will say that the man seemed to be falling apart. In the North, the mood among the passengers was strictly business, showing signs of industry and progress; but once we passed the capital and went through green Virginia, a sort of feverish alcoholic atmosphere became the norm and everyone seemed to go into crisis. Styles of dress became eccentric and unkempt, as did modes of behavior . . . It was extremely odd, and later developed into a sort of riot. I would characterize the atmosphere as smoldering. From the Carolinas through to Mississippi.  Someone had a radio playing old music from Memphis and only in the South would there be that kind of crazy kind of jazz, the instruments in languid unison, such old saxophones and jazz, along the Gulf Coast, downtrodden and remote with its unlikely glamour.

But one thing you know---when you are in the South, approaching your hometown---is your ticker’s back in business. This may have some strange effects. Take the man with bourbon, for instance.”