Well, I had an almost fully written newsletter that reverted to its earliest form when I logged in from another device… In other words, a humble welcome to Mercury retrograde!!

I’d written at length about process and story, my Nana and turning points, and how the body weaves into everything. It was ambly–how Piscean.

The gist was that process and story are my work. That in Nana’s death began a path to me shifting patterns and beliefs. Processes and stories, as it were. That I changed, and so did my art. How (I’m especially interested in this) change comes with greater ease when the body is on board. And that in every moment we turn towards the body, rather than shutting it out, is an act of resistance in this fascist, oppressive fuckery.

I still want to talk about Nana and a work I hold very dear to my heart, “Cycles.” I’m sure the other stuff will work its way in too.

I wrote the following a few weeks after her death at the age of ninety-nine, in the Fall of 2023. I think it’s a good snapshot of who Nana was to me.

When I was five, Nana asked my parents if she could take me to horse-riding lessons. They said no, that I was too young. They could discuss it again in a few years, when I was older.

One day, shortly after, I came home bouncing on my heels and declaring that I wanted a horse of my own.

Where had this come from? They’d wanted to know.

Well, Nana had made an overriding executive decision and taken me to my first horse-riding lesson anyway. She stood there beaming, proudly announcing that the trainer said I was a natural.

Her decision was the best thing that could’ve happened for me, for all the unknowns to come, it was horses that would be my bedrock. She gifted that to me.

Nana wasn’t my Nana by blood. She’d technically been my nanny. Nana had responded to an ad Mom got printed in the newspaper a few months before I was born, along with some teens and twenty-somethings looking for shorter-term gigs. Nana was the obvious choice. She was a retired nurse and had parented more than a handful of her own kids.

At the time, she was seventy. This woman had existed for seventy years before coming into my life. Seventy years of which I only learned a fraction about. Nana held her cards close.

I’ve always said that she felt more like a grandparent than my blood grandparents. Maybe this was because she was the third set of hands in parenting me, one of my primary caregivers from the start. I was with her heaps more than any other extended family. 

When I was a toddler and things weren’t going my way, I’d say, “I’m going to call my Nana.” And she’d come. Before she lived across the street and could walk over, she’d drive. Anytime, day or night. She’d come.

She always kept a jar of skittles in her cup holder. She was never short on peppermints and made the best fudge brownies and once painted her kitchen an alarming shade of bright red. It stayed that way for years. She had a green thumb, a collection of porcelain figures, and a hard time getting rid of things. She filled her own shakers with a blend of cinnamon and sugar. She liked it on toast and sweet potatoes. I thought the latter were already sweet enough. She was in her element at horse shows and always did up my long hair in the perfect bun. Held together by excess bobby pins, hairspray, and sometimes my tears. She wore the best pair of skeleton earrings every Halloween and played a mean hand at cards. She only cheated occasionally. She was the definition of sass.

When I was a young teen, she sang this, in her words, naughty song to me about someone wishing they were a little cake of soap, slipping and sliding over everybody’s heinie. A few weeks ago, I belted it to her over a video call. She laughed.

Nana was blue fire. She was a light you couldn’t help but notice.

Days after her death, “Cycles” started unfurling in my head, emerging onto paper and then canvas as an expression of grief and in honor of Nana’s spirit, in honor of her love of horses, of her bold energy, of her punchiness, of her discerning heart, of her presence, of her infiniteness beyond the finite.

And, in bringing this piece into being, things started shifting inside me.

It was as if Nana left her corporeal form and came to me, making herself known by energetically and emphatically saying, Do the thing. Don’t half-ass it. Take this practice seriously. And maybe that’s—unbeknownst to me until consideration right now—in part to how “serious play” has become such an integral piece to my work. She was serious about taking action, but it was never without the element of play, of trying, of experiencing joy.

She once glued a tooth back into her mouth with crazy glue. She later went to the dentist. She learned how to drive a probably, like, 40-foot motorhome, and when she knocked out half a cement gate post, I’m pretty sure she said it wasn’t her. She once gifted me a treasure, only to be reached after unwrapping twenty-one boxes within one another. She cackled the whole time. She took action, in practice and in joy. It wasn’t about perfection. Except for my hairbuns at horse shows.

I understood that I wanted to choose my art in the way that Nana had chosen that shade of red for her kitchen, with the unhesitating confidence that it was for her.

And so I did. The end.

Just kidding.

What I found out was that choosing my art actually meant that I first needed to choose the practice.

Which didn’t mean hunkering down in the studio, pushing harder. What it meant was embarking on a very slow (years-long) ongoing process of writing different stories–of learning to relate differently, of being with myself differently.

When I was writing this newsletter the first time, I was sort of struggling to find my point. Like, what was I getting at?? Where exactly was I going? I wrote a lot more about what this ongoing process has looked like in relationship to my body, which felt quite important. But now that it’s vanished into the ethers, I have the opportunity to catch a different thread.

What I’m really wanting to convey is that Nana was a badass. And I want to express my gratitude to this woman who has helped shape me both in life and through her spirit beyond. That feels important.

“Cycles” became my sort of eulogy for Nana, and the work set me off on a path I couldn’t have imagined prior.

Is it weird to say that a piece of art has ultimately made me a better person?

That, in the energy of her saying, Don’t half-ass it, I started stepping more and more fully into myself.

Don’t half-ass what’s in your heart.

I guess that’s the real gist of all of this, that’s maybe where I needed to get to.

Okay, I’ve got some other heart-oriented goodies to share.

Hooper Arts News

• I have a year-long “Zodiacal Print Club” in the works! I’ll be releasing more official information on this in the next week or so–but I’m very excited!

• My website is going to launch next week–eek!

• Plus, I’ll have an Etsy shop linked for little wonders to purchase. I’ll be doing semi-regular shop drops there.

• I have SO many works in process, like 7 larger scale and several little guys. I’ve gotten into the groove of incorporating embroidery through canvas and paper and working in lots of water-based oils.

I’ll say it again. Don’t half-ass what’s in your heart.

In practice,

Mar