flower fields

This Friday I’ll be showing some new works at Fieldwork in Atascadero, CA.

FLOWER FIELDS will be on view August 7th, with live music and good times from 6-9 PM at 5880 Entrada Ave.

I’d love to see you there if you’re nearby.

The last time I was on the central coast was 6 years ago, before the highway washed out. It was late spring and the poppies were in full bloom.

We were driving from the Olympic Peninsula down the coast to Southern California, then eventually back up east side of the mountains, in the Subaru packed to the gills with camping gear, a water tank, several film cameras, and two already road-weary chihuahuas. Making our way down highway 1 south from Monterey, the oil light and check engine light started flashing and J quickly threw the car in neutral and shut the engine off as we managed to coast to a turnout near Salmon Creek (maybe the only turnout for miles that you can’t see the ocean from, which wasn’t our primary concern in the moment, but worth noting). We spent a couple hours stranded there with no cell reception and the only call box nearby out of order, while several Tesla drivers pointedly avoided looking our way, and I mostly cried on the side of the road with our 5 month old puppy in my arms.

Eventually, help and hope arrived in a yellowed old motor home with a bumper sticker on the rear window that read UNDERCOMPENSATING.

The oil drain cap had fallen out, but miraculously was caught by the skid plate, and the suntanned and barefoot young couple that stopped to help set out up and down the stretch of coast along with their cat to find the nearest place with motor oil in stock. Over an hour later, after we started to doubt their return, the old RV rounded the bend and they got us back on the road again, with luckily no other major mishaps on the rest of the journey.

There’s few other moments for me that stand out as such a stark reminder of the kindness of humans and strangers, and my memory sometimes drifts to that day when everything seems hopelessly cruel and I remember that it’s not, it never is.

Back in my late teens, I spent many days covering a whole lot of miles up and down California in a rusty old Toyota Corolla station wagon that was older than I was. Taking some risks with how long I could go without stopping for gas, convincing a shop to sell me an odd number of tires (I had to sign a waiver), turning on my hazards to crawl up the Grapevine at 30 mph, and getting lost alone on a dark highway more than once, but somehow it always worked out.

Earlier than that, there were many weekends traveling up and down the coast with my dad and sister for surf contests. Days that usually started with 4 am donuts and watery hot chocolate, hitting the road before light, and ended with sun- and wind-bitten faces, covered in sand and salt.

A lot of these works are an homage to these stretches of landscape and memory.

[there will also be a selection of unframed small drawings and sketches]

Thank you for being here.

with love,

K