What Do You Take When You Move To a Different Country?

November 26, 2023 in thoughts

What do you take with you when you move to a different country?

Here’s what you don’t take:

Your library of books, collected over the years, gifted and inherited encyclopedias, dictionaries, and atlases.

Your collection of music on tapes and vinyl records. Those don’t make it.

Your friends, the ones you grew up with.

Your entire history: the city you were born in, the street you walked down to get to school, the park you hung out with your friends at, the favorite shortcuts to all the usual places.

The smells and sounds that cue you into feeling safe and secure because you are home.

Your accomplishments, your credentials, your work experience, how important you are. This gets erased when you cross the border, like etch-a-sketch.

Some like the clean slate.

Here’s what you take:

A whole suitcase of memories. You stuff the memory about leaving your home into a special secret compartment under the rest of them, to be dug up much later.

Only the best of your clothes. These, you later find, do not match the climate or style of your destination, but they’re the best you’ve got.

Lungs full of air. You inhale as much as you can when you leave and do not exhale until years later.

Only the most important documents.

Only the most important art. You will make more from the air in your lungs and the memories in the suitcase.

Money. If you have any. You bring all of it. Some of it has been traded for gold jewelry because gold will be sold later. For money, when you run out of it.

Language. Surrounded by foreign sounds, you keep your language preserved in a snow globe. Sometimes, you shake it a little to see the snowflakes fall and make sure it still works.

And so, as you embark on this odyssey into the unknown, your suitcase heavy with memories and the weight of what you've left behind, a new chapter begins. The books may be absent from your shelves, but their stories fill your mind. The songs from your tapes and records may be silenced, but the soundtrack of your life evolves with the unfamiliar music of your new surroundings.

Friends and family may be left in the rearview mirror, but you carry those connections, a security blanket woven from shared laughter and tragedies. Colorful threads run through it, like the streets of your faraway hometown, warming you on especially lonely nights.

Money buys time and opens doors. And then there's the language, your linguistic snow globe. Its quiet snowfall grounds you while, day after day, you mold your voice into unfamiliar shapes.

In this journey, you find that what you take and what you leave behind is rarely a physical object. As your eyes adjust to the harsh sunlight and your ears learn to ignore the background noise of the new land, you hold on to the intangibles. The smell of tangerine on New Year’s Eve, the emerald color of the Black Sea in April, the way a Ukrainian word fills your chest and makes you write poetry:

Коралі. Горнятко. Дівчина.

Creating your new immigrant identity may make you feel lost and disoriented. You will miss people and places. You will question who you are and whether you will ever fit in. But trust me, you will make it. You brought so much with you, a whole life’s worth.

P.S. Happy 20th immigration anniversary to my family!

Unity - cityscapes from Ukraine

July 23, 2023 in thoughts, yupo

Back in 2014, I did a series of paintings reflecting on the cities of Ukraine. I called it “Unity,” the wishful thinking motif that many Ukrainians shared when Russia invaded the eastern Ukrainian area of Donbas and took Crimea. These paintings were filled with mourning, longing, and hope. And memories of the Ukraine I had left 11 years earlier. I wasn’t able to revisit it until 2017.

A lot of the paintings look moody and obscure, and some even suggest fires, smoke, and loss. Or am I imagining it, looking back at what I created 9 years later, through the angry eyes of a Ukrainian watching my country being wiped off the face of the Earth by the terrorist state of Russia?

Whatever it is, these paintings haunt me now. Here is Kharkiv, somber and tall. Dnipro, with a red open wound, Lviv, aged and tired of caring for those sheltering in its beautiful architecture. Kyiv, the Golden Gate still miraculously intact.

The art technique I came up with and used on this series also feels non-accidental. I would first cover the panel (prepared with a special paper) with conte crayon marks, effectively ending the blank page paralysis. Then came the thick layer of intense, juicy watercolor. After it dried (which took a while, since the Yupo paper is essentially plastic), I began the archeological process of uncovering the silhouette of my Ukrainian cities. Parts of the scenes got scraped away to reveal layers of ghostly shapes and atmospheric moodiness. Others have the preserved intensity of the original layer of paint. And some I reworked over and over, removing all of it and adding it back, until the translucent strata spoke of my history the way I wanted it to.

I haven’t been to all of of these places. Some of the reference images came from my friends and family, some from historic postcards, some from internet strangers. And yet, all of them felt…native to me. The architecture, from the cold Soviet neoclassicism to copper-roofed Ukrainian Baroque, is all mine. It is the architecture of these cities that inspired me to become an artist, and then a passionate architect.

And every time a Russian missile destroys a Ukrainian building, a part of my heart breaks.

A 4-Euro Breakfast

January 26, 2023 in thoughts, urban sketching

It was my fourth morning in Berlin, the morning when all the German I studied in high school and college finally started coming back to me. The language of Rilke and Schopenhauer floated to the surface of my brain in soupy chunks that I had to fish for and prod with the help of the Google Translate app. A German alphabet soup. Umlaut, spazieren, zum Geburgstag viel Gluck, displacing the few Danish words I had learned the week before.

Berlin Dom watercolor sketch — Berliner Dom

Berlin was a stop on my journey from Copenhagen to Khmelnytskiy, and a part of me carefully closing chapter after chapter of my life. I needed closure. I pretended like I wasn’t in Berlin for my ex, but I was.

I didn’t like Berlin. Too big, too similar to the Soviet vibe of eastern Ukraine. Too-wide roads with too-fast cars. An odd amalgamation of Soviet concrete and American car-centrism.

I stayed at the hotel recommended by my ex, a nice enough mid-range outfit with a Spanish theme. I suppose all this “ethnic” flavor was a way to differentiate yourself in the big city, but to me, as a tourist, it seemed silly. German was ethnic enough.

From my room on an upper floor, I could see the empty street below. My main memories of that room are associated with dating-app chats, conveniently updated to my new, albeit very temporary, location.

There was a very bearded, very serious guy, very much into Iron & Wine.

There was a guy with a shaved head and a writing style that put me on edge. I did not want him to show me around at all.

There was a guy who volunteered to bring me some drinks from a nearby bodega. I declined, but only after I satisfied my polyglot curiosity about what Berliners call a small convenience store that is open late into the night. Späti. A cute, endearing name pronounced as “sh-patty.”

There was, still, the guy I met in Copenhagen. We kept the casual connection up, I don’t know why. I think I have a hard time letting go.

And in the upside-down world of the U.S., there was, asleep during most of my waking hours in Europe, a good-looking American I knew I’d have to see again at least once.

I found the little breakfast place on Google, a bit of a hike from the hotel, but the glowing reviews of what one could get for €4 made it seem worth it. Besides, did I have anywhere else to be?

I checked out of the hotel, put my backpack on my shoulders, and followed the directions along the wide stretch of the road which made me feel very small. A tiny, insignificant, uprooted divorcee, lightheaded from all of this newfound space.

My route was all but deserted on this weekday April morning. I found the cafe, no longer deserted, and started deciphering the menu board.

Here it was, the 4-Euro breakfast celebrated in the internet reviews. I read it off the board to the woman behind the counter. She asked something to confirm, probably how do I like my eggs, and I said “ja” and smiled. Good enough.

I took the table marker and found a spot at an empty table outside.

I sipped my coffee and surveyed the wide-open street. Maybe it’s the lack of foliage in this early spring period that made it look so big and barren. Maybe it’s the master planning philosophy, visible only in plan, of concentrating the greenery in the shared yards of the apartment buildings, instead of in front of them. The cafe was on the ground floor of such an apartment building.

Anchored behind the bistro table and very quickly full, I didn’t mind this openness. I felt safe, watching people wander in and out of the cafe, talking, shuffling chairs. This was my last morning in Berlin. Today, I planned on boarding the train to my next stop: Prague.

An older man came out of the cafe with a coffee in his hands and looked around for a place to sit. He came up to my table and motioned at the seat across from me: “Okay?”

I smiled and nodded. We spent the next few minutes aware of each other’s existence, once in a while manifested in a small smile when our eyes met. If we spoke the same language, this would have been a short but pleasant small talk about where I’m from, where I’m going and what he is up to today. He looked like a man who had a family, probably somewhere up in those apartment buildings. He would have told me he had two children and the younger one was a girl. I would have said I have three back home in California.

It felt like we said all of this, but telepathically. With eye contact and limited range of facial expressions.

He finished his coffee, got up, and with a nod, departed to cross the street.

I went back to looking up information about the museums I was about to visit in Berlin, before my train to Prague. I was going to Museum Island.

I was pulled out of my deep dive into the internet by the same man. He was standing in front of the table with a bundle of pink long-stem roses. He took one of them and offered it to me, saying in English, which he probably practiced all of the time between leaving the cafe and coming back,

“Have a great day!”

Surprised, I said “thank you” and smiled as he walked away.

I watched him cross the street again, the rest of the roses gripped in his right hand. What was the occasion?

Was it a random act of kindness? European hospitality? A flirtation from a middle-aged German? The universe trying to tell me…what?

I finished my breakfast with plenty left on my plate (that 4-Euro breakfast is the bomb). And now, I needed to do something with this long-stemmed rose. Sure, I could trek through Berlin with my backpack, a canvas tote full of books in one hand, and a meter-long rose in the other.

That wouldn’t do.

I opened my translator app and looked up how to say “Can you please make it shorter?” Then, I walked back into the cafe and addressed the woman behind the counter again, with the most German I’ve said thus far the entire trip. Miraculously, she understood, took the rose, and, snip-snip, handed it back to me shorter.

I felt such tremendous success, like I just had a 15-minute conversation with her about politics or contemporary art. All of my years studying German culminated in:

“Können Sie es bitte kürzer machen?”

Elated, I walked out of the cafe, put the rose in my canvas tote, and headed for Museum Island.

What about the ex?

We met up for lunch a few days earlier. It was the first time since I left for the U.S. many years ago, the first time since we’ve “gone our separate ways.”

I’m pretty sure all our ways are separate. But that’s another topic.

We haven’t seen each other for 16 years, the number of years we both were when we met for the first time. Something about the rhyming of history.

I spent a lot of those years thinking about the alternate reality in which we did not break up. They say losing a long-term relationship brings on full-blown grief, and the stages of grief are cyclical. It’s less of an orderly procession from the first stage to the last and more of a chaotic bouncing between all of them. I was forever stuck in the denial gear.

Our Berlin lunch was pleasant. We assessed each other, comparing the real-life people whose lives kept going to the preserved specimens of each other we carried as souvenirs.

Did you get taller?

I guess so.

I also got a whole lot less shy. He wasn’t used to me looking at him with such intense directness, as if he was a sculpture I was examining at a museum.

We spent some time catching up. He had gotten married, I beat him to it, and then also got divorced. I had three kids, he had not had any yet. We were each living strange immigrant lives. He spoke way more German.

And when the lunch was over, so was the angst. Cycle complete.

Chapter closed.

Thanks to the random German man and his pink rose, I did have a good day. At the end of that day, I felt ready to leave Berlin, with its wide boulevards and miniature spatis. It was time to move on, accept untethered gifts from strangers, and go have more adventures.

I held that rose with a smile on my face, and as I boarded the departing train, I felt even taller.

2022

December 31, 2022 in thoughts, sketchbook, urban sketching

Ever since I started blogging back in 2009 or ‘10, I have enjoyed the annual tallying of life events. And now, my winter doesn’t feel complete without a “year in review” post.

So this is it. Get yourself a cup of coffee, or perhaps a more…reflective…drink ;)

I realize that these types of posts are quite self-indulgent, and that you have a reality completely different from mine - but I hope you will still find some entertainment and insight in what I’m about to write. Sharing our experiences is one of the most human things.

Looking back at this year about to end, two things stand out to me: a tragic one and a happy one. I wrote about both of them at length in my “Love in the Time of War” post. The war in Ukraine and my wedding.

Here is the rest.

January

Sometime in late December ‘21, I get asked if I’d like to teach architecture at the local university. Surprising as this is, I have always wondered what it would be like to teach at the higher education level. It was one of the career choices I considered at some earlier part of my life but never pursued.

So, after some deliberation and check-ins with my business and life partners, I say yes. It helps that the commitment is limited to one class, one semester, very much defined scope. Let’s see what it’s all about.

Due to leftover covid policies, the first two weeks of the class are online. It’s brutal. I spend a full week before the class starts learning the ropes of the university’s remote learning delivery system and preparing my course content.

Thankfully, I’ve had a lot of virtual meeting practice by now. The very first class, although nerve-wracking for me, goes smoothly. I feel like I just finished a marathon.

sacramento state faculty card — Sac State card

They call me “Professor Watts.”

There is a sense of…not quite responsibility…maybe debt that I feel when it comes to teaching. Like I am trying to single-handedly undo the trauma of architecture school that I experienced.

Most of my students are women. How many female architecture professors have I had? Maybe one. How many of them were first-generation immigrants? None.

I know that it’s a huge task to represent, be approachable, and instill a sense of “this, too, shall pass” into the very abstract and self-important world that higher architecture education is. But I am proud of myself for moving the needle just a little tiny bit.

All of that being said, I do not re-enlist to teach another semester. My architecture practice needs my undivided attention and the stress of keeping up with both was getting to be too much.

I feel a blog post on the power of saying “no” brewing.

February

February starts with a celebration of sparkSTUDIO’s birthday. My firm turns 2. We light sparklers!

celebration with sparklers in a virtual meeting — sparkSTUDIO birthday celebration

The rest of the month is taken by preparations for my upcoming wedding (and that of my brother, who decides to schedule his wedding two weeks before mine). Getting ready for two weddings at the same time is exhausting.

On February 24, Russia strikes Ukraine. My heart sinks. I am disoriented and paralyzed for weeks.

March

watercolor sketch of yevgenia and erik — I used this sketch of Erik and myself on our wedding invitations

The war spills into March, and every month since. As a Ukrainian immigrant, I am struck by the survivor’s guilt, a particularly painful variety of an alternate reality. It could have been me sheltering my children in bathtubs, basements, and subway stations. Those could have been my brothers taking up arms and defending our country. I could have been living in any of the targeted cities - I used to be a regular on the overnight Odesa-Kyiv train.

The guilt makes me freeze up, strapped to the steady drip of news. Most of them bad, with an occasional injection of hope and even humor. Ukrainians have a sense of humor even in the darkest times. I can’t move.

I go through the motions, because the alternative is the depression paralysis. I get up and take the kids to school and I work. But any plans beyond tomorrow seem to be locked up beyond a door I can’t open. Today matters. Next week? Who knows what happens next week.

And yet, the weddings do happen. My brother gets married, and two weeks later, so do I.

My wedding is, of course, way better than his ;)

tea and sketching — Tea time sketch at the New York Edition hotel

April

Our New York City honeymoon is beautiful. This is my third time here:

First, just an aerial view of Lady Liberty and an overnight stay at a motel as a refugee on the way to California.

Second, many years later, several days at an architecture conference, my first solo trip after being married for eleven years. The trip when I finally realized I had to get a divorce or else I wouldn’t make it.

And now, the third time, a new beginning. A perfect bookend to a chapter in my life.

We come back home in time to celebrate Katia turning 10. She is such an amazing, beautiful, bright human.

May

May is busy with work. Seriously, looking at my photos from May, it’s pretty much just snapshots of “existing conditions” (industry term for already-built stuff), basements, attics, measurements, sketches, and pictures of my kids sprinkled throughout. It still blows my mind to see this evidence of a functioning, successful architecture firm that I started from scratch.

June

June brings Father’s Day, Erik’s birthday, and my dad’s birthday. It’s basically a father-figure conspiracy month. Erik and I take a short trip to Bodega Bay, a sleepy coastal town with ties to Hitchcock’s The Birds. (My cinephile husband thinks of all of our destinations in terms of movies).

July

Summer is in full swing when July comes. School is out, summer camp is in. Erik plays a show, and it’s great, despite his protests. We take the kids to a production of Beauty and the Beast, starring Erik’s daughter, who is an amazing singer herself.

August

The main event of August is my son turning 13. He is tall, handsome, and full of mystery. I see him turning into a young man before my eyes. (And all of my kids just luuurve Starbucks. A new one was built from scratch and opened across the street from our house. Highlight of the year ;) ).

September

September, as usual, means my birthday. I give myself the gift of a few days off and an encaustics webinar. I’ve wanted to try encaustics for a long time, but couldn’t swing it when the kids were younger (hot surface, blow torches, fumes…you know). But now, I buy a live course by an encaustic artist I’ve been watching for a while (and I once literally begged her to sell me a small demo piece during her Seattle studio visit).

Encaustics is fun. I learn the basics, and very quickly become frustrated with the slow pace of the course, along with the artist’s unwillingness to share a more “advanced” technique that is her signature style.

Through a little bit of googling and reverse engineering, I learn that technique, too.

I vent to my husband about this artist’s stinginess…Which I’ve encountered before. Artists holding their cards close to the vest for fear of getting copied, or somehow taken advantage of. Trade secrets. Spy games. Scarcity mindset.

I think generosity is a better way to live. Don’t you?

We return to Bodega Bay, this time with our kids. We stay at a “modern yurt” house, which is made up of two round “yurt” volumes connected by a more conventional rectangular core. It’s a curious place - at night, you can see the stars in the round skylight at the top of the yurt, and when it rains, you hear the rain all around you.

October

In October, we host an epic yard sale (the kids loooove yard sales) and my musician husband plays another show. It’s a blast. I love his voice and the passion he brings into everything he does.

And did I mention he published a book? I watch him work on it, methodically, little by little, on weekends and after work, for almost a year. He reads it to me at night, to iron out the language and get my feedback (though I do tend to sometimes fall asleep when he reads to me ;).

And while the book is not completely autobiographical, a lot of it allows me glimpses into his mind, both when he was growing up and now. It’s a well-told coming-of-age story. The man is a fantastic storyteller, yet another talent in his arsenal.

What else to do during presentations but sketch the beautiful architecture? Julia Morgan would approve.

The last weekend of October is taken by the Monterey Design Conference - a work-related getaway to Asilomar. It’s simultaneously relaxing and intense. I miss my husband and kids within the first two days. I sketch furiously, feeling my tired brain stretch out and enjoy the moment.

November

We celebrate Ella’s birthday in November, just after Halloween, which is also the 19th anniversary of my immigration. I do some mental math and realize that in just a few years, the scales will reach an equilibrium- I will have spent as much of my life in the U.S. as back in Ukraine.

December

Once December hits, I am ready for winter break. I “save up” vacation time throughout the year to take two full uninterrupted weeks off around the holidays. By American standards, this is indulgent. By European ones, it’s laughable.

Whatever it is, I enjoy unplugging from social media and letting my email go unanswered.

We have way too many holiday parties, between various parents and other family members. I feel a meltdown coming: me plus lots of people, plus no me-time, plus stuff I “have to” do, minus a quiet place to do the stuff I want to do - equals low, low, low mood.

Black and red sunflowers, a meditation on the war in Ukraine.

I wish I were a different person, someone who loves being there for others, someone who enjoys spending their “free” time interacting. Instead, I long for solitude. I feel the need to save my energy, whatever little I have left, and burrow into some dark, warm corner. Maybe I’m secretly a small hibernating animal.

And yet, I also love this time of year. I enjoy giving gifts. I crave the labor-intense holiday foods I grew up with: kutya (the cold and sweet Ukrainian “Christmas soup”); kulebyaka (the cabbage-stuffed savory pie); apple strudel with paper-thin crust and powdered sugar; red caviar on everything. It’s a comfort thing for the angry, hurting, homesick Ukrainian in me.

Two colors dominate the Ukrainian culture. No, they are not the blue sky and golden wheat fields of the now-ubiquitous flag, though those are also important. In the long history of Ukraine (longer than that of Russia, if you can believe it), the two colors are red and black.

Black stands for tragedy and sorrow. There has been plenty of that, usually thanks to some king or another, who decides to come, conquer and destroy our land. This war is nothing new.

Red stands for love and happiness. Love of a mother for her child, love of a woman for her man, love of a man for the land he was born in. All these loves are cross-stitched with a red thread into our lives.

And that’s what I think about when I look back at last year: black and red patterns. Love running through all of it, like a river.

What does it cost to be generous?

December 07, 2022 in thoughts, urban sketching

What does it cost to be generous?

I liked teaching art classes because it allowed me to share the knowledge and skill that I have in abundance with others. It allowed me to be generous.

Generosity comes from a human desire to help. Especially to help those that you can see need your help.

Is it generosity that prompts you to put an extra $10 bill into the collection basket as it passes you? Or the hope of redemption?

Is generosity simply camouflaged selfishness? Do you expect a payoff the next day, week, or years from now?

Do you do it because your cup overflows and you can afford to share? Because the risk is low?

Is generosity altruistic?

Is the warm feeling in your stomach, feeling good about yourself as a human being, is that feeling the payoff you count on? What if your generosity falls on flat barren land and you don’t see any results or hear any “thank you”s? What then?

Lotta's Fountain San Francisco watercolor urban sketch — Lotta’s Fountain - San Francisco

For me, the most precious resources are time and attention, and the ultimate act of generosity is giving my time and undivided attention to another human.

What about you?

In this “season of giving,” what currency do you trade for the warm feeling of having done something generous? Is it money? Time? Kind words? Professional advice?

What does it cost to be generous?

Love in the time of War

April 20, 2022 in thoughts, urban sketching

“I woke up to the news” is never the beginning of a happy story. On February 24th, I woke up to the news that Russia invaded Ukraine, beyond Crimea and the Donbas region.

Yes, but what does that mean? What it means is reading my high school friend saying that she and her family woke up to explosions heard in their apartment in Kyiv suburbs. Learning that at 5 o’clock in the morning, she had to yank her scared toddlers out of bed and hide them in the bathtub. Seeing the face of her 6-year-old son, old enough to understand that he and his family are under the threat of death, and not wanting to die.

I track the updates from Ukraine, unable to focus on anything else for weeks. I have to explain my state of mind to the kids, who notice that things are not okay. I show them the map of Ukraine, with the latest strikes identified in blood red.

This is Crimea, where my aunt Ella lives. This is Odesa, where I spent countless summers with my family and went to architecture school. This is Kyiv, the capital, where my friend and her two small children are hiding in the bathtub.

It doesn’t take long for my children to grasp the gist of the situation. Katia, my 10-year-old, puts it this way:

“So, if Russia succeeds, your childhood will be destroyed.”

…

It feels like I have been holding my breath since February 24. A behavior that makes sense underwater, but for how long? My wedding is scheduled for the month after, I’d have to come up for air long enough for that. The thought of postponing the wedding floats before my eyes like a dark patch of seaweed. How can I be happy when my people are suffering? I only have anger and sadness, and I can’t breathe.

Daily calls and messenger check-ins. Are you okay? Do you need anything? How can I help?

Helplessness settles in, despite the frenzy to gather humanitarian aid and money.

I feel paralyzed. My psychologist friend later tells me that it’s normal, it’s just my reaction to trauma. Some run away or fight, I freeze up. And I know that all too well, this time reminds me of my previous “defining life events,” the scopes of which were a lot more personal. The familiar dreams of being swallowed by a giant tsunami wave come back.

But what is MY trauma, compared to that of my friends and family going through this nightmare now? I push it aside, and it sinks heavily to the murky bottom. Something to dig up later.

Among the stream of war news, I come across photos of a frontline wedding near Kyiv. Bride and groom, both wearing camo, bow their heads while other soldiers are holding tactical helmets over their heads. The commentary from the western reporters says something about this gesture protecting the newlyweds from the weather, but I know it to be an old Orthodox wedding tradition. In a church, these would have been crowns held over the bride and groom’s heads. They would have been crowned, at least for the day.

And it strikes me how beautiful and life-affirming love in the time of war is. How this private miracle is also an act of resistance.

Russian warship, go f**k yourself.

I am getting married.

I push myself up to the surface, and inhale.

The wedding is beautiful. I’ve never thought I’d say something like this, the non-conformist and skeptic that I am, but I love it. My wedding gown has a train. A train! The only other time I’ve worn a big dress with a train was when I was 6 or 7, dressed up as The Snow Queen.

I choose a small hairpiece with a sunflower in it and buy a bucket of sunflowers the day before the wedding. We hang a Ukrainian flag in the backyard where the wedding takes place. Small gestures, all of these, and my heart hurts with a strange mixture of happiness and sadness.

sunflowers at a wedding — Photo by Chris Bogard

No one holds tactical helmets above our heads as we say our vows, only close friends and family watching us and late California sun forming halos around us. Time flies by at warp speed, and here we are, married, flying to New York City.

New York is a plan B. Plan A, dreamt up before the war, was London. For a number of reasons, we adjust, shift gears and go to New York.

And the week in NYC is glorious. I feel guilty, again, having only skimmed the bare minimum of main updates from Ukraine, since a few days before the wedding. And yet, I owe it to myself and my husband to be…present. To celebrate love in the time of war. To breathe.

Which is what we do. We enjoy the unbelievable views from our corner room on the 38th floor. We don’t make plans and we do what we feel like at the moment. We eat like there’s no tomorrow. We breathe in the city, where spring is unfolding before our eyes, until we feel intoxicated by it. We breathe in each other, both comforted and thrilled by the intense sense of belonging.

View from the hotel window - The Manhattan Edition. Special thanks to the blue and yellow at top right.

Time stretches and flows, like a thick lazy river, and for a long moment, I bask in this private miracle of love.

People who have lived through tragedies know how to cherish the moments of happiness.

In the quiet alone minutes, of course, I can hear the low electric hum of worry and anxiety. It didn’t go anywhere, and I know I will be back to face it soon.

Our last day in New York brings warm sunny weather, and we watch as everything at once begins to bloom. I can almost hear Vivaldi’s Spring in the background, which, along with the honking of cars and rattling of the subway, forms the soundtrack to the complex mixture of feelings inside me. I’m sad to leave - this always happens after a good trip - and I look forward to hugging my children and watching them unwrap souvenirs. I feel the presence of war and pain, just behind my springtime honeymoon glow. And I am so happy.

Flatiron Building sketch — Morning sketch of the Flatiron Building

We land back in Sacramento late at night and then wake up to the news that just a few hours later, Sacramento experienced a mass shooting. And…I don’t even blink. My Ukrainian friends call me to ask if I am okay, and it feels wrong. It feels insignificant compared to their reality. This is America, of course there are mass shootings. Just another day. As Erik puts it later, “it’s easier to get a gun than health insurance.” Anything wrong with this picture?

By this time, I feel like I am standing in front of the dam, which barely holds back the volume of information about Ukraine that I stepped out of just a week or two ago. I lean into it, and that’s enough to get swept away with its force. The discoveries of Bucha happen. Civilians, children are killed indiscriminately. Women and girls, raped and murdered. Full-blown genocide of my people is happening at the same time as spring in New York City.

All of this hits me head-on, the injustice and tragedy of it impossible to fully grasp. Lara, my trusty psychologist friend, advises me not to rush getting back up to speed, she tells me to wait and enjoy the honeymoon glow as long as possible… but it’s too late. My survivor’s guilt doesn’t let me last in the information vacuum.

And in a strange way, this time, as opposed to the beginning of the war, I am ready for it. I can handle it. Resilience, the sustained strength to resist and recover, kicks in.

There is still anger, hurt, and worry, but the learned helplessness and shock are gone. It is time to act. And my act right now is sending financial help. My hometown of Khmelnytskyi has become a pit stop on the way from Eastern Ukraine to Poland. A lot of my family over there is involved in providing temporary housing to refugees and transportation to take them to the border and deliver humanitarian aid. So that effort has become the direction to focus on. And you can help, too. 100% of revenue from my art sales is going directly to Ukraine.

Explosions of ammunition and unstoppable blooming of flowers, brutal death and miraculous newborns, families broken apart by the war and brand new weddings in spite of it. All of this, at the same time, this spring. Cue in Vivaldi.

My Landlady Was Right All Along

February 05, 2022 in sketchbook, thoughts

Hope called me back in two months.

“Are you still looking for a room?”

I wasn’t, as I was living in the back of a Pepto Bismol-colored home of an old lady by the name of Olga, and sharing the greasiest kitchen ever with an Indian grad student.

“I will knock a hundred down.”

This made the rent manageable at $450 a month, while being an added expense compared to the $350 I was paying Olga.

Olga had odd friends, who would occasionally attend her front room parties, where she liked to show me off: behold, a foreign architecture student. Tell us something interesting.

“Okay.”

I wrote down the address but I didn’t quite know how to get there without a car. Hope offered to pick me up at a BART station.

She drove a small, boxy silver-gray car, the make and model of which I do not remember. My memory of it now looks like a retired, slightly worse-for-wear Delorean from Back to the Future. She wore her hair in a tight silver ponytail and took off her pitch-black sunglasses for a second to say “Hi.” We sized each other up.

Through a maze of highways and interview questions, we made it to her house in Oakland Hills. I could not believe my eyes: this house belonged on cute postcards, with its ochre walls, dark green shutters, and carefully trimmed rose bushes in the front. It was a stark contrast to Olga’s Pepto Bismol.

I had a hard time keeping track of all the rooms Hope led me through, finally settling at the round wrought iron table of a brightly lit dining room. She had a handwritten agreement that fit on a single page of her legal pad.

I moved into the ground floor bedroom two weeks later. Olga wasn’t pleased and she kept the deposit, alleging that I clogged the toilet and flooded the bathroom. That’d be something interesting to tell her friends about the foreign architecture student.

My bedroom in Oakland Hills was the largest I’ve ever had, to date. It looked into the terraced backyard, with a hot tub right outside the bedroom and a huge collection of mature orchid plants in glazed blue pots. On cold nights, Hope wrapped her orchids in sheets to protect them from the weather. The rest of the plants were regularly maintained by the gardener.

Hope lived in this two-story (plus basement) house with her big blind dog Seamus. He was old and friendly and I’m not sure I heard him bark even once. Seamus liked to spend his time in Hope’s upstairs bedroom, an even larger room with blackout shades and a built-in TV cabinet. Hope’s favorite TV show was Six Feet Under.

Getting to the campus from Oakland Hills was an adventure. I walked down the steep streets to the nearest bus station, which took a good 25-30 minutes. The bus would then take me to another bus station, where I would transfer to another bus, and ride another half hour to UC Berkeley. Then the uphill trek to the top of the campus and the seventh floor of Wurster Hall, the worster building on campus when it comes to aesthetic choices. I could never relate to Brutalism.

The way back to the room was exactly in reverse, now a 30-minute climb back to the house from the bus station. It may have had something to do with me missing classes at a higher rate than before.

Hope was not exactly a ray of sunshine. She had a weekly therapy appointment near McArthur BART station, where she would sometimes pick me up or drop me off in her weathered Delorean. She confessed to having a daily struggle with sleep and depression, but this news was delivered to me in an entertaining bit of dark humor. Her ultra-black sunglasses were supposed to help with extreme photosensitivity, brought on by a combination of medications.

No sweat, by October of my first year at Berkeley, I myself was a regular consumer of Prozac, which was supposed to address my anxiety, chest pains, and “flat affect.”

Hope loved listening to me talk about architecture and my life in Ukraine. I suppose this was the same allure that Olga responded to but I didn’t mind it with Hope. She seemed genuinely interested and she had stories of her own to share. Her kitchen became the place we would spontaneously meet and chat.

During these kitchen chats, my eyes wandered around the kitchen and study the shiny copper pots, the spines of cooking books, most on French cuisine, and the postcards pinned to a wall and covering the fridge. I wondered who the postcards were from and why, with so many pen pals, did Hope and her fluffy white dog seem so alone in her big Oakland Hills house.

Hope was an orphan. She carried the last name of her adoptive family and her birth parents were unknown to her. In her early 70s then, she had a sarcastic view on men, and had no interest in adding one to her life. I never found out what she did for a living - I was sure she must have been a retired actress or heiress to some unknown Bay Area fortune. She seemed both carefree and tragically fragile, a short slender woman fluttering around like a hummingbird one second and shutting herself in her dark bedroom for the whole day the next.

I’m not entirely sure how I survived architecture school at Berkeley. Sometimes, I still have the nightmare where I have not yet graduated, or dropped out, or failed in some other way. I was a transfer student, a recent immigrant, a few years older than everyone else. I worked a part-time job to offset the student loan. I still learned new English words every day. I was definitely computer literate but struggled to learn new software and design projects at the same time. I used to function a lot better with a well-trained drawing hand and a single focus on design.

I could not connect with any of my architecture studio professors. All of them were male, white architect superstars. I was not a superstar. I felt that I was failing all the time.

Surprisingly, I connected just fine with all other, almost exclusively male and white, professors. Structures, acoustics, city planning, sustainable design, history of architecture, dark room photography, German - those made me feel grounded, in contrast to the unrelatable studio. Paradox?

At the studio, I felt like an imposter. What human error let me into this impenetrable top of Mount Olympus? Surely, anyone else here is so much better than me, so much farther ahead.

But outside of Wurster Hall, there was Hope. One day, as we crossed paths in her kitchen, she pointed to the black frozen bananas in the freezer in disgust and asked me what that was about.

“Oh, I was going to try a banana bread.” I had a recipe from my boyfriend’s Texan girl.. female friend. It involved salvaged bananas.

Hope raised her thin eyebrows and transferred the bananas from the freezer to the trash bucket.

“Let’s make a banana bread with no rotten bananas.”

She reached for one of her French cooking books and leafed through it, landing on the recipe I still use to make banana bread.

“Here. 2-3 bananas. We have that.”

Hope was precise in her cooking. She introduced me to the invention called a flour sifter and showed me how to measure dry ingredients by leveling the top of the measuring cup with the dull side of a knife.

She got her groceries once a week, on the same day of the week, at the Berkeley Bowl - a wonderland of organic produce, European imports, and local goodness. My strictly utilitarian relationship with food was significantly improved thanks to Hope taking me along on these shopping trips. Berkeley Bowl had my favorite muesli and cranberry walnut bread.

In the span of the seasons that I lived with Hope, we had become an odd couple of friends. Neither of us had much of a social life and so we created one together. She took me to the San Francisco Symphony, where I was dazzled by evening dresses and glorious performances with overrepresented Russian last names. I was her movie date when Pan’s Labyrinth opened at the tiny Art Deco theater in Berkeley. After the movie, she introduced me to gelato.

I lived at Hope’s Oakland Hills postcard house for almost a year. She kicked me out via a handwritten note sometime in the summer. She didn’t explain why, other than pointing out several times when I left something out that should have been put away or failed to clean something that should have been cleaned. She suggested that maybe, after my resentment related to my first few years as an immigrant, working alongside my parents at various cleaning jobs, I was subconsciously trying to make others clean up after me.

I don’t think I was anything other than clueless.

She also didn’t take to my ex-boyfriend-fiancée-unfiancee-boyfriend-husband at all. Hope had a negative gut reaction to my ex and immediately distrusted him. She shared this with me, but, of course, as a civilized lady, she didn’t press the issue. But I think it had more to do with her kicking me out than my occasional messiness.

I also wish she had pressed the issue. My own gut was still catching up with the impact of immigration and the loss of my previous long-term relationship. I was in no state to choose husbands.

Things went downhill after I moved out. I lived in a sublet studio for the rest of the summer, and then shared a two-bedroom apartment close to the campus with three other students. My depression kicked into high gear by then and I struggled to complete classwork. I dreaded going to the studio because that’s where my fear of failure stared me straight in the face. My long-distance marriage had become an escape fantasy, and I would fly to this fantasy island once a month, spend a weekend near the ocean, and come back to reality. Somehow, with the finish line so close in view, I was losing momentum and feeling more lost than ever myself.

By some miracle, I did cross the finish line. In record time, by taking summer classes and loading up on units as much as I could. I shakily walked across the stage of Zellerbach Hall and took the scroll from the hand of some important person.

Even though we never spoke again, I think that Hope, my Oakland Hills landlady, was a big part of me making it. Maybe we weren’t a perfect match, but for a moment there, we were friends. She gave me more than a temporary dwelling, exactly when I needed it.

And Hope was right. My marriage didn’t make it, the guy was a walking red flag. Six Feet Under is an excellent show. Only the best ingredients for my banana bread from then on.

2021 Was Not So Bad

January 18, 2022 in thoughts, sketchbook, urban sketching

Calendars are convenient. They give us a reference point to anchor to, handy for finding our spot in the spiraling whirlpool of time. Truth is, beyond the repeating patterns of weather and our own seasonal habits, every day, week, and month is different from the one bearing the same name last year.

And by the same logic, it is convenient to label a day, week, or year as “good” or “bad” because of the frequency of negative events and our capacity to handle them. Labeling a year “bad” helps us feel less of a burden of making it better. It takes us closer to the comfort of clearly categorized, black and white lens on reality.

I’m not saying that wanting comfort and clarity is wrong. It’s natural. But it also carries the danger of subjectivity and bias, which may not be ideal when you are trying to be an objective observer of the world around you. And it tends to lean towards negativity.

copenhagen sketch — Memories of Copenhagen, sketching during one of many zoom work meetings

So it’s not surprising to me to see 2021 being labeled as yet another “bad year.” It was probably a little bit of a self-inflicted failure of expectation management - after 2020, we were all hoping for something better. And I think those who expected a “return to normal” were let down the most.

I did not expect a return to normal. It could be that my own life experiences have primed me to have low expectations as a guardrail against disappointment, and then be pleasantly surprised when they are exceeded. There are some questionable mental coping habits there, but we will leave it alone for now. My point is that I don’t think 2021 was a “bad year.” I am quite happy with how it turned out.

And so, here’s 2021.

In January, I pass my seventh and last Architect exam, the California Supplemental Examination (CSE). After a “long and winding road” to this moment, it feels surreal. The night before, the kids, Erik and I agree that if I pass, we will have sushi to celebrate. And if I fail, we will have consolation sushi. Thus the slogan “Do it for the sushi!” Is born.

Earlier in the month, the U.S. experiences a violent attack on the Capitol. It is most definitely the lowest point of this country since I moved here in 2003.

…

February

The main highlight for me is getting my Architect’s license in the mail. So much work, persistence, failure and success is wrapped up in this moment! As it goes with goals that are achieved, I almost instantly begin asking myself the question: “What’s next?”

What’s next is sparkSTUDIO. I hang on to the day job for a few more months of the pandemic but I have already boarded the train to Bosstown.

I immediately begin looking for opportunities to use my shiny new title of Architect on email signatures…and not much else. My answer to “What do you do?” becomes a little easier for me (because the law prohibits using the title of Architect unless you are licensed), and pretty much nobody else gives it a second thought. Wait, you’re doing the same thing you’ve been doing but now you have another paper on the wall? That’s cool.

Nevertheless, I feel like I’ve been knighted. I suspect newly minted Sirs and Ladies add their titles to email signatures at the first opportunity, too.

March

March is rather low key, other than marking the anniversary of the first Covid lockdowns in California. I manage to do some sketching while in Old Sacramento…(need to work on my car and truck drawing skills!).

April

April brings Katia’s birthday, a lovely family trip to the Pacific Ocean and our stay at the whimsical Mushroom House in Bolinas, where we are the first short term rental guests. It’s great to be next to the ocean for a bit, and see it from almost every window of the house. Such a treat! Armed with a recent Ian Stewart workshop experience, I sketch it in water-soluble markers and watercolor and leave the painting as a gift for the hosts. We hope to return next year!

May

I’m not even sure what happens in May. Work, worry, rinse, repeat. That, and planning a trip to Colorado.

…Which happens in June!

Erik and I go to Denver, Colorado, which is only a stopping point on the way to Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains. And Estes Park is where we find The Stanley Hotel (cue in dramatic music and thunder). The Stanley is significant because it’s the inspiration and setting of Stephen King’s The Shining. And that fact is significant, in turn, because my beau is a major horror movie nerd and this trip is a celebration of his birthday. Last year, we visited Ferndale, the filming location for another Stephen King’s creation, Salem’s Lot.

Colorado is beautiful. We take the winding road to the mountains in our white rental Camry, a feat impossible during the winter. As we get closer and closer to our destination, every turn opens a spectacular view of the mountains and forests, layered with fog and clouds, illuminated by patches of sun, dusted with faraway snow. It’s a lot easier for me to get excited by architecture than nature, but I am definitely getting into it!

The white structure of The Stanley Hotel stands out on the rocky hill it sits on, against the backdrop of undeveloped mountainside. We can see it from far away, at the very beginning of our descent in the valley of the small town of Estes Park. The hotel greets us with a wide porch I will later have breakfast on, a grand carpeted stair with gold-framed portraits following us as we walk up the second floor, and a glorious mountain view.

I am disappointed at the absence of a freestanding tub in our room. It was promised to me by the hotel’s website…and they forgot to mention that the hotel’s bathrooms were recently remodeled to replace the tubs with showers. First-world problems, I know, but I was really looking forward to relaxing in a tub filled with hot water….Not warm-ish shower with cold air leaks.

I suppose I will recover. We rest for a bit and then go to explore dinner options in town. The whole town of Estes Park can be seen from our high vantage point of the second floor room at The Stanley. It unfolds for us to go and learn about its streets and old buildings, its tourist attractions and hidden treasures. This is my favorite part of traveling. The unknown, soon to be known and loved.

We head downstairs, past the gold-framed portraits and their watchful eyes, out of the red-carpeted lobby now filling up with loud tourists. Erik says we need to go walk the shrubbery maze in the front of the hotel “real quick.” I’m starving, but I follow him across the muddy puddles through the maze, in the light drizzling rain. He is, of course, recreating The Shining, walking through the maze and then retracing his steps, like a giddy kid.

We walk into a small open space with a pond and sculptural water feature of two faces…possibly kissing. We walk up the platform at the top and look over the grounds.

“This is a cool place!” I say.

“Yes. A perfect place, in fact, to ask you something,” he says, and reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket.

I feel an odd mixture of panic and excitement as I begin to suspect what is about to happen.

“Whaaaat is happening right now?”

And what is happening is him pulling out a small box with a ring in it and asking me to marry him and me being completely unprepared for this and forgetting to breathe for a minute and then saying yes, of course yes, as I put my arms around him and kiss him, right in front of that water feature.

And I kid you not, while all of this is happening, the rain clears up and a double rainbow appears above Estes Park.

July

In July, I and the rest of my coworkers are ordered back to the office - the email from the firm management actually says “back to work,” which strikes me as incredibly tone deaf. Have I been not working the last year and a half, then? It didn’t feel like it. It felt like working double time, all the time.

I am not going back without a fight though. Work from home has become my default method and, while it has its own challenges (I don’t have a separate room to work in - but that’s not any different from working in an open office back at the office), those challenges are eclipsed by the benefits. The commute, generally a complete waste of an hour of my life every day, has become unnecessary, unless I choose to do it. And choice - in time, location, priorities, environment - has become the key word. Why would you give up choice?

In August, sparkSTUDIO wins an award for our housing design - an unexpected but very welcome validation of our work, something we still do after hours and behind the scenes of our day jobs. My son turns 12. Wildfires are back.

September is…eventful. I turn 40, and Erik and I celebrate with a long weekend visit to San Francisco. I geek out on public transportation, architecture and art. We walk the Golden Gate Bridge and that same evening, I have my first ever clam chowder in a bread bowl. San Francisco seems oddly quiet and disheveled …It is still the pandemic. But no matter, I walk around like a wide-eyed child, absorbing the best of the old and the new architecture that the city has to offer.

We spend the whole day at SFMOMA, where I am floored by the exhibit featuring the work of Tatiana Bilbao, a Mexican architect whose focus on affordable housing is both admirable and inspiring. She can’t draw cars either.

Right after my birthday, I sit down with my boss and tell him I am leaving to focus on my own firm. I offer to continue my current projects on a contract basis and we work out an agreement to do so. Two weeks later, I am officially no longer an employee.

And so, in October, after a very short lull, I get to business full throttle. It feels like the the best decision ever, even though I pulled the trigger a few months earlier than I had originally planned. Even though the world is still in the midst of the Covid crisis. I am loving every minute of building sparkSTUDIO and am proud of us.

I give a short talk about our award-winning housing project at a remote award ceremony for the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Erik and I go to an in-person, live music show, first time in forever. It feels incredible.

November brings more birthdays, an actual, in-person Thanksgiving, and finally cooler weather. I settle down with some knitting in the evenings, which has become my favorite winter wind-down activity.

Which brings us to…December. The Christmas tree goes up, the rains come, and we slow down for the winter break. This year, it looks different for me, because I get to say when I need to work and when I can take time away from work. It’s a double-edged sword, of course, as I don’t necessarily get paid vacation time. But I have the choice, which matters so much more.

Re-reading my summary of 2020, I remember the feeling of overwhelm by the barrage of negative events and oversaturation by the dark energy that seemed to fill the very air we breathed. Earlier this year, I caught myself getting sucked into the vortex of this darkness and overwhelm. And when I did, I had to pull the plug and step away.

So this year, the focus has been much closer to home, on the things I can control or at least influence. I have very limited resources to worry about much more than that.

How I bought my ex-boss lunch and why it matters

October 17, 2021 in announcements, architectural, thoughts

It’s Sunday morning, much earlier than I would have ever imagined myself sitting outside on a Sunday morning, writing and sipping my homemade version of Temple cafe latte. And yet, here I am. Middle of October, crisp autumn air making my pinky fingers cold as I type. I have somehow become a morning person.

Two weeks ago, I served my last day as an employee and left to forge my own path in the business of architecture. As most of my decisions go, this one was not made lightly and I’ve been getting ready for this moment for years. I announced the news on Facebook and LinkedIn but kept it out of my art website until now, thinking that it doesn’t have anything to do with my art. But it does.

Not too long ago, I wrote a blog post here, titled “Are you an Artist?” This one is about claiming your identity as an artist and how other people often know who you are before you announce who you are. Like a lot of my writing, that post is also me speaking to myself and coming to terms with my own identity. At the time I was writing it, I was considering my identity as an Architect, “with the right to practice architecture and use the title Architect,” as the licensing board puts it. And my identity as the owner of a young and promising design firm.

Just like “coming out” as an artist, this required me to straighten up my posture, put the cards on the table and embrace what seemed scary to me but already obvious to others: I was ready.

Two weeks later, I feel great. I am enjoying the freedom and the opportunity to create something that is bigger than me. I feel a lot less stressed. Of course, as many business owners tell me, there will soon come times when the stress will be greater and the freedom will be limited - but for now, I am having a blast!

It also feels true, in a way that well-aligned life decisions do. This is where and when I should be. And it makes me feel lucky and want to share my good fortune with others.

Speaking of fortunes…I had a meeting with my former boss last week, part of my continuing role in their projects. After the meeting, we had lunch at a Chinese place nearby. We’ve always had a good relationship but this time, it felt like a different kind of a good relationship. It felt like we were on even footing. We dug our way through the huge piles of chow mein and fried rice and talked about recent developments at his firm and about our respective kids. Things we have in common. It was an easy, pleasant chat, and I even told him that he was a good boss (which is true).

As he placed his hand on the tray with the check at the end of the meal, I pulled out my wallet and asked if I could get it. He looked at me curiously.

“You’ve bought me a lot of lunches,” I said, “It’s my turn.”

And I paid for our lunch. It’s amazing how something this simple makes you feel all kinds of meaningful things. Like planting my flag in this common ground. Like claiming my place as equal in the business community. Like paying back, in gratitude for his wisdom and all the help in getting me to this point.

As the server walked away with my Amex card, we broke our fortune cookies and looked at the narrow strips of paper inside. His said something about exercise routine. Mine delivered a punchline to the day:

“Your hard work is about to pay off. Congratulations!”

P.S. Here is the link to visit sparkSTUDIO, my very own design firm.

The Effect of the Margin

September 26, 2021 in thoughts, sketchbook

The most interesting, unexpected things happen in the margins.

Think about it: the last time you went on a carefully orchestrated trip, remember that hole-in-the-wall cafe you accidentally stumbled upon when you were hungry and the five-star expert-recommended eatery was too far to walk? Did you feel that you had discovered a secret, just between you and the few locals lucky enough to live nearby?

The bar at Pink Door, a restaurant in Seattle you can easily miss, unless you know to look for…the pink door in a otherwise blank wall.

Some years ago, I was a newly-wed military wife. I had just moved from Berkeley to Oceanside, where my marine husband was stationed. Not a lot happens in Oceanside…I was constantly looking for things to do and one of my favorite things to do is attendIng concerts.

I don’t remember how people found out about such things back then (internet, of course, but with a lot more effort). Big concerts were advertised (like Radiohead, $150/ a cheap seat, no thanks). Others, the small bands on the margins, you had to be in the know.

I find out about a small venue in Los Angeles that hosts such bands. You do not, back in the mid-2000s, buy tickets in advance on your phone. You show up and if the venue still has a standing spot for you, you are in.

I follow the trail of scheduled shows and find one that, based on one or two audio samples, seems interesting. I research the band and, with the very limited information there is online at that time, decide this is it.

So, we ride to LA, maybe an hour and a half on the motorcycle, to cheat the traffic, and just because motorcycles are fun. The hole-in-wall venue has a line at the door but it is a manageable line, and we become a part of it. It is dark by then - the show was scheduled for 7 pm, but guess what, the band isn’t there, or isn’t ready enough, or they are doing very important things we will later thank them for - whatever it is, shows never start on time.

I stand in the line, in that dark and desolate LA alley, and study the others. What kind of a character goes to a weeknight concert at this tiny venue, to hear a band they have not been aware of until very recently? Why don’t they follow the establishment, the 5-star reviews, the sure thing you can buy advanced tickets to?

(And does it mean that Radiohead is the establishment? Whoa.)

What kind of a character indeed.

Eventually, we get into the tiny vestibule, prove that we are a few years older than 18, and pay the token admission fee. We made it.

Another half hour, or maybe more, passes by. I guess this is the time intended for everyone to buy drinks and get primed for the show.

And finally, finally, finally, someone enters the stage. It’s not quite enough to kill the hum of the people who came here to see the headliner, however obscure. A second person joins them. There is a viola, or maybe a guitar, and definitely a keyboard. Or is it drums?

“Good evening everyone! We are Wye Oak.”

The opening duo begins their set and I am immediately taken by it. I love everything about it, the pace, the lyrics, the low female vocal. How nerdy they both look. How uncomfortable to be on the stage. These are my people.

They go through their set, with reasonably good reception from the small crowd. And after, they move to the side of the room, to the small table with their one and only CD album for sale. I feel like I’m the only one who goes there and buys a CD. I say, “Hey, you guys were awesome. Thank you!”

And then, after a long intermission, there’s a headliner, they are entertaining and pretty good, and I enjoy watching the curious instruments they use.

But my heart is taken by Wye Oak.

No one expected this. This is the effect of the margins, the effect of appetizer eclipsing the main course, the effect of best human connections happening on the outside of the formal networking events and dating profiles. The unexpected by definition.

I don’t know why it works this way. It could be that we are more receptive to experiences that change us when we do not expect them. Maybe we like the feeling of discovery. Maybe the very nature of having a planned and scheduled life sets us up to lean into the margins, the gaps, the sidelines.

The video below is based on an accidental performance I stumbled upon at a book shop:

There is also something to be said for the discovery in the process. All of the daily writing, painting, creating routines bet on the effect of the margins. You focus on doing the thing and going through the motions, just so you can allow the greatness to happen when you least expect it to. But you need to be present for the process.

And it could be about the expectations. Did I expect the opening band to knock me off my feet? No, because it’s an opening band. They are expected to be the lesser beginners, the stragglers, the tag-alongs. And that’s exactly why the contrast between the expectation and the experience is so powerful.

So pay attention to the gaps. Be open to experience greatness where you least expect it. And scribble in the margins, those are the best parts of your story.

How I didn't get into UC Berkeley

August 28, 2021 in thoughts

I think about this story a lot.

When my family immigrated to the United States back in 2003, I was a third year architecture student at the Odessa State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture. That’s Odessa, Ukraine, now spelled with a single “s” to reflect its Ukrainian (as opposed to Russian) spelling. Odesa.

But back then, it was very much Russian and our native Odessite professors struggled with the “ukrainization” of education. It felt very half-hearted and much less effective than my Ukrainian language high school back in the western part of the country.

So, I had three years of architecture school under my belt when I saw the Statue of Liberty from above for the very first time. It was poetic, in a tragic poetry sort of way. As the plane began circling the city for landing, getting lower and lower, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into sadness. Probably not your typical response to seeing NYC from air but …there it was. An end and a beginning all-in-one.

I had a completely different reaction to it the second time around, when I visited 15 years later.

I spent the first year in the U.S. learning English, which I already had a fair grasp on, and figuring out the new life. After a year, I was now a “resident of California,” which allowed me to attend community colleges. I immediately loaded up on units to get out the way so that I could finish my interrupted education in architecture. I went on a bus tour of Northern California colleges that offered an architecture degree and really loved the Berkeley vibe. UC Berkeley also seemed to carry a certain status value, particularly for someone like me - an immigrant, starting from zero.

I will confess that I also looked into the Harvard School of Design and other prestigious universities far away from Sacramento - and I know I could have gotten in - but the financial math did not check out. I did not want to take on significant debt, even if it came with bragging rights, and I certainly did not have the cash. My best bet was a combination of scholarships, grants, part time work and a reasonable loan.

Only at UC Berkeley: Nobel Laureate parking

In Ukraine, my 3 years of architecture school were at no cost to me (other than heavily subsidized room and board). Just throwing it out there.

So, I decided to apply to Berkeley. It was a stretch: only a semester and a half into gathering general ed classes and a bit fuzzy on the prerequisites. But hey, I was going for it. I submitted a FAFSA and filled out a long admissions application. I requested my transcripts and evaluations to be sent to Berkeley. I wrote an essay, the content of which I honestly do not remember.

During the application process, I went through a list of all kinds of possible grants and scholarships (concepts completely foreign to me at that point) and I don’t think I found myself in any of the criteria. I was not a “minority,” I was not a first generation college applicant (my dad went to technical school but my mom holds a Master’s in engineering). I was not a single parent (yet) and I did not belong to any particularly ethnically endangered or politically inconvenient group of people. I was an immigrant and that’s about it. Just your average white woman of the slightly above average college age.

And so, for months, I waited to be notified: did I get in or didn’t I?

“We regret to inform you…”

Regret. I doubted the sincerity of this sentiment on behalf of the California Board of the Regents but you know what…I did not regret trying to get in. I had the process down and I knew what I was missing. I had a plan.

After this “regretful” letter, I doubled down on my prerequisite courses including the following summer, and applied again in the fall. Curiously, I remember what my essay was about this time. I talked about my story as a Ukrainian immigrant, about my family, about the struggle of starting over in the U.S., and about my future as an Architect and an artist. I offered my talents as a gift to the University.

A couple of months later, another letter arrived. I didn’t open it right away. You know that image of someone ripping open the long-awaited envelope because they can’t wait any longer? Yeah, that wasn’t me. I paced myself, and braced for another rejection. I pretended like it wasn’t a big deal, just another piece of mail. I took it to my bedroom and then opened it with steady hands.

”We are pleased to inform you…”

Why, I am pleased , too!

Two tries is all it took. Reflecting on it now, this focus on the goal has really helped me through the first few years in the U.S. Those years were difficult, even with all the English I learned by then. But maybe resilience is what it takes to survive as an immigrant. Your average white immigrant woman of a slightly above average age.

Are you an artist?

July 25, 2021 in art tips, thoughts

There is a threshold, or maybe a small speed bump, that we must cross when we are about to change our identity or add another one to the deck of identities we already have. This threshold involves a “coming out” to others. We do it by calling ourselves this new name, awkwardly and gingerly at first, until it feels natural.

And this public proclamation to others, this voice we are giving to something that grew silently until now, is also a “coming out” to ourselves. We try it on for size, we play with it, we wonder why we haven’t done it earlier. Because we’ve already had this identity within us for a long time but were afraid to claim it.

Becoming an artist is exactly like this.

It may take someone seeing your work, something you call “dabbling” or “doodling” to avoid judgement, and telling you that they like it. Do you show it anywhere? Can I buy it? Can you make one for me?

Or it could be you getting a community center art class as a gift on your birthday and wanting more after it’s over. Or finding your high school drawings in a long-forgotten file and feeling a longing to make art again.

I remember my speed bump moment well.

I’ve always been making art in some form or another, and my parents recognized this interest early and enrolled me in all kinds of art workshops and schools since I was 8 or 9. This was my after-school activity of choice. I was also okay in choir, half-decent on piano, miserably bad on violin, D- in theater arts, and immediately bored with any kind of sports.

So, art it was. When the end of high school came around, it became clear to me that “artist” was not a career choice. Professional artists, so it was rumored, did exist, but I’ve never met one until, ironically, I was getting lessons in preparation for architecture school entrance exams. You could see their work in museums but they were like these mythical creatures that lived somewhere in their secret studios, hidden from the turmoil of daily life and separate from the rest of us.

I realize that this perception was probably uniquely Eastern European. Back in the U.S.S.R., artists were subsidized by the government and were free to create…as long as this creation promoted the message of the Communist Party. They didn’t need to make money. I guess they were a kind of an affiliate occupation to the politicians.

But, it’s high school, and my classmates are choosing majors and universities left right and center, and I am spending my summers on job sites with my tile contractor dad. What’s it going to be?

I accidentally stumble on a set of drawings for a store remodel at one of the job sites - and the gears in my brain suddenly align with a click. School is easy and I like drawing stuff. I can do this!

I’ve never met an architect before.

I go on to enter architecture school in Odessa and study there with mixed success for three years. Mixed, because I love exploring possibilities and hate getting half-baked projects done on time. I overthink.

And my favorite classes are studio art. I develop mad watercolor skills and get top marks. I’m also really good at math. And skipping classes I don’t like.

In my third year, my family moves to the U.S., and the clock re-sets. After settling in, I get back into school and take a community college watercolor class for fun. The teacher, himself an established studio artist, tells me that if architecture doesn’t work out, I could always be an artist.

I brush it off.

Eventually, I do finish architecture school (by some miracle, because I have not learned to stop thinking and start doing by then). I graduate at the front end of the Great Recession and I can’t land a job in architecture. It’s not happening.

I take a retail job I am completely overqualified for and sign up for another watercolor class. Again, the teacher wonders out loud what exactly I am doing in this class. I should be teaching it.

But I do not yet call myself an artist. I “dabble” and “doodle”. It’s a form of stress relief, something I turn to in times of uncertainty when things aren’t going the way I planned them to. It’s an outlet for angst and depression.

And one day, my then-husband comes home and tells me that someone at his work saw one of my drawings and became interested in my work. Oh huh. They want to see what else I got.

About the same time, I enter my first ever group show.

The co-worker buys one of my paintings and pays me to get it framed. The frame is more expensive than what I charge for the painting.

But now, I begin trying the artist identity on. I practice in my head: “I’m an artist.” I don’t come back to the retail job after having my first child, and I start a blog talking about my art process. I enter more and more shows and make more and more art. Finally, I call myself an artist.

The Paper Bags, the first painting I ever sold.

It takes a while to feel natural. The imposter syndrome loves creative people, thanks to the gap between what we know to be “good art” and what we produce. But eventually, with enough sales and validation from others, I claim the title for good.

I’m an artist.

It is now part of my identity, along with “mom”, “daughter”, “architect”, and soon, “wife.” I don’t give it a second thought or skip a beat when I say I’m an artist. And the truth is, I could have claimed that title long before I did. It was clear to everyone around me that I was an artist, but it took a while to convince the toughest audience - myself.

I will finish with another quote from Seth Godin:

“Are you an artist? Of course you are.

Artists make change happen. Artists are humans who do generous work that might not work. Artists aren’t limited to paint or museums.

You are an artist as soon as you announce you are.”

The discomfort of changing the world

March 23, 2021 in thoughts

True learning (as opposed to education) is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort (the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill).
Seth Godin, “The Practice: Shipping Creative Work”

Getting older (I know, you, the majority of my readers, will smirk and snigger at this, perhaps even roll your eyes) - getting older feels like a gradual discovery of our true selves.

A carving and chipping away at the marble block, which slowly takes the shape of the person you’ve always been. Midway through it, one can really see the tilt of your head but the special indentations where your neck meets your shoulders have not been developed yet.

A careful bathing of the photographic print of your personality in dangerous chemicals, timed and processed in total darkness, all designed to bring you into focus.

This is what it feels like to me. I sense this coming into focus, shaping and forming, brought about by external forces but exposing the features that have always been there.

I sometimes look at the pictures of my kids that I took when they there babies and along the way as they got older. I see their features sharpening, their quirks becoming more pronounced and their characters showing more and more. But I can also recognize all these features in the small rosebud of a person they were - only quieter, waiting to blossom.

It’s like that.

What has become clear to me lately is that I intentionally seek out discomfort. Not for the sake of feeling uncomfortable…but as a side effect of pushing boundaries, challenging status quo and in general feeling compelled to rock the boat. I confess. I feel nervous when things are static, structured, and comfortable. I feel restless.

I was surprised by this discovery because I’ve always thought of myself as relatively risk-averse…even though people who know me in personal or professional life tell me otherwise. My boyfriend Erik was telling me a few months ago about a childhood friend of his, the kind of a friend who incites you to do questionable things that might get you in trouble.

“Everyone has a friend like that.”

I thought pretty hard for a few minutes. I could not remember having a friend like that.

And then it hit me: I was that friend. I’d get my friends to follow me into the questionable decisions. I was the rebel.

Granted, my ideas were rather tame and I rarely engaged in anything too dangerous. I was an evangelical Christian for most of my adolescence and early adulthood, so that probably helped to keep me out of too much trouble (read: no sex or drugs. Limited rock-n-roll). But still…I remember, for example, challenging my barely teenage friend to walk on the parapet of our 9-story apartment building with me, for fun.

I am that friend. I am a rebel. I am a leader.

Somewhere, some time ago, the shaping and development of this feature got put on hold or maybe I was just more aware of other traits I needed then and there. Maybe it took all this time for the chemicals to be just right. I try to stay away from magical thinking and assuming that things happen for a reason when they happen - but I also think that if the time feels right, then it’s the right time.

The discomfort I look for feels exciting and a little bit dangerous. Reading Seth Godin’s “The Practice”, quoted at the very top of this post, I see the truth of sharing your art as a form of leadership. It carries the inherent risk of: rejection, indifference, embarrassment. It takes generosity and bravery to share it and it might not work.

It may be a mistake.

And this discomfort, this fear of being wrong, misunderstood or under-qualified, is always there when you step out of the box. It makes you work harder and burn brighter.

I will probably always be a little bit restless, I accept that. But as long as my itch to change the world around me is stronger than the fear of failing at it, it’s a good thing.

And I have so much respect and admiration for you. For daring to share your art - whatever form it takes - despite the flutter of fear in your stomach. For risking rejection or indifference. For trying to change the world.

Thank you.

On Love and Holidays

February 20, 2021 in thoughts

I am not a fan of most holidays. Christmas is an exception, of course, as I’ve already confessed. But most of them catch me an unprepared and reluctant participant. I do not enjoy doing things just because someone says I should do those things. Issues with authority perhaps? This is also why, when I have to identify with a particular generation, I identify with Gen X and almost take it personally when internet says that based on my year of birth, I am a Millennial. Whatever that means.

I guess it also doesn’t help that I do not feel rooted in any particular culture. I grew up in Ukraine, sure, but I was also an evangelical when it wasn’t as mainstream as it is now. All the holidays had to have a “reason for the season” or some other justification on why this or that secular holiday deserves to be celebrated and not boycotted. Which weeded out a lot of them.

Yet another factor is the rapid westernization of Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which happened to fall right at my middle and high school years. The “formative” age. Soviet holidays became uncool and western ones began awkwardly earning their spots on the calendar. Like Valentine’s Day for example. We didn’t quite know what to do with it.

But here’s the thing. Telling someone how much you love and appreciate them is worth it even on a day when everyone else is compelled to to the same. Just do it in a … non-conformist way. Or any way. Just do it today.

Another post with year-end reflections

January 03, 2021 in thoughts

Hi friends! This holiday season, I feel even more reflective and philosophical than usual. Stress and fear tend to narrow my vision and zoom in on things that are scary and stressful, but after they pass (and they always do), it feels like an after-crash snap back to the big picture. What I value seems even more valuable, people I love feel irreplaceable.

I don’t need to tell you that last year has been tough. Probably tougher for you than for me. I haven’t lost a family member, or a job, or my home. But I have lost track of time…and not in a good way. My most-listened podcasts last year have been news. Perhaps an attempt at reducing the level of uncertainty and anxiety about the immediate future? We humans really don’t like uncertainty. This desire to reduce uncertainty drives us to accept things on faith and lock them in, impenetrable to any further inspection, because it feels better than not knowing. And some of us turn to the constant stream of bad news instead. Access to information, even bad one, is comforting.

2020 feels like several years stuffed into one. There was definitely no shortage of events, so my annual task of looking back at the highlights is easy.

Alright then, January 2020. Kids in school. I get a glimpse into their worlds through an after school activity where they are asked to draw a map from their house to the school. It is curious to see that “7-11” appears on Ella’s map, Elijah marks important places with a star, and Katia shows a free floating 4-story apartment building on her map. I can bet that these drawings required quite a bit of mental effort to simplify the representation of an already complicated life: “which house do we pick, mom’s or dad’s?” and “what are the important places that are constant in our lives?”

Ella, 6

Katia, 7

Elijah, 10

Also in January, I go back to my old job, after an 8-month stint in public sector architecture. It feels good to be back. I pick my favorite project back up, a historic rehabilitation of 3 Victorians into apartments. So fun! I bring with me the habit or working from home on Fridays, which at that time in January and February of last year, feels positively revolutionary. Two months later, at least half of the company is working from home full time.

At the end of the month, Erik and I visit Portland, OR for the first time. That trip, not unlike all of my trips, could use a separate blog post, but I’m going to keep my ambitions in check and share a few sketches instead.

A “hop” public transit pass, an explainer insert for the map of Portland earrings I first talked myself out of buying and then went back and bought anyway (they are currently my favorite pair of earrings), and the Stag.

40 lbs Coffee Bar, right around the corner from Hotel Rose where we stayed (which, despite the hideous exterior, turned out to be quite nice). Our trip included the absolutely mandatory list of architectural objects to visit (which we did); the glorious several hours spent at Powell’s Books; a bike ride where I almost died riding up hill and then again when I crashed the bike while trying to ride it and take a picture on the Burnside bridge; an accidental Comic Con; a few coffee shops, and eating food truck faire outside of Voodoo Donuts, where we didn’t actually go because I am quite indifferent towards donuts and my beau didn’t care enough about them to endure the long line. But I did have a good view of the sign :)

February is pretty quiet, other than the constant hum of worry about my Dad and his cancer…and the slow but steady buildup of anxiety thanks to news from Europe. The Covid ride is starting. Katia and I have some of our last Friday morning coffee hangouts. Those have become a routine thanks to my flexibility at work and the staggered start times at school. We would drop the other two kids off and then go get a coffee for me and steamed flavored milk for her (usually with a donut or cake pop, too!).

That particular Friday was a Pajama Day at school.

March…yeah. March is hard. It is impossible to focus on anything but the relentless stream of news and anxiety. Dad has his cancer surgery right as the hospitals are ramping up capacity for the upcoming surge in Covid cases and at the same time, shutting down access to any non-essential procedures and visitors. It’s scary. Mom and I pick Dad up from the hospital and, while waiting in the car for him to be discharged, we have a long conversation with the most substance we’ve ever had. She is scared and lost and reflective. I listen to her fears, beliefs and advice and keep most of my fact checks and conclusions to myself. But I also talk about important serious stuff. Like Erik, our past, my kids, our future. It’s uncomfortable but also cathartic. We should do more of that.

In the outside world, insane hoarding of toilet paper and sanitizer starts. On March 17, San Francisco goes into lockdown. Two days later, and seemingly, two months later, Sacramento county follows and we are ordered to stay at home. No one knows what they are supposed to and not supposed to do. Worry is palpable.

In the beginning of April, Erik and I celebrate 1 year together. This story is also worth a separate blog post…but the bottom line is that we are happy. On the high tide of 2019, in the bottomless pit of 2020, we make each other happy.

After several weeks of “spring break,” distance learning commences. Kids and I are enjoying each other’s company while at the same time trying to figure out how to combine all of this work-from-home-do-school-but-also-actually-work nonsense. It is particularly hard to do when the world around us is feeling more and more surreal. On the nights the kids are with their dad, Erik and I hold on to each other for dear life. Sometimes, we argue, because both of us are stressed out and on edge. Then it passes, and we’re back to finding solace in one another. I keep reading that 2020 has been really rough on relationships…couples broke up, divorces skyrocketed. For us, it brought us closer together. Like I said at the beginning of this post, the significance of the important people in my life has come to a sharp focus. I want to hold on to that.

Elijah catches the right moment and talks me into allowing him a pet. We get him a leopard gecko.

Echo the gecko on middle school zoom call

Katia’s birthday is very quiet and limited to immediate family. She is the most social of us, so it’s hard for her. I promise her to make up for it at half-birthday (because I have no idea how long this will last) or at the very least, her next birthday. We will go all out.

I sign up for the free Fender Play self-paced guitar course and buy an acoustic guitar. On some days, there is a certain “we’re in this together” feeling in the air. People are trying to look for the silver lining, helping each other out. My friends are sewing masks and giving them away for free, hosting online drawing challenges, live streaming music, raising funds for struggling businesses. There is hope, despite the obvious lack of leadership and common sense from the federal government. Conspiracy theories keep popping up like there’s no tomorrow. We are watching both the good and the bad sides of American individualism play out at the same time.

May is strange. U.S. passes 100,000 in Covid-19 deaths. NASA and SpaceX launch first ever commercial spacecraft and successfully deliver two people to the International Space Station. I watch the livestream of them getting on board. The same night, I watch livestream of Black Lives Matter protests in Sacramento. This is just one of many locations throughout the U.S. they have been happening since May 25, the day George Floyd is killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

My stress levels keep going up and up. I feel the burnout right around the corner, regardless of how full my batteries were at the beginning of this whole thing. I am a single mom, working from home, full time, while taking care of 3 kids, all in distance learning. Katia is really struggling with school and it takes her all day to finish school work. The drawing below is my portrait by Ella that really captures the … times:

In June, we don’t go to the concert we’ve been looking forward to for months. This is the second cancelled concert for us so far, though the organizers act optimistic and “postpone” the events, rather than cancel them. Erik can’t play live music either and his band is about to be broken up. School is over for summer and I sigh a sigh of relief. Toilet paper re-appears at the stores. We have our last family gathering for my Dad’s birthday. It doesn’t feel safe after that.

July is spent doing home improvements, which…can actually be said for the rest of the year, too…Either something breaks or I get the urge to do a home project as a break from brain-work I do all the time. I also finally complete a wedding portrait for one of my long-time collectors. She now owns wedding portraits of all three of her children.

In August, Erik and I take a short trip to Ferndale (or some of you may know it better as the filming location of “Salem’s Lot”). It’s a cute Victorian town and if I had the time, I’d spend it sketching the many architectural details. But it’s only a weekend getaway, so we make the best of it: Erik visiting all the significant (to a film nerd) spots, me taking pictures of him at those spots and watching him transform into a giddy kid. We stop at the gigantic redwoods and I get my fix of dipping toes into the freezing cold Pacific Ocean.

Kids “go back to school,” which means more distance learning. No one likes it. Elijah turns 11 and starts middle school. He’s a very smart cookie and goes to an IB school now. California is on fire, we are breaking records. The sky is “Apocalypse Orange”, ash is falling from it like summer snow and the president is telling us that we need to manage our forests better. And also that global warming is fake news. The air quality index is at “hazardous,” so good thing we already wear masks…well, at least some of us. For an unknown reason, wearing a mask becomes a political issue.

I pick up sunflowers, one of my favorites, and paint them.

It is harder than ever to be creative. I hear this from other artists and musicians. The anxiety, the uncertainty, the constant shifting sands of our reality wear us out. We go through periods of caring about others intensely and not caring at all.

At the end of August, I take part in a big Julia Kay’s Portrait Zoom Party. I almost flake on it, the introvert in me trying to avoid interaction with strangers. But I give myself a push and log on. It ends up being an hour and a half of so much fun!

September. My birthday, and the kick-off of the U.S. Presidential election circus. It’s exhausting to watch. The division and animosity is unreal. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies and it feels like the rug getting pulled from under our feet. More conspiracy theories follow, this time specifically directed at undermining trust in the outcome of upcoming elections. Created and fanned by the most influential man in the world, they seem dangerously effective. White men with guns feel that they have more say in what happens than anyone else. It’s not hard to imagine this country sliding into a dictatorship.

I vote. By mail.

October. The wildfires are still going. My parents’ backyard orchard, which reminds me of our “dacha” back in Ukraine, produces ginormous pomegranates and I paint them, while talking on the phone with an architect mentor, who has been my sounding board and cheerleader over the last several months of 2020. In return, I help her come back to art-making.

In November, the U.S. election stretches out into nail-biting weeks. Burned in 2016, I do not keep my fingers crossed for anything, but I am pleasantly surprised when Biden wins. Ella turns 7. We have a very small Thanksgiving that still rocks. I settle into my cold weather knitting habit.

In December, we are back in lockdown. This is probably known as the “holiday effect,” or should be. Even though I am very much aware of how things are going, it’s disturbing to receive this emergency alert on my phone:

At the same time, I am relieved that this puts brakes on the school’s plans to re-open in January. I do not feel that anyone is ready for it and the phased, staggered reopening plans I’ve seen do not make sense for anyone with more than one child or a job. We are only now getting into some kind of a rhythm with the distance learning, so shuffling the cards again feels like a huge source of stress. That’s on top of just not feeling safe due to Covid.

I finally commit all the way and convert my dining room into an office. I’ll be here for a while.

We celebrate Christmas. It feels lovely, even though I miss hosting the rest of my family at my home.

Right after Christmas, I get the long-awaited green light from the California Architects Board to schedule my last Architect’s exam. It’s in 2 weeks.

And so, we make it into 2021. Maybe it’s our collective wishful thinking, but it already feels better. Calmer, brighter, more hopeful. The winter will be over. Having lived through a difficult year, we will come out stronger and kinder. Zombie apocalypse is cancelled. We are still here, with a deeper understanding of what matters to us. And I suspect that what matters, if we dig deep enough, is the same for all of us: people we love, health, safety, happiness. Let’s remember that ❤️. Happy New Year!

A Brief History of My Christmas

December 28, 2020 in thoughts

I’ve always loved Christmas. First, as a child, growing up in the Soviet Union and celebrating the Soviet secular equivalent of Christmas, the New Year’s Eve. There would be the mandatory New Year “morning party” (утренник), the winter-themed annual masquerade, featuring singing and awkward preschool choreography. This would be one of a few times a year I would get to dress up, though usually I didn’t get to pick the character. I did not, for example, pick the “mushroom” costume one year, but I absolutely rocked my “Snow Queen” persona at the last party before going to 1st grade and leaving the “morning parties” for the youngins. I can’t find the mushroom photo or the snow queen at the moment but here’s one of me as a snowflake:

We would still have a Christmas tree, though not called a “Christmas tree”. Just a “fir.” It would still have beautiful decorations and a star on top, presents would still magically appear under it roughly around midnight on New Year’s Eve. Sometimes, there would be a “Grandfather Frost” involved.

Living in Western Ukraine during the strange period surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union, I had an insecure relationship with Christmas. There was the official New Year celebration, of course, but it coexisted with a plethora of other winter holidays of various origins. Take, for example, December 19, Saint Nicholas Day. Not a huge holiday to be excited about but significant nonetheless because it felt like the beginning of the holiday season. That, and Nicholas (or Nikolay) is one of the family names in my family.

Next, there was the “Western Christmas”, December 25th, which my family began celebrating sometime after the end of the U.S.S.R., and which involved an elaborate dinner on Christmas Eve. I may be wrong, but I think my parents were turned on to it after they joined a Pentecostal church in the 90s. For all intents and purposes, my immediate family have been proper Soviet citizens who did not approve of religious activities up until that point.

It is this Christmas that I’ve come to love. It was small, just our parents and us kids, and there wasn’t much to it other than tasty Ukrainian food, presents, decorations and being in each other’s company. That’s all. Later on, it evolved to include church services and prayers and other people, which, in retrospect, I took as intrusion into my cozy family bubble. Many years later, I understand that it is this feeling of being in a small, loving, warm bubble, that makes Christmas my favorite holiday.

After the New Year (which is still the main winter holiday in many ex-Soviet countries), and exactly two weeks after the “Western Christmas”, we would sort of celebrate the “Old Christmas.” This was Christmas according to the Greek Orthodox calendar. This holiday was a lot less remarkable, at least in Western Ukraine, but it was still an excuse to eat a good dinner (and for many, get drunk). It also carried a curious old-timey, pagan flavor. I am sure that, quite like all mainstream Western holidays, it was just a re-branded pagan holiday from before Ukraine became Christened.

The “Old Christmas” would also kick-off a week-long season of singing traditional Christmas and New Year carols, concluded on the first day of “Old New Year”, January 14, with a special “sowing” song, accompanied by throwing grains over the threshold and wishing the family prosperity in the New Year.

You have probably realized by now that in Ukraine, it’s really a whole month of Christmas. December 25th only recently became an official holiday and you are free to pick which of the many holidays you like better. Or do it all!

I have been living in the U.S. for 17 year now. Sometime soon, there will be a tipping point, where I have spent more of my life in the U.S. than in Ukraine. I have embraced the “Western Christmas” wholeheartedly since, both in continuing celebrations with my brothers and parents and once I had a family of my own. I dread most American holidays and the frenzy that comes months before them (“are you ready for_____ (fill in the blank)??!!!!”). But Christmas…still has a warm glow to me. I love giving presents. I love the smell of Christmas trees. I love being in the bubble, which I am now the creator and keeper of.

So now you know the history of my Christmas 😉. What is yours like? And if not Christmas, what other winter holidays feel special to you? Whatever they are, I wish you happiness, peace and love. I wish you the warmth that comes from being in a bubble, with people you love. And speaking of the people we love, I will leave you with this Christmas carol performed by my boyfriend and my kids (at 36:30 if the video doesn’t take you straight there). The rest of the musical compilation from a great selection of California musicians and put together by the aforementioned boyfriend, is also worth a spin. Enjoy!

2020

September 12, 2020 in thoughts, sketchbook

Wow. We made it to September, everyone. What an unbelievably strange year! I feel simultaneously like it has been years since March AND like Fridays just come one right after another. Life is both very fast and indeterminably slow these days. Uncertainty plays tricks on our perception of reality.
I hope you have hung in there. I hope your loved ones are safe and sound and that you have found pockets of time to fill with creative things. Or maybe just stayed afloat, that’s all anyone can ask of a human in a crisis.

As for me, I think I went into this with fully charged batteries so to speak, and fared pretty well so far. My main source of stress has been the distance learning for my kids, which turned out to be very frustrating for everyone involved. I’ve been working from home most of the time since March. Before then, I negotiated the (highly unusual in architecture industry) work from home on Fridays. So it wasn’t a completely new thing for me and the transition went just fine. But working from home while also working as a mom, teacher, tech support and therapist to three kids is a whole new level.

We’re managing. It helps that I share custody with my ex and we both get to take breaks. My mom recently started helping with childcare, too, after an intense beginning of the year, when my dad was fighting cancer (he had his surgery right as the hospitals began cutting off all non-emergency procedures and not allowing visitors). That was no fun either. He is doing well now.

I keep trying to build good habits. A routine. Like going to sleep before 10:30 and walking in the morning. I schedule blocks of time on my calendar for work, breaks, lunch, and more work. I love my job but I feel like my whole life is being sucked up by “work.” It feels especially acute on days when I am more aware of the news and less certain of what the future holds or what exactly it is that I have control over. It feels a bit hopeless. And I know I’m lucky to 1) have a job and 2) have the opportunity to do my job remotely. I do appreciate that. I could be unemployed, a single mom of 3, with a mortgage and California-style utility bills.

Instead, I have a great job that pays those bills and I can do it from the comfort of my home. Despite being a woman, an immigrant and a divorcee, I am the privileged minority.

Other than an occasional sketch, it’s been a creative desert here. Somehow, it’s easier to channel anxiety and stress into learning an instrument 10 minutes at a time than into making art. I signed up for an app-based guitar course in April and worked it pretty hard for the first 3 (free) months. Once the trial ran out, I looked around for other resources but eventually bought the paid version. I’ve been slacking on it since then…paradox? I think I need deadlines for motivation, financial investment doesn’t do it for me.

I realize all of this is sounding depressing and gloomy. My friend said today that it must be the “smoke blues” - California is currently breaking fire season records and we’ve been waking up to ash in the air and orange skies for weeks now. We are constantly bombarded by more bad news. Sometimes, 2020 feels like one long endurance test.

But…it not all bad news. There are people in your life who love you and care about you. People who depend on your love and care. People who will risk catching a deadly virus to give you a hug. That’s the good stuff, something always worth waking up for.

Maybe it’s just me, but have you noticed that in this dystopian future, people are starved for connection? They are more eager to respond when you reach out, happy to give and get some humanity. It’s reassuring: unseen dangers are wrecking havoc on our routines but people we know are still the same and still want to know us. There is comfort in that.

Of course, they could just be bored. Too much time on their hands. I keep hearing about that particular effect of the quarantine, and if this is you…please keep it to yourself. See above re: work, distance learning, stress, work, no time, homework.

The point I am trying to make is this: we are living through very difficult times. And whatever your reality of that is at the moment, it is yours to own, even if someone else might have it worse. It’s okay to feel “smoke blues”. We will get through this by carrying each other and offering others the humanity, love and care we all need so much.

I will finish with a sketch from the archives: a basket of lemons, given to me by a dear friend. I got the lemons, she got a painting of them. Win-win! If life gives you lemons….sketch them :)

Happy, New.

December 31, 2019 in thoughts, urban sketching

Well, what do you say after going AWOL for over a year?

Hi! How have you been? Hope all is well.

I’ve been all kinds of good and bad during that year and a half. A lot has happened but the main event has been my divorce…If you’ve been through it, you know it’s something that devours your whole life for a while. The hardest times for me have been those to do with the kids…I have three, and they are now 10, 7 and 6 years old. They have been my lifeline through the difficult marriage, and now in the absence of marriage, it is my turn to be the rock.

They’ve done well, considering. These days, they split their time half and half between mom and dad and a lot of the scary emotional uncertainty brought on by the divorce has died down.

I guess it has died down enough for me that I can talk about it. I went through almost a year of therapy (and could probably do a few years more). I won’t go into detail about why all of this happened here but you are welcome to ask. However dramatic it may sound, I feel like a survivor. There really were times when I felt I would not make it. But I did make it, and I am happy now.

After the divorce was final in February this year, I decided it was also the time to change jobs. Try a different size firm, a different market, see how well I do in a new environment. As a newly single mom, I was also feeling the need for more income.

I timed the beginning date of my new job a month after I quit the last one. That month, I went on my own “eat-pray-love” adventure in Europe. I’ve been saving up for and planning that trip for a while. And it was so worth it! I spent a glorious week in Copenhagen and stopped by Berlin, Prague and a few places in Ukraine. There is enough material there for a whole series of blog posts, but for now, just a few sketches.

Right before I went on my trip, two things happened: 1) I got into a car accident that totalled my car and 2) I met the man I am dating now. Those were two independent events :). It was easy to pull off a month without a car while in Europe, but after I came back, I scrambled to get another one as soon as possible.

On the other hand, after one date and a month away, I wanted to see the same guy. We’ve been going steady since. If you were about to roll your eyes, now is the time - yes, I am dating a musician. He’s good at it, too.

So yeah. Divorce, new job, epic trip to Europe, new relationship. I’ve been busy. Ah yes, I also passed my last (6 of 6) Architect Registration Examination and now, all that stands between me and an architect license is the CSE (California Supplemental Examination). That’s the goal for 2020.

Often, I get asked if I still paint. I do, though these days, it has taken the back seat to the architect job and the rest of my life. It is harder to make the quiet space for art and to get in the flow. I have to physically take myself into a specific setting: I am either 1) traveling or 2) participating in a life drawing session. Both of those are a break from the daily life, rather than a way of life.

And that’s okay with me. The other repeating question I hear once in a while is “How do you do it all?” That’s just it though, I don’t. I haven’t blogged for a year and half because there was no room for it in my life. And because the heavy topics I wrote about would be out of place here on the website dedicated to my art. I have been occasionally sloppy with my art sales during that time, too. I have not felt on top of my game.

Sometimes, it is time to step away. It’s tempting to beat yourself up for not being everywhere at the same time, for not living up to someone else’s expectations. I do it all the time, and the expectations are usually mine. But if you pause and look at yourself with compassion, as you would at a friend, it becomes obvious how ridiculous those expectations are. You are doing just fine. You got the things that matter covered.

And to others, it probably even looks like you’re “doing it all.”

Tomorrow, a new year starts. It is my annoying habit to question all conventions and I know that there is nothing magical about December ending and January beginning. However, I also know that we have the power to make it magical. So let’s! If 2019 has been good for you like it was for me, 2020 will be even better. And if it wasn’t so great…well, there’s no way but up!

Happy New Year!

Pivot

May 19, 2018 in sketchbook, thoughts

After a few years of my posts becoming less and less frequent, I feel the need to explain myself. If you're in the sacred exclusive circle of people I keep in touch with, you probably know what's up. Or, alternatively, you haven't noticed anything fishy at all. But still, here's an update.

I've enjoyed sharing my journey through art world and parenthood here. I loved helping other artists learn more about watercolor. And I'm sure I will be continuing to do so...just not in the same way.

After I re-entered AEC (architecture-engineering-construction) industry almost three years ago, I felt an instant sense of belonging. Sure, painting is fun and my art career is shaping up nicely - but I also really enjoy the many facets of the architecture profession. I get a real kick out of figuring stuff out. And I know art and architecture aren't mutually exclusive - but the time and intensity needed to keep the art career moving forward is not something I currently have...

In front of the Seattle Public Library by Rem Koolhaas.

I am focusing on architecture, again, and the art is being pushed to the margins. It makes me sad and frustrated a bit but it was a necessary move. Once I accepted that I can't keep up the pace I had before the full time architecture job, my frustration went down several notches. I'd like to think it's one of those "it's time for this and time for that" situations. It's time to get my architect's license and it's time to be a fully independent human. Masterpieces of contemporary art will either have to wait or happen in-between the lines.

This is not a goodbye. It's a pivot. I will keep creating but I will also have to redefine myself as an artist...whatever that means. I used to think I'd create larger and larger pieces, but in the last few years, I turn to my sketchbooks more and more. I had visions of complex, abstracted cityscapes but when I'm looking for a release, I paint people. I come back to people. Go figure.

Katia. Le Pen and watercolor in a Handbook sketchbook.

Keep an eye out for more sketches, then! And if you feel like sticking around, let's see where else my journey takes me.

Until next time,

Yevgenia

Ukraine trip part 3 - Lviv

January 21, 2018 in thoughts, sketchbook

Lviv, Lwow, Lvov, Leopolis. The coolest city in Ukraine, no contest. It is the cultural capital of Ukraine, due to its breathtaking architecture, healthy emphasis on the arts, delicious food and adoration of all things Ukrainian. In a country with a history of conflicted identity, Lviv is proud to be Ukrainian.

I sketched and painted Lviv a few times (not enough!)...The experimental Yupo piece above was part of a 20x20 show at a Sacramento gallery.

Coming back to Lviv was wonderful...We caught the perfect weather and, although very short, our visit felt like a rich experience.

We came by train, from Khmelnitskiy. It's only a couple of hours' ride and I took the opportunity to introduce my husband to the standard travel choice of most Ukrainians - "platzkart", or 2nd class. This is basically an open train compartment, with two lower bunks, two upper bunks and one more lower and upper across the aisle. Your feet stick out into the aisle.

Another super traditional thing about this train ride - the mandatory hot tea in a glass with metal holder. Apparently, these things have been around since the late 18th century.

They are, of course, also highly sketchable :)

Once we got to Lviv, we had an airbnb place waiting for us. A loft in a tower, at the end of four or five stories of a spiral staircase.

And the best thing about it? The view...

The view inside the 17th century Bernardine church seen in the previous photo.

..And the view into the inner courtyard.

We stayed close to the apartment - which is in the old town - which is where I wanted to be anyway. There's the Rynok square, the main tourist hangout with the city hall and the bell tower in the middle. The square is surrounded by something like fifty historical buildings, each unique but playing nicely with its quirky neighbors.

Among the new places, I got to visit the House of Legends - a multistory restaurant / museum of local urban legends. We dined on the rooftop and I scored a goal, shooting a coin into the chimney sweep's hat (this is supposed to bring you tons of luck).

Another stop was the Fedorov square, which his the location of a long-standing book flea market. I was limited by the size of my luggage, exchanged money on hand and also a little bit of common sense - otherwise, I would have bought a lot of paper. And vinyl.

Here, I am holding the first issue of my favorite childhood magazine. Mr Ivan Fedorov, the first printer of a text in Church Slavonic, is looking over approvingly from the distance.

Also, I painted this guy before - in my Unity series.

And this place - St Olga's Cathedral - is my favorite painting out of the series. I waved at it as we were passing by.

We missed the festival of street music by a week or so but, this being Lviv, music happened on the street anyway. We just kind of wandered into this Ukrainian girls choir performance at the Rynok square.

This is just a very small, curated collection of images I brought home with me. I love the photo above, taken from the top of the House of Legends. I didn't think of it at the time, but this East-West pointing wind compass illustrates the historical predicament of my home country. Stuck between Russia and Poland, Ukraine has been a favorite site of many wars between the East and the West.

Ukrainians are not belligerent people. More like, conflict-avoidant - it takes a lot to tick us off. Which, I guess, attracts all sorts of conquerors thinking we're an easy win. It is really a mistake on their part...historically, Ukraine grew all kinds of rebels and militias in response to the bullying neighbors.

At the same time, the Ukrainian national identity has also been a site of conflict, particularly after its independence in 1991: do we associate more with the former soviet countries and their mentality or do we jump head first into the Western culture?

Anyway...I enjoyed the trip thoroughly. Hopefully, a longer stay next time. So much to see, so many things to sketch!