November 2025: Broken but Better

Where did October go? On October 13, my 94-years-young mother and I went to what we thought would be an ordinary doctor’s appointment. Instead, we discovered that her oxygen levels were dangerously low. She confessed she had felt short of breath just getting dressed that morning. Within an hour, we were sent for a chest X-ray, and before we even settled in back home, the call came: go to the emergency room immediately.

I’ll spare the long story of the emergency room, the monitors, the waiting. The result is simple and profound—she has been diagnosed with right-sided heart failure. It means she will likely need oxygen for the rest of her life, and yet, in her quiet, steady way, she could still very well make it to 100. After three weeks in skilled nursing care, she has regained her strength and will be coming home this Saturday.

She now lives with a literally broken heart. But I’ve come to believe that all of us live with figuratively broken hearts. As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack, a crack in everything—that’s how the light gets in.” Each of us carries our own private fractures, and collectively, we are living through a time of deep social and political breakage. Still, the light finds its way through—if we let it.

My way of letting the light in has always been through making art or poetry. Creation is how I make sense of things, how I breathe. I was fifty before I sold my first piece of art—an etching I had made twenty-five years earlier. But selling it was never the primary point. The act of creation itself is our very human way of mending, transforming pain or simply releasing it, in order to make room for light to pass through us and out into the world.

And because art is a conversation, not a monologue, I invite you to share in that light. Below are a couple of exhibitions and projects I’m honored to be part of.

In the Groove

The Groove Artspace, 309 Gold Ave SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102

First Friday, November 7
Opening Reception, 5-9pm

First Friday, December 5
Meet the Artists Reception, 5-9pm

Saturday, December 18
Last Day of Show, 10am-4pm

Happy to be invited to show the following three pieces during the Holiday Season.

OTSO IN THE MOONLIGHT
16×16 inches, mixed media on panel
purchase HERE

Fall of Freedom

OT Circus, 709 Central Ave NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102

First Friday, October 7, Opening, 5-9pm

OT Circus is answering the national call to the arts community in uniting against authoritarian attacks to our democracy. For November, the Fall of Freedom exhibition will bring diverse artists expressing their voice through visual resistance. We are joining the nationwide chorus against censorship and silence. Pleased to have four works from the Postcards to America series in this exhibition.

GEORGIA: On My Mind
Mixed media on paper, 32×46-inches framed

OHIO: The Hurt of it All
Mixed media on paper, 32×46-inches framed