“I didn’t think these notes and personal photos would have a purpose other than to log what I was learning and observing, but now I see each brief reflection as a seed. These entries are about the time and care it takes to grow something. It is about both the unglamorous tending and revealing the work behind the polished description and documentation of a project.”
Practice Notes are reflections from working artists sharing strategies for sustaining a practice under real-world conditions. This may include time management, collaborating with non-human forces, maintaining vitality during slow periods, collective care economies, pricing work, or navigating scarcity.
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Jen de los Reyes—whose studio profile was published earlier this year—shares personal journal entries that coincide with her work at Garbage Hill Farm and LAND. These day-to-day musings are filled with references to the artist’s inspirations while providing thoughtful reflections on how one cultivates creative practice and place-making in a tumultuous world.
“The salt flats offer a certain kind of frame. A space where ground is brighter than sky, so our orientation is flipped. In search of a point of reference, it has been described as an alien landscape or a white gallery wall, turned flat; in either form, we are out of context.“
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Anika Todd’s project began as a simple experiment: a camera lifted into the air over the Wendover Salt Flats by a weather balloon, tethered to the ground by a string. It grew into an essay and two channel video installation exploring a human desire for speed and inhabiting the sky.
“The Wendover Historic Airfield Museum says it was for American glory. But when I look at the faces of the smiling pilots in the archival photos, I read something more like escape. Not in a nationalistic sense, but a personal hunger—a desire to shed an earthbound weight.“
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Anika Todd’s video essay, Tether, questions what is lost when a place is understood from above without maintaining a connection to the ground it surveys. Watch, listen, or read at the link in our bio.
Tether is a video essay that began as a simple experiment: a camera lifted into the air over the Wendover Salt Flats by a weather balloon, tethered to the ground by a string. The video essay situates this footage within the history of Wendover, where the bombsight for the atomic bomb was developed during World War II, and examines how framing operates in both military and artistic contexts. At its core, Tether challenges the idea of a “god’s-eye view” as neutral or objective, asking what is lost when a place is understood from above without maintaining a connection to the ground it surveys.
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Anika Todd (b. 1992, Boston, MA) is an artist and educator whose work investigates Western principles of property that authorize human control of earth and sky. Todd earned a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and currently teaches sculpture at the Sam Fox School of Art and Design in MO. They have created site-specific outdoor works for Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, TX (2024) and NONstndrd, MO (2025), and have presented solo exhibitions at Erin Cluley Projects, TX (2024); Lydian Stater, NY (2023); and Flux Factory, NY (2021). Todd has participated in residencies nationally and internationally, including the NARS Foundation (2020) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019). They received an Austin Cultural Arts Council Award in 2019 and were a finalist for the NYFA Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design Award in 2022.
Are you interested in a writer - project matchmaking service? For example: you want to write but need a metal-themed project to write about OR you have a metal-themed project but don’t want to write. Weigh in!
“You want to talk caulk, do ya?
Okay, so first up: what is caulking? Caulk is a sauce we lay down to seal and adhere. Not all caulking is an adhesive and not all adhesives are caulking, though there are a few that can be used for both applications.
Real ones know the job title used to be called a mastic man. Now we just call ‘em a “caulker.” Yes a “caulker” is a profession, and–who knows–by the end of this letter you might be running off to join the goop troop.”
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Read Jerry’s guide to good caulk at the 🔗 in bio
Open Arms is our version of an “Editor’s Picks” list. Because Art Forearm is born from ongoing relationships with creative people and organizations, listings in Open Arms may possibly—and probably will—include projects by AF contributors, collaborators, and members of our extended community. We believe that supporting one another’s work is part of sustaining a healthy cultural ecosystem.
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Comment OPEN ARMS and we’ll send you the link
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Do you have an exhibition, project, publication, or opportunity you’d like us to know about and share with our readers? Comment with the info!
Technique Case Studies are process-forward conversations or investigations with makers whose technical mastery reveals something larger about labor, embodiment, and care. This feature provides an intimate look at a specific technique—whether centuries-old or newly emergent—through the eyes of a dedicated practitioner.
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Michelle Wilson describes why the technique of courtroom sketching emerged in her artistic practice in the past year—first as an attempt to hold masked ICE agents accountable but ultimately as a method of documenting the breakdown of our court system.
“silhouettes leave an openness that a viewer can fill in—the person in that drawing could be any person. I hope this enables people to see themselves in these stories and, thus, increase a sense of empathy.”
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Michelle Wilson recounts her time as a voluntary court observer in the San Francisco Immigration Court, sharing insights and reflections gained from this witnessing.
Technique Case Studies are process-forward conversations or investigations with makers whose technical mastery reveals something larger about labor, embodiment, and care. This feature provides an intimate look at a specific technique—whether centuries-old or newly emergent—through the eyes of a dedicated practitioner.
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Michelle Wilson describes why the technique of courtroom sketching emerged in her artistic practice in the past year—first as an attempt to hold masked ICE agents accountable but ultimately as a method of documenting the breakdown of our court system. She recounts her time as a voluntary court observer in the San Francisco Immigration Court, sharing insights and reflections gained from this witnessing.
JS: Are there strategies or structures you recommend for artists or educators who want to build alternative or field-based teaching models, especially thinking about funding and labor?
CT: The biggest thing is just to do it. The world needs more of these things.
Something can burn bright and short and still matter deeply.
That makes more sense to me than incrementalism—trying to plan everything or ensure long-term perpetuity before starting. That can become insurmountable.
Right now, with institutional risk aversion, it’s increasingly difficult to do anything. Especially in the arts and humanities, where you’re asking for inventive thinking, but the systems limit you to predefined options.
We’ve shifted from deep engagement—like reading a book—to quick snapshots of information. Everyone has access to the same data. What matters now is what you do with it.
Our path forward is through human imagination.
