Years ago, I was traveling through China with some other artists and we stopped along a beach on the island of Putuoshan, a Buddhist pilgrimage site on the edge of the East China Sea. It was hot and muggy and we were young, so we raced down the beach and jumped into the surf to cool off. None of us could read Mandarin and our guides didn’t say anything, so if there were surf warnings posted, we were oblivious. I was 22, a strong swimmer, and with friends; to my mind, indestructible.

Maybe that youth and hubris took me out a little farther from shore than I should have been to body surf in waves that were maybe a bit too big and unruly. At any rate, I ended up taking the full brunt of a large wave that knocked me spinning ass over tea kettle under churned up water, breathless and without a clear sense of which way was up.

Surely it was just moments stretched out. Everything slows down when you’re in danger. In literally over my head, I could feel water pressure pushing one way and sucking at me down all at the same time. A sort of atavistic instinct kicked in and I rolled up in a ball, but kept kicking out with a leg until my toes hit sand, giving me direction up and something to push against to propel myself out of the undertow.

I tell you this, because that is what I’ve felt like for the past few months.

Last year, I began work on Undying World, a series about hope and a world and humanity worth saving. It was about the belief that, while not perfect, we have chosen the better angels of our nature; that we have begun to embrace the things of our world that endure over the transient and disposable. Then the U.S. election happened and with it, a significant number of people supported an administration that has attacked civil rights, environmental protections, the arts, science and reason. It knocked the wind out of me. It wasn’t simply that I wasn’t able to continue with the series. Artistically, I couldn’t find which way was up. I’ve spent months not just trying to find words and make images that address this mess that we have made for ourselves, but to move past the political dumpster fire to begin working again. Then, kicking into the chaos, my toes touched bottom.

I’ve begun melding images of industrial decay with organic elements from time spent in nature. It’s a long way from a cohesive statement of my feelings and I don’t know what will emerge from the soup. I’m not even sure it’s a way up, but it’s a direction.

Okay. That was all very melodramatic, but it doesn’t mean it’s not where my brain is. We’ve got a long way to go…