Vhåt iS a life?
I once had an encounter with Albert Maysles, the cinematographer (“Grey Gardens,” “Gimme Shelter”) when he was filming In Transit about train travel. It was deep winter & I was on the Empire Builder heading home to Oregon. We spent a pleasant hour talking in the lounge car as I was drawing in my sketchbook. I remember showing him my drawing (camera rolling, and no, I did not make it into the movie) and he asked me, “Are you a professional artist?”
After considering I said, “Nope. I’m an un-professional artist.”
“Ahh,” he replied. “The best kind.”
Those are the words I use when describing what I do: I am an unprofessional artist who likes to make things.
A book compositor by trade (design & production), and 40 years a calligrapher – these are the foundations I bring to the page. When I'm not working or drawing, it's hand crafts I turn to – baskets, pinch pot ceramics, pebble mandalas, bookmarks, textiles . . .
And I’m a writer. My son died when he was only 4; I’ve been writing our story ever since. My Skin Is the River, A Mother’s Book of Grief is a memoir of love and loss, yes, but also of survival against the odds, and especially the beauty and necessity of grief that somehow, paradoxically, leads us back into a life worth living.
It was during those years – between when I lost Alex and now – that I started drawing.
I always wanted to draw, but I didn’t believe I could, until I changed that belief into: I want to, and I will. From there followed classes and lots of practice. Without really understanding how or why, I now see that drawing has been a big part of my survival.
I began a travelling sketchbook in 2008, and it’s become a constant companion. It travels with me, everywhere. I can pull it out at a moment’s notice, draw quickly, tuck it back inside my purse. While every page does not always satisfy, that’s the gift of a sketchbook. It is not about product; it’s all about practice and play and being present to the 10,000 things in front of me to draw.
So Vhat is a life WOrth living?
My definition, distilled over the past 30+ years, is letting go of, well, a heckuva lot of whatever is holding us back. And then, with luck, finding our voice – & using it to speak or draw or sing or dance our truth.
chRiSti’s bio
Christi can often be found sitting on an urban park bench or in her folding chair on a New England common, working happily in her sketchbook. Her drawings include landscapes, actual and imaginary human figures and animals, lettering, and ornamentation often derived from 12–15th century manuscripts. She has come to call her calligraphic style of embellished lettering as ‘Modern Medieval.’
Christi’s eye for small beauties and quirky details as seen in her drawings is perhaps most evident in her foundational love of words & letters and her ongoing practice of calligraphy & writing, which has informed the life-long thread that runs through her art.
As well as her work with the medieval forms of hand-lettered and illuminated pages, she has a love for that slightly less old-fashioned medium, the printed page. Her experience in print media includes working as a professional book designer and compositor, which she has translated into a freelance career of co-creating with authors to self publish, working side-by-side as active participants in the design & production of their own books.
Christi is a recent transplant from Oregon to Western Massachusetts. She and her husband Greg Darms lived on a floathouse on a Columbia River Estuary for 18 years in where the tides pulled them up and down 6 to 12 feet twice a day – a wild and wonderful existence. Moving to New England and the hilltown of Shutesbury Massachusetts in 2019 has brought them much pleasure and endless exploring, not to mention how many new steeples there are to draw.
50 years in publication production – newspapers, magazines, and books – as designer, compositor, & production manager
Calligrapher with 40 years experience – drawn lettering & medieval illumination a specialty
Writer. BA in English Literature /Writing from Dominican University
2020 Recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and 8-week winter residency for the memoir, My Skin Is the River, A Mother’s Book of Grief
Craftswoman who loves the slow rhythm of working with her hands, whether its baskets, ceramics, a felted hat, painted pebble mandalas, whisk brooms, building a birch-wood throne, or textile explorations into weaving, embroidery, and traditional Japanese techniques of shibori & shashiko
Teaching Experience – Art of the Travel Sketchbook · Medieval Illumination · Pebble Mandalas · Paper Embossing · Celtic Knots
Survivor. Perhaps the accomplishment I am most proud of.
