Yellow Arrow Publishing Presents:
Highlandtown Art Walk Writer-in-Residence
The writer-in-residence for April, May and June 2019 is Kerry Graham.
By Kerry Graham
Lately, I’ve thought a lot about creating. Well, maybe it’s actually nurturing that I’ve been thinking of. Creation is the beginning of the process, when we make something exist. Nurturing it is what allows that something to develop and grow.
The annual arrival of ducklings in the park and along the waterfront. These baby feathered beings who, around Mother’s Day, transform into the winged version of children, and then, by Father’s Day, adolescents.
The seedlings gifted to me by my neighbor, which have miraculously flourished under my not-so-green thumb. Every morning, they seem to have been made taller, greener, fuller, via the magic of sunshine and water.
The writing projects I’ve been imagining, planning, starting, refining, completing. Arrangements of words and expressions of ideas that are on the page only because of my mind and heart.
The students—or as I call them, the lovelies—who I’ve spent the last school year with, for whom I’ve tried to grow and evolve so that I could better care for them. Their increased confidence, and clearer communication, and better time management, which I hope propel them into futures that will delight them.
The art in and around Highlandtown that I want to sit down and discuss with the artists at every glance. The streaks of bold paint, intricate weaving of beads, and shining mosaics. Images that began in a mind and were formed because of someone’s patient fingers.
The community—of strangers, family, friends—at each First Friday Art Walk. Strolling from their stoops, or looking for street parking, the people who make sure they laid out their day so they could be here. Now.
I’ve thought about why we create. Nurture. I’ve considered this not with questioning so much as with wonder. For many of us who create and nurture, both our efforts and outcomes will remain largely unnoticed, or even invisible.
We don’t do it for the recognition. It’s for the love—replenishing and exhausting—of what we hope to see thrive. It’s for what we believe in, even if no one realizes it except us.