The Routine of Risk

Call me crazy, but I’ve noticed that the crows in my neighborhood are practicing good COVID prevention. They seem to be staying in small family groups and limiting their contact with other groups. There’s been no dive-bombing or food thievery, and while they’re not exactly washing their ‘hands’, they’ve taken to washing other things. We’ve recently put out a water dish for all the animals that visit our yard and they have been loving it! Half the time it’s a bath for the young bluejay siblings, and the rest of the time it’s a watering hole. This morning, I noticed the crows taking the peanuts we gave them and washing them in the water dish before they ate them. Very good risk management!

Doesn’t it feel like life is full of risk right now? Everything we do is more or less risky-going to the grocery store, meeting with family or maybe a few friends, going to work again or even just taking a walk. Everything requires thought and preparation. Wear your mask and don’t get too close, and at the same time try to hear and be understood but don’t touch your face. Wash your hands every time you touch something that someone else might also touch or has touched. Where’s the sanitizer? Our lives have become a series of risk management routines.
The exhausting part is the lack of immediate feedback. Have all my precautions worked? Is anyone I came into contact with sick? Am I carrying the virus without knowing? There is the constant stress of unrelenting uncertainty with a vague and future reward. I haven’t gotten sick yet, but the answer is always two weeks away. This is risk without tangible reward.

Luckily, making art is full of another type of risk-risk of our own choosing and with immediate reward! It’s more experimentation than real risk. We try making things bigger, more delicate, or we use new and unfamiliar materials and all of this leads us to a different set of problems than before. If we solve those problems adequately, then we are rewarded with a successful piece. If we don’t come up with a solution, then at least it’s not life threatening and we end up with more knowledge about how to move our work forward.

Sometimes risk isn’t in the making of the work but in presenting it to people. We put part of ourselves into every piece we make and nobody know what struggles that might have entailed. Presenting it for people to judge sometimes takes s a bit of courage. While it can be painful, this kind of risk doesn’t carry the repercussions of the real, everyday peril inherent in life right now. It’s a relief to creatively concentrate on solving problems that are of your choosing and within your control. So keep making and trying new things!

I’m at the Fairfax Farmers’ Market!

If you want to see the new functional ware I’ve been experimenting with, stop by the Fairfax Farmers’ Market! I’ll have a booth there every Wednesday from July 1st through October 14th, from 4-8. Masks are required and I have plenty of hand sanitizer!