On keeping track of our little worlds

This week I bring to you Natalie Wadlington’s, Digging in the Rain, 2021. Here, the artist’s character is scraping at the Earth’s ground in desperation for something. Digging in the Rain is one in a series from her show at the Dallas Contemporary last summer, Places that Grow. The exhibition was stolen time, and it captured the youth's spirit and movements in their exploration of natural curiosities.

In her narratives, Wadlington uses idyllic adolescent experiences and her recent move to Texas to inform her visuals. Throughout her artworks, her characters are all on adventures and excavations in brilliantly colored worlds. They capture how unconditionally vivid the world is in childhood — and how it still is on the better days. Semi-autobiographical, the vignettes recount hazy memories in the great outdoors that veer away from whimsical narratives. Resisting surreal or fantastical depictions of child-like wonder, Wadlington shares the emotion of discovering little worlds in your yard, in your home.

Find her other works here to understand the strength of emotion in this painting.

The artist uses familiar elements like the fences and trellises depicted here and hoses, plastic chairs, and pools in other paintings. These common visuals bring a sense of comfort to the viewer — the character exists in a world we know, so we feel like we know her. While looking at this painting, we, too, want to find whatever the girl is digging for.

We cannot identify what she’s searching for, so we make our assumptions of what it could be. Perhaps she’s looking for nothing at all, and it’s the warm, dry days of summer that she’s missing. Her dig is futile, it seems. Unlike many of the artist’s other vibrantly colored works, this is a demure painting of a girl drowning in her little world. But, somehow, desaturated as it is, it remains colorful. Wadlington tells us that unlike in her other stories, although emotion is still intense, here it’s unfortunate. Perhaps at this moment, the girl can’t fathom that she doesn’t even know what she’s looking for. It may not be any particular thing — maybe it’s a feeling she’s chasing. A feeling, a person, or someone who gives her that feeling.

There’s rage and sadness so extreme that this girl feels she won’t recover. Because, when you’re young, that’s what it’s like. There is no coming back from a disappointment. No respite. No assurance that everything will be okay again.

When you look at this painting, take stock of your life and confirm that you haven’t lost anything. But can you even say there is anything you might be so desperate to find if lost? Could you be so distraught? Anything that would tear you so deeply as the girl in this painting? I do not know what you might be wondering you’re missing, but something that might be an irredeemable lost requests attention. So, take this painting, this girl, as a sign to think carefully.

I told you this is about little worlds, but it’s also about losing sight of those little worlds. It’s about losing them when we don’t nurture them enough.

Last year, I wrote a review — linked here — of Places that Grow for Glasstire.

Fleishman is in Trouble

Fleishman is in Trouble on Hulu. Have you seen it yet? If so, or even if not, set aside any preconceived notions you’ve drawn from reading articles on or hearing about the “Fleishman Effect” and just watch and listen to Libby, the narrator of the show. Her monologue at the end of episode six gets me every time, and I’ve gone back to watch it specifically about five times. Realize that she, and the other characters, are searching for their little worlds. We understand this most clearly when Libby describes herself as everything but is “essentially a magazine writer with no assignment.” It’s the neglect of her little world in this series, no matter how you slice it.

In the Shadow of the Tent

This 1914 painting by Helen Galloway McNicoll is a soft painting of two women on the beach engulfed in their little worlds: one with an open easel box on her lap, the other sitting on a blanket, leaning over a book she’s reading. While a painting made during the beginning of the Women’s suffrage movement, it’s a painting appreciating all that a woman could be involved with and do — to learn and to create.

Hall of Small Mammals

Inherently strange protagonists in these fantastical and surreal short stories seem to exist in their own worlds. A few words from the about: “The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil hunter, a comedian, a hot-air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world.”

Earlier this week, I opened a chat for everyone to share news and thoughts. It’s already been posted to and I can’t wait to learn more from you all.

Thank you, and I’ll see you next week!