This summer was filled with trips to beautiful, natural places, and unexpected grief. I lost someone very important to me. I’ve known her since I was born, and I consider her two grown children (and their families) part of my family. She was an honest and independent person. By being herself, she taught me and […]
I am looking for more space in my ideas of who I am and what my work creates
So far, 2015 has been full of new beginnings: 12-step programs, coffee with butter and coconut oil, a new full-time job that comes with an office that I don’t have to share with an industrial furnace. When you start the new year by assembling the Lego Swamp Police Station, good things are sure to follow. Changes. It […]
Maybe I should have asked my friends–the few who haven’t been badgered into participation on this blog at this point–to weigh in on 2015, new starts, and old habits that die hard in the face of the desire to change. But that would have been a lot of work, and I’m not in the mood […]
Steve Spehar has completed his residency at the Studiola, and I’m so honored that he chose to exercise his steely discipline and multi-media talents on this blog for his one-a-day shoot-and-write 31 day challenge. December 2014 was filled with high quality content and a heart full of effort and reflection, and if you are just browsing […]
My boyfriend LB grows a great mustache. Mustache success has been achieved by these notable figures: Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck, Ron Swanson, Attorney General Eric Holder, Carl Pavano. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Walter Cronkite, Martin Luther King, Jr., my uncle Sam Ripley. Adam Tschorn, who covers men’s grooming, style and pop culture for the Los […]
What am I doing lately? I’m binge-watching Parks and Recreation via Netflix streaming, and reading. This past weekend, I finished this year’s Lambda Literary Foundation‘s selection for its Bisexual Fiction award, Susan Choi’s My Education. A first-person narrative about first love, circling the drain, careening into and out of academia, and sex–oh, and growing up. I loved […]
Confession: I don’t know how to take a joke. My parents used to chant cantcha jake a toke? over and over at me in my more intense moments of meltdown, when someone had poked fun at me. Super-serious, super-earnest. So much seriousness that it prompted my high school French teacher to whisper burnout in my ear and nudge […]
It’s hot, I’m full of angst and aimless, multi-directional impulses, so I think now is a good time to grab the reins here at Nola Studiola for a couple months’ sojourn. Yours truly Alison Barker is back to update you on all things Barker, including Lost Boy, his Mustache, the politics and evolving philosophy on […]
I’d never have guessed it a year ago, as I chased a toddler around a lakeside house in Denver, dated a guy who thought putting my earrings in a ziploc bag and returning them to me was a “big step emotionally” for him, poured hours crafting what would be tens of unanswered cover letters to […]
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