A lifetime of joy and worry

A world forms itself around the donkey: a sun, a couple of trees, birds, shrubs, vessels… Tinsley later told us that the trees and the sun were copied from one of her son’s drawings, part of an ongoing visual exchange. The installation becomes its own gallery, with small paintings nestled in between sculptural objects. There are monumental donkeys and average-sized donkeys and tiny donkeys - layers on layers of donkeys - like a set of nesting dolls.

When we visited Tori Tinsley in her studio, she said that her mother used to refer to her and her sister as “my chickens” - that every time they would come to visit, she would say how happy she was that her chickens were home.

A Lifetime of Joy and Worry is about the moments that a parent misses in their children’s lives. It spirals into infinite tangents just like the life of a child quickly grows too big to contain; there’s too much to keep up with it all. I would love to have children someday, but I wonder if I could ever reach the level of selflessness required to be a good parent: re-centering your life around another being, only to watch as that being goes from total dependence on you to a fully-fledged, independent human in their own right. It must be weird.

Details from A Lifetime of Joy and Worry, Tori Tinsley

On Friday, we went to Chrome Yellow for coffee, then to the Slutty Vegan for lunch because it was walkable. The Slutty Vegan does not want you to linger. There is booming music, three (3) chairs, and a wall of slut-themed merchandise.

“Hey, slut,” said the man behind the counter. “We’ve got a slut from Chattanooga here.”

Instead of going to Midtown, I lay on an oversized bean bag in the High Museum, looking up at a projection on the ceiling of two men, holding each other by the arms, skateboarding up and down the curve of a half-pipe, caught in an infinite moment of mutual unwillingness to let go.

The film was part of Tyler Mitchell’s Idyllic Space, a collection of photographs, video pieces, and installations. Hazy and nostalgic, his work captures the fleeting moments, split-second memories, easily forgotten, now made eternal.

At the High Museum, I saw my first ever Guston in person. I stood with my feet touching the tape line in front of it, as close as I was allowed to go, and tried to commit it all to memory, to pay attention to the pink, to the mark-making, to the surface. My photos can never really capture the true quality of a thing. They’re more like flash cards: devices to help me trigger the memory of a real moment. I’ll photograph a sunset and immediately notice what the camera won’t pick up, and try to commit those things to memory. Remember that the pink tones were deeper in real life. Remember the evenness of the light.

He carries her over the bridge, her white kitten heels glowing in the light, an act of needless self-sacrifice. He can’t hold her forever - eventually he has to let her go. But for now, she laces her fingers behind his neck, holding on for just one moment longer.