Well, it’s been a good long while since I’ve posted a blog.
A lot’s happened since February 2017. Can I get an amen? That seems like such a long, innocent time ago. I just reread that post and I’m amazed at how much has changed in my external circumstances, but not in what I’m thinking about.
The primary idea in that 2017 post was that artists serve the community in ways that are unique to being artists, in addition to producing and presenting their creative work. In the 15 months to date of the pandemic we’re in, in which more than 60% of full-time artists (in any discipline) were fully unemployed, a whole lot of people didn’t have any choice in how/whether they served. I imagine for most of them, serving took a back seat to surviving. I pray that they were served by someone.
My musician husband, Chuck, lost all of his gigs and about half of his teaching from the move to Zoom. I was fortunate that my job with Creative Waco continued on Zoom with few other changes, and I actually picked up a semester of teaching at Baylor that I wouldn’t have been offered in healthier times. And, without a pandemic and the accompanying loss of income in our home, I probably wouldn’t have taken a gig teaching a theatre class at a local Catholic high school, which turned out to be surprisingly rewarding.
One of the reasons I stopped blogging was that my work with Creative Waco, doing professional development training for artists, received a two-year grant and I was able to expand what I was doing. So plans to write and speak at colleges got put on hold.
That grant is coming to an end, and we’re not trying to renew it with a role for me because…wait for it…
Chuck and I are planning to move back east within the next year.
Continue reading “The Year of Kudzu”
Luann Purcell Jennings 