I’ll start at the beginning. Over fifteen years ago, at an art festival, I met someone who told me she knew a person who designed art for hospitals. I did not think it would go anywhere. At that time, I did not believe in myself enough.
I cannot remember who reached out first, but when it began to move forward, I felt something I had never felt before. Someone saw me. Someone truly saw me as an artist. Enough to share my work with others, with many others. That feeling was both beautiful and unsettling.
I wrestled with it. I still do at times.
Because I have always seen photography differently than many other mediums. I do not feel like I create in the same way. I feel as though I am simply witnessing, simply gathering what has already been made. God’s work, offered as it is, unfiltered and complete.
What brought me peace was this. I am not trying to improve upon it. I am sharing it.
Sharing glimpses of something honest and steady in places where people walk the halls feeling unsettled, afraid, and unwell. Places where time stretches and hearts grow heavy.
I know that feeling. I have walked those halls too.
An enormous sense of purpose began to fill my days. At the same time, I was creating stock photography for major international agencies, so my life was full in every direction. Mornings were spent hiking and wandering three days a week, with studio time filling the others.
But it was the time in the woods, in gardens, and in open meadows that quietly changed me.
I was no longer content to live my life indoors. I needed the air. I needed the movement. I felt pulled to wander, to drift in and out of trees and tall grasses, to follow light as it moved across the land.
Somewhere in that rhythm, something in me shifted and stayed.
Some of my favorite places to explore, beyond southeastern Wisconsin, are found in the Northwoods. Family owns a large, private piece of land that has become a second home to me, a kind of quiet, wild space where I can return again and again.
Cedar forests, marshlands, and stretches of evergreen trees make it feel almost limitless. There is always something to notice, something to follow.
Mushroom hunting. Gathering elderberries. Standing still long enough to watch dragonflies move through the air. It all draws me in, again and again.
There are days that stretch into hours, three or four at a time, riding through northern Wisconsin trails and parklands, watching the landscape unfold. Those moments have given me more than images. They have given me something lasting, something I carry with me long after I leave.
When I began to see my images placed in spaces of healing, that same question returned to me. I found myself unsure of how to feel.
There was my work, hanging on the walls. And yet, it was not mine alone. It was the Creator’s first.
How much pride can you take in something you did not truly make, but simply noticed? Something that existed long before you arrived, waiting only to be seen.
I stood in that tension for a long time, quietly holding both truths. That I was part of it, and that I was not.
I have come to rest in this knowing. What I do is share.
I share beauty. I share color. I share places that ask nothing, only that you pause and take them in.
I share moments of stillness, gathered quietly and offered to those who may need them most.
And that is enough.
Journey with me through the rest of this year as I take you deeper into the woods and prairies. I will be visiting local areas of interest as well, places that hold their own quiet beauty and story.
I will also be photographing and collaborating with homesteads and farms continuing to share that work as I have in the past. Each place offers something different, yet all of it is connected by the same thread of observation, light, and stillness.
This weeks blog post features images from my latest hike.
This weekend’s trip took me through the Northwoods. The woods were mostly gray and cloudy, damp and dewy. I was thrilled. Images captured in these conditions carry a rich, full color and detail that I love.
With my dog in tow and my camera in hand, I wandered at a snail’s pace, studying every tree, branch, fungus, and lichen—my favorites. There is an excitement in the woods this time of year, a quiet sense of possibility just beneath the soil, under last year’s layers.
If you stop—really stop—you are introduced to a microcosm: tiny worlds that go unseen and unnoticed. I love these places. They are where wonder is found.
Warmly,
Michelle
