The past six months have moved with the slow insistence of weather — a period where the ground kept rearranging itself beneath me, sometimes gently, sometimes with a weight that asked for more steadiness than I felt I had. What began as a focused push toward my MFA midpoint review became something far more layered: caregiving, travel, technical graft, family milestones, and the quiet work of tending to my own mind in a city that feels unsettled.

Much of my creative attention has been held by A Landscape Under Threat. Working with sediment — as material, metaphor, and a way of thinking — taught me to notice what accumulates, what erodes, and what shifts beneath the surface long before it becomes visible. It shaped not only the project, but the way I moved through these months: aware of layers, of pressure, of the stories that settle in the body.

Life, of course, continued its own parallel narrative.

There were trips back to the UK, days spent reconnecting with and caring for my parents, stepping into old rooms with a different kind of tenderness. Those journeys carried their own emotional sediment — the quiet weight of responsibility, the strange familiarity of returning, the reminder that love often looks like repetition.

In the midst of all this, my daughter married. A moment that felt like a clearing in the middle of dense terrain. Watching her step into her future, gaining not just a son‑in‑law but a son, a widening of family — it grounded me in a way that still feels warm when I think about it. A brief, bright pause in an otherwise demanding season.

At home, we began designing a new house. A place shaped by intention rather than inheritance. A place with a darkroom, naturally — not as an indulgence, but as an anchor. A room for slowness, for chemistry and light, for the tactile rituals that keep me connected to the work. Planning that space has been its own quiet act of hope.

Meanwhile, the technical side of my practice asked for its usual devotion. I rebuilt my development workflow, upgraded my scanning equipment, and moved to the Stenopeika 4×5 — a camera that slows me down in all the right ways. I repaired both a transmission and a reflection densitometer, coaxing them back into precision. I linearised the transparency output of my Canon printer for digital negatives, then measured final prints by reflection, chasing tonal accuracy with the patience the craft demands.

Threaded through all of this was the work of looking after my mental health. Minneapolis feels heavy at times — the political climate, the immigration enforcement actions happening right now, the sense of uncertainty that settles over neighbourhoods like a low, unbroken cloud. Some days, the noise of it all presses in, narrowing the horizon. I’ve had to learn, again and again, how to step back, how to breathe, how to protect the small, quiet spaces where my mind can settle. It isn’t always graceful, but it is necessary.

And then came the midpoint review — the presentation, the interview, the strange mixture of vulnerability and resolve. Standing there, speaking for the work, I realised how much of these months had been about learning to trust myself amid shifting ground. The review wasn’t just an academic checkpoint; it was a marker of persistence, of staying with the work even when the world around me felt unsteady.

Looking back now, the period feels like a sedimentary layer of its own: caregiving, travel, machines, landscapes, family, politics, fear, joy, and the quiet determination to keep building a life that feels intentional. A record of what it means to move through uncertainty with both hands open.

The next chapter is already forming — a new home, an internship, a deepening of the work. But for now, I’m letting this layer settle. Letting it become part of the ground I’ll stand on next.