River Journeys Podcast

It was no surprise I paid no attention to running a household or creating a home. In the subtle ways past generations shape future ones, Mother survived a childhood of drudgery compounded by poverty and parents with grade school educations. She wanted neither for her children. She ran the house. I studied. My much younger sister played. When faced with a home of my own, the shock was electric. I h...

Being able to look back is important, but not enough. Old art, whether magnificent or mundane, is always the raw material of new art. The artist’s job is to build on it or transform it, not offer up comforting familiarity as a talisman against the void. That was the problem with my glass project. It was a bridge backward. Much later, painting became a path forward. Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find...

Could I be more than a caregiver, housekeeper, cook, gardener — important jobs, functional jobs, exhausting in their relentlessness? Jackson Pollock characterized art as an act of “self-discovery,” positioning the experience of the individual, not the work, at the center of the endeavor. I didn’t need to be the center of anything. I needed something else. Tole painting became that something. Writt...

On bookbinding, questioning Plato and poiesis. Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack . Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco EXCERPT But measuring and sewing the bindings of my simple books, I knew I was both working and thinking. Buried in the Greek language is a word, “poiesis.” It is the same word used to describe the work of both mechanic and poet....

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces | Between stars—on stars where no human race is. | I have it in me so much nearer home | To scare myself with my own desert places. —Robert Frost Now what? First house. First job. The house was in an almost new tract miles from charming homes we couldn’t afford around the university. The job matched Jim’s research interests in business and labor relatio...

Part One ***ENERGY UNBRIDLED Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist when you grow up. —Pablo Picasso Draw. Decorate. Design. All were outside my sturdy middle-class school experience. In a curriculum where memorization and outlining were daily companions, art was an infrequent visitor… and never for a “serious” student. I was a serious student. The Space Age began October 4...

“To create a memorable design, you need to start with a thought that is worth remembering.” —Thomas Manss The small box, with its geometric inlaid light and dark pattern, was a gift from my father after one of his Navy deployments. When he pulled it from his duffel bag, I tried to hide my disappointment. It looked like a decorated wooden rectangle. I had been hoping for a Japanese doll, or maybe a...