Keira McArthur

The sky here is a uniform sheet of white this morning, the sun a faint dot of yellow. A few snowflakes dance outside my window, there is a skiff of white on the rooftops and hydro lines from the wee-hours snowfall. Trees sway and wave in the same wind that has pushed these snowclouds here.

They look restless, the trees. I feel restless too, after this morning’s scan of email and news.

Today is a fully reflective Capricorn moon. I sip coffee, watch the snowflakes (more, now) and check in with my body. Ah, there. Beneath the restlessness is a steady warmth, a deep trust that all is well, mid January 2025. My mind whispers No! Not rational, given the urgency of my task list, given the relentless news. Nevertheless it is there.

Hush now, I say to my mind, a lullaby to a fretting child.

In Los Angeles, right now, wildfires consume everything in their path, wildfires that an international crew of firefighters from as far away as South Africa cannot yet control. These are mostrous, carnivorous fires that roar as they consume forests, mansions, gardens and vehicles, rain black ash on backyard pools. Advance flames lick the walls of churches, liquor stores and real estate businesses before the inferno guts them. The plastic signs, the paint, the glue, the decorations left up after Christmas; the bodies of humans and animals who chose to stay, or could not leave, all gone, horribly gone.

I have friends who live along this coast. My heartstrings stretch to them, taut with concern over their well-being. Every level of wellbeing, in the shock and un-doing. Even if one house among 12,000 still stands, the change is irrevocable. Neighborhoods, jobs, businesses, daily rituals of connection, ended.

You become a refugee who owns only what you can carry. What do you carry. Who is home. Where.

I am reminded of my tasks for today and the remainder of January. My Cotton Factory studio closes on January 31, a decision made this past November as I felt the world shift beneath my feet. My studio work is going in a different direction; I no longer need the CF space, beloved though it is.

I do not carry regret over this, but I do grieve for what I’d imagined could be, there, the work and the connections that now will not happen.

Grief takes time. Since early December I’ve been making space for what I will keep in my home studio.

All that is left behind will be sold to whomever has a use for it – chairs I have painted from, connected with fellow artists from, sipped my tea in. Tables I’ve used to assemble countless pieces of art, to display and photograph on, to serve nibbles and drinks from at receptions. Stools, an ottoman from my parents’ schoolhouse, a cherry-red futon chair that folds into a cot, where I re-charged my energy. Lamps for pop-up shows, a tall sturdy easel, shelves and tables for materials, stretchers, acrylic paint and ink, some dry media, art books I no longer need – All of it will go in these next 2 weeks.

(If you would like to purchase any of these things, please message me with an offer at https://www.facebook.com/keira.mcarthur/. I will post images with captions & suggested prices there and on Marketplace.)

It is not a crisis, this closure of the CF studio. But the change feels tectonic – a deep letting go of a place, of routine connections with people that have been integral to the fabric of my life since 2019. My work life was entirely structured around the synthesis of Cotton Factory, my shore cabin, and my home studio for five years. Then life, and a choice – to change.

For some time I’ve been feeling uncomfortable with the limitations of an Arts Industry that is structured around competition and privilege. Jury shows, residencies, Biennales and group shows all cost money; no artist I know earns anywhere close to a living income from their work, or even expects to. It’s an invisible profession, with an invisible ceiling above our heads that is well below the poverty line. And yet, art continues to be made. This really should tell us something important about the inherent creativity of human beings.

So, an experiment, motivated by a desire to be more active in my community beyond the art margins – to apply my arts experience in support of the elders among us. I’ve been doing this part time for some weeks; it’s intense, rich and satisfying work – a tangible way that I can be stretch my ingenuity, to care for people I don’t know and out of respect for Us.

Studio work provides the perfect balance, a breathing out into the broader world, a flexing of strong familiar muscles. In my home studio new stories crop up like spring bulbs. Some have been in the works since Mom’s passing, others are new, about fire, loss and wellbeing.

More to come on these, but not here. Endings come before beginnings.

A climate crisis, these wildfires. Now human crises, as with each earthquake, tsunami, flood and hurricane that demolishes a place of people. The simple, direct, heartfelt question becomes: how do we care for each other in the disasters? And we know what to do. The people who will now make the difference in LA are neighbours from neighbourhoods of all cultures, all over the planet. The ones that have not been destroyed, the ones that have been destroyed but reclaimed and rebuilt themselves, after.

We innovate new ways to help and so shape the world we want to live in, as we always have. Yes, the Politicians, the Bureaucrats and the Economists will no doubt swoop in to claim hero roles, but it will always be collective human ingenuity that chooses how to care for and with each other.

David Graeber, in his too-short life of common-sense bad-assery and uncomfortable academic truth-telling wrote that ‘The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently,’.

I’ll repeat that: the world is something we have made. It follows that we can make it anew, differently. Never mind the politicians, the Corporations and the Economists. WE choose how we care with and for each other, and the world.

This irrational, unshakeable faith in the higher nature of human beings is at the root of the steady warmth I feel in my body, as the January Capricorn moon reflects the full light of our Sun.

May the winds calm, may the wildfires end, in California, Arizona, Australia and around the world. May we care for each other.