Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025 In June 2001, I mailed stamped invitations (pre-email) to a few dozen of my most creative friends and colleagues requesting them to join me for a dinner party at Bloodroot, a feminist vegetarian restaurant...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025 The jury's still out on AI, but after my latest experience, I might just make it Employee of the Month. In my March newsletter I confessed to my insecurity at being a beginner when I described the Hunter College...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025(illustrated with pieces of my art process along the way) In March, my granddaughter Chloe became Bat Mitzvah – a time of recognition and celebration when a 13-year-old Jewish girl is welcomed into her...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025 (illustrated with pieces of my art process along the way) I’ll say it. I hate being a beginner. Which is kinda silly, because anytime I try something new, which I love to do, I’m in that role. I don’t like failing....
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025(illustrated with pieces of my art process along the way) Since my eldest child gave birth in 2011, I’ve kept an ongoing Notes section labeled Grandma Activities. Whenever newspaper articles or ads for family fun...
Click here to listen. I’m very suggestible. When a fiber arts colleague on Instagram shared her wisdom about material storage, I accepted and felt compelled to honor her methodology. “At what point do you throw out leftover pieces of wool?” I asked,...
Click here to listen. Talk about ink in one’s veins! This birth announcement, created by my dad, is prominently displayed in my baby book from 1948. My mother, too, had a way of making things newsworthy just by naming them. When a neighbor in the Midwest...
Click here to listen. I took a hard stumble in mid-September, broke my shoulder and have had to pivot my well-organized life to accommodate what is. Still, I’m able to create exciting new digital mock-ups of wall installations. My fantasy: I would announce to you...
Click here to listen. Do you remember the staggering number of catalogs that used to weigh down our mailboxes day after day, particularly in the fall? LL Bean came weekly, if not more often, in various iterations: Women’s, Outdoors, Holiday, etc. But there were a...
Click here to listen. This post tells the story of an exception to the rule of thumb: Never meet your heroes. In the early ’70s, when my art students from Westhill High School competed in the state’s Scholastic Art Awards annual competition, we were upstaged and...
As a fan of the Rule of Three, I mulled over what would complete my list for this month’s newsletter inspiration. It all started, serendipitously, while I was in Iceland on vacation last month and received an email from one of my collectors. She wanted me to see...
As a kid in the 50’s, I played a game called 7-Up. All you needed was a Spalding ball and a wall. Our garage was the perfect arena for mastering the seven different challenges of throwing the pink sphere against a flat surface: allowing it to bounce, catch it...
Driving down William Street toward our house in Connecticut, a full moon lit up the winter-black sky. “Ach!” I exclaimed to my family of passengers, the ‘ah’ catching in my throat from the emotion behind my pleasure. Henceforth, that monthly spectacle was labeled...
Each time I visit my grandsons in NJ, I bring a surprise. It could be folding a dollar bill into an origami shirt, sharing a fun painting technique (making roses using a plastic bag), or introducing silly riddles or word games. I listen for cues to...
An actress/playwright I knew in the 90’s described a pop-up tent she’d erected in herbackyard in rural Connecticut. What intrigued me most was the handmade sign she’d hung atits entrance. She labeled it The Place of Not Knowing. She explained that she would sit in...
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