What's Going On Behind the Scenes

Fieldnotes from an Introverted Artist

This is either the last newsletter you’ll receive from me through Mailchimp or the first from Substack that explains what I’ve been up to. Possibly both. I haven’t fully migrated to Substack yet, but let’s just say this is a test of longer-form communications and slightly weirder structure.

While I'm striving to release a newsletter every three weeks, a lot has been going on behind the scenes to arrive at this new habit. Going into week four, I’m already a week behind.

It’s also the longest newsletter I’ve written, but it’s been broken into digestible sections. Think of it as a slow scroll with photos. Or an organized ramble.

If you’re new here, thank you for subscribing. This isn’t my standard format, but then again, I’m not sure what is anymore. I’m looking for a voice that fits, and I’m starting here.

Doors and corners, kid. That’s where the interesting stuff hides.

Solitude with Squash

One of those corners turned out to be mine. I’ve come to realize that space isn’t just where we live; it’s how we live and what we’re willing to let go of to be held by it. The concept of living minimally, surrounded by beauty, has been appealing to me for years.

When I was looking for a new place a year ago, I was drawn to the idea of a tiny house but wasn’t quite ready. Location was the concern. Instead, I found a tiny apartment with north-facing light, sliding glass doors, and a French balcony on the third floor overlooking a pool in a thriving downtown area of Chattanooga. At 325 square feet, it shares the footprint of a tiny house. The challenge was identifying the necessities and making them fit.

One of the challenges involved configuring the studio. A free-standing easel wasn’t feasible, and I had a desk that served as my palette to incorporate. As in my previous residence, I implemented a wall-integrated solution. I created a scaled floor plan that documented the room’s dimensions and defined the exact placement of each item, including the mounted easel and anything occupying vertical space. The arrangement prioritizes access to natural light, movement through the space, and functional clarity. It is a compact but efficient system. For me, it was simply a design problem, one with constraints, but nothing unmanageable. And if I could thrive here, I could thrive in a tiny house.

Squash and I are, in fact, thriving. We’ve found solitude in this little space. There’s joy in waking to quiet mornings and basking in the soft light that filters through the windows. She is becoming, just as I am.

Hello Digital Design! Welcome Back Front-End Development.

That move coincided with a change in my work life, too. For ten years, I painted full-time, five to seven days a week, while caring for Ziggy, my horse of eighteen years. Those were the formative years of my practice, spent developing my skills as a painter. Ziggy died in 2020. Since then, life has shifted.

Now, with only Squash for company, I support myself through digital design and front-end development. The work speaks to both sides of me: the creative and the analytical. I work with two clients four to five hours a day during the week and reserve weekends for painting. Eventually, I hope to extend my painting days to three as I settle into a rhythm that feels sustainable.

My schedule is shaped around the neurobiological patterns of focus and recovery. Mornings begin with CrossFit, which ends around 12:30. The physical exertion helps regulate my circadian rhythm and primes me for structured cognitive work. My client work typically begins in the early afternoon, when executive function and sustained attention are strongest—ideal for front-end development, which requires logic, sequencing, and convergent thinking. Later in the day, when alertness naturally dips and the brain becomes more open to associative thinking, I shift to digital design. This work benefits from diffuse attention, visual-spatial processing, and a lower cognitive load; conditions well-suited to late-afternoon and early-evening hours.

Painting fills most of my weekends. Without the physical demands of training, the days move more slowly, which helps me ease into a more open headspace. I can give the work more of my attention without having to protect my energy.

Ultimately, my goal is to live comfortably off the sales of my paintings. I expect that it will take several years of intentional planning, work, and visibility.

Painting on the Weekends

Of course, the weekends are structured a little differently. Yes, weekends are for painting, but also for the things that orbit painting: submitting to art calls, writing newsletters, updating the website, and preparing work to share on Substack, which will become my main hub. It’s the administrative layer of the studio. Less romantic, but necessary.

I try to keep it efficient so that most of my time goes to the actual painting.

Exploring the Intersection of AI, Art, and Science

My art is rooted in science and science fiction. Even when I’m painting on the weekends, what’s happening on the canvas is often shaped by the things I’ve been thinking about during the week —concepts from science, stories from science fiction, or results from an AI model I’ve been experimenting with. I move between art, science, and AI as a way to observe more closely. These tools surface patterns, reveal structure, and occasionally catch something I didn’t know I was looking for. Some of the process is intentional, some of it's subconscious. I’m not aiming for certainty. Curiosity is usually enough.

Science fiction has always felt like a liminal space — part imagination, part prescience, often a lens for seeing things sideways. Everything’s shiny. It makes room for possibility and invites questions that don’t need immediate answers. My paintings often settle in that same space.

Parental Projects and a Purpose

Of course, not all systems are digital or abstract. Some are my parents. About every third weekend, I drive out to visit them. The original plan was to help them with a few projects around the house, but somewhere along the way, I may have turned it into a fully scheduled operation. Efficiency is a love language.

I especially like being outside, helping in the garden, moving rocks, painting whatever needs painting. I’m 102 pounds but deceptively strong. “I’m the muscle” is fun to say, mostly because it looks unlikely.

Evenings are slower. We usually end the day with a movie, sometimes two. These weekends have become a kind of reset. After losing Ziggy, showing up for my parents has given me a different sense of purpose — still rooted in care, and shaped by presence.

Saying Goodbye to the CrossFit Open
(and looking forward to finding a replacement goal)

There’s a familiarity to devoting yourself to something fully, then learning to let it go. While I’m continuing with CrossFit and weightlifting (weightlifting going on 39 years), I’ve decided not to compete in the CrossFit Open again. I opted out after dealing with the financial and physical aspects of broken capillaries on my face from inverted movements like handstand pushups, wall walks, and GHD sit-ups. It was a pragmatic decision.

For about seven years, I trained like a competitive athlete —nutrition, recovery, sleep, consistency. Last year, it all started to click: I achieved my first bar muscle-up, stayed injury-free, and made the Age Group Quarterfinals. Earlier this year, I got my double-unders back under control, another piece finally back in place. It took seven years to reach my goals in CrossFit. Eighteen, in the case of Ziggy — the number of years I spent building a relationship with him.

Now, I’m looking for what’s next—something new to learn, maybe physical, maybe cognitive. The shape doesn’t matter yet. What matters is the focus. The practice. The becoming.

We’ll see where it leads.

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Trying my best not to overthink this goodbye line. Thank you for reading along and making it this far.

Catch you in the liminial bathroom,
- Shelli

Throwing Bits of Joy


🐧 An island country club for six geriatric African Penguins at the New England Aquarium in Boston is designed to address the aches and pains of aging.

🐙 Speaking about thriving, a calving Chicago-sized iceberg exposes a vibrant, thriving ecosystem.