Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Category Archives: artist


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The truth about you.

I thought I must be surrounded by the smartest people in the world. Imagine my grandfather, farming, alone. How could he possibly? (And I also had every “W.”) Who tells you what to do? What is that for? Why do you get up so early? When is it finished? To everything he simply answered that he knew. And once I got my arms around the fact that he gathered in all the information, I was still surprised at his discipline. No one told him the hours to keep or to finish that job on that day. I asked him if he let it go until tomorrow, who would know? I would know, he said. I walked in the certainty of his overalls that shadowed a path to an open field.

I asked the same of my grandmother, as she placed the empty bag of toasted marshmallows on the counter to pay at Jerry’s Jack and Jill. Certainly there were no camera’s at Jerry’s. No one even paying attention. Who would know? I asked. I would know, she said. I started to see a pattern.

Without event or occasion, my mother dressed. Put on her make-up. Faced each day with the scrutiny of the unproperly lit bathroom mirror in our basement apartment on Jefferson Street. Even for a driveway toss of the frisbee on a quiet Sunday afternoon. You already know her answer to the question. But no one is going to see us, I said. She smiled behind her lipstick.

It’s an old table. Most would probably say unworthy of the effort. And I just saw the latest influencer praising the inexpensive IKEA table. And it crossed my mind. But it’s the only table I’ve ever had in my studio. So I began filling in the holes. Strengthening the right bottom foot. Sanding. Filling. Resanding. Painting. Sanding. Painting. I love it. Not many will see it. It will be overshadowed by displayed books and paintings. When I move them to do the work, it will be ready. It will feel the weight of wood and canvas. The pinch of clamps and the splattering of unintentional paint. And I will feel special, because I get to know. Not this arrogance of “Oh, I know!” — but it’s what I had been shown, had been living in — the privilege of getting to know, being involved in the truth of the experience. I got to know them… I had the joy, the work, the breathless chasing, the tender tears, the heart in lap resting love of knowing them.

I won’t photograph the table. But I will stand in its certainty.


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The stoop.

As a child, sometimes more than once a day, I would have to gather and push all of my swirling thoughts out the front door of our house on Van Dyke Road. It was there on that cement stoop that they could breathe. All of my hopes and plans. My dreams and curiosities. They felt free, like summer toes in green, dew-damp grass. They tumbled without spotters. They grew without restriction. Voices were given to dolls and animals. I planted my future in Hugo’s field. Dared my existence in the North End. Outraced my worry over popping gravel behind my banana seat bike. And in all that release, I felt complete. Full. 

I still try to allow the space for the swirling. Letting it loose on canvas and paper. Roaming up the hills of the Montaiguet. Splashing in the pool. I don’t think any of it was meant to be contained. Not imagination. Certainly not love. So I give it space. Room to tumble. And on the stoop of all that feeling, all of that letting go, I am saved. 

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The best!

It was rarely destinational. And that’s why we simply called it a bike ride. It was purely for the ride itself. For the wind in hair. The pumping heart that matched the pedaling feet. The blur of field passed. The daring of handlebars let go! The thrill so big, that when riding with a best friend (it was so easy to get to best), you had to reach out to grab their hand, to feel the pulsing of their, too, grateful heart. And for just a few seconds in the balance, (knowing but not caring that it wouldn’t, couldn’t last) your clasped hands said “can you believe we get to do this!”

I mention it because isn’t it the closest we come to love?

Yesterday, I finished a painting and a delightful book at the same time. Oh, the missing of the ride! And maybe, within all of this letting go, it became so obvious to me that she wasn’t there in the evening of our family reunion. And I thought of how she would have cooed at the newest arrivals. Squeezed cheeks that weren’t ready to be kissed. How she would have talked faster and louder over the other French pedaling sisters. My mother in law — she was good at the ride. 

But it wasn’t sad, this letting go of painting, book and Lucy. I knew it going in. And I will joyfully, eagerly do it all again. And again.  

The morning is calling. How easily the race begins. The best!

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Maybe I felt pretty.

Instead of lamenting over the hole-worn draped in my grandma’s sink, my mother started bringing her own dishrag when visiting the farm for a meal. Being the oldest and most responsible (and she’d throw in prettiest just to get herself from the table to the sink), my mother was always cleaning up, as easily as she wiped away my grandma’s words of “oh, just leave it…” (Like that would ever be possible.)

And she didn’t mind. She was good at it. But a proper dishrag…please. Let’s be serious, she wasn’t going to finger-wash what soaked before her. It was obvious that complaining wasn’t going to work. My grandma would just shrug and smile. Not because she didn’t care, but really, she just didn’t care. So my mother began bringing her own. Her beautiful dishrag that she purchased at the mall. And not in the discount section. Full price she paid, both to Herberger’s and everyone at Independent School District #206. Happy to do both. To give it all for something that mattered. Mattered to her, and maybe only her, but that was more than enough. Because hadn’t she earned it? Hadn’t she risen from Jefferson Street after little hope and less sleep, to will herself into a full heart, after someone she knew, she thought she knew, said, “I’m just leaving it, you.”

Giving our kitchen a proper cleaning yesterday (and I mean I paid full price, from the floor to the walls to the counters and burners) I finished by hanging a new towel sink side. No more walking and dripping across the floor to the rack on the wall. It was romantic. And maybe I felt pretty. Oh, my full and possible heart, I will never leave it.

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Unexpected Lilies


Before there were air conditioned cabs on tractors, there was my grandfather and a lone tree left in the field. It provided much needed shade. A respite from the heat, and even navigation beneath the blinding rays. 

They still surprise me, these unexpected trees. From Minnesota, to the south of France. And maybe even more so now, because they may no longer serve the practical, but still, they serve a need. Because even in all the comfort available, a little reminder is always welcomed. 

He came home with a bouquet of lilies on a Wednesday. Unexpected lilies. Love can still surprise me. And find a way to grow. 

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The pace of Jerry’s Jack and Jill.

I recently started a large canvas. The difference between this and a small one?  Patience. There are no quick scrolls to the details. The juicy parts. The larger work must be complete. But isn’t that what I also love? Sure. I have to remind myself, but it is true. I liken it to reading an excellent book. You know the kind. Where the characters are living in your soul. Words that keep you fighting through nightime’s blinking eyes, and doing the dance between the urgency of your brain that wants to see how it ends and your heart that never wants it to…. It is the glorious and deliciously painful anticipation of falling in love with the canvas. Why would I ever want to rush that? So, patience…

Certainly we are given lesson upon lesson. I don’t imagine it was my first, but it was early on. Waiting for my grandma in constant conversation in the aisles of Jerry’s Jack and Jill. Cart by cart, she spoke to everyone. We’d just finish one exchange, and I’d think, hope, that we’d make it around to the next aisle, but then there, by the beef, or the boxed cereal, it would begin, “Oh, Elsie…” and we’d be locked in for another five to ten minutes. I’d like to think I was patient at first. Even accommodating. But I’m not sure it was very long before my shoulders started to droop. Before my head tilted backwards, as if my neck were no longer able to support it. My hand hanging on to the silver chariot, willing me to drag along. 

And I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t say why. Wasn’t the point to just be with her? I see it now. Caught up now in the whirl and twirl and scroll of it all, I simply want to slow it down. To love slowly. With attention and intent. To maneuver the days at the pace of Jerry’s Jack and Jill. 

I don’t always get it right. So I lesson myself again. I stand in front of the large canvas. I pick up my slow paintbrush, and hear the words, “Oh, Elsie…” 

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Becoming verbs.

It seems when I know you, really know, you become a verb. 

To make my favorite cookies, I have to Grandma Elsie my way through the recipe. We don’t have brown sugar here in France, so I make it by adding an undisclosed (even to myself) amount of molasses. If it seems like a lot, I add more flour, or adjust the butter, all by heart and eye, just like she did. Never measuring anything with hand, only taste. 

It was my mother who verbed her first. If I fell asleep in a chair, she would say I was “Pulling an Elsie.” And the comparison brought only delight. 

It’s funny how we are adjective driven. (And who doesn’t want to be pretty?) But I think the real admiration, the love, comes in finding the acts of the person. Because love is active. In constant motion. And to get pulled into the verb of it all, well that’s a dance!

My friend Loie is a dancer. My Grandma Elsie baked. When I saw the two paintings together, their worlds collided. Nothing similar but the love. So today, when I “Loie” myself around the studio, or “Grandma Elsie” my way through the kitchen, I will know that I am returning the love that I have been so joyfully given.

…and so she would dance.

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My solid ground.

“If you opened people up we’d find landscapes.” Agnès Varda

When I fell from my training bicycle, riding down the hill on Van Dyke Road (at my brother’s urging) I was opened up from chin to knuckles to knees to shins. I was certain that if I weren’t bandaged from head to toe, the neighbors would be able to see directly inside of me, revealing every thought, hope and broken promise. 

Right from the start, all of my feelings were worn close to the surface, and without skin, well, wasn’t it obvious? Having survived this grand opening, perhaps I never saw the need to hide myself away ever again. Each day when I write, when I paint, a little credit must be given to the gravel of Van Dyke Road, the first to offer, demand even, my vulnerability. 

This landscape that I carry, I must admit has often gone uncelebrated through the years. Buried beneath the dazzle of mountain and beach, of lavender field and golden grain. Can you even ask a gravel road to outshine the Champs-Élysées? And yet, when called upon, when skinned to my very core, or delighted to the same, it is there. To hold me. To lift me. To be my solid ground. 

My husband often laughs that I always have something in my shoe. It just occurred to me, perhaps it simply fell from heart. 

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Find a reason.

I had a customer request one of my older pieces. She said she looks at it every morning and wanted to give a print to her best friend. I sold the original years ago, but I still wake to the words on my heart each morning.

“It isn’t that something comes along and gives you a reason to get out of bed, you have to get out of bed and go find that reason, every day…”

I’ve always found discipline to be much more reliable than motivation. 

I didn’t have the words for it then, sitting on the front steps of my grandparents’ home. The sugar still settling in my belly from one of the variety packs my grandma bought especially for us, I rested elbows on bare knees and rested bare brain in hands. My grandfather, not one to suffer fools or folly, making what wasn’t his first trip back to the tractor, asked me what I was waiting for. “I don’t know,” I said without lifting my head. “Better find out,” he said without turning back. “Yeah,” I thought, and raced into an open field of reasons.

There is always the sun. The morning. My hands and heart. I am out of bed, more than ready to find out….

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Before complete.

Forgiveness comes so easily as I allow the portrait to come to life. I actually enjoy the beauty of the becoming. I hope I can do the same in real life. With others. Possibly even me. 

It’s easy to get hung up on the timing of things. People often ask me, “How long does it take to make that painting?” “This painting?’ There is no answer. Or there is every answer. I know with repetition, some things come more quickly. A bird can appear readily, because I have ridden that wing so many times. I have fluttered and flapped. And still, not every time is the same. 

I smile because isn’t it the same when it comes time to “snap out of it” — the mood, the feeling, the getting over. I’d like to think it comes “more readily.” I think it does. But I’m learning it’s not just about the getting through, but the beauty of becoming. As messy and unfinished as it all can be, it can be beautiful before it is complete. Before forgiveness, before healing, before love, it is all still beautiful, within sight, within reach.

So I keep fluttering and flapping, from hand and heart, and with this morning sun, every answer awaits. And so I become. 

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