Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: travel


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Bon voyage

Miss Green was my fifth grade teacher. Both her title, Miss, and her name, Green, should tell you that this was her first teaching experience. And fitting, because this was my first time in fifth grade (my only time :)). It was nice to begin together. In the grades before, all of my teachers were veterans. They seemed to have a leg up. But Miss Green was young and fresh and new and it felt like she was on this journey, not way ahead of us, but with us. Maybe it was her youth, or enthusiasm, that made us feel like anything was possible. When she hung the giant map on the wall, and told us that each week we would take a trip, a spelling trip, it really felt like we were packing our bags and taking flight! We closed our eyes and randomly pushed a pin into the map, and then had to research the destination and write a story about our imaginary travels.


I think this began my life-long adoration for travel. And what a gift that was. I had no money. No experience. No real reason to believe it would ever become a reality. But what she gave me, us, was hope, possibility. And I still carry it with me.


Today I sold a painting that will ship to Washington, DC. A part of my heart goes with it. From my hands, to the canvas, to the plane, to its new home. In this lockdown world, I am traveling. And it feels as magical as it did in fifth grade.


I do not live in the same country as Miss Green, (now Mrs. Vickerman), but today, we are both going on a journey together. Bon Voyage!


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Rose Ann and the Sainte Victoire

I’m not sure I would have even met her if my brother hadn’t married her daughter. And yet, with this one choice, not made by me, she became family. She was just always there. My brother was now TomandRenae, (not just Tom), and Renae’s mom was now RoseAnn. As familiar as that, in one instant. She included us in every holiday meal. It took awhile for our unsteady hearts to believe that we weren’t being included, but we just belonged. This is what she gave us. How can that be anything other than family?


When I say her name, an image of a nurse comes into my head. The old-fashioned kind, (I don’t mean that in a bad way) – you know the image, white uniform, white stockings, white shoes, even the paper hat. There was something solid about that uniform. Something to lean on. I guess that is RoseAnn. Something solid. Something to lean on. Sometimes that can seem unapproachable, all this strength, but when you need it, and oh, sometimes we really need it, it’s good to stand beside all of that white.
And there are surprises. Moments of vulnerability. An unexpected softness that invites you in. When the uniform is off. And we’re just people. Just gathering from the land of misfit toys for a wedding, or a thanksgiving. And it is something to believe in. Because you’ve seen every angle.


The first iconic image I passed in France was the Sainte Victoire. The mountain that Cezanne painted again and again. This giant white rock sits just outside of our home. Every day when I pass it, I say hello. Thank it for being solid. Constant. Beautiful. Even on rainy days, when the sides are dark, or when the clouds can make it almost disappear, I know it is there. That is comfort. Had I not met Dominique, I may never have known this certainty.


Small decisions join us. Bring us together. And we are stronger because of it – because of them. I wave to the Sainte Victoire this morning. I wave to RoseAnn. We are all in this together. We greet each other. We support each other. We lean on each other. It is beautiful. It is strong. It is something to believe in. 

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To travel

When I lived in Minneapolis, about the only travel I could afford, was “in time.” Life was deliciously full of work and friends and art, but every once in a while, when the walls started closing in, my friend Deb and I would decide it was time to take a trip. To Cottagewood. It was only about 15 minutes in distance, but years back in time.  Founded in 1895, tucked gently on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, this quiet community, survived a tornado, and the chipping away of progress. It still had the same General Store, selling gasoline, coffee and candy. 

We would arrive on a Saturday summer morning, buy a coffee, walk past the Texaco pump, and stroll through the gardens, or along the lake. People still put flags on porches, rested baby dolls on chairs in the yard, leaned bicycles against railings and left pails in the sand on the beach. There was so much life, in all of this quiet. It felt sacred and secure. Loving. Safe. Enduring. Without time. There was no need for hurry, or worry. It was built to stroll. In all of this calm, I found an energy to create. I painted the old Texaco pump. I painted the mailboxes, and inserted my name, so I could be a part of it all. Just as my grandmother had made quilts, inserting our old clothes, so we would be a part of the story.


I love to travel. This is how we find the stories of the world, and create a story of our own. Sometimes when I say that, people respond, “well, I have no money, no time, I can’t go anywhere…”  My response is this. When I was a child, taking care of myself during summer vacation, I would pack a lunch in a brown paper bag, fill my book bag, my water bottle, and walk into the farmer’s golden field behind our house. I brought back wild stories to tell my dolls and the neighbor girls. I traveled. When I was older, with no money (but not poor) I would travel to Cottagewood on a quiet summer morning, and travel, not only in space, but in time, in my heart, and in my soul. 


I was lucky enough that my art brought me to new places. Chicago. New York. Then my heart brought me even farther, to France, and all around the world.


The stories my grandmother made still lie around our house in Aix en Provence. The painting of the mailboxes greets people at our front door. The gas pump still leans in our yellow room. I took a stroll around our yard this morning and knew that in all this calm, there would be a space to create. A painting. A love. A life.

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If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.

It can’t be too personal. That’s what they taught me about writing at the University. The reader doesn’t want to know that anyone could have written it. They wanted to know that you wrote it. You knew it. You felt it. And you shared it with them. And so I did. 


When I paint. When I write, it is never generic. It is specific. It is personal. When I write about a house, it is a big, yellow, house, with a yellow so inviting, that if you were to walk by, just being you, it would call to you, “come in, you and your heart sit down.” When I write about my mother, people say, “Oh, that’s my mother.” “That’s my sister.” “That’s so me.” When I write about my heart, being overwhelmed or overjoyed, people say, “How did you know exactly what I was feeling?” And the power of these words show me, every day, I am not alone. We are not alone.


I made a painting of my grandmother’s hands. It has been purchased from Chicago to San Francisco. And I know that a piece of my grandmother gets to go there. She gets to pass over Wrigley Field, through the Magnificent Mile, into the loving arms of Illinois. She crosses the largest bridge a girl from Minnesota could ever imagine. And she shows them her hands. These strong and beautiful hands. These hands that could raise nine children, could also build bridges and stadiums, and we were not that different. We were a part of it all. She was. I am.

Each painting holds a story. Each picture, each phrase, is me, with my nose pressed up against the window pane, on Van Dyke Road, nearly wearing the window through with wishes and plans and dreams. Connecting us all, they would take me farther than I even dared to dream.


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Remembering Corsica

Paper is one of the few materials that has a memory. If you fold a piece of paper, crumple it, it remembers that fold, those lines, that wrinkle. You can unfold it, heal it, but the memory, the mark remains. Some might say it is damaged, but I think, maybe, that it is just more interesting. I think words can do that to a book. This collection of imprints on a page, lines, dots, all embedded in the sheets of paper. This book becomes alive. Touched by hands, dog-eared, embraced. It holds the memory.

I was walking along the beach in Corsica and I watched this woman reading in the sand. As time went on, the tide kept rising, but she remained fixed in the pages. The water grew up her thighs and her focus never wavered. She was becoming part of the page. The magic of the words.

I knew I would paint her, this stranger on the beach, because she was a stranger no more. I knew her heart, also made of paper. It had been folded and wrinkled and healed, but the memories remained. And she, we, had become, only more interesting.

There were no borders between the sea, her body, the words, her heart. No borders between her and I.

I clutched the folds of my own heart, smiled, and kept walking.


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The memory of snow

The memory of snow.If you are from Minnesota, you will have a memory of snow. Many. I remember bundling. These were not days of Polar fleece. No slim down jackets and pants. No these were days ofbundling. You put on all that you had to keep you warm, and then started to layer with your sibling’s larger clothes, until you almost couldn’t move. You bundled until the sweat started forming on the back of your neck, and the thoughts began to disappear of what you were going to do when you actually got out there.

A fresh snow could mean any sort of building. A fort. A man. Balls. On this day, I began rolling. The bundling made it hard to bend, so I made it bigger and bigger. Big enough that I stood upright to roll. And I rolled. And I rolled. My snowball was huge. It was the largest ever seen on Van Dyke Road. I kept rolling. The Norton girls would be so jealous.I rolled. My brother might notice me. Maybe even talk to me. I rolled. My mittens were wet. My hair was sweaty and freezing under my stocking cap. I rolled. It stood nearly as tall as my ten years. I rolled. Pushed. Grunted. The front yard was almost cleared. Brown grass caught a rare glimpse of the sun. And I rolled. Until I couldn’t. Until there was no snow left to pick up. Until I could push no more.

And there it was. The largest snowball I had ever seen. It was beautiful. White, bright snowball. I loved it. The kids talked about it on the school bus. Neighbors gave the thumbs up as they passed by. It was as large as the rock at the end of my grandparents’ driveway. It marked our house. Our winter. Our youth. My mom took my picture with it that day. And again in March. It was still there. And in June. Still there. Getting smaller, but still reached the top of my hand. The marigolds were coming up in the row that lined the driveway. And it was still there. I posed in front of the orange and gold flowers, in my orange and gold pants set, with one hand on the remaining snowball.

I had built something that lasted. Beyond the norm. Beyond its season. People throughout history have been doing it. In clay, and marble. Building their stories. Without our stories, we are nothing. So we carve, and forge and build and write and paint to tell our stories. To place them at the edge of a town’s road and say, we were here, we are here. Here is the viking-sized evidence of our lives.


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I have to believe my feet will take me where I need to go.

I had only been in France a few weeks when he said we should climb the mountain. The Sainte Victoire. It was Cezanne’s mountain. I was a painter. Why not? Sure, why not start with a mountain?!!! Being from Minnesota, I did not have my mountain legs yet. But nothing about this trip, this adventure, would have occurred if I had been stuck on “maybe,” so I said yes – of course I said yes! In my head though, I had visions of a long stroll, with lovely views…almost a picnic for the senses really. Reality unpacked it’s bags within the first few steps and I knew this was nothing like I had imagined. My heart was pumping faster. I could feel every rock beneath my Vans. My lungs hit my ribs with every breath. I had never climbed a mountain. I had my doubts that I would finish this one.

The last big hill I had climbed was in the 3rd grade. Pike’s Peak. We had gone on a field trip from Washington Elementary. I had a sack lunch – a peanut butter sandwich and a warm Orange Crush soda. “It will be beautiful,” our teacher said. And we believed her. We raced down the steep hill. Never had we moved faster. Dirt flying everywhere. Screams of delight. But then we had to get back up. Straight up. We made brown clouds as we raced – pumping arms and legs, pumping, breathing, pumping, sucking last bits of air, and grabbing the blades of grass just at the top edge,pulling ourselves up. 


Muscle memory…that’s it – that’s what would save me. I had heard of this – yes, muscle memory. Soon now my legs would remember how I made it up Pike’s Peak. My muscle memory would kick in and I would climb the Sainte Victoire with ease. Nothing. My thighs remembered nothing. I struggled with each step. Each lesson must be learned, first, still, and again.


“It will be beautiful,” he said, “at the top.” For some reason I believed him and kept climbing. My nose ran, my lungs were exploding, my thighs were pulsing and my feet – my poor Van covered feet. At one point he said, “those berries are poisonous…” My first thought was “give me a handful.” I kept climbing. Pumping, breathing. I followed him step for step. I trusted him. I had no muscle memory of that. I loved him. I had no muscle memory of that. Yet, I knew that every thigh-burning, brown-clouded, peanut butter fueled step had led me here.  Here. Summit. Beautiful. I must remember this —  the view from gratitude is pretty spectacular.


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I’m not too busy.

In 2019, we went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.  


I don’t want to gloss over anything in that sentence.  We were traveling – oh the glorious days of travel.  Van Gogh, after Cezanne (I live in Aix en Provence, so I want to, and am slightly obligated to profess this) is one of my favorite artists.  Amsterdam – it never ceases to amaze me the places I’ve been able to see – truly.

So, that Spring of 2019, the museum was having an exhibition “The Joy of Nature”, featuring David Hockney alongside Vincent Van Gogh.  David Hockney has always expressed a fascination with Van Gogh.  They both paint in full movement with visible brush marks.  Hockney says, “When you’re drawing one blade of grass you’re looking and then you see more. And then you see the other blades of grass and you’re always seeing more.”


That’s what I want – to always see more!  This is the joy of learning from those who went before us.  Then taking that knowledge and expanding it, creating beyond it, becoming that blade of grass for someone else.  
A few years ago, I created the book, “I’m not too busy.”  It’s all about taking the time to see everything and everyone around us. I illustrated each page with blades of grass.  If you’re not paying attention, you will miss that the grass is growing on every page, until you reach the end, when it is in full bloom.  

I don’t want to miss anything.  I want to enjoy every moment. 

We were walking back to our hotel after a full day in the city.  Seeing, eating, exploring, laughing, drinking – there’s a lot to do – and of course by the end of the day, your feet do get tired – your whole body gets tired…but as I put each foot in front of the other, it occured to me this simple thought, “I’m walking in Amsterdam.”  I said it over and over. I was no longer aware of my feet, but my steps. Each step was magical. I was in a new country, a new city, a new life, wasn’t that amazing???  


When I’m done typing here, I’m going to go for a walk around our house.  (Covid restrictions do apply).  But I will not say, I am in quarantine. I will not say, but we could be going places – doing things – why can’t we… NO… I will say, the sky is blue, the grass is green, not every blade, but most – and I will look at them all, and joyfully know, “I’m walking in Provence!”  (And isn’t it amazing!)  


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I saw the world and found my heart. I opened my heart and became a part of the world.

The first time I brought home a piece of paper from school for my mom to sign, it carried me 120 miles away. These words, her name, a pen… released me from this town. Our class was going on a field trip to the Minnesota Zoo in Minneapolis. 120 miles away. I carried my permission slip with such care. I folded it twice, no wrinkles, as deep in my pocket as it would go. I knew the power these words held. These few words on this scrap of paper would take my feet from Washington Elementary onto the big yellow school bus. Up the three giant

steps, past the bus driver, onto one of the green bench seats. Open windows, singing songs about the 50 states and a farmer’s dog named Bingo, we were free. On the bus, on the road, to places unknown. The tires hummed to the magic of these words, and we were off to the zoo. 

I was destined to see the world. And words would always take me there.

You have a ticket.  Don’t be afraid to use it.