There was a throbbing. A heaviness that had no business being there.

Then a golf ball. That’s what it felt like. What it feels like. Though the doctors held up a ruler and showed me two inches. Two inches. The size looked like nothing in the grander scheme of a life. I’m not supposed to say that. I’m not supposed to say it’s nothing because other people have died from this. It would be disrespectful.

But now that this belongs to me, it might kill me too. Maybe I can.

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Not a lump in the soft uncertain way women are warned about in pamphlets and annual appointments. A hard mass under my skin that anyone could feel without having to search for it. Something with presence. Something that had clearly been doing this for a while before I noticed it was doing it at all.

My nipple began changing shape. Started to flatten. In two short months, things have become very different but also hardly different at all. But whatever is in there is alive and is changing. I can see it, and I can feel it.

In two months, my body has become unrecognizable in the mirror. Visibly distorted. I stand in the bathroom light, and my own reflection has rewritten itself without my permission.

The cancer side looks good. I’m not supposed to say that. A small bit rounder. A little fuller in a way that only someone who has lived with them their whole life would notice. But I notice. I stand there, and I notice, and I don’t know what to do with that. You’re not supposed to find anything about this beautiful. You’re not supposed to look at the thing that is trying to kill you and think. Oh.

But I do.

So I did what we do now. I typed my symptoms into an AI. I needed a ratio. Not poetry, not comfort. A number. What are the chances this is the worst, based on the evidence I have right now?

Seventy percent not cancer. Thirty percent cancer.

I sat with that. I watched myself closely as I struggled to secure an appointment. A month passed, and more symptoms arrived. The scale shifted.

Thirty percent not cancer. Seventy percent cancer.

Two months of phone calls and tears, I finally made it into a diagnostician. I don’t need to tell you this, but our healthcare system is broken. Yet, he was careful with his language. Careful, the way people are trained to be when they are protecting you from something they already know. He told me he couldn’t say for certain without tissue. Without proof. I told him I needed a ratio anyway. For peace of mind. That’s what I said. Peace of mind. As if a number could do that.

He gave me one.

Ninety percent cancer. Ten percent not cancer. He said he was sorry.

I’m supposed to sit with the ten percent. Hold onto it. Let it do the work that hope is supposed to do. I can’t. I’m not that hopeful. I know what’s in there. I have known for a while. The ten percent feels like a courtesy. Something offered so that everyone in the room can breathe a little easier. I started to tear up at all the known unknowns in the air. Am I dying? I won’t know for weeks. But surgery is imminent. I’m supposed to walk through the world with that. I tell everyone close to me that it seems simple. Cut it out, move on. Somehow soothing them makes me feel better, but I still tear up every time the lie rolls off my tongue or into a text because I know that we don’t know yet if this is a death sentence or an inconvenient summer. But that’s what I tell them, “just an inconvenient summer”.

I drove home from that appointment with a new reality in my chest. Not in my breast. In my chest. That specific place where fear lives when it has decided to stay.

Here is what no one tells you about this part. The part before the cutting. The part where you know but cannot yet act. Where the thing is real but still nameless, still unclassified, still being decided by cells that you can’t claim but are feeding on you. This part has its own texture. Its own silence. You are a host body to one of humanity’s greatest fears and unsolved mysteries. And the fear is heavy. I’m supposed to wait for it to introduce itself officially on paper before anyone does anything about it, before I am supposed to speak about it. That’s not fair to my process, and I choose to let my healing start before the diagnosis because 90% chance of cancer and a certain need for surgery is enough to start grieving.

The data helped with the fear. Numbers gave me somewhere to stand. Ninety percent is not a death sentence yet. From a technical standpoint, this could be manageable. Cut it out. Move on. Unpleasant, but survivable. Simple enough.

Except that I cried.

Not from fear. The fear had somewhere to go once the numbers arrived. The sadness was different. Sadder, somehow, than fear. I am sad for myself. For the disruption. I had plans. Actual plans. And when you lead the kind of life I lead, your plans are other people’s plans too. As a community organizer, the ripple goes out further than most people’s. Events. Commitments. People are counting on a version of this summer that may not exist anymore.

It seems silly that no one is supposed to know yet. Even though I already know. Even though I had known since before the first abnormal screening, and after this second one. I have been carrying this in rooms full of people who have no idea. Smiling at the right moments, answering emails, making plans I may have to unmake when the biopsy results come in, and a treatment plan is made. The containment is its own kind of weight and guilt. I’m sorry I told you I would be there. I am still hoping I will be.

I feel silly about the tears. It may still just be an inconvenient summer, but this may also be the beginning of the end for me. Life goes on while I wait. I host a class, go to a fashion show, launch an art exhibition, go shopping. Watching videos on what to expect. Reading about the worst. Any real answers only come Monday through Friday from 9-5, and it’s taken months to get this far. My mind wanders the most at night and when I’m alone. I’ve cried a lot since the 90% was dropped on my lap with a box of tissues.

But then I think about what I am about to become.

Cancer is one of humanity’s greatest mysteries. We have spent centuries throwing our finest minds at it, and it still moves the way it wants, names itself what it wants, chooses who it wants. And somehow it chose me. There is something in that I am still turning over. Not gratitude. Not exactly. But something adjacent to it. A strange weight that feels almost like distinction.

I will be a cancer survivor.

I have never said that before. I am saying it now, before it’s finished, before I’ve earned it in the way the world counts earning. But I know it the same way I knew about the golf ball. I will carry this, and I will win, and I will have that word in my back pocket for the rest of my life. Survivor. When someone says they’ve survived cancer, it is ironclad proof. They have carried death. They have looked at the thing humanity fears most, and they have lived to tell the story.

I will be that woman now, or I will die. There is no in between.

And I am sad about what I am going to lose to become her. Somewhere on my body there will be a scar where there is now smooth skin. I won’t be perfect anymore. Not naturally. Not in the way I have always simply been. I’ll get a boob job after this is over. I’m certain of that. But that won’t be me either. Neither version coming is fully me. And yet this one, right now, the distorted one, the one with the golf ball and the flattening nipple and the cancer side that looks unexpectedly good. This one still feels more like me than anything that comes after it. There is only forward, and the Kimberli today won’t be the one you meet a year from now. That one will have experienced trauma, physical and mental anguish. Will have fed death with her own flesh and paid a price for it, even though it was not her choice.

I am not at peace with this. I don’t think you’re supposed to be.

I still tear up when I talk about it. I am crying now as I type this. I’m not sure why. I think it’s the embarrassment. I think about the people who might read this and cry, and the ones who might read this and be happy about it. I know how heavy it lands in people’s ears. I know the weight it carries when it enters a room. And I don’t want to be that. The pity. The victim. Ugly. The woman people look at differently now.

But here I am. Saying it anyway.

—

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I went on a Saturday in March. Parked just outside the gate at the Rail Yards, walked the perimeter to get a few different angles. The sun was still up. The gate was closed.

You can see it clearly from outside the fence. And I stood there long enough to understand something the photographs had never told me.

Scale. Bigger than you expect, and I like that about it. We don’t have enough of that yet. It looks like we invested some money in it, and it’s important that we do. We are still a city learning to believe in itself.

This is one more notch on that “real city” belt. The bear in Denver. The Bean in Chicago. We have this now. It’s a postcard moment, and we need more of those.

I didn't know Antoine Predock designed it until I got home. I looked it up before I sent my public comment to the paper, so I knew whose work it was by the time I put my name on anything. But I'd made my judgments before I knew that. I went because of the thing itself, not the name attached to it. Predock died two years before, March 2, 2024, at home in Albuquerque at 87. When his public funeral happened, I knew several people who went. I didn't. It felt disrespectful to grieve publicly for someone whose work I admired but hadn't studied deeply enough to claim. But I drove to the Rail Yards and stood outside a fence around his last major public work until the light changed. My instincts got there before my knowledge did. That's something. I'm not sure what, but it's something.

The tumbleweed itself is mid, and I mean that with precision. Artistically, I wanted him to commit. It’s not entirely abstract, not entirely literal. It reads patinaed without looking rusted. Segmented like a citrus fruit, with fronds that are softer than a true gangly, sharp tumbleweed. It’s a kinder version. And I’m okay with that. But it lives in the middle, and the middle is the hardest place to defend.

But the tumbleweed as symbol I’ll defend. Yes, it’s an invasive species from Russia. It’s also been woven into the visual lexicon of the American Southwest for generations. We didn’t choose it. It arrived, spread everywhere, and became part of the iconography anyway.

What the bear and the bean don’t have: you can stand inside this one. You can look at it and look through it at the same time. The entire courtyard orients around it. A shady refuge in an otherwise blazing concrete zone. It’s not just a thing. It’s an experience. It makes the space feel intentional in a way that most of downtown Albuquerque still doesn’t.

He was an architect of international stature who could have practiced anywhere. He stayed in New Mexico. That sentence from his UNM obituary keeps sitting with me. Because it’s surprising. Because of what it costs. To be that good and that rooted simultaneously. To resist the pull toward the places that would have celebrated you louder. To build your spiritual home in the same place you actually live.

The tumbleweed will outlast any argument about what it symbolizes. So will he. You can look at it and also look out of it. That’s a smart move. It’s an experience as much as a thing. It’s a memory. It’s a grand entrance. This installation is a marker of where this city is right now, however complicated that is.

Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, the size deserves commendation. It's good and it's big.

One note for anyone ready to argue it’s not authentically New Mexican: Albuquerque has had a 14-foot tumbleweed snowman along I-40 as an annual Christmas tradition for years. Maybe it's not New Mexican. But it is Burque.

I always fly to Denver for these types of things.

Not because I have to. Because I want to see what happens when the designers I know from home land somewhere with more oxygen. More competition. More eyes that haven’t already made up their minds about what Albuquerque produces.

The Meow Wolf Denver Trashion Show is not a novelty act. Concepts are submitted months in advance. Applicants come from across the region. There is a selection process with teeth. The theme this year was intergalactic, which meant the trash constraint was exactly that: a constraint. A material problem to solve, not an aesthetic to adopt. That distinction matters. Anyone can make something weird out of garbage. Not everyone can make something with a point of view.

Three designers from Albuquerque made the cut. I watched all three. I have thoughts.

The Room.

I came back to the hotel with a wrist full of bands. VIP seating on arrival, press credential after that, then a designer band once I was escorted backstage. Each one given at a different threshold of access. I mention this not to brag but because it is an accurate description of how the night accumulated.

Backstage, I spent time with the Albuquerque designers, getting behind-the-scenes content on my cellphone before the show started. Then I took my seat.

The venue is formatted for traditional concerts, which means the runway was floor level. That created some navigation problems. Several models struggled making it down the side stairs, which is something worth addressing if this show happens again. The press pit had a raised platform for models to stand on, which is a good call. Cameras could get very close, and I am genuinely excited to see what the detail shots look like when they come back.

Three rows of seating, general standing behind. Each designer had their name projected onto the walls during their performance, and the models were projected floor to ceiling as they walked. It felt big. It took up the entire room even though the footprint was an average size. That is a production decision worth noting.

Twenty designers, one look each, a couple of minutes on the stage. What each one did with that time was entirely their own. Cool Critters arrived with a full storyline and supporting characters for an introductory skit. Some designers used the stage as an extension of the runway. Some models danced. Others threw themselves over the railing with what I can only describe as enthusiastic commitment to a choice. I tend to like my fashion straight with a twist, but there were sugared rim moments, and there were beer-in-a-tall-can-in-a-paper-bag moments. The range was real.

Not everyone in that room shares my taste, and that is fine. A show like this is not supposed to be a single argument. It is supposed to be a room where twenty different arguments happen simultaneously, and the audience figures out where they stand.

One note, and I say this with genuine confusion: the host. She was wearing a black suburban-style dress. Not trashion. She did not have the quirkiness or stage presence I have come to expect from a Meow Wolf production. I do not know where they found her or what the brief was, but she read as a normie dropped into a room that had spent months building something strange, and the gap was visible the entire night. A host is part of the world. This one wasn’t in it.

There is something particular about watching designers you know well perform for a room that has never heard of them. You are holding two things at once: what you already know they are capable of, and the question of whether this room is going to see it. With Ashley, Jess, and Madison, I already knew the answer. I came to watch the room catch up.

Ashley LeBlanc, Intergalactic Salvage.

LeBlanc works in electronics waste. Circuit boards, keyboard keys, wiring pulled from the guts of things people discarded when something newer arrived. She modeled her own work, which tells you things. Her work is made to feel easy and low-maintenance, and there is no translation layer between the vision and the body wearing it. She’s also the first to tell you that she’s here to have fun as an artist, not to become a full-time designer.

She walked in a solid-form octagonal skirt, then removed it mid-runway to reveal a denim piece underneath layered with her signature electronic appliqué. Multicolored wiring erupts from the shoulders. Circuit boards and keyboard fragments are mapped across the opera gloves and skirt. The boots are wrapped in wire down to the heel with the same precision as everything above them, which is the detail that gets me. Most designers stop caring at the shoe. The reveal reframed everything that came before it. The structure was the setup, and what she was actually saying was underneath it the whole time.

It was clear that she was there to have fun, dancing across the Meow Wolf stage, wearing something chaotic, experiencing the room firsthand.

Jess Sheeran, Cool Critters.

Let me be precise about something. Jess Sheeran is not an Albuquerque designer who occasionally shows elsewhere. Jess is a full-time creature maker whose work lives in galleries and art houses coast to coast. The fact that she lives in Albuquerque does not make her an Albuquerque designer in the limiting sense of the phrase. It makes Albuquerque one of the places she happens to be.

What she sent down the runway, worn by Denver drag performer Mother Daddy, was a complete species. Electric blue satin structured into winged geometry that holds its own shape before a body even enters it. Metallic domes anchored across the bodice with dark beading draped between them. A headpiece that continues the creature logic upward. Nude gloves extending to clawed fingertips. Thigh-high black boots that ground the whole thing without competing with it. Mother Daddy didn’t model this look so much as inhabit it. The character was already fully built. She just moved inside it, which is what happens when someone hands you a world instead of an outfit.

Jess was a crowd favorite, and so was Mother Daddy. This style of fashion show is truly where I see Cool Critters work shining, and as a frequent Meow Wolf creature creator, her work felt right at home in the space.

Madison Van Der Lingen, MadVan.

I did not fully understand what I was looking at when I was looking at it. That is the sentence. That is the whole review.

Standing in the room, I saw Sophi, a dancer, in pointe shoes, in a stance that made the garment move like it was choreographed into it from the beginning. The fabric read as delicate. Collaged, layered, almost antique in its density. Electric yellow fringe cascading from the hem and sleeves. A pink lace appliqué collar at the neck. A monster face built into the bodice, complete with googly eyes, small creature figures nestled into the skirt, a protruding red felt tongue. The whole thing playful, strange, fully committed to its own logic. And that’s before you get to the elongated bald alien head on the model.

Then I got home and looked at it up close.

The fabric is not printed like I had assumed. It is a three-dimensional layered construction made from scrap material from her downtown Albuquerque studio. What appeared to be a surface pattern is structural. Imagine my complete disbelief when I realized days later that she built the textile before she built the garment. Madison is as much a technical artisan as she is a whimsy maker, and most people in that room had no idea they were watching both at once. I didn’t.

That is the harder thing to do. Making something technically rigorous and genuinely strange at the same time, without either quality apologizing for the other, requires a different kind of confidence than discipline alone. That is how work ends up in Elle magazine and Paris Fashion Week.

There are a lot of designers in Albuquerque, and most of them are salvaged-material artists. I have never understood why this market is so concentrated in this one specific vein of production, but I don’t disagree with it. The range of designers spans from amateur craft level to the international stage. My personal taste tends to lean toward the polished and sculptural, while the current local fashion narrative favors a more unfinished aesthetic. I’m not sure whether that is evidence of an artistic choice or a skill gap. But understanding something and respecting it are different things, and there are a few who can stand neck to neck with the best from cities three or four times the size, in rooms that do not already know their names, and still win the room.

I think about this sometimes. The city and I have our tensions, documented elsewhere. I do not always feel inspired here. I do not always feel fed. But every time I watch our fashion designers land in a place with more competition, more noise, more eyes looking for a reason to be unimpressed, I am reminded of something that took me a long time to learn.

The place does not make the work. The discipline does. The vision does. The refusal to soften the thing into something more palatable does.

The city is incidental. The work is not. I will show up to witness.

There is a passageway in downtown Albuquerque that most people walk past without looking. It sits between Flyby Provisions and Bloomstone, connecting the everyday grid of 2nd Street to something that most of the city has quietly agreed to ignore. When I first stood in it, I did not see an alley. I saw a corridor waiting to be claimed.

That is the origin of The Candlelit City, CLAY+CODA’s first large-scale public art installation. 40 feet of hand-sculpted foam and plaster stonework, embedded with over 100 solar-powered LED flicker candles, and projection mapping that animates flame and shadow across the corridor walls. The music was ethereal. The light spilled onto 2nd Street. Over a hundred people came to the opening.

I want to tell you what it took to get there.

The idea behind the light

The concept drew from Route 66, specifically the way neon once functioned along that highway. As both decoration and wayfinding. As a signal that said: there is something worth stopping for here. Neon was civic infrastructure dressed as spectacle. It made the road legible at night. It pulled people in.

I wanted candlelight to do the same thing for this corridor. To transform a forgotten passage into a beacon, intimate enough for reflection, expansive enough to serve as a runway for local fashion designers, a stage for community activation, a place where Albuquerque’s creative culture could see itself lit differently than it usually is.

Candlelight as civic-scale design. That was the intent. Light as ritual, cleansing, not utility.

What it actually cost

Not money. I mean what it cost in the currency that does not appear in any budget line. The proposal for City Brights III said $10,000. It did not say: your creative confidence. Your willingness to be wrong in front of people you respect. Your ability to hold a vision while releasing your grip on exactly how it gets built. But I learned quickly that is exactly what I was going to have to pull out of my purse to accomplish this project.

I led a small team, our same CLAY+CODA core team that organizes pop-up markets and design-focused gallery exhibits; now we were required to become builders as well as storytellers. We were responsible for engineering the piece: the structural framework, the foam and plasterwork, the drybrushing, the lighting, and the soundtrack. We had 13 weeks to build a world that had only lived on paper and in my head until now.

We started the project with the same uncertainty that we ended with. We stopped several times in the middle of what we were doing in the garage to watch YouTube tutorials. Sitting in front of the computer as a group, wearing our masks around our necks and jeans stained with construction foam. Our neighbors slowed as they walked past with their dogs, as we fumblefucked our way through a masterclass in failed concrete techniques. Our knowledge stood just 10% beyond what was required of us at any point, learning as we went.

To be honest, we were still not certain that things would come together as the due date approached. Even though we did everything we knew we needed to, we tested the lights and measured things a hundred times before we added any materials of permanence. No step in this style of work looks attractive; the yellow construction foam looked only slightly less terrifying than the plaster, even after it was sanded down. It was only when we got painting, just days before the unveiling, that we all had a collective sigh of relief. This actually looks… good. The more we added details, the prouder we were of the work, the scale, and the skills we were most confident in. I mean, it’s three girls contouring, we were in our flow state.

The lights were no walk in the park either. We have a dozen wiring diagrams scribbled on paper. My Assistant Director, Madison, and I performed several iterations of mental acrobatics and internet searches to land on a modular approach to get the light projections just right without completely blowing our budget. Less than 72 hours before the unveiling, I was on a plane to Denver, trusting Trevor could recruit help, move the sculptural modules into place, and make it all work without more than our electrical drawings and the shitty explainer video we made for him.

In the gap between what I had imagined and what was physically possible, materials changed. Timelines compressed. Problems arrived that were not in the proposal. Every time something shifted, I had to decide in real time whether we could muscle through it on our own or reach out for guidance. I chose to ask. Every time. Not because asking is easy, but because the work was bigger than my ego.

Asking for guidance is a form of creative discipline that does not get discussed enough. The willingness to not hesitate. To not perform self-sufficiency when what you actually need is collaboration. I was supported by a core team of four, with an additional three consultants spanning engineering, fabrication, and design. That number did not happen by accident. It happened because I wasn’t pretending I could build a canyon of light by myself. This was a community effort, for the community to enjoy. And though we built in secret from the general public for several months, we had friends on call to talk us through our hurdles and help us through our moments of panic.

Opening night

More than a hundred people came.

What I was not prepared for was the quality of the attention. Not the volume of people, but the way they moved. Slowly. Deliberately. They were not performing presence for the camera before they had even felt anything. They were walking the corridor the way it was meant to be walked: as a road, a runway, a meditative path. They were letting themselves arrive somewhere.

Standing there watching it, I felt something that was not quite pride and not quite relief. It was closer to recognition. This is what I do. Not just write about creative work or direct it from a distance, but build the rooms. Physically. In public. Where anyone walking past 2nd Street can wander in and be moved by something they did not know they were looking for.

What I know now

This was not a departure from my work. It was the fullest expression of it. Everything I believe about creative direction: that it is structural rather than decorative, that community is built because the work needs many hands to exist, that the architecture is always invisible to those who only know how to look from the outside, all of it was present in that corridor.

I am still processing it. Proud but not settled. That is probably the right way to feel about something that mattered. The work that moves you should take a while to absorb.

The project that is too big, too strange, too hard to explain to someone who has not seen it yet, that is the one. Build that one. Stop waiting to be certain. Say yes before you know how, ask for what you need, and trust the people willing to stain their jeans for it. What I learned is that I can hold a vision at scale without losing it in translation. And the doubt I carried into it was not a warning. It was just proof that I cared enough to try. That is the price of admission. Pay it.

When Editing Becomes a Structural Upgrade.

In my 20s, I was a facade, but we all are around that time. You’re glass and steel. All reflection and no core. We say “yes” because we’re terrified of being empty. And we decorate our portfolios with titles and big words like they’re fancy wallpaper and expensive suits, hoping nobody notices the walls are paper-thin and the tailoring hangs loose on the skeleton.

Our early adult years are funny that way. We are walking in the dark, making our best guesses about the next move. No systems built, but all engines on. Charging forward at full power while actively burning bridges and forming allies, creating a network of learning experiences.

These days, the lean on AI is apparent, almost amplifying the hollowness of the statements. I sit back and wonder how the veneer is going to burn off this time for those who are all at the “intersection of X and Y” before they have fully developed a stance in either. We all go through it; the tools evolve, but we all, at some point, were in our 20s, talking bigger than our walk.

I remember starting a blog about survivalism back then. I would write about things I had learned that very day from a position of mastery. I primarily attracted older men, and I let myself believe it was because I was being taken seriously by “serious” survivalists. I kept at the narrative. I attended municipality-sponsored response classes, played the victim for police active-shooter drills, volunteered in National Guard trainings, and sat in the back of fire academy classes taking meticulous notes.

I showed up just enough to learn the jargon of the things I claimed to be an expert in. It was only later, after I had started responding to real-world disasters and working with FEMA to load semis for rapid load-outs, that I realized my blog had merely been highlighting my ignorance. No one was fooled. The men watching weren’t there for my skills. It was just a branding practice. A glass facade reflecting an image of competence that had not yet set.

But a decade of high-pressure resilience training does something to a person. It burns off the decorative. It leaves you with the Resilience Grain, the marks left on your soul by the wooden forms that held you together while you were still liquid.

The Violence of the Retrofit

When the pressure comes, and in the work of moving people, the pressure always comes, wallpaper doesn’t hold. You cannot maneuver in tailoring that doesn’t fit.

This is where editing becomes a structural upgrade.

In architecture, a retrofit isn’t about adding ornaments. It is about stripping a building down to its core to ensure it doesn’t collapse under new loads. It is a violent, dusty process. It requires you to look at the “mastery” you performed in your 20s and recognize it as dead weight.

Real editing is the act of dropping the bullshit. It is the refusal to simulate authority through a prompt or a polished “intersection.” It is the moment you realize it is better to do less very, very well than it is to do everything just to say you did it.

Density Over Volume

We are trading Volume for Density.

Today's digital tools have made the facade cheaper to build than ever. You can manufacture “authority” without ever having bled for it. But that is just more wallpaper. When you choose the structural upgrade, you are choosing béton brut, or raw concrete. You are choosing to be a person who is ten stories deep rather than a mile wide.

The Resilience Grain isn’t pretty. It’s textured. It is the literal imprint of the pressure you survived while you were still hardening. It is the memory of the FEMA pallet hitting the trailer floor at 3:00 AM while the “branding” of your blog was miles away, proving itself useless.

The Honest Build

When you edit your life down to its load-bearing elements, the world gets quiet. The older men watching the performance leave. The noise fades. You are left with the raw, unyielding concrete of actual competence, and you start attracting the people ready to build with you.

You stop trying to be “marketable” and start being structural.

This is the brutal truth of starting over. You aren’t losing anything. You are finally removing the wooden forms to see what the pour actually created. You are standing on a foundation that doesn’t vibrate when the wind blows. You are no longer a reflection of the world’s expectations; you are a structure built to hold the weight of it.

I didn’t realize we had become a creative community until I saw it happening without effort. No curated introductions. No performative networking. Just people finding each other because the conditions were right.

The moment it clicked was during the second annual Midsommar party at my house. There were maybe 150 people drifting between rooms, the courtyard, the hallway, the kitchen, the vegetable garden. Many of them were strangers to me. I moved through the space listening — a DJ talking lighting with a barista, a writer offering to style a shoot for a filmmaker, someone mapping out a collaboration for the fall.

No panels. No institutional programming. Just proximity. A place to melt.

This is what had been missing: a room where people don’t depend on an algorithm to choose each other for them.

Culture begins when people can see each other. And seeing each other requires being in the same room.

The Landscape We Inherit

People like to claim artists here lack resources. That we’re underfunded and that there’s nowhere to start.

But that’s not entirely true.

Resources exist — grants, support, studio spaces, programs — but they’re not always in the same places where emerging artists actually gather. And the grassroots initiatives I was invited into felt scattered. Earnest, but without direction. A lot of wanting, not much steering.

I saw a gap and knew how to fill it. So, the moment I landed in a house big enough, I started building the rooms myself.

I invited hundreds of people into my home until I found the ones who were ready to build.

The creative landscape here is maturing. We’re past the “everyone does everything” stage. Specialization is forming. Taste is refining. Cliques are emerging, and that’s a sign of growth, not exclusion.

We’re lucky. Our city and state value the arts.

I work closely with the city’s Art and Culture Department, the state’s Creative Industries office — I see the infrastructure. Support is real. But what we’re still developing is taste, discipline, and refinement.

We produce a lot of work. But not enough work that can stand toe-to-toe on a national stage.

Not yet.

We are still an incubation city.

And that’s not a flaw. It’s a phase of becoming.

The Invisible Architecture

People at large often see community-building as canva posters on social media, matching T-shirts, or enthusiasm. But the real work happens before anyone arrives.

The architecture is invisible:

I send the invitations. I build the environments. I’m organizing classes, hosting discussions, signing leases, drafting proposals, securing grant funds.

I arrange furniture into conversational clusters. Test the lighting and sound. I pull permits and all-nighters. I pull together teams, draft agendas, and keep productions organized with spreadsheets that have become legendary.

I write and rehearse the annual speech I give at 7PM sharp at my annual MidSommar party— the only pep talk some people will hear all year.

This is all the parts no one sees.

And that’s the point.

When a room works, the scaffolding disappears.

Culture feels effortless because someone designed the environment where effort isn’t required.

The Discipline of Belonging

People romanticize creative community as if it’s all encouragement and instant collaboration. But real culture demands standards.

Not everyone is meant to make a living from their art.

Not everyone is ready to lead.

Not everyone wants to do the work.

And that’s fine. The consumer is just as crucial to the ecosystem as the creator. But if you are going to step in, then step in with intention. When it comes to building creative teams, I’ve become really good at weeding out those who show up to say they were there but do not actually contribute to the hard parts. I have an excellently calibrated bullshit meter, and so do those closest to me. We can see right through anyone who claims to work at “the intersection” of anything.

I don’t coddle. I don’t chase. I don’t dilute the vision.

Tough love is still love — it just respects the work enough to be honest.

I believe that community is not built for the sake of inclusion. Community is built because the work needs many hands to exist. Becoming a model requires more than a wish; it needs a team behind you to help build your foundation. Crafting public art, a gallery, a market, a block party, a film, a campaign does not happen in a vacuum. Creating together is not sentiment. It’s a pool of resources, skills, and contributions. It’s accountability and continuity.

Something I find myself teaching to my mentees over and over again is that leadership is not control. People see the person with the clipboard pointing and think that is the way to do it. What they don’t hear is the nuanced translations of the vision I am formulating on the spot with each person.

The creative director needs to be so clear on the vision that she can articulate it to every team member in their own language, while tying it all back to their personal motivation.

Every artist needs something different to stay committed.

My work is knowing what those languages are — and holding the center while everyone moves.

Yes, it costs something.

Sleep. Money. Time. Certainty.

But what I gain in return is watching someone become the version of themselves they didn’t know how to reach alone.

Nothing costs too much for that.

I think back to that Midsommar night often. The way everyone moved like they already understood their role. Like the room had chosen them. Because it had, I chose them.

Culture emerging because the door was open and the space felt possible.

I know that some think culture is built online. I know some think it’s built through institutions. Most think it’s built by the loudest voices.

But I’ve seen it.

It’s built in rooms kept open long enough for people to recognize themselves in each other.

The incubator city is not the prelude. Not the bullshit you have to read before the story starts. We’re writing actual chapters.

And the architecture will remain invisible to those who only know how to look from the outside.

Why I Chose Creative Director Over CEO
When I decided my business was grown up enough to start giving my team members titles, I chose Creative Director over CEO. It’s language that fits our brand and values better. Yes, I’m technically the boss—but I’m also an artist. I don’t have to stop being one just because I’m in charge.

My unpopular opinion is that I don’t believe you have to choose between ideas and direction. Between creativity and leadership.

What most people get wrong—especially early in their careers—is thinking those are separate skill sets. That to lead a business, grow a project, or run a team, you have to become more rigid. More managerial. Less imaginative.

I’m convinced it’s the opposite: Good leadership is creative. And staying creative takes leadership.

How I Learned to Lead
I’m opening a gallery soon, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to lead inside creative environments. Why I move the way I do. Why being the decision-maker feels clear and energizing for me, while it seems to overwhelm or burn other people out.

And before I go any deeper and you start wondering who is she to bark all this into the internet, just know: I was trained for this. Literally.

I come from a background where leadership is a lifestyle. If that doesn’t read eldest sister energy, I don’t know what does.

I was thrust into decision-making early—someone always had to have a plan, and I happened to be the one who could make one. But in my adult life, I got formal help too.

From Chaos to Systems
I think it started because the world I grew up in was utter chaos. Sparing the details for another post someday, I had a bad childhood with a good attitude. So when I was old enough to venture out of my ghetto and get exposed to environments with clear systems and outlined pathways, I was in awe. I was 19 and thought, This is how civilized people do shit? This easy? I want in.

So I joined. I raised my hand. I said yes to everything. Ready to collect all the gold stars because it was clear how to get them. For the first time, there was no guessing how things would end up. Cause and effect worked when chaos wasn’t in charge.

It was obvious how to win; you just had to put in the work and play the game. That was a new environment for me. I was a fish raised in a dirty aquarium, experiencing open water for the first time. I could see. I could breathe. Everything was possible.

The Deep End of Leadership
Get hired at the shop and become the manager? Yes, I’ll do that. Join the club and become president? It appears that the structure puts me as President in two years if I start now and play the hand. Observation and action. In that order. Over and over again. A classic case of fake it till you make it.

I took every class, every training, every opportunity. Over 200 hours of formal leadership development: Military programs. FEMA disaster response. Executive boardrooms. Train-the-trainer certifications, where I taught strategy to rooms full of men in uniform. Business incubators. National energy contracts. Global strategy sessions with people who school world leaders. Chase the next goal, the bigger better title, get the star, again, again.

You’d be shocked the rooms you could get into if you raise your hand and put in the work.

I’ve been in a lot of rooms. Some, where leadership was impeccable, but I’ve also seen what happens when leadership is too rigid or absent entirely.

There’s a huge advantage to knowing how to build a system before you even know what the system is for. The ability to craft a system requires language and understanding that few people receive in a lifetime. I am grateful to have had the audacity to push myself into rooms where I could get that education. There’s power in being able to design a business idea around a problem that needs solving, without needing all the answers up front.

Home Life, Leadership Life

And then there’s the personal layer: I live in a leadership household. My husband leads too—and, honestly, was trained even more thoroughly than I was. It helps. We talk about leadership like other people talk about sports or screen time. It’s the shared language of our home. We talk about people development over dinner. Culture design at the grocery store.

It makes you see the world differently. We watch bad leadership happen in real time, all the time.

A bad interaction at the airport may start as an observation: “She wasn’t empowered.” “She’s afraid to make decisions.”

Then spirals into a string of assumed causes: “Probably got shut down by her boss one too many times.” “And he probably stopped listening for ways to help optimize workflows because his wife never lets him help with anything at home.” “Because her dad taught her the house was her domain, and she equated doing it all with showing love.” And now, here we are—me at the airport, dealing with a mistake this girl can’t override because she thinks it’s not her place.

I don’t blame her. She’s a victim of the system, same as I am. Though it is inconvenient for me in the moment.

But this is how I see things. Not just from a policy lens, but a human one. Dominoes, falling. Systems inside people. People inside systems. It’s all connected.

Muscle Memory and the Cabinet
My world has changed a lot since the days of competing with myself to climb every ladder I could find. I’ve proven what I needed to prove. I know what I’m capable of.

Now, I move differently. But there are a few core leadership philosophies that stuck—deeply, and without ceremony. They show up automatically, like muscle memory.

One of those core lessons is this: Have your officers, and have your cabinet.

Your officers are your team. Your staff. The people in the day-to-day with you. But your cabinet? Those are your trusted advisors. The ones you lean on behind the scenes.

It’s easy to confuse the two. Sometimes we pick our closest friends or family members to serve in a cabinet role—but if all they offer is blind cheerleading, that’s not going to expand your thinking. That’s just comfort.

You need perspective. Challenge. Range.

My cabinet is made up of a small group of people—diverse, brilliant, and outside the echo chamber of my work. I can ask them hard questions. I can gut-check decisions. I can talk through things I can’t ask my team about… especially when the questions are about my team.

Leadership gets lonely. So pick your cabinet wisely.

Shaping the Fire
Leadership is more like shaping a bonfire than flipping a switch. You gather the right materials, light it with care, a strategic poke now and then, and know when to step back and let it burn— the same way you know when to step in and add more wood.

It’s about facilitating an environment, not demanding authority. Because real leadership is about shaping culture.

The mistake people make is assuming authority equals influence. It doesn’t. Not always. Sometimes the boss has less sway than the popular guy.

I learned that being an eager helper for military leadership, my assigned job was always to motivate people to attend events. I thought when the one in charge said be here, it would be enough. But I found out quickly: if the popular guys on my team said yes, the rest would follow. If it was just the boss there? It was another meeting—not a party.

At first I didn’t get it. I was naive. I didn’t realize I kept getting assigned roles like “membership chair” or “event coordinator” because I was the fodder. I was the spark. The bait. The one who made it seem fun. If it came from the boss, no one would want to hear it.

And honestly? That’s leadership too.

Because if you can get the right people in the room, and give them something to say yes to— you don’t have to force anything. You just have to shape the fire and step back.

Building Systems with Vision
When I was active in the military world, I used to love when new leadership came in. I was always hungry for vision—eager to learn what they had planned, what they were going to do with their time in command.

I especially loved being a civilian consultant during annual planning sessions at different military installations. Watching big initiatives take shape across teams of thousands taught me how vision becomes movement. I learned how the machine turns.

I’d sometimes request one-on-ones with incoming commanders—not because I had complaints, but because I had ideas. I wanted to talk about culture. I wanted to offer myself as a point person. A translator. A mirror.

I haven’t done that in the civilian world. I live in a town small enough that I could probably call the mayor’s office and schedule something like that. But there’s something about the lack of structure outside the military that dulls my interest. The discipline isn’t there. The follow-through isn’t built in. So I’ve had to build it elsewhere.

Command structure makes a lot of things possible. But it only works because it’s built on clear systems—and a shared faith in those systems.

Living Lives
For the longest time, I wasn’t the visionary—I was the structure. The get-it-done person. The translator. The person who took the idea, cleaned up the mess, built the system, and made it real.

And usually? The visionary was a mess.

Now? I’m that person. I’m the visionary of the group. But I’ve lived both lives—and I try to act like it.

I don’t snap my fingers and say make it so without pressure testing my own ideas first. I give my team a framework. I walk myself through the steps. I try to avoid what I call the blank page moment—when someone hands you nothing and expects results.

It’s not fair to your team. It’s not leadership. Vision is great, but vision with no structure is just vibes. Take it from me, a new vision doesn't have to have all the answers from the beginning; no one expects that. BUT it must be fail-mapped from the beginning, looked at objectively, turned into goals, poked for holes, what-ifs, and worst-case scenarios. That is what your team is there for. Not to tear you down, though it could feel that way if you allow it to. The team is there to see the vision through to success, and it must be tested and built out while it's still in the workshop, before it’s thrust out to open water.

Give your team a vision that can be measured. If you can’t articulate it, it’s not ready to come out of your mouth. Not all ideas are plans, but all plans are ideas, and everyone hates to hear it, but ideas are cheap.

Language and Culture
Language matters. It’s one of the most powerful tools you have as a leader—and one of the most underrated.

Last week, my team had a five-hour strategic planning session at the gallery. But I’d eat glass before calling it that when I’m depending on them for results.

It wasn’t a meeting. It wasn’t a brainstorm. We call it a thinking day. We think a lot—it's part of being a creative team. But to say we have day-long meetings? Suck the lifeforce directly out of the room, why don't you. So many people will hang on to corporate terms like it magically makes things more productive, but it doesn’t.

We draft an agenda—my team just calls it the to-do list. We cover old business, new business, and work through each topic in real time. We establish SMART goals for clarity. It’s all the structure of a corporate boardroom, without any of the corporate language.

At one point, we paused for lunch. Our newest team member asked if we’d be switching gears afterward. I said simply, I think we’ve got more thinking to do to get through the list.

That’s how we work: clear, human, low-friction. I chose to establish language shaped by people—not policy.

But I’ve learned these things the hard way.

About a year in, I scheduled our first formal meeting. An automatic email landed in everyone’s inbox with the subject line: Madison's Annual Review. She was my assistant at the time and had done great work. She knew I was happy with her performance—but also knew, from the wording alone, that her name and output were now officially being judged.

She dreaded it all weekend.

When Monday came, I asked everyone else to step out so we could talk one-on-one. She sat with sweaty palms at the far end of the table, tense and quiet, until we finally got far enough into the conversation for her to breathe again. Thankfully, we had enough social capital to peddle out of it.

But in retrospect, that moment was a failure on my part.

She didn’t need to feel that way. It was my fault she did. She didn’t look forward to work that day because I chose lazy, inherited language—language that betrayed the tone I’d worked hard to build. I had created a casual, open culture. Then, in one careless move, I used a phrase that didn’t belong. It landed hard. And it stuck.

Little infractions like that—small linguistic betrayals—chip away at morale and spoil retention. That day, I dropped the ball.

It reminded me: language is culture. And culture is a living thing.

Protecting the Off-Switch
I do everything in my power to protect boredom. It’s hard in the modern day with so much available to engage our attention. I literally leave town and lock myself in my San Francisco apartment when I know I have something big to think about. I require physical distance from my team, family, and all my creature comforts.

If you’re on fire all the time, you can’t think. You can’t lead. You’re just reacting.

That’s why I demand we, as a company, take one collective day off each week. We don’t get weekends—our business doesn’t run like that. For over a year, that day has been Thursday. And now, they’re sacred.

No calls. No deliverables. Just space.
It’s a day you can count on. A rhythm we all share, even in solitude. We don’t see each other, but somehow it still feels like we’re doing something together.
A collective off-switch.

I never call someone on their day off with something that can wait until Monday.
If an idea hits me, I drop it in the group chat—on mute. I've made it clear: that thread is there to catch thoughts, not demand them.

Not because I’m being polite. Because I know how rare it is to work for someone who protects your off-switch. Because I know that boredom is where the nectar of the fruit lies.

Protect your boredom with violence.

Your team will feel it. They’ll absorb it. And they’ll start protecting each other the same way.

The Culture That Stays
If someone’s day sucks, we sit on the floor and do easy tasks by the fireplace. If a far-right official gets elected, we eat ice cream and take an hour to make wellness calls to our friends. If someone’s getting steamrolled by their other job, we reduce their hours before they even ask.

People think culture is a group photo and a shared Google Calendar. It’s not.

Culture is what happens when no one’s looking. It’s how people treat each other when the boss isn’t in the room. It's the difference between on-the-clock energy spent on passive-aggressive “per my last email” emails flying back and forth, and collective problem-solving and flow states. It’s the part that keeps people around or pushes them away. People don't work for me; they work with me.

Cultivate it. Establish your values. Lead by example because, in my mind, truly, everything is the boss’s fault. If your culture sucks or has not been established, and your business is a bunch of fragments held together by a series of paychecks, that's 100% on your leadership, or lack of it. Spend the extra payroll hour not interrupting a long team lunch where productive conversation is happening. Take a day trip with your team to do some market research and see what sparks new ideas. Do things together that matter to the bigger picture, and take the energy to think of your people and why they work with you.

Culture is a major talking point in every rank of leadership. Keeping employees engaged and inspired is an uphill battle for most big companies. So many of us have this great opportunity with a team small enough to establish something that can last throughout our future growth. Culture is key to attracting quality talent, cultivating self-starters, and developing our people. I cannot stress enough how the culture of an organization affects everything. e-v-e-r-y thing.

If my team talks about me when I’m not around, I hope they say:

“She’s intense, but it never feels heavy.”
“She works hard, but protects the hell out of us.”
“She’s convinced me I can do bigger things than I thought I could.”

Creative Leadership is a Lifestyle
Creative leadership isn’t something you fall into. It’s something you practice—over and over—until it becomes instinct.
Until care becomes culture. Until clarity becomes contagious.

Lead like an artist. Build like a strategist.
And protect your off-switch like it protects everything else.

—Kimberli

I used to think place was everything. That a true creative could mine beauty from their surroundings, adapt to the landscape, and meet the moment with reverence. But what happens when the place you find yourself in doesn’t stir your spirit? When it leaves you dry, unlit, and uninspired? However storied or sacred it may be to others, it just doesn’t move you.

And I think more of us feel this than we admit. Whether we’re aware of it or not, many are quietly enduring environments that stifle rather than ignite. But no one really talks about that. There’s no language for it, no handbook for what to do when your external world dulls your sense of creativity. We’re told to romanticize where we are. But what if where you are just… doesn’t resonate?

This is the question I had to sit with after moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico. A place revered for its natural light, ancient roots, and desert mysticism. A place people romanticize. But not me. And for a long time, I thought that was a problem.

It’s taken years to understand that being unmoved by a place is its own kind of clarity. That creative droughts can offer purification. That building a world from within, instead of reflecting what’s around you, is an act of self-trust. Maybe even rebellion.

I don’t hate the desert. I was raised in one. But this desert— the sunbaked, old-town, adobe-soaked version— never spoke to me. I didn’t want its pinks and browns. I didn’t feel its warmth. I wasn’t awed by the ancient echoes, lazy pace, or half-hearted contemporary architecture. I didn’t want to photograph it, mimic it, or soften into it.

Not long after I arrived, I stopped taking architecture photos. Stopped walking the streets with a camera around my neck. The visual hunger I once had - for shadowplay, for skyline, for texture— dulled to a whisper. For a while, I thought maybe I had changed. Perhaps I’d grown out of my fascination with buildings, design, and fashion.

But then I’d leave. I’d go to Denver or San Francisco, and suddenly I’d feel alive again. There is magic for me in places where the past informs the present without stifling the future. My eyes would scan corners for cast concrete, and my pulse would quicken at pridefully maintained mid-century facades and soaring glass-paneled bank buildings. I’d walk down the street, stopping several times to compliment forward-thinking outfits, unexpected vintage pairings, and clever backpacks. Variety, daring, experimentation. I would remember who I was— and who I still am. I’d go back feeling recharged. I hadn’t lost my spark. I’d just landed in a place that didn’t feed it.

So I stopped believing that I had to reflect this place I call home. I stopped forcing myself to continue my several failed attempts at designing from the outside in. I stopped feeling obligated to borrow the language of my environment and started refining my own. I pulled from memory, from cities I love, from images that have shaped me. I tuned into my intuition and started defining, maybe for the first time, what I would create if I started a world from scratch. My aesthetic didn’t grow from New Mexico. It holds its shape in spite of it.

In a place where very little is curated, my taste became the tether. I can now say with emboldened certainty that I prefer grit, where there is apathy— sharpness where there is softness. Here, that desire makes me stand out. But I’d rather stand out than melt in. Here, I’m “fashion-forward.” Somewhere else, I’m just... myself. And I like myself more in those places. But I’ve learned to show up as her here too— not to impress, but to stay intact. Unapologetically me.

What New Mexico did teach me, strangely, is that not everything has to inspire you. You’re allowed to feel underwhelmed. You’re allowed to love aspects of a place, yet still not want to design around them. You’re allowed to contribute to a community without folding yourself into its aesthetic.

And maybe, just maybe, underwhelm is useful. Maybe boredom is a creative state, not a failure. A necessary clearing. A quiet canvas. A kind of forced stillness that lets your deeper instincts surface. When you’re not constantly stimulated, you have to generate your own spark. You learn to cultivate an internal drive instead of leaning on external motivations. And you depend on yourself again, and again, until you forget that the outside world is capable of moving you. That’s where originality comes from— not from reacting to beauty, but from needing to make it.

In that way, the lack of inspiration became a gift. Not a romantic one, not poetic or easy. But an honest one. The kind that reshapes your habits and hones your focus. How lazy my creativity once was, what a luxury I once had to be surrounded by things that inspired me everywhere I looked. Creating in places that fed me endlessly and never taught me how to scavenge, to hunt, to cook for myself. Without the flood of external visuals, I’ve had to trust my own. I now tune into my taste like a survival skill.

Accepting my otherness in this environment was key to becoming more of myself, and I think it would be key for anyone struggling with their lack of desire to fit in. You are not alone in feeling confused, searching to meet any other pair of acknowledging eyes, as everyone around you is cheerfully content to drink the local Kool-Aid. The key is understanding that the unwritten rules of this place (or any place) don’t apply because you can always do your own thing. You can choose otherness.

It’s true that living in Albuquerque, NM has cost me ease. It’s cost me the luxury of living inside a world that reflects me. But it’s also made me ruthlessly clear on what I love— and what I never will. It’s taught me how to build an interior world that doesn’t depend on context. One that doesn’t beg to be understood. One that is authentically my own.

If you’re in a place that doesn’t move you, you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You don’t have to bloom where you’re planted. You can stay rooted in who you are and build your creative ecosystem around that. You can be honest about what inspires you and go all-in on that, even if it’s nowhere around you.

Place is not always the muse.
Sometimes, it’s the mirror.

When the rain stops, the tree doesn’t panic. It doesn’t toss off its limbs or stop being a tree.
It digs deeper.

In a drought, a tree presses its roots down, chasing the water that’s no longer surface-level. It trusts what it is. It remembers what it’s made of. And in doing so, it survives — sometimes even thrives — in a way that the shallow-rooted ones can’t.

I think about that a lot lately.

Because let’s be honest: the economic climate is dry. People are anxious. Budgets are tight. And for anyone building a brand — especially one rooted in aesthetics, values, or vintage — it’s tempting to start discounting.
To panic.
To believe that maybe we are too expensive.

But we’re not.
They’re just not our people.

And slashing prices won’t fix that.
It’ll only tell the wrong people they were right.

Cheaper Isn’t the Cure

When you reduce your prices out of fear, you're not just cutting numbers — you're cutting meaning. You’re shrinking your story. You’re teaching your audience to wait for the moment you flinch.

And here’s the truth that most of us aren’t taught:
Discounting isn’t a growth strategy. It’s an exit strategy.
It’s a last resort.
Or a rare thank you to loyal supporters. But it’s not the engine of a lasting brand.

I know this from experience. Not just with CLAY+CODA, but from years spent studying communications and helping other businesses and brands find their core message. The temptation to drop your price is just a signal. A blinking light that says:
“Something else in the system needs strengthening.”

And that’s where the roots come in.

So What Do You Do Instead?

You don’t lower your value.
You raise your visibility.
You deepen your connection.
You go back to the core — and turn up the dial where it actually matters:

🗣 Your Communication
This is your story, your tone, and your message. Ask yourself:

• Do your captions educate or just entertain?
  → Teach your audience how to see your value — break down your process, your sourcing standards, the longevity of your product.

• Can someone explain your brand in one sentence after visiting your site?
  → Simplify your positioning. Put your mission in your bio, on your homepage, in every email footer.

• Are you naming the emotional need you fulfill?
  → People don’t buy things — they buy identity, comfort, confidence, nostalgia. Name it.

Try This:
Film a 30-second “Why this matters” reel.
Update your website’s landing paragraph to reflect your deeper why.
Write out the five values your product or service actually delivers — not just what it is, but what it means.

🚚 Your Distribution
This is where, how, and with whom your product meets the world.

• Are you showing up only where you’re comfortable, or where your customers are?

• Are you relying too heavily on Instagram, or exploring offline moments too?

• Is your buying experience simple and elegant, or clunky and dated?

Try This:
Audit your sales channels — is there a better platform or in-person opportunity?
Create a “discovery funnel”: pop-up + email capture + follow-up storytelling.
Use QR codes at events that direct people to curated landing pages, not generic sites.

🤝 Your Collaborations
This is your borrowed equity. Your brand in conversation with others.

• Who shares your values, but not your exact audience?

• Who’s doing something different but harmonious — someone who could expand your reach while affirming your identity?

Try This:
Host a joint giveaway with a complementary brand (stylist + photographer, florist + ceramicist, etc.)
Pitch a guest post or story swap with someone whose audience overlaps yours.
Create a mini collection or content series together — limited, specific, and story-rich.

🛋 Your Visual Merchandising
Whether it’s a feed, a shelf, or a pop-up — your space should feel like the price you’re asking.

• Does your online presence evoke the emotion your in-person experience would?

• Is your photography doing the heavy lifting? Is your copy pulling people in or just listing facts?

Try This:
Refresh your website homepage once a month with a new feature or seasonal mood.
Batch-shoot high-quality, editorial-feeling photos to use across platforms.
Create “how to style this” guides for your most overlooked pieces.

📣 Your Marketing
Are you visible? Are you consistent? Are you memorable?

• Are you reminding people often enough of what you do?

• Is your content generous — does it offer beauty, education, personality, or utility?

• Are you building trust over time, not just attention in the moment?

Try This:
Plan a 5-day storytelling campaign that builds anticipation or highlights a single product.
Share behind-the-scenes content that reveals your process and passion.
Write a love letter to your ideal customer and turn it into a carousel or reel.

Most brands think pricing is the only dial they can turn.
But you’ve got a whole control panel in front of you.

Your job is to figure out what’s not turned up high enough — and adjust there.

Because value is not always about what you sell. It’s about how clearly and deeply people understand why it matters.

Dig deeper. Don’t dig up.

The Root of It All

At CLAY+CODA, our goal has never been to just sell vintage. It’s to make sustainable living desirable again. To offer objects that carry memory and character — pieces you keep, tell stories about, pass on.

That’s not a discount business. That’s a devotion business.

We’re building a space that feels like a discovery. A place where you can walk in on a quiet morning and listen to music while dreaming up your next living room makeover. A place to find a one-of-a-kind piece for your next celebration.
A space that teaches, that welcomes, that feels like home.

We’re not for everyone.
And that’s by design.

Because when you build something meaningful, you don’t chase people.
You help the right ones find you.

If you’re in that drought season — if your inbox is quiet and your sales are soft — take a breath.
Don’t panic. Don’t cut your limbs off.

Send your roots down.

There’s still water down there.
There’s still value in what you do.

You just have to go deeper to reach it.

—Kimberli

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how the internet is shifting — how fast it’s all evolving, and what it means to build something that lasts.

Not just a business.
A presence.
A future-proofed identity.

Lately, I’ve been working on my personal brand in a new way. Not as a sidekick to the business, not as a casual feed of behind-the-scenes content — but as the main character. Because here’s what I believe:

People want to follow people.
They want to be led by curiosity, by emotion, by values. Not by a product or algorithm or the promise of productivity. They want to feel something — and they want to know where that feeling is coming from.

I’ve been studying the people who do this well. The tech moguls of the world, the weird cult-following indie creators you discover late at night who have more influence than the brands they founded. In each case, the personal brand is the gateway. The business is the world that grows behind it.

And with AI now charging ahead — unregulated for the next decade, if you missed the memo — I believe the only thing that will continue to matter is the emotional signature you bring to your work. The aura. The stuff that can’t be faked.

So lately, I’ve been asking myself:
What does my brand — as a person — do with her day?
What does she care about? What does she ignore? What does she wear, eat, spend her money and time on?

I’ve started mapping her out like a character. Not to be performative — but to stay consistent. Because consistency doesn’t come from “posting every day.” It comes from knowing what you stand for.

The Aura Is the Asset

I’ve never loved the advice to “niche down.”
It works for some, but it’s never worked for me.
I’m not a single-focus person, and I’m not interested in becoming one.
I’m a builder, a curator, a stylist, a storyteller. A polymath.

Instead of choosing less, I’m defining aura.

My personal brand is the soft lead into everything I do — and for that to work, it has to feel like a complete, three-dimensional universe. That’s what I try to build. That’s what I think everyone should build.

And no, this isn’t just about having good photos or matching fonts.
It’s about building trust.

Because when your brand is built on your values — when people follow you for you — they will move with you wherever you go. From product launches to pivots, from one city to the next. From the screen to the showroom.

It’s not about viral reach. It’s about resonance.
It’s not about followers. It’s about fidelity.

World-Building > Branding

Something I wish more people understood about creative work: it's not a vibe. It’s world-building.

For me and my team, every part of what we do is made from scratch. The logos, yes — but also the editorial writing, the videos, the casting, the styling, the photography, the props, the editing, the events. The furniture we source and refinish by hand. The emails we write, the booths we design, the spaces we’re opening.

We don’t just sell a product. We build the world it belongs to.

And because we’re building something storied, every decision matters. The characters, the context, the pacing, the transitions. This isn’t a “small business.” It’s a full production. A creative direction practice that’s alive in every detail.

And that’s why the personal brand — the human brand — matters even more.
Because the work is too layered, too intuitive, too alive to be boiled down to a SKU.

So, what now?

If you’re reading this, maybe you’re in your own version of this moment. Trying to decide what your personal brand actually says about you. Trying to figure out if it’s working — or if it’s time to evolve. Maybe you’re multi-talented, or shifting identities, or starting to question whether your Instagram bio still fits the person you’ve become.

If that’s the case, here’s what I’d tell you:

Don’t ask what your brand does. Ask what your brand feels like.
Does it move like you? Does it sound like you? Does it hold the same values?

Because if the future is shifting — and it is — what will hold up is the aura.
The emotional signature. The essence that can’t be faked, flattened, or fed to an algorithm.

And that’s what I’m building now.

One storyline, one post, one room at a time.

This is your reminder: your personal brand is not a side project. It’s the lighthouse. The glow that guides people in.

Let it feel human.
Let it feel real.
Let it feel like you.

The Wake of Influence

There’s a difference between being secretive and being sacred.
I didn’t tell anyone I was opening a gallery—not at first.
It wasn’t strategy. It was survival.
A quiet choice to protect a raw, unformed idea before the world could touch it.

I wanted to move slowly, to choose carefully, and that kind of slowness demands space—space away from the relentless pace of our day and age. The dead zones where creativity used to thrive have been overtaken by ads, memes, opinions, updates, and urgency.

As a creative director, I’ve learned when to step back from the noise—to ponder, to dilly-dally, to float freely and let the tide carry me without anyone else’s wake disrupting the course. These moments of stillness aren’t a luxury. They’re part of the work.

I call it the wake of influence: a well-meaning but disruptive force that pulls your creative instinct off course before it has a chance to take root.

That’s why I chose to stay quiet. To stay close to the origin of this idea. To sit in stillness where only my voice—and the ones I intentionally invite—can be heard.

So I left. First, on a Santa Fe road trip with my team. To Native Fashion Week. Then, Denver Fashion Week. Then two uncomplicated, deliciously quiet weeks in my San Francisco pied-à-terre—not to escape, but to tune in. To filter inspiration on my own terms. To move at the pace of my own instincts.

Behind the scenes, our team has been building slowly and intentionally: new concepts, products, events, and workshops. Brick by brick. Layer by layer.

When a friend recently asked how planning was going, I answered. And within seconds, the conversation—kind, generous, and well-intentioned—shifted into suggestions and solutions. What hours I should keep. What to include in my contracts. How to do it “right.”

And I get it. Advice is love language. People care.

But that moment reminded me why I’d chosen silence in the first place. Even thoughtful advice—even love—can create ripples before your idea ever touches water. The wake of influence, again. Not malicious. Just too early. Too loud.

Because when ideas are still forming, what they need most is your presence—not persuasion.

And in those moments of clarity, I’m reminded of how essential it is to indulge your own ideas fully. To trust yourself enough to sit with something long before it makes sense to anyone else. That’s not selfish. It’s sacred.

Not every step of a creative journey needs to be shared or shaped by outside input. Some of the boldest, most thrilling choices come from quiet knowing. And while risk and reinvention are part of any creative path, I’ve noticed something:

We’re often most proud of the decisions we sat with.
The ones that came slowly.
The ones we chose for ourselves.

This is what The Director’s Cut is for—the slow edits, the silent knowing, the things that surface when you give them time.

I’ve always seen the world as performance art—the way people communicate, dress, react, move through space. Stories everywhere. Being a creative director just makes those stories louder.

This next chapter—the gallery—is my chance to tell a story in a new medium: physical space. Tangible story. Living style.

It’s messier than I imagined. But it’s mine.
And I’m still figuring out the plot.

What are you building that needs protection?
What vision are you carrying that you don’t want to explain, justify, or poll?

Let this post be your permission slip.

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