“What I bring to the table is rich”
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
“What I bring to the table is rich.” Those words are from Detra, the latest subject of a Humans of New York series (if you haven’t read it yet, go to @humansofny on Instagram and go through the photos of the fabulous woman smoking a cigar). Her words keep sticking with me. They reveal a woman who knows her own worth, who isn’t waiting for permission to love how she shows up in the world. This past week, I’ve been trying her words on for size. Sitting in front of a blank page, or sending my writing out into the world, I remind myself that what I bring to the table is rich. It feels freeing, b ..read more
Visit website
Behold, Be Held
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
I’ve had the curious experience recently of going outside with a question, and getting an answer. Yesterday, I was sitting by a river, feeling creatively stuck and wondering what would help get me unblocked. Bam! Three separate flocks of honking geese flew over me, one after the other. Oh, I needed community, people to create with. I also noticed that the river, which was so still that the surface shone like glass, had a gentle current visible on the other side. It may have looked stagnant, but there was still flow. Oh. It felt too good to have made up (and if I had made it up, I would defi ..read more
Visit website
Museum Visit of the Day: My Tomato Plant
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
Museum visit of the day: my tomato plant Goodness, the smell of tomatoes on the vine just gets me. I have a few tomato plants—grape and cherry—and when I get up close enough to pick my miniature harvest, that distinctive tomato-y smell wraps me up and takes me somewhere. I don’t know where exactly; I never had tomato plants growing up so I don’t think it’s a sense memory. But each time I get a whiff of my tomato plant, I am transported by this all-encompassing and wonderful sensation. I’ve come to accept the inevitability of this experience in my gardening routine: 1. Go outside. 2. Pick tom ..read more
Visit website
David Hockney and the Local Pool
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
I felt like I was in a David Hockney painting this week. My son and I spent a morning in the outdoor pool in our local park, and somehow we were the only ones there (besides the three lifeguards looking out for us). The turquoise water in the pool was still, except around my splish splashing toddler in lemon swim trunks and his green pool noodle. The colors were saturated and crisp in the morning sun, with a bright blue sky broken up by pine trees and the tall poles carrying the lights for the hockey rink. Looking around me as I floated on my own green pool noodle, I felt in that moment the s ..read more
Visit website
The Whiplash of Balancing Working and Mothering
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
A glimpse into my brain right now… People told me that being a mom would help me become skilled at getting work done efficiently in the pockets of time available for it. This has been somewhat true for me, but not in the way I imagined it, where I’d become this superhero work machine who could perfectly manage time and pump out mass quantities of finished tasks. For me, it’s looked more like the slow shedding of the fear that the quality of what I produce has a direct impact on my value as a human being. The same boldness that I felt when lactation consultations made certain parts of my body ..read more
Visit website
Getting Up Close and Personal With Art
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
I love getting up close and personal with a painting. At a distance, this painting of three cakes on display is simple, and quite satisfying in that simplicity. The artist Wayne Thiebaud came back over and over to this theme of commercially-produced Americana desserts over the course of his career (fun game: if you see a painting in a modern art museum of a dessert that looks like it could be proudly on display in a diner, look to see if it's by Thiebaud). This repetition allowed him to explore possibilities in his painting technique. He often surrounded the objects he painted with halos of ..read more
Visit website
Museum Visit of the Day: My Kitchen Counter
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
I was tidying up a bouquet in my kitchen yesterday, salvaging the blooms that were still holding on. When I went to clean up the counter, I did a literal double take. The vegetal detritus I had been about to wipe away was an explosion of colors and textures, curly greenery and wrinkly poppy petals. It was so joyful. It made me think of the giant shell in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, of the swirly colours in a Kandinsky abstract painting, of the golden light pouring down on my son’s curly hair during our visit to the hillside flower farm that made the bouquet. I took a moment to actually look ..read more
Visit website
Dramatic Skies in the Palazzo Barberini
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
It was turning into a rainy evening in Rome. The downpour was steady: persistent enough to slowly seep through my raincoat, but not aggressive enough to convince me to stop meandering through the drizzly streets, past intriguing old churches and lazily flowing fountains. Eventually, I made my way to the Palazzo Barberini, a seventeenth century palace that is now home to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica. This museum hosts one of Italy’s most important painting collections, but it can be easy to overlook as a visitor to artwork-saturated Rome. Evening darkness was already starting its slow ..read more
Visit website
Two Strategies to Help with Imposter Syndrome
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
Imposter syndrome is raging fiercely in me. I am coming up against three academic writing deadlines. And as I gaze up at these huge mountains looming ahead of me, I find that I'm having a hard time lifting my feet to take the next steps forward. It feels like each individual step has the power to make or break my entire journey up the mountains, and that's too much pressure for one little foot. When I experience this kind of fear, I don't go into fight or flight mode, I go straight into freeze. Right now I am leaning hard into two strategies to keep inching forward. The first strategy is to ..read more
Visit website
Fresh Eyes On The Writing Process
Marina Gross-Hoy Blog
by Marina - Imaginibus
1y ago
I’m in a phase of my PhD journey where I am writing, writing, writing. Until recently I was in a place where I was plotting out what I would eventually write, but now I’m actually writing. Real sentences that real eyes will read. When I sit at my computer with my document open on the screen, my fingers poised at the keyboard, I sometimes feel paralyzed with doubt. It feels like everything has already been said by smart people who have read many more books than me. Sustained writing is about wrestling with the subject matter and honing the craft, yes, but it is also about working through the ..read more
Visit website

Follow Marina Gross-Hoy Blog on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR