Getting Settled in Asheville

So I've been in Asheville, NC about six weeks now which has zipped by. We've had the warmest welcome I think I've ever experienced in a new place—mostly due to the good rep of the Beehive Collective, I think. It's snowed, it's thundered, it's been hot and sunny and the green things are all exploding and shooting out flowers and seeds and it feels GREAT to be on my bike again, chugging up and down the mountain hillsides.

At this point we're down to two illustrators on the coal poster—almost everyone else is back in Maine and working on different pieces of the campaign from there. We've built ourselves a studio in the basement of the Phil Mechanic Studios on the French Broad River. It's in the corner of a huge old cement basement room that used to be a freezer for a seafood company and now serves as a metal shop. So it's dusty and kinda dark but with some mopping, some new white walls and good lighting we have a nice hidden-away spot to focus on what we're doing.

It's unbelievable to me how long this project has taken, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We got so much positive feedback from folks on our monthlong tour to colleges and community events this spring that I feel certain it's going to be something I can feel proud of in the end.

Some folks have asked me who this "we" is. Well, here's the person I've been spending 24/7 with for about a year, about five months of that in a romantic kinda way. Her name is Beatriz. She is Cuban and I am a Wasp which means that when we argue, she mostly wins.

We're living on a beautiful, steep piece of land with friends of Bea's on the fringes of the city. It's hard to tell in the photo, but it took several years off my life to squeeze my bus into its parking spot and it's jacked up to make it level (sort of.) There's a big garden and a clawfoot tub and our housemates have been great.



Bea made herself a bedroom in a garden shed. We built a little porch and a porch roof and she girlied it up. It's like a little birdhouse. The birds make a huge racket every morning and the rain pounding on the roof makes it feel even warmer and cozier inside.

Life is pretty good. Asheville feels less isolated than the collective house in Maine or the studio in South Florida. We're close to lots of coal activism, and we're surrounded by working artists at the Phil Mechanic. We're meeting an assortment of interesting local activists, artists and queers, gardeners, d.i.y builders, biodiesel makers, students and teachers. Asheville seems like a hotbed for lots of low-key, off-the-grid smartypants-ness. And it's not easternmost or southernmost or anything like that, so come visit!