Hello there. My name is April Parviz. I don’t know who is reading this right now, but if I know you then, “hello!” and if I don’t then… “hey, nice to ‘meet’ you?”
Anyway, here are some things that I am : graphic designer, visual artist, musician, photographer, gardener, writer, and general gift-maker. I work for Intersect Arts Center (where I also have a studio) and Holy Cross Lutheran Church, in St. Louis Missouri, which is also my church that I love so much. It’s great. It’s basically my dream job, if I had had a dream job before getting this dream job. I’m a mother to two sweet little girls and wife to Benjamin Parviz. He is currently working toward a doctorate in bioethics and philosophy at St. Louis University, so he brings home all kinds of interesting topics for the two of us to think and talk about. I believe that his work has moved me forward in my work, to some degree. He thinks and talks about hope a lot, with regards to the medical world. This has moved me to reflect more on my own experience with despair in the year 2014 which brought me very close to death.
I have an odd case of late-onset type-1 diabetes (diagnosed at 24) which spiraled me into a place of despair, where I believed my life wasn’t worth living. But it is. At that time, I could not have envisioned my wonderful life now. I have the most fulfilling job, that would have been impossible for me to imagine. I have a sweet little house, with a garden, where my little girls run and dance and sing. My husband loves me very much and is constantly offering encouragement and support in my chronic illness. So if you or someone you know is in a state of despair, I want you to know that God loves you and even though you might not understand the plan right now, He is working for your good.
Also, if you need someone to talk to about it, feel free to reach out to me. I love encouraging people and offering support. I know a lot about the darkness. But I also know that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.
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I’ve started writing monthly reflections / artist statements / short stories. If you’re interested, you can read them here.
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Just want to give a quick shout out to several artists that inspire me to create including Delro Rosco, Meena Matocha, Kelly Kruse, Eugenia Sherman Brown, Dana Otto, Reinhold Marxhausen, Mellisa Gwyn, Aly Ytterberg, Ben DiNino, Greg Mueller, Gigi Florek, Lori Marble, Sufjan Stevens, Fred Rogers, Johann Sebastian Bach, King David (son of Jesse), my boss and friend: Sarah Bernhardt, and of course God. Soli Deo Gloria.
My favorite things in nature, ranked in possibly the right order:
Dirt
The smell of evergreen needles baking in the sun
When it rains while the sun is shining
Murmurations
Manzanita
The smell of eucalyptus buttons
Goldenrod
When it’s peak fall, and there’s a nice breeze and the most beautiful colors are literally swirling all around you all day
The pigeons that live (or at least hang out) on top of the building at the corner of Jefferson and Sidney
A completely still reflection on top of a small to medium body of water entirely surrounded by tall trees
Aster
The shadows of cumulus clouds slowly gliding along the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin
Watching my children eat straight out of my garden
When you can see exactly where the wind is moving through tall grasses
Yarrow
Finding a clearing inside a group of trees that you can stand in, but is till completely shaded and covered from the sun
The smell of a new season
The smell of a California beach
The smell when you open a fresh marigold
The sound of a mildly-steep very-rocky beach at high tide
The smell of a fire
A network of Aspen trees glittering in the wind
When the robins finally come back and they are the only birds here and they hang out with me while I garden in the cold
When you are so deep in the woods, you know that you can’t hear another human
That day when all the largest gingko trees decide to drop all their leaves at once
Going deep enough into the Grand Canyon to feel like I was inside a lake of air. Then sitting on a ledge and looking out across the canyon at all the giant birds swimming nonchalantly through the sky in front of me. But they were actually fish right?
Walking through a mature wheat field in closed toed shoes
The strange little pinkish/purple bumps that start the base of the Celandine poppies, announcing that the perennials are returning
Surprise bird migrations
Madrone
The moment the loon resurfaces, right when you believed it never would again
Finding fossils in the magnificent sandstone walls of Austin, Texas
Puzzle Grass
The smell of lavender
Chickweed
Eating pine-nuts out of the cone
The smell of flowering Hazel and flowering Jasmine trees and flowering Lemon bushes - which for the record ALL SMELL THE SAME
When the birds chirp in the yard and my 3-year-old daughter talks back to them like they’re having a casual conversation
Wrens
Being alone in a kayak in the middle of a large lake
Acorns
Kicking my feet through fallen dry winter leaves
Lichen
Foraging
Eating pine nuts off the ground
When the wind blows the leaves in the trees
Making hearts out of evergreen needles
Minors lettuce
The white lines on the inside of a strawberry that were clearly the paths of energy journeying to the seeds
Buntings
Hugelkultur
Watching my children jump in leaf piles
The smell of honeycomb, and the smell of mustard flowers - which smell the same
Sugar pinecones
Digger pinecones
Cypress cones
Lodgepole pinecones
Hemlock cones
All other evergreen tree cones
El Morro National Monument
Warblers
Cilantro
The smell + feel of a sweaty tomato plant - especially before the tomatoes are ripe #anticipation
A dry poppy seed pod still on the stalk
The resilience of flowers on plants that are clearly dying
The way bald cypress roots point up like stalagmites along the water
The way you forget the details of the season from last year almost like you’ve never experienced it before now that it’s come back around again
The sight of blooming lavender
When trees grow over fences
Throwing a clump of Samaras into the air (*far away from my own garden)
The smell of those tiny white morning glories that bloom wild along all the fences in July
Watching the miraculous progression of seed-production
Joshua Tree National Park
A nice large stump to sit on
Finding a sunny clearing in a dark forest
Rotting wood
Flowers that bloom in winter
Eating baby spruce tips
Finding mussels
Kicking my feet through fallen fresh autumn leaves
Finding a large field at the end of a dark forest
The tedium and rhythm and sameness
Freshly fallen snow OBVS
Flowers that bloom in full shade
Finding mica in the stone walls of Pennsylvania
Walking through a mature wheat field in open toed shoes
Honorable mention : rust (I’m going to semi-count it since nature is what causes it) (also it gives me some strange hope that nature is reclaiming its own)
