Meet Rachel Lee-carman

We recently connected with Rachel Lee-carman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel , thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many topics we could discuss, but perhaps one of the most relevant is empathy because it’s at the core of great leadership and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your empathy?

Falling in love relentlessly.

Today, I feel like I can’t breathe.

5 things I can see:
Aspen leaves waving
Bouquet of wilted flowers
My glasses
A list of things I’m discussing with a boy I’ve been dating for the past few weeks who has managed to break my heart into a thousand acorn shards
My phone brightening as it receives a text that he’ll call me after he showers

4 things I can touch:
The page of this journal
My wool socks
Back of my neck
This pen

3 things I can hear:
Water boiling on the electric kettle
Acorns boiling on the stove
Vent of air coming from the main house to my renovated garage studio

2 things I can smell:
Hot acorns
Tiger balm ultra strength I rubbed on my shoulders and chest to get the grief to pass down my spine (it’s caught in my lungs and lower back right now)

When he calls I’m going to put my coat on and walk to the store to buy tomatoes. I decided it’s best to get bad news walking in a direction, not pacing my house.

Today is about processing acorns and making bucatini all’amatriciana. I bought the guanciale and pecorino from the store last week. He was going to come over but instead he is going to call and tell me it’s over.

I can’t write a zine today. I can’t write an essay. I can’t organize a workshop. Anything I create will be trash because I am not in a crafting phase, I am in a living phase.
Writing as I am living looks very very bad on paper. Observe the adverbs as proof.

Anything I create will be saturated with a grief I know will be a pearl in two months time. Today it is sand in my shell. I coat it over and over again with my spit, trying to soften it. Digest it. Make it palatable.

To talk about the big things you talk about the little ones. To make bucatini all’amatriciana is to acknowledge you can love tenderly. The grief is the proof. It’s in the sauce.

I will slice the gaunciale with the mandoline borrowed from Jonathan. As a joke he brought an instrument mandolin and Michael and I sang edelweiss. To sing edelweiss with Michael is part of the recipe. The guanciale is frozen because it is fatty. The woman at the grocery said it has to be frozen to cut properly. She also said this grocery store was “probably the only place in the area that carried guanciale” so I was in luck. She also handed me the pecorino with me needing to ask.

To make bucatini all’amatriciana you must know the universe conspires to love you.

The guanciale will be cooked for a bit, then diced tomatoes will be added to stew. Though I have garlic and homegrown provincial herbs, the recipe calls for all the flavors to come from the cured meat. It’s a simple dish. Made from the town of Amartrice, for someone who once loved another and wanted to prove themselves. I will shed one tear to salt.

I will make the past al dente and finely grate the pecarino, cheese from sheep’s milk. I will put all the ingredients together on a plate. I will toast some bread and rub on olive oil and garlic. I will eat it alone.

I’m not making anything to last, I’m attempting to live and create in alignment with the laws of the universe. A compulsion. The way other people feel about raking leaves or driving long distances. What I make is intended to fall apart over time. To be consumed by hand, mouth, or other elemental composers. It’s on paper. It’s palm readings and acorn shells. The continuous digestion grants me the opportunity to be changing. I’m uncomfortable with any one thing representing me, or even itself. I must always be working.

Douglas Coupland once crumpled and chewed page-by-page his entire anthology of works and shaped them papier-mâché style into wasp nests.

Corita Kent’s Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules #7 goes “The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.”

I’m going to fall in love again and again as if I don’t know any better.

As if it’s going to be any different any other time. The attempts disrupt the flow, the work, every time. My inspiration comes from a place deep within myself that is connected to Source. Falling in love with the world returns me to my body, to my physicality. This does the work no favors but it reminds me I’m human as well as artist.

Today I pluck my returned heart from the ether. I consume the all’amatriciana.
I grieve. Tomorrow I work.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I love doing Flash Portraiture, drawing folks at events, and have been getting more opportunities to do that: weddings, private events, pop-up craft markets. There’s a mutual vulnerability in those moments, very much like Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present.” It’s terrifying to be seen. All I can seek to do is capture a little line, a little truth about a person’s face.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Discipline. I don’t believe I’m a quality artist but I try very very hard and show up and do my best at every opportunity.
Love. I will get my crushed a thousand times in this life and in this creative practice but I’m compelled to continue moving forward with my heart.
Recklessness. At the end of the day I’m just going to send it. Even if I’m embarrassed. It just has to be out, I just have to move tf on. Rick Ruben said something in “The Creative Act: A Way of Being,” “sometimes the best work is the sketch.” That might not be the real quote. *flips through book.* I can’t find it. I had this workshop I was going to host making Alsatian paper houses for Advent Calendars. I couldn’t organize sufficiently to put the workshop together so the fruition of the idea was making them with niblings. Maybe I’ll make an install for the cafe I have an ongoing residency at. Or maybe not.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

The heartbreak, because the focus is like “pew! pew!” messy and unrestrained. My Venus in Pisces is leading the storyline right now and she’s pretty messy. But that isn’t a challange to the work, it’s part of the process. Once she’s done salting her bowl of bucatini all’amatriciana with her tears we’ll go back to our old schemes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://RachelLeeCarman.com
• Instagram: Rachel_LeeCarman