"Maddy, will you come draw on the walls of our daughter's nursery?"

Why yes, I’d love to!

This spring, I was asked to do some of my wall drawing, but this time for a nursery! My first wall drawing experience was completely unplanned, the result of pandemic boredom and my unwillingness to completely remove the wallpaper bits from the walls in my home office. In that project, I did a little bit over the course of months and slowly developed a sense for what I was doing. With this project, I would only have a few evenings. Could I do it again?

It turns out, I can! I planned a bit more than I had last time, but still left a lot open to improvisation and experimentation. We decided on a color palette ahead of time, based on what is available in the larger sized Posca markers that I like to use and what would look nice on yellow walls. Once I arrived onsite, we had to establish what would go on the mural. I knew I wanted to draw a duck, a sheep, and some turtles. She asked for a hedgehog. So, that’s where I started. I sketched out a basic landscape with duck, sheep, turtles, and hedgehog, and then took to the walls.

After the first day, we knew it needed more. She requested a moose. I learned how to draw a moose, and it went up on the wall. I finished it up with some buzzing bees. Throughout the process, we critiqued and edited together, making it a more collaborative process than my first mural.

This project came after a fallow creative period for me, so it was particularly affirming to be able to stand in front of it and say “look what I made!” And when, during the baby shower, some kids appeared and started playing with stuffed animals against the drawings, I was especially glad to have created a space for that kind of imaginative play.

Art, Literature, and the Law

My local bar association did an issue all about “art, literature, and the law,” which just came out. It includes one of my “We will get through this” illustrations and some of my thoughts on being a lawyer who can speak are and law. I love how it turned out and it was so fun to be included!

Hennepin Lawyer Cover
Hennepin Lawyer Interview.JPG
Hennepin Lawyer illustration.jpg

It is fun to page through the issue and see so much creativity from members of a profession that is viewed as being anything but creative. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but it is weird to me how much law and art seem like total opposites but also very related. I think there may be a lot of creative people underneath the formal training and expectations of lawyers. That creative side just isn’t valued or encouraged unless it is in the form of making an innovative argument or, in the rare cases, writing a witty footnote.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Venn diagram of art and law and what it means to inhabit parts of both of those spaces. I have no answers, but I do find it interesting to explore…we’ll see where that thread goes!