It's been fun to finally show people a detailed listing of what's up for the Festival. Over the last week, we've placed posters and a couple of thousand takeaway cards with many people in local church congregations near New York City. I like to watch their reactions to the cards. They invariably turn to the listing of events and are taken aback at the breadth of it all.

We were at an Advisory Board meeting for the Center in January, and J. Kirk Richards had an idea: what if we did something at the Festival that allowed multiple artists to make something together? At the 2017 Festival, we exhibited Kirk's multi-panel work, Cristo (2014), that brought together 161 paintings of different sizes together. These had been created by Kirk working with people in his community who were invited to show how they imagined Jesus Christ to appear; then Kirk reworked the images to unite them stylistically.

Hildebrando de Melo arrived at JFK airport from Angola via Lisbon and Amsterdam one week ago today. He is here to do an artist's residency, the Center's first. The resulting paintings will form the solo exhibition at the Festival in June. Our plan was to have him here early to give us a chance to frame works, create a catalog, and become acclimated to the works a while. Then, he'll come back in June for the opening. He'll also be giving a presentation/interview about his work at the Festival.

All the action is in the library. That's my experience as a student and author. Whoever invited the library was a genius. For the Festival, we had a meeting this week to plot out strategies: opening night, decorations, flowers, locations, flow, food. This team of Festival staff members is extraordinary. At the Italian Academy biblioteca, where some of the events will take place, we sat down together (from left to right): Jenna Holt, Marilee Moe, Alyssa Chard, Sharon Harris, Emily Doxford, Braden Burgon, and Allyson Chard.

I'm always curious to see how artists work. I love visiting the places where art is created. I want to know what they look like: a painter's studio, a writer's den, a choreographer's space, a filmmaker's set. Leading up to the Festival, we've asked some of the participating artists to shoot very short videos to introduce us to them and their lives. Today, Hildebrando de Melo sent us a video made on his phone that captures the wealth and poverty of Luanda, Angola, where he lives and works. His atelier is a beautiful, pristine space.

I'm not a mom, so I don't know what it feels like to be in labor. I have experienced what it's like to labor on projects though. Not the same thing, of course, but I can imagine that there are moments in both when you say, "Why am I doing this, again?" For me, there's a lot of satisfaction that comes from the end result--the book, the project, the concert, the new friendship. Still, personally I don't need a lot of acknowledgment from the outside to keep going. I just do what I do.