For this week’s post, I thought I’d pair these collages with one of my journal entries from a few months ago. Both carry that stream-of-consciousness theme.

4/15/2026, 4:00 p.m. Maman Café, NYC.

Life can end just like that—at the snap of a finger. That’s really what’s on my mind: to witness Ate Marica, and walk with her until the end. I still grasp for the words to describe the loss.

Suddenly, there’s no room for hesitation, for putzing around. Life never gives us all the answers to our questions. We’re left only with mysteries—and learning to live inside them.

Plans falter. There’s only uncertainty, and the work of sitting with it. There’s so little we can control—our internal landscape, and not much else.

We only have moment to moment. And we have to savor it, make it count for as much as it can. Loving the everyday, because that’s where life lives.

There are no redos. No dress rehearsals.

Time only moves forward.

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Marica Notecards

Inspired by my sister Marica’s love of literature and libraries, this collection layers vintage imagery with library ephemera—date stamps, catalog cards, and handwritten script. Through circulation and return, libraries connect us across time and generations, making timeless stories accessible to all.

Share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY JANE AUSTEN NOTECARDS

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Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

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GIVE A GIFT

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, come join Jessica, Senny, Ngân, Laura and I for a conversation about the personal projects closest to our hearts.

it’s a rare moment for me so I am excited and nervous at the same time. I’ve worked quietly over the years documenting my family as a record for myself. Our gatherings are rare. We only get to see each other once, maybe twice a year if we’re fortunate.

So, come join us if you are in town. I look forward to seeing you there!

About the exhibit, Where Words Fail Us

Comment

I’m not particularly rooting for any one country — it’s just fun to witness the camaraderie and fervor of the fans in the stadium, as much as enjoying the games themselves.

With that in mind, I revisited my Olympics collages from 2024 and applied the same treatment here, in appreciation of soccer — or football, depending on where you’re from.

Enjoy the pieces, and the matches, throughout the summer!

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Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

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More Ways to Support Sundays with Stella

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, Venmo or BPI for my Filipino supporters. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading. Maraming Salamat!

GIVE A GIFT

I couldn't find an official website or video interviews on YouTube or Vimeo. Like a dog with a bone, I persisted until I stumbled upon two transcripts: an hour-long oral history interview conducted by Steven Watson for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, and a video interview and transcript from the PBS documentary Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light. Combining these with Martin Harrison's essay from her first monograph, Lillian Bassman, gave me a fuller picture of her life and work.

The Early Years

Long before she began her career at Harper's Bazaar, Ms. Bassman was at heart an artist and a dancer. She recalled those days when she and her husband, Paul Himmel, were broke, so they spent their weekends at the Metropolitan Museum. "It's where I got my whole visual education in fashion, in design, in paint and art," she told Mr. Watson.

In the world of dance, Isadora Duncan was a childhood idol. She was on her way to becoming a Martha Graham dancer, but a leg and ankle injury ended that dream. She came to realize that dancing was not in the cards, and she would have to find another way of expressing herself.

Ms. Bassman wanted to become a painter but did not have the money to pursue it. So she struck a deal with Moses Soyer. She'd model for him half the day; in return, she had access to his studio to paint. Afterward, she tried her hand at textile design, but later realized that neither endeavor was financially viable. "I needed to eat," she said. Fashion illustration and drawing came closest to painting and, at the same time, could pay the bills.

Brodovitch

Ms. Bassman took speed drawing and sketching classes at Pratt Institute. She was proud of her work, and when an opportunity came, she presented her sketches to Alexey Brodovitch. He offered her a place in his class at the New School. Ms. Bassman declined, saying she couldn't afford it. But he saw something exciting in her portfolio and offered her a scholarship on the spot.

"He had his class divided into two rooms," Ms. Bassman recalled. "I went into the fashion room, and I did maybe one or two drawings. And he poked me on the shoulder, and he said, 'In the other room, we do posters and layout. Would you like to go in there and see what it's like?'"

She agreed and never left.

At the end of the year, the prize for being the best student was an unpaid apprenticeship at Harper's Bazaar. "Great, great training," Ms. Bassman called it—but after two years and two months, the arrangement was financially unsustainable.

She left for a paid position at Elizabeth Arden. Mr. Brodovitch called her every day, asking her to return, but she held firm, repeatedly saying, "I need to eat. I am not one of those rich kids." He negotiated with the magazine to let her work part of the time doing promotions and the rest under him. Six months later, Ms. Bassman returned as his first salaried assistant.

Darkroom Experiments

Between the demands of the job, Ms. Bassman was quietly shaping her own visual language. She spent her lunch breaks and evenings in the darkroom. It had formerly belonged to George Hoyningen-Huene, who moved to California where he became a celebrated portraitist of Hollywood's golden age.

Finding it long abandoned, she made it her own—experimenting with ferricyanide bleach, cotton swabs, brushes, and unconventional diffusion materials such as tissues and gauzes, her painterly aesthetics guiding every choice. She had not yet learned to use a camera, so she practiced and developed her techniques using Mr. Hoyningen-Huene's old negatives.

Brodovitch and Junior Bazaar

Ms. Bassman had great respect and admiration for Mr. Brodovitch. He had an incredible eye, and his taste was infallible. She praised his restrained layouts—the white space allowed to breathe on the page, the typography, the photographic choices. "But if you were expecting direction, forget it. You only knew whether today it was acceptable or not acceptable. You never got to know why or how, but within his ability to push you—you got there," she recalled.

Mr. Brodovitch was known to take extended absences. On one occasion, he was out for several months after being run down by a Hearst truck. She practically carried the magazine during this time: art directing and laying out pages, taking them to his farm for suggestions, modifications, and approval, then returning to the office to produce the issue. She even made a major change to how the production department functioned.

Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief, took notice. She knew that Ms. Bassman not only had a creative eye but also had the technical knowledge of magazine production.

When plans for a Junior Bazaar were taking shape, Mrs. Snow asked Ms. Bassman to design a dummy. When Mr. Brodovitch saw her sketching ideas at her desk, he asked what it was for. She told him about Mrs. Snow’s request. He stormed into her office, demanding to know why she had not given this assignment to him. For fear that he might quit, Mrs. Snow struck a compromise and listed him as co-art director at Junior Bazaar—even though Ms. Bassman made all the creative decisions.

In the three years that the publication ran (1945-1948), Ms. Bassman was given carte blanche to do what she wanted. "We gave our photographers full rein to interpret their ideas, recognizing what Junior Bazaar stood for and the freedom to stay away from literal photography into the more poetic side," she said. She leaned into the younger photographers who brought a fresh look and energy to its pages, launching the careers of Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, and her husband, Paul Himmel.

Behind the Camera

Contemplating her next move after Junior Bazaar folded, Ms. Bassman felt that transitioning to photography was a natural next step. She paid a visit to Mr. Brodovitch, and he suggested, "Why not become a photographer with me?"

Mr. Avedon—with whom she had closely collaborated at the magazine and become close friends—generously lent her his studio, equipment, and an assistant while he was in Paris on assignment for an extended period of time. The two couples had grown close over the years, owning a bare-bones shack at Cherry Grove, Fire Island, spending weekends together with their spouses.

By the end of those two months, Ms. Bassman had secured her first major commercial campaign. At first, she directed every frame by telling the assistant where to point and compose the shot. When she received her first Paris assignment, she was technically proficient enough to operate the Rolleiflex camera herself.

Soon after, Ms. Bassman started a family at 35. She had a son, Eric, and two years later, Lizzie was born. In her interview for the PBS documentary Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light, she reflected on how this changed everything:

“I was pregnant. Very soon after I gave birth, our life changed completely. We were no longer partying and drinking and dancing in the same way—at least during the first few years. That was the real cutoff emotionally. When Dick decided he wanted the celebrities, we decided they meant nothing to us. So that’s how it went. We became virtual recluses. We had a few friends, but not many—not like Dick was having. And we didn’t miss it. So that’s how a friendship ends. In a way, though, we have tremendous respect for each other. My children certainly respect him.”

In order to juggle family life and her career, Ms. Bassman sought childcare help. "From the day they were born we had—I think Eric was seven days old when Louise came. And she stayed until he was over 16. So she was always part of the household," she told Mr. Watson.

The Intimate Life of a Woman

For the It's a Cinch assignment at Harper's Bazaar, a contact sheet showed Carmen Dell'Orefice clad in a half corselette and panty girdle, her graceful, dance-like movement captured with intimacy and ease in her own body.

"I always photograph the girls as their movement was coming down. To me, it was a kind of sensual, female kind of action. I was very interested in women—not that they were working women, because we were all working women—but [who] had a much gentler kind of attitude about themselves and the people around them…my kind of sex was always kind of internalized," she said.

Drawing on her roots in dance, Ms. Bassman described the way she directed her models. "If you ever saw me on a set—not now that I'm 94, but when I photographed for real, you know, on my feet—the moment I got interested in what I was doing, my shoes went off. I would get on the paper, dance barefoot, dance for the models, move in the way I wanted them to move, really dance barefoot in front of the camera, take on the body movements that I felt would get them to move—actually to dance in front of the camera."

Pushing the Limits

Ms. Bassman's creative expression was often tempered by the demands of commercial work. But she tried and pushed herself further when she could. In 1950, she showed Mr. Brodovitch two photographs she had manipulated in the darkroom. She had selectively burned in the outlines of the model's silhouette, making the images look like illustrations. "This is dangerous," he wrote to her—in a way, a reverse compliment, for he had always encouraged such boldness from his photographers and designers. A colleague went further, calling the images "sheer madness."

Virginia McBride, assistant curator at the Met, noted, “Often Bassman’s work appeared in the back of the magazine, or she was skipped when assigning the most glamorous couture pieces to photograph.”

In his essay for her first monograph, Martin Harrison quoted Ms. Bassman: “For Carmel Snow, Paris was everything—she had little interest in dresses by California designers aimed at older women. But we had to photograph them because the firms paid for advertising. I would try to make something of the bad clothes, got a reputation for that, and afterwards, almost never got the good ones.”

Changing Times

When the reins at Harper's Bazaar changed in 1958 with the exit of Mrs. Snow and Mr. Brodovitch, Ms. Bassman grew increasingly disconnected from where fashion was headed in the 1960s. She often clashed with the new art director, Henry Wolf, and admitted that an editorial assignment he gave her turned out to be a disaster. She was so embarrassed she told Mr. Watson that those photographs should never see the light of day. More staff changes followed and left the magazine in disarray.

“I realized that my days as a Harper’s Bazaar photographer were over. There was a new generation, a new view, a new kind of photography. And by then, I was old hat, you know.” she said.

She transitioned from the magazine to commercial photography, taking on A&S Department Store as a client—a lucrative arrangement that allowed her to pursue other creative endeavors. By 1970, she had left the fashion and commercial world entirely, focusing solely on her personal work.

Looking back at her career, Ms. Bassman said in a 1997 New York Times article, "I had a terrific commercial life, I did everything that could be photographed: children, food, liquor, cigarettes, lingerie, beauty products."

Purging and the Lost Negatives

To offset the loss of income from photography, and with Paul transitioning into psychotherapy, the couple rented their studio and basement to artist Helen Frankenthaler. While clearing out the space, they disposed of most of their negatives, saving only what they thought was important.

“I had one bag of, I guess, things that I thought I would preserve and put them in a black bag. And we had, at that time—I mean, back in the studio, there was a room that we didn’t realize was a damp room. And we put all my negatives that I was keeping in that room, and a few of Paul’s, and the rest of the stuff we just tossed—threw it out,” she recalled.

During this period, Ms. Bassman also pursued a variety of interests. She had a short-lived clothing line under her name, carried at Bergdorf Goodman and stores across the country.

“We didn’t lose any money. I had quite a following. I had stores all over America. But it was—you know, I had designed the stuff, and I didn’t want to run the business. So that was the end of that, thank goodness,” she said.

She explored silkscreening, using muslin to produce works on both fabric and paper. She continued photography through personal projects: still lifes of fruits, vegetables, and flowers in Cibachrome; a series documenting the stories and dialogues she saw in sidewalk cracks across New York City; and distorted, non-sexualized images of bodybuilders drawn from muscle magazines, which she viewed as fascinating anatomical distortions.

In the late 1980s, Martin Harrison, a fashion curator and historian, was working on a book on fashion history that featured two or three of Ms. Bassman’s photographs. They developed a friendship, and he would stay at the carriage house whenever he traveled from London to New York for work. It was Mr. Harrison who found the black bag under the table in her darkroom. Recognizing their value, he encouraged her to revisit the images.

She reflected on the discovery. “I’d completely forgotten about that…it was sort of all mildewed and messy, but within it there was always one or two negatives that could be resurrected and used. And I started to print them and became interested in the fashion again in the old pictures,” In a New York Times interview, she added, “I was able to make my own choices, other than what Brodovitch or the editors had made.”

In 1993, Mr. Harrison organized a one-woman show at Hamiltons Gallery in London, relaunching Ms. Bassman’s career and introducing her work to a new audience.

“I never felt accepted as a fashion photographer as I do now as a photographer. I always felt that I was, you know, not in the first league, not accepted that way. I feel much more accepted now. You got to be 94.” she told Mr. Watson.

Her curiosity never waned. In her early 80s, Ms. Bassman taught herself Photoshop after daughter Lizze left a computer at her home. “The assistant’s role was to transfer the image to the screen and then to leave me alone. When I got into trouble, he was there, but it was a matter of—it was like drawing, you know, being able to isolate the parts that I wanted, to change the parts that I didn’t want, to intensify…to this day, I can compose pretty much what I want, eliminate what I want, distort what I want. I learned all the tricks of how to elongate a figure, how to mash it. So I’m pretty adept at the computer. I’m very savvy with it.”

1997

I drove down to Los Angeles with a good friend during our week off between sessions at Brooks Institute. Back then, there was no internet. We only knew by word of mouth—faculty and students pointing us toward Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, a cluster of galleries that showed photography: Rose, Peter Fetterman, and Craig Krull. We were encouraged to seek inspiration from other photographers, so my friend and I decided it would make for a good day trip.

We walked into Peter Fetterman Gallery where Lillian Bassman’s Women was on view. Something stirred. My heart fluttered—a current ran through me. Are these even photographs? I said to myself. It was nothing I’d ever seen in my life. That a woman made these images in the 1950s felt like something I hadn’t yet found the words for.

We took our time, moving from one image to the next. I remember the stark contrast between light and shadow, the graininess, the soft focus. I remember the poses—silhouettes inspired by Christian Dior’s New Look, post-war emblem of haute couture's golden age. There's a softness to Ms. Bassman's gaze, but her gestural compositions are graphic—that tension so beautifully palpable in her images.

I was mesmerized.

We lingered long enough that Mr. Fetterman noticed and introduced himself. We told him we were photography students. I don't remember much of our conversation, except that he offered a payment plan for anyone interested in purchasing a print. At the time, they were priced between $1,500 and $2,500. Still, it was out of reach for either of us on a student budget. I also learned that Ms. Bassman had just published her first monograph—I'm not sure whether it was on this trip or a later one that I made it a priority to buy it.

That spring, I enrolled in a less technical, more creative course called People. Interpretations were wide open, and in one of those assignments, I channeled Ms. Bassman. I couldn't stop thinking about her work after that visit to the gallery—I had all this energy that needed to be poured out. So I experimented on my own, both in creating the images and in the darkroom.

The instructor expressed his distaste for the top-left image in this series. He made it a point to pluck it from the rack for its ambiguity. Admittedly, I did push the limits on that picture, but I didn't expect such a strong reaction.

In the fall, I flew to New York to interview with Mr. Penn for the next internship cycle. I was recommended by my good friend, Allyson, who was the current intern. I brought this series to show him, along with other personal projects in the portrait and fashion genre. He let out a bemused huff after viewing these and lingered on the title, A Tribute to Lillian Bassman. There was a photo shoot the following day, so I received a call to come in and help out. That afternoon, I was offered the internship.

I smiled at the memory as I stood at the center of Ms. Bassman’s show at the Met.

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GIVE A GIFT

In July 1996, my travel partner Allyson and I met Gorm on a scorching afternoon in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He was sitting with his colleague Mauve at one of the tables on the veranda overlooking the Pont Faidherbe at Hôtel de la Poste. We were wandering aimlessly and happened to walk inside—probably looking lost and confused. He invited us over for a beer. He had just finished working with a local organization as part of his master’s degree program in health services. We told him we were students photographing in the area for a school documentary project. During our conversation, we asked if he could share a few tips, since we were staying for a month and a half in the city.

“You know, there is this American lady who comes by every day around 6:00 p.m. and uses the phone in the lobby,” he began.

He paused to take a sip of his beer.

“I don’t know her at all, but you might want to come by tomorrow and see if she’ll be there. She might be open to showing you around.”

Gorm left for the States the following day. We took his advice and returned to the hotel. Sure enough, Lisa F., a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Saint-Louis for two years, walked in as scheduled. We waited until she finished her phone call before introducing ourselves. We hit it off right away. She spoke the local language and was able to help us with translations. She gave us tips on how to navigate the city and dished out common-sense advice.

“When there’s no napkin in the restaurant, just slowly wipe your mouth with French bread,” she told us.

It still cracks me up to this day whenever I see Lisa’s posts. We recently reconnected on Facebook during the 2020 lockdowns.

Upon my return to Santa Barbara, I sent Gorm a thank-you note and included two matted Polaroid transfer prints I had taken in Saint-Louis. He was thrilled to receive them. I thought that would be the last I heard from him—but he sent an email four years later, in 2000. By then, I had moved to the Bay Area, while he had relocated to Sydney with his partner. He told me he was in town visiting his parents and brought his mom along for a brief stop at the photo studio I rented in SoMa.

Fast forward to June 2011. I received another email through my website. He was due for a visit to the U.S. and asked if I could commission portraits of his family. I immediately said yes. And what are the odds—his hometown is only seven miles from where I live.

On the day of the shoot, as I drove to his parents’ home, I thought about how remarkable it was that we had met in such a remote part of the world, and that he had continued to stay in touch all these years. We held the portrait session in the backyard, where I met Gorm’s parents, brother, sister-in-law, and two nephews. The youngest refused to participate and would pout and stomp off whenever I raised my camera. Despite this, the rest of the family went with the flow and made the most of it.

That evening, sitting in bed, I found myself marveling at the power of chance encounters—our paths had crossed at a hotel in Senegal, and here I was, more than a decade later, photographing his family.

Over the weekend, I was busy organizing a reunion for the seventeen of us who journeyed to West Africa twenty-seven years ago. While doing so, Gorm crossed my mind. I still haven’t seen him since 2011—time really does fly.

“You must come and visit me in Australia,” he said before we parted ways that day.

He lives a few hours from Sydney. I only had a few days in the city in 2017 and couldn’t make it work.

I reached out to him most recently in 2023, and he wrote: "It was so nice to hear from you again after all these years. The two beautiful images you shot in Senegal are hanging outside my office at home, and I enjoy them every day. Imagine that we would still be connected after so long!"

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Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If posts like this one are worth something to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber — it's what keeps the archive growing. Every paid subscriber helps keep this space free and open to everyone who needs it.

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More Ways to Support Sundays with Stella

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, Venmo or BPI for my Filipino supporters. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading. Maraming Salamat!

GIVE A GIFT

I’ll be starting soon.

I had to wait a full week over a mix-up about third-party vendors. Thankfully, it’s been sorted out. As of this writing, the contract is being finalized and a laptop will be delivered tomorrow. As much as I want to write an essay about an exhibit I saw in New York last month, my mind is too distracted. It’ll have to wait.

So, I’ll share these collages instead. I finished four before I left for New York City last month, then picked them back up today. It’s play, really—a way to keep the anxiety of waiting at bay.

Why mushrooms?

I just love them in pastas, soups, and stews. My favorite part is sautéing them with aromatics. Roasting is a close second. Last year, in the fall, we had lunch at Daimant St. Honoré and ordered these skewers—a combination of thistle ears, oysters, and shiitake mushrooms. Deeply savory, umami-rich, with a fall-apart texture. Three weeks later, we went back, invited a mutual colleague of my brother’s, and had it again.

Then I thought: what if I combined the mushrooms with the boom collage idea?

I’m not sure what the pace of this contract job will be. I’m hoping to keep my Sunday cadence, though it may be erratic for a while. Once I’m settled and have a sense of the workload, I’ll adjust accordingly.

In the meantime, enjoy these pieces and let me know what you think!

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Your Support Keeps this Newsletter Going

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

More Ways to Support Sundays with Stella

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, Venmo or BPI for my Filipino supporters. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading. Maraming Salamat!

GIVE A GIFT

Marica Notecards

The Reader is part of the Literature and Library collection in honor of Marica’s love for the written word. This piece pairs a figure from a classic painting with layers of library date-due stamps. The faded ink and stacked return dates speak to a book well-traveled — passed from hand to hand, generation to generation.

Share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY THE READER NOTECARDS

2026 Februllage Zine

The zine is here! Whimsy meets graphic boldness: 28 collages, one for each day of February.

Februllage is an annual collage-a-day challenge hosted by the Edinburgh Collage Collective and the Scandinavian Collage Museum. Artists from around the world respond to daily word prompts, creating original collage work throughout the month of February.

BUY FEBRULLAGE ZINE

When Words Fail Us

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, stop by and see our group exhibition. The show runs until Sunday, July 19, 2025.

Emeryville Retrospect Reimagined

Through a public art commissions grant from the city of Emeryville, my digital collages are on display at the bus shelters around our little city from May to August 2026. If you are in my neighborhood, stop by and check them out!

When the crowd got off at the North Greenwich stop on the Jubilee line, a sea of gray-haired folks made their way toward the same exit. “Yup, they’re all going to the concert,” my brother GT observed. We were all heading to the O2 Arena to see Rick Astley. Swept along with the rest of them, I was overwhelmed, thinking of the then-twenty-one-year-old ginger-haired lad with the deep voice—the one who wore a trench coat and black turtleneck sweater—who had just celebrated his sixtieth birthday.

“Did you ask your mama or your grandma to play some of their CDs for you before you came?” he asked the young-ish audience with a grin, in a YouTube clip from a Glasgow concert last year, as the band played the opening beats of “Together Forever.”

Inside the arena, about ten minutes before Rick came on, a group of girlfriends were excitedly making their way back to their seats in pairs, carefully climbing down the steep aisle stairs. One of them had a cane, her friend holding her steady by the elbow. A family of four sat in the row in front of me: parents with their daughter and her boyfriend—or son-in-law—in tow. Portly men carried beers, while couples who looked like they’d been holding hands since 1987 sat quietly together. I imagined that Rick’s songs had marked the beginning of their relationships—and that thought made me smile.

There was something so electrifying about singing along to the hits with Rick and a crowd of twenty thousand. I danced and belted out the lyrics like prayers—words I didn’t know I still held, flowing through my lips without effort. For those few minutes of song, I felt like I belonged—that for once, I wasn’t in a social cave. How amazing that all of us made the effort to be with him, to stay way past our bedtimes, to rekindle our youth. If only for a moment, the worry and grief that rode shotgun in the car these past two years took the back seat and pure joy washed over me—something I didn’t see coming.

“I am just an old man in a suit who is profoundly grateful to be given this chance,” Rick said nearing the end of his set.

And his life story is worth noting. He turned his back on a thriving career at twenty-seven. “I just didn’t want to do it anymore, this world, this nonsense that I got myself into,” he said in an interview on This Morning. The money gave him the freedom to quit and stay home to be with his then-two-year-old daughter.

Although he had been quietly performing nostalgia gigs—he sheepishly admitted these included singing his hits at friends' weddings for free—it was the internet meme "Rickrolling" in 2007 that catapulted him back to cultural relevance. He wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but his daughter, a teenager at this point, gave him perspective, emphasizing that the viral fame had nothing to do with him. Covid-19 and the lockdowns brought new life to the meme, introducing his songs to younger generations.

At fifty, he released a new album that climbed to No. 1 on the U.K. charts and mounted a full comeback tour covering the U.K., Europe, and North America. He followed it up with two more albums and a memoir. He continues to perform, extending this year's Reflection Tour into the summer.

Back at the hotel way past one in the morning, Malyn and I were still buzzing from the concert, replaying the footage on our phones and singing again. Then it dawned on me that this was also a full-circle moment for us.

The year was 1988 when my siblings and I first set foot in London with Mom. It was the starting point of our month-long bus tour around Europe, and we stayed at a modest hotel around the corner from Marble Arch station. GT said that walking the streets of London planted in him the desire to settle and work in Europe. And here he was, living that dream for more than twenty years—in Prague, Budapest, and now Paris. Our theme song for that trip was—you guessed it—Rick Astley’s “Together Forever.”

Thank God for Malyn, who had the sense to purchase the tickets when GT and I wobbled on the idea!

When we finally slept, Malyn had a vivid dream about Ate Marica. It was our hotel room, but flipped—the headboard on the opposite wall. We were lying in bed, heads propped on one arm. Ate appeared fussy, a halo of light around her. She was wearing something white. Malyn waved. She did the same and said hi. “We miss you,” Malyn said. “Ate is right behind you,” she added. But when I turned, she was gone.

She recounted the dream when she woke up and couldn’t stop talking about it. What she took away from this trip and from Ate’s presence was that she is always with us—and we can be together forever with her, too.

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Marica Notecards

Jane Austen is part of the Literature and Library collection in honor of Marica’s love for the written word. This piece layers a figure from a classical painting with a vintage library card catalog of Pride and Prejudice.

Share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY JANE AUSTEN NOTECARDS

2026 Februllage Zine

The zine is here! Whimsy meets graphic boldness: 28 collages, one for each day of February.

Februllage is an annual collage-a-day challenge hosted by the Edinburgh Collage Collective and the Scandinavian Collage Museum. Artists from around the world respond to daily word prompts, creating original collage work throughout the month of February.

BUY FEBRULLAGE ZINE

When Words Fail Us

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, stop by and see our group exhibition. The show runs until Sunday, July 19, 2025.

Emeryville Retrospect Reimagined

Through a public art commissions grant from the city of Emeryville, my digital collages are on display at the bus shelters around our little city from May to August 2026. If you are in my neighborhood, stop by and check them out!

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

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ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, Venmo or BPI for my Filipino supporters. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading. Maraming Salamat!

GIVE A GIFT

Oh, what a timely birthday gift and it so happens to fall on World Collage Day this weekend (May 9th to be exact).

My digital collages are now on display at the bus shelters around our little city from May to August 2026. These pieces are part of a series called Emeryville Retrospect Reimagined. Using images from the Emeryville Historical Society, I paired people, industries, and landmarks from different eras—like a 1940s baseball player standing outside the Home Depot where the stadium once stood, or industrial workers from the Paraffin Companies layered with images of today’s Public Market. Collage is a fitting way to show how past and present exist in the same place.

What a journey this has been.

I began collaging in the fall of 2020, when the pandemic and lockdowns had no end in sight. I picked it up to pass the time, but soon discovered that moving pieces around and assembling cutouts from magazines was thoroughly engaging, even addictive. I also felt I’d accomplished something at the end of the day, that I hadn’t wasted my hours doom-scrolling on my iPhone. I was laid off earlier that year, too. I had no idea what my future held. Collage became a kind of alchemy for my worries. It brought small doses of joy, enough to get me through another day, a week, a month.

As the world opened up, I found myself continuing to experiment with different techniques—digital, analog, and hybrid. Same with styles: from abstraction and typography to figurative work with a touch of whimsy. I flit between all of them, which has sustained my attention and enthusiasm. The deeper question I ask myself is: what keeps me coming back? What keeps me from giving it up?

It is perhaps the idea of returning to play—that time before our inner critics showed up, when we were free to try anything, to inhabit a place of possibilities, unafraid to stumble. Collage is a forgiving medium; grace and mercy are baked into it, and I feel it has cushioned the sting of failure or the fear of making mistakes. Perhaps because it is so different from photography, which I spent most of my adult life practicing, trying something new awakened a creativity long dormant in me—something I didn't know I had, which came through only when I began to collage. The pandemic handed me the permission slip to give it a try.

Then one thing led to another—a zine by Kat Melheim, the first person who said yes, that she loved my work and wanted to publish it; a coffee table book spearheaded by Regan Caton; this newsletter; my on-going collaboration with for A Considerable Age; a magazine feature in Get Closer Magazine; Marica Notecards; and now a public art commission. Things happened organically because of my earnest intention to share my work and see how it would be received and where it would take me.

From sheltering in place to bus shelters, I am humbled and in awe of this full-circle moment.

My deepest gratitude to everyone who has supported my creative endeavors over the years: from those of you who quietly tune in every Sunday, to those who actively engage—leaving hearts and comments—to those who became paid subscribers and have kept this going through my moments of doubt—to those who purchased—postcards, zines, Marica Notecards, and art prints. Your belief inspires me more than ever.

My birthday wish is that you keep coming back when so much of your attention is pulled in so many directions.

Here's to another year of not knowing. The only constant is the making.

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Marica Notecards

The Archivist is part of the Literature and Library collection in honor of Marica’s love for the written word. This piece layers a figure from a classical painting with library date-due stamps — the accumulated record of knowledge sought, borrowed, and returned across decades. Dressed in deep burgundy, she clasps a small book close, as if keeping something safe.

Begin this month with intention—share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY THE ARCHIVIST NOTECARDS

When Words Fail Us

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, stop by and see our group exhibition. The show runs until Sunday, July 19, 2025.

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

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ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, Venmo or BPI for my Filipino supporters. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading. Maraming salamat!

GIVE A GIFT

Tickets to a Rick Astley concert, hotel employee rates, a gift of miles. One booking led to another, and here we were, my siblings and I, lucky enough to have four gorgeous, sunny spring days in the city—ever so grateful to have spent time together two weeks after New York.

Schedules shifted with the London Marathon and a transportation strike during our visit, but we made it work.

These photographs are London in a blink—whatever was in front of me as we walked around, wherever we happened to be, was what I captured.

Enjoy!

ps. I brought a gift to London and posted it to . Last month, I shared some new work that had been brewing in my head—and it felt right to show her what I'd done with the seeds she'd given me. Thank you so much!

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YOUR SUPPORT KEEPS THIS NEWSLETTER GOING

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

GIVE A GIFT

Through it all, I managed to photograph in pieces.

I visited Brooklyn for the first time. A downpour sent me scrambling for cover under the bridge. By sheer luck, a teenage couple felt the intimacy of the rain and kissed right in front of me.

Walking north of Central Park was meditative—less crowded, away from the touristy areas. I’d say it was my favorite route: the reservoir, the Conservatory Garden, all the way to Harlem Meer.

Without further ado, I’ll let these images do the heavy lifting in this week’s post.

Enjoy!

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YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:

YOUR SUPPORT KEEPS THIS NEWSLETTER GOING

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If Sundays with Stella brought you something worth supporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

GIVE A GIFT

Storytelling is as old as time, embedded in our DNA. Author Lisa Cron, in her book Wired for Story, argues that the science is there — that telling stories goes beyond pleasure. It is a matter of survival, of passing on practical information and knowledge. Stories also tell us what we want to hold on to.

In 2010, researchers at Princeton University discovered a phenomenon called neural coupling — where stories alter brain chemistry and enhance our sense of empathy.

Books were invented to carry forward information, knowledge and stories, and those privileged to amass a collection have always felt the desire to share them with others. Although Benjamin Franklin is famously known as one of the founding fathers of the US and as an inventor, he was also the first to introduce the concept of the public library. The seed of his idea came from pooling together books from merchants who belonged to the Junto, a philosophical group Franklin was part of — and from that, The Library Company of Philadelphia was born in 1731.

In researching for this essay, I was surprised to learn that the first major public library supported by taxes and opened to the public was the Boston Public Library, in 1854. What a coincidence then that it was there where Ate Marica was the first in our family to sign up for a library card when we arrived in Boston as immigrants from the Philippines.

Part of celebrating what would have been Ate Marica’s 58th birthday, we traveled from New York to Boston this past weekend. We walked along Boylston Street and stopped in front of the Boston Public Library. It was a stone’s throw from the building where she worked. I like to think she visited often, perhaps during lunch breaks or after her shift ended. For her, the access to knowledge, information and stories was what she believed in. That’s why she had a quiet devotion to them.

In the public library’s early history, women were the unsung heroes. By the 1930s, 75 percent of public libraries in the country owed their origins to women’s clubs. Nationwide, women’s organizations fundraised, donated books, lobbied local governments, and simply started libraries themselves when no one else would.

There was also The Pack Horse Library Project (1935–1943), part of the Works Progress Administration under President Franklin Roosevelt. Mostly women, they rode 100 to 120 miles a week through all types of weather — sun, snow, rain and storms — on their own horses or mules, delivering novels, newspapers, magazines, homemade scrapbooks of recipes and quilting patterns, and hand-lettered Bible verses for families who couldn’t read. In the most remote locations, they left their horses and continued on foot. They slept outdoors or sheltered in barns, going from farm to farm.

Across the South, however, Black readers were excluded from public libraries — the very institutions built on the principle that knowledge belongs to everyone. Not to be deterred, in 1905 the first free public library staffed and operated entirely by and for African American readers opened in Louisville, Kentucky. Atlanta, Georgia opened its first branch for African Americans in 1921.

Public libraries have grown and expanded in the 21st century, providing vital services that most of us tend to overlook — and worth mentioning now, as this current administration has supported banning books and cutting the funding that allows them to continue to operate.

For children and families: story time and read-alouds, summer reading programs, after-school homework help, children’s author visits and book clubs, literacy programs for early readers.

For adults: book clubs, author talks and lectures, language and ESL classes, citizenship and naturalization prep, GED and adult literacy programs, job search assistance and resume workshops, financial literacy workshops, and free tax preparation assistance during tax season.

For everyone: free internet and computer access, printing and scanning, notary services, museum and theater passes, seed libraries, tool lending — here in the Bay Area, the Berkeley Tool Lending Library has been lending gardening and home repair tools to residents since 1979. Some branches offer 3D printing, free meeting rooms for community groups, social services referrals, and increasingly, social workers on staff to help patrons navigating housing, mental health, or food insecurity.

Digital access: e-books and audiobooks through apps like Libby, streaming films and music, genealogy research tools, language learning apps like Rosetta Stone — all free with a library card.

Public libraries are, in many communities, the last truly free public space — no purchase required, no membership, no proof of anything. Just a card confirming you live in the community or nearby county.

This week, April 19–25, is National Library Week — the American Library Association’s annual celebration of libraries and the people who make them possible.

The thread that connects us — from Benjamin Franklin, to the unsung women who took action and built their own clubs and libraries, to the pack horse librarians riding through Kentucky storms, to the library card Ate Marica signed for on Boylston Street — is the belief that knowledge, story, and connection belong to everyone.

That thread is fragile right now.

It needs tending.

Support your local library.

Donate if you can.

National

• American Library Association advocacy hub: ala.org/showup

• EveryLibrary: everylibrary.org

• Unite Against Book Bans: uniteagainstbookbans.org

Find Your Local Library

• Library finder tool: libraryfinder.imls.gov

The Libraries Closest to Ate Marica’s Heart

New York Public Library

• Donate: nypl.org/donate

• Become a member: nypl.org/support

Boston Public Library

• Donate: https://www.bpl.org/about-the-bpl/support-the-bpl/

• Become a member: https://www.bpl.org/get-a-library-card/

And if you feel moved to reach out to someone you love or care about, to say something that deserves to outlast a text message — there’s always the Marica Notecard for that.

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Marica Notecards

Inspired by my sister Marica's love of literature and libraries, this collection layers vintage imagery with library ephemera—date stamps, catalog cards, and handwritten script. Through circulation and return, libraries connect us across time and generations, making timeless stories accessible to all.

Share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY JANE AUSTEN NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

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ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

Instinctively, I knew it as divine instruction but its brevity made it feel like a clue. Similar to the way I think about creating a collage, I tried to piece together each fragment from that visual clip. The question that emerged: If I’m supposed to deliver messages, no matter what they are, what would that vessel be?

There was no doubt in my mind I wanted to name the notecards after Ate Marica. I also wanted to use her handwriting for the logo. But where in the world would I find one when every correspondence these days is through text? I called to her in my mind, asking for assistance.

One morning I woke up knowing exactly where to look. There was a postcard from Scotland stored in a black box just below my desk. I went downstairs to open it. There it was on top of the pile — her handwritten signature among a collective memento of a special trip, one she joyfully shared photos and stories about when she arrived in Manila. I can still hear the excitement in her voice, see the smile on her face as she recounted the drive through the Scottish Highlands. She even convinced me to share a shot of whiskey from her collection. I don't usually drink, but that window of time between her return from Europe and my departure for San Francisco had rekindled something between us — and that called for a toast.

Once the notecards were made, I handwrote gratitude messages to family, friends, and to some of you, my readers, for your kindness, care, compassion, and support. The act of sitting down, pen in hand, and remembering as I wrote each note was comforting. I modeled it after the way Ate Marica expressed gratitude to those around her even after she received her diagnosis. What struck me most was that she thanked her caregivers every day for taking care of her — at the end of each shift, without fail, until she could no longer speak.

I also wrote Ann Patchett a thank you note for her Harper’s Bazaar essay “These Precious Days” and her novel Truth and Beauty. I poured into it the sentiment from a piece I shared with you last year called Threadbare Connection:

I honestly don’t know how I would have stayed grounded without having read Ann’s stories. They taught me how to bear witness to suffering, and that presence was enough when there was little else I could give.

Ten days later, a letter from Ann arrived.

She receives a lot of mail at the bookstore and tucks some of it into her purse, pulling pieces out when she has a minute. My notecard came out last night. After she made dinner for her mother, she read it aloud and they ended up crying together. “It is an impossible loss,” she wrote. She expressed gratitude for being allowed to be a small part of my story.

I wept too.

I was not only moved by her words acknowledging my loss and how the note had affected her, but that a writer of her stature took the time to handwrite a response and mail it. Just like the homing pigeons that carried messages across impossible distances in ancient and medieval times, it found its way home. Perhaps it was a nod from the divine — what I call God, or what others might call the universe — that I had gotten at least part of the instruction right.

After introducing the Marica Notecards last November, the image of the flock of pigeons kept lingering in my mind. I sat with it, deciphering the reasons for its insistence. What emerged was a nudge to continue the notecards — but this time to pivot the collages toward universal themes while still honoring my sister.

In January, after fully resting from the trip to Manila over the Christmas holidays, I sat down and got to work.

Ate Marica loved the world with open curiosity. A voracious reader since childhood, she immersed herself in a wide range of topics — ancient civilizations, Greek mythology, and art movements from the 17th to the 20th century. She studied English Literature at the University of the Philippines and later took courses in Creative Writing and Literature at Harvard University Extension School. She loved public libraries so much that she was the first in our family to sign up for a card at the Boston Public Library once we had settled into our home in Somerville. She was also a proud card holder of the New York Public Library. I wanted to celebrate her love for the written word through these four collages from the Literature and Library Collection: Jane Austen, The Reader, The Archivist, and Virginia Woolf.

In celebration of her birthday this month, these notecards are available for purchase in my online shop.

EXPLORE LITERATURE & LIBRARY NOTECARDS

Thank you to those who felt a tug in their hearts to support my humble request — to carry forward my sister Ate Marica’s life of kindness, gratitude, and small acts of care through the Marica Notecards project. Like those homing pigeons, may your heartfelt messages cross impossible distances and find their way home.

With every card you've sent, she lives on.

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Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

GIVE A GIFT

Last year, my brother GT took us on our first trip to Istanbul. It was a three-day stay in Sultanahmet, the historic heart of the city, where four of its main attractions are within walking distance of one another: Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and the Basilica Cistern.

We were overly ambitious and managed to fit three of the four sites into a single day. We took in all the beauty they had to offer— soaring domes, towering minarets, intricate mosaics, richly colored patterns, and tilework.

The photographs say the rest.

PARIS

Some more photographs in color. These are just random images that caught my eye while walking in the city.

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Marica Notecards

Bleu de Joie is part of The Marica Notecards project created in honor of my sister. This Picasso-inspired abstract collage celebrates all things French and Marica’s love for travel.

Begin this month with intention—share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY BLEU DE JOIE NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

When Words Fail Us

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, stop by and see our group exhibition. The show runs until Sunday, July 19, 2025.

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

I took deep breaths to greet the day—blue skies, warm light across the building to my left. With eyes closed, I stretched my neck to one side and paused to feel its pull and the gentle breeze across my body. Then I did the same on the other side. Then I rolled my shoulders, the cracking sounds at every rotation a reminder that I was middle-aged. Then I twisted at the waist, letting my arms swing from side to side. A noncommercial plane flew overhead. Distracted, I stopped and looked up to follow its trail.

At the center of the patio sits a handful of large, heavy earthen pots, clustered and stacked together, undisturbed for several years. Some are empty; others contain a bit of soil. Plants have taken root inside them. I’d seen this greenery sprouting before—from a distance, through the sliding glass door, while opening the curtains in morning to let light into the nook. I hardly paid attention until today.

I knelt down and looked closely. They were thriving in spite of our neglect. How did this happen? We never planted them so where could they have come from? I didn’t even know what they were called, so I looked them up online between mouthfuls of my breakfast chia bowl.

I learned that the clover-shaped plants are called oxalis, or wood sorrel. Their reproductive strategy is twofold: dormant bulblets clone the plant underground, while ripe seed capsules explode and scatter nearby. That could explain how they found their way into these pots. A third possibility: the soil already contained them, simply waiting for the right conditions.

I learned that these ferns are a California native. Its taxonomic name is Polypodium glycyrrhiza. Unlike most plants, ferns do not reproduce through seeds. Their life begins as spores drifting through the air. Once settled in a moist, shaded environment, a spore transforms into a prothallus—a tiny intermediate structure. The first frond can emerge only after the prothallus mates, completing the transformation into a fern.

I learned that the white, fluffy globes are called pappus—the seed-dispersal structures of a plant known as sowthistle. Once dried, they break apart and become airborne, traveling long distances on the wind. Again, it seems plausible that these, too, drifted in from nearby urban gardens or patios like ours.

The most fascinating thing I discovered is that these three plants thriving in those pots are what ecologists call ruderal plants—from the Latin rudus, meaning rubble. Plants that thrive precisely in the places that have been disrupted or left behind.

By then, I had finished my chia bowl and walked it over to the sink. I sat down on the sofa, and David Kessler’s words came to me once again:

Our grief does not get smaller.
We grow bigger around it.

Perhaps today’s discovery was a vivid illustration of what he meant. These urban ruderals thrive precisely because ruins are their habitat. They take root in the very thing that was broken. Grief, like those earthen pots, remains—but life, uninvited, grows in its own time. You don’t always see it coming. One day it simply arrives.

I’m not there yet.

But this morning on the patio gave me something I hadn’t expected—a quiet hope, the same way the plants themselves had appeared. Now I only have to draw the curtains to remember. The pots are still there, and so is what’s growing in them.

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Marica Notecards

Inspired by my sister Marica's love of coffee, the Clover and Tendril notecards features delicate whimsical flowers blooming from vintage coffee cups—tender, hopeful, and full of quiet possibility.

Share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY CLOVER AND TENDRIL NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

in the space between
my stars and yours, we invent
new constellations

I don’t remember the last time I wrote a haiku. A year, maybe longer? It’s one of those things I’d like to do more but somehow gets lost in the busyness of life. I don’t say it as an excuse. What I do believe instead is that creating something has its own time and space. Ann’s haiku felt like a gentle nudge so I took a moment at the end of the day to sit still and compose one.

New constellations
a star illuminating
oh, whispering soul

Two days before Ann’s tag, I met with Sandi, who gave me a tour of two exhibition spaces at the university. We had worked together on a show there a decade ago. “This is such a moving project and your art is inspiring,” she had written in November, after I shared the Marica Notecards. “Maybe you could develop this into an exhibition. Please let me know if you are interested.”

The idea hadn’t even crossed my mind.

On the drive home in the pouring rain, I began to think about it more seriously. I could resurrect prints from images that had been sitting dormant for years — photographs with a certain emotional resonance but no clear theme, no finished shape.

Somehow, my gut told me it was time.

Toning the prints with coffee felt like the right place to start — and not only for aesthetic reasons. Ate Marica always made coffee in the mornings when we gathered. To work with it, to dip my hands into the brew, was a way of inviting her into the making. A way of processing grief through the hands.

An excitement I hadn’t felt for a long time with my photographs was beginning to emerge.

Back in August, another wonderful artist, had sent over some watercolor paper along with a handful of word prompts printed on delicately thin slips. I tucked it all under my desk, knowing I’d want to use it someday.

That someday had arrived.

With Ann's haiku prompt, Marta's gift, and Sandi's seed, I had the raw materials to breathe new life into these images. This is only the beginning. I know the work will evolve over time, but for now I am marveling at them.

My sources of photography inspiration:

Dawn Surratt
Raymond Meeks
Masao Yamamoto
Deborah Turbeville

On Substack:

Anne Silver Mondinot
Manuela Thames
Marta Blum
Al Adlard

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Marica Notecards

These notecards honor my sister Marica’s gift for small, thoughtful gestures. Each one transforms collage pieces into meaningful connections, carrying both art and intention.

The collage “Cords and Chords” is a wordplay that captures both her love of gadgets and our memories of learning and playing guitar together in high school.

Begin the year with intention— share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY CORDS AND CHORDS NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

I laughed out loud in my head.

I haven’t come across that word in such a long time. It brought up memories of my days at St. Paul Pasig, a girls’ catholic school in the Philippines. Before I tell you the story, let me pull up the definition of the word.

loiter (intransitive verb)

1. the act of lingering aimlessly or as if aimlessly in or about a place.
   —Dictionary.com

2. to linger in an aimless way; spend time idly [often with about] —Collins

3. to move slowly around or stand in a public place without an obvious reason –Cambridge Dictionary

Sister Miriam, our well-loved principal, began each morning with reminders to students over the wooden box speakers mounted just above the blackboard in every classroom. In her soft, melodic tone, she went over the rules — from how to properly wear our uniforms to avoiding junk food. Loitering was prohibited, and so was running in the hallways and laughing boisterously. Despite the rules, I did my fair share of walking the school grounds during recess and lunch, always under the radar.

In sixth grade, I discovered a series of books on paintings at the library and fell in love with light. I spent months studying the way these artists saw and captured it. It brought joy to my day, a welcome distraction from my usual routine of the classroom, library and the chapel. So I loitered — not only in search of light but to satisfy my natural curiosity for anything, really.

I was careful not to get caught, for fear that a nun or teacher would summon my mother and me to the principal’s office, where I would have to explain my odd behavior. I dodged them in the hallways, varied my routes, or sometimes hid behind classroom doors and snuck into bathrooms to avoid detection. Thankfully, I never got into trouble — though had surveillance cameras existed, I wouldn't have stood a chance.

By the end of the year, the rubber on the heels of my leather shoes had worn down to the wood. The nails were jutting out, and I could feel their dull edges digging into my heels. My slightly bowed legs only made things worse. My mother was perplexed: how had I managed to destroy my shoes while Ate Marica's remained pristine? There were even years she had to buy me two pairs within a single year — an unexpected expense that was decidedly not in the budget. I remember her raised voice and saying nothing.

That laugh in my head at the bookstore was for my mother — her bewildered face over a pair of worn-out shoes — and for Sister Miriam, whose wide-eyed horror I can only imagine had she known that loitering would one day lead me to years of photographing the streets of San Francisco on my lunch breaks.

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Marica Notecards

Bleu de Joie is part of The Marica Notecards project created in honor of my sister. This Picasso-inspired abstract collage celebrates all things French and Marica’s love for travel.

Begin this month with intention—share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY BLEU DE JOIE NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

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This marks three years in a row completing all 28 days. I love having prompts — planning my days, mulling over ideas and possibilities, and then finally sitting down at my desk to make them real. I love the surprises, the angst, the doubts, and everything in between. The joy of the making is so complete that I finished the challenge a full week ahead of schedule.

To be honest, I was apprehensive about how these digital collages would be received. They’re not traditionally made of paper, cut or pasted. They’re not illustrations either. They live somewhere undefined — but I trusted my gut and committed to simple assemblages: a few carefully chosen pieces, rich color combinations, and a clever idea. These are small light-hearted art offerings, an antidote to the dreary 24/7 news cycle. It truly warms my heart that you’ve enjoyed them.

It’s certainly tempting to ride the algorithm and continue past the challenge. But I recognize that as a formula for burnout. I’d rather honor what this is — and wait until next year. The integrity lies in knowing when it ends.

Similar to last year, I’ll be putting together a zine. I’ll be offering some prints as well. More details to come. In the meantime, kindly enjoy the video compilation.

See you all next Sunday!

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Marica Notecards

Bleu de Joie is part of The Marica Notecards project created in honor of my sister. This Picasso-inspired abstract collage celebrates all things French and Marica’s love for travel.

Begin this month with intention—share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY BLEU DE JOIE NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

If this post inspired you, would you be so kind as to share it with others?

Share

It’s been raining all week in the Bay Area. In our neck of the woods, it’s called an atmospheric river. I love it when it rains and I am a self-professed pluviophile. The caveat though is that commuting in the rain annoyed me.

In 2016, the rain returned after a long period of drought in the Bay Area. So, I thought to myself, why not do a creative project out of it to confront this feeling? If I focused on something other than my attitude, it might do the trick. Saul Leiter’s work in the 1950s was the kernel that got this project started. I had been a fan ever since I encountered his photographs in 2003.

One day, Tina sent me a link from the New York Times Instagram feed.

We’re looking for your photos of a place you’ve suddenly seen through fresh eyes. Maybe it’s your hometown, or perhaps it’s somewhere you lived for a while. Photograph something — a striking street name, a strange storefront, an oddly-shaped building — you once overlooked but now treasure.

At first, I hesitated but she nudged me to submit one photo. After giving it some thought, I agreed. The process was painless –all I had to do was post a picture and add a hashtag. To my surprise, I heard back from the Times and they ran this photo on their opinion page a week later. The nod encouraged me to continue in this direction.

(Since the article is behind a paywall, I recreated the page for this post.)

I’ve been experimenting with ways to capture the feeling of rain. My paltry 8-megapixel iPod Touch camera, it turned out, was the right creative tool for this series. Using its limitations to my advantage and with some degree of luck, the results kept surprising me. My attitude began to shift from annoyance to excitement every time it rained.

Having a purpose changed my perspective.

I continued working on this series until the battery malfunctioned. I tried to use it together with a mini power bank but it only gave me at most 20 minutes to photograph. I used my iPhone SE as a substitute but the images came out sharper than I wanted. So, as all projects go, it reached its end.

I heard this inspiring backstory on NPR’s Hidden Brain, It’s about jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s most famous concert in Cologne, Germany. A 17-year-old named Vera Brandes invited Mr. Jarrett to play at the Cologne Opera House in January 1975. On the day of the rehearsal, the staff wheeled in the wrong piano. This particular one was a rehearsal model— dilapidated and out of tune.

The organizers did their best to bring the instrument in decent shape. Still, Mr. Jarrett refused to do the concert. Without any other options left, Ms. Brandes stood in the rain and begged. Seeing her drenched from outside of his car, he relented.

That evening, Mr. Jarrett played one of the most magical performances of his life. The live recording of the Köln Concert became one of the best-selling solo albums and the best-selling piano albums in jazz history.

I hope this post will encourage you to face any limitations you may have in your life right now. By thinking outside the box and learning to work with the resources you have, who knows what might come out of it?

Take a breath and have the courage to try.

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Marica Notecards

Bleu de Joie is part of The Marica Notecards project created in honor of my sister. This Picasso-inspired abstract collage celebrates all things French and Marica’s love for travel.

Begin the year with intention—share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY BLEU DE JOIE NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

If this post inspired you, would you be so kind as to share it with others?

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It brought plenty of newcomers in a span of two days, and a few more have trickled in since. I thought this would be a good moment to reintroduce myself and perhaps, for my longtime readers, you might learn something you didn’t know about me.

If you’ve just joined this creative journey, a big warm welcome to you! There are so many things that call for our attention every single moment of the day, and with a slew of choices out there, I’m grateful you’re here. I also value your time and want to let you know what you can expect each week.

Sundays with Stella explores this creative journey as it unfolds in real time. For those of you who just arrived, my practice is expansive. These days, I'm gravitating toward collage—I'm currently doing the Februllage challenge, making a collage each day based on a word prompt throughout the month. I'm also equally versed in photography (my first love), and I share stories—both personal and creative experiences—to bring joy, hope, and encouragement.

In other words, there's no regular cadence on any one topic. There's no niche. There's no brand. I'm just someone faithful to a creative practice who shows up every Sunday to share collages, photographs, and stories, offering a little bit of light in these difficult times. My hope is that you come away with your spirits lifted, or that some words or images linger afterward.

Why This Newsletter Exists

Let me tell you about my good friend and mentor, Gail. She worked at the Brooks Institute library and hired me as one of her TAs in my first year. The reason I applied was that I’d fallen in love with photography through the monographs I discovered at the library connected to the US Embassy in Manila ten years prior. I wanted to be surrounded by inspiration. Shelving books and working the desk fueled that insatiable curiosity. I was like a sponge, absorbing everything I saw and read.

There’s a small room behind the library desk where Gail and I used to chat during downtime, usually the evening shift from 6–9 pm. It was a safe space where I poured out my early successes, failures, frustrations, and heartbreak to her. She was my sounding board, confidant, and cheerleader.

Whether I was celebrating successes or navigating failures, I continued to share them with Gail after I graduated from Brooks. I'd visit her at home in Santa Barbara, and we'd sit in her living room or on the back patio for hours—sometimes in deep conversation, sometimes just laughing together.

“Are you writing this down?” she’d always ask, or “When are you writing a book?”

She knew, early on, that I had something meaningful to share with others, that my stories needed to be preserved, not just lived and forgotten.

I started Sundays with Stella because of Gail’s encouragement. She planted that seed in me. The book seemed such a tall order that I thought starting a newsletter where I could share these stories, one Sunday at a time, felt less intimidating.

The through line or thread is this: an honest and humble documentation of a creative life, about planting many seeds, doing the quiet work when no one's watching, and whatever harvest arrives. Alongside are the personal stories of joy, hope, and grief that make up a meaningful life.

Gail has dementia now, but I am still showing up as if I am telling these stories to her. When I write, I think of her.

If you’re here for the creative journey in all its forms—messy, reflective, joyful, experimental, sometimes heavy, sometimes light—welcome!

Stay if you're curious about the work of sustaining a creative practice.

Stay if you’re someone who believes in planting seeds and quiet tending.

Stay if you welcome and hold space for stories of both grief and joy.

Stay if any of this resonates with you.

I’m grateful you’re here, whether you’ve been reading for years or have just arrived. Thank you so much for being part of this journey.

See you all next Sunday!

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You Might Also be Interested in This:

If you’d like to see more of my collages paired with personal essays, I’ ve been collaborating with through her weekly newsletter called A Considerable Age.

In Alice’s words:

“Each Sunday morning I share people’s wildly authentic, heart-stoppingly real, or funny stories for you to read while you enjoy a morning coffee. Occasionally, I send out something I have written myself. I’m a slow writer, so it takes me a while. All of us of a considerable age have something to say.”

Check it out if you are curious!

Marica Notecards

Inspired by my sister Marica’s love of coffee, the Golden Hour Wildflowers notecards features delicate whimsical flowers blooming from vintage coffee cups—tender, hopeful, and full of quiet possibility.

Begin the year with intention— share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY GOLDEN HOUR WILDFLOWERS NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

If this post inspired you, would you be so kind as to share it with others?

Share

Yesterday, was the opening of a five-person all Asian women group show called Where Words Fail Us, curated by

Friday night, I stood in front of my photographs, marveling at the incredible journey from beginning this personal project to finally seeing them as large-scale prints on the gallery wall. They were being shown publicly for the first time—they hadn’t seen the light of day for over 20 years except when shared with my family and on a blog I used to have on my website but have since retired.

How the Exhibit Came to Be

Going through my past text conversations with Jessica, I found that she first called me in October 2024 to share her seed of an idea for this show. She was hoping to submit a proposal.

Jessica and I had worked together on another group exhibition two years earlier. She called out of the blue and invited me to her first curatorial debut—a group show titled “The Stories We Tell” for the East Bay Photo Collective (EBPCO). She said she loved my work, particularly the Cubao series, and thought it would fit with the theme.

She also mentioned that EBPCO would take care of all the printing and framing for the show. "Wow," I thought. That was rare. Usually, artists pay for their own printing and framing—an expense I couldn't justify with my financial realities over the years. But this one was different—it felt like a gift handed to me on a gold platter.

This strongly felt like a YES from God.

I also had a good feeling about Jessica. She was genuine, warm, had a light spirit about her, and—might I say—persistent.

I paused for a moment before replying, “I'm going with my gut here, Jessica, so I'm saying yes.”

The exhibition was well received, even garnering a write-up at Oakland Murmur.

So, back to this current show.

When Jessica reached out in October 2024, I showed her some black and white images about my family that would fit the theme. Two weeks later, she texted again, this time requesting whether I had any color work. I submitted some family portraits.

I didn’t hear anything until 14 months later, in December 2025, when she shared the good news: the exhibition proposal was approved! Not only were they providing the venue, but they were also covering the printing costs for the exhibition.

The timeline was tight. I was in Manila until the first week of January. The show was scheduled to open a month later, on February 6th. I asked if it was possible to obtain high-resolution scans for my negatives since these personal projects were all shot on film. A few days later, she emailed back and said that Brian Brooks, owner of Underdog Film Lab, would take care of them for me at no cost.

I was floored!

Gratitude poured out of me. On the day I scheduled to pick up my negatives, I wrote a thank-you note to Brian on one of my Marica notecards and bought a few empanadas from the cafe around the corner. I picked the chorizo flavor—it was Ate Marica's favorite when she last visited.

“Oh, you didn’t have to,” Brian said sheepishly.

“You don’t know how much this means to me. Thank you,” I said, resting my hand on my heart.

About the Images

The photographs featured in the show belong to two personal projects. The first one began in 2000, three weeks after the birth of my only niece, Marina.

With every visit, I documented brief moments of intimacy between my family and their interactions with her until she was nine years old. The project halted once my younger sister, Malyn, decided to move her to Manila to attend high school. Nonetheless, I continued to photograph my family, on and off, over the years—with the same rigor regardless of the camera gear.

The portraits were done sporadically from 2003 until 2012. These sittings, which extended beyond my immediate family, were a way of remembering and marking the passage of time since all of us are scattered across continents and we only saw each other briefly once or twice a year.

FULL CIRCLE

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant,” wrote Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

I believe this wholeheartedly.

I pair that with this knowing from my life experience: what's meant to be finds its way when I'm in alignment with God or the universe. It arrives in its own time—no forcing or striving required.

Yes, it took over 20 years to arrive at this point, but trees don’t sprout overnight—the ones built to last take years for strong roots to take hold. And there’s a careful, quiet, and steady tending that happens when no one else is watching. That’s where the essence of this creative journey lies. It requires faithful attention along with trust and patience.

And, I’m filled with joy in celebrating this with all of you! Grace brought the harvest after a difficult two years.

I also believe this was another gift from Ate Marica. Her portrait hangs in this exhibition, right there alongside my name—a full-circle moment honoring my biggest cheerleader and supporter, the one who believed in me before I believed in myself. And, she’s still here from across the veil.

So, I invite you my dear readers, What seeds are you planting right now that you can’t yet see the harvest of? What might bloom if you let time do its work?

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Marica Notecards

These notecards honor my sister Marica’s gift for small, thoughtful gestures. Each one transforms collage pieces into meaningful connections, carrying both art and intention.

The collage “Cords and Chords” is a wordplay that captures both her love of gadgets and our memories of learning and playing guitar together in high school.

Begin the year with intention— share words of encouragement or gratitude, or offer a simple reminder that someone is loved.

With every note sent, her presence lives on.

BUY CORDS AND CHORDS NOTECARDS

To learn more, visit: MARICA NOTECARDS

Thank you for inviting me to join you every Sunday in your inbox. I am grateful and appreciative for spending a small part of your day with me. If you have the means to support Sundays with Stella, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those who contribute financially will ensure that this place of inspiration, creativity, and meaning remains free and open to all.

Subscribe now

ANOTHER WAY TO SUPPORT SUNDAYS WITH STELLA

By request, I’ve created a support page where you can contribute in any amount—via credit card, PayPal, or Venmo. Your generosity helps keep this space open and accessible to all. Thank you, always, for reading.

Give a Gift

If this post inspired you, would you be so kind as to share it with others?

Share