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Dear friends—
Recently, I was struck by something Robert Rasuchenberg once said: “Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point….Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”
Dovetail began during the pandemic as an art-meets-design magazine in collaboration with a friend. Over time, career paths changed, the world returned to “normalcy,” and the publication went on hiatus. In early 2023, while I was living in Scotland, I revived the project with more of a focus on contemporary art and place—and within that, myriad ways of thinking about material, site, environment, climate, action, and so forth. It was even granted some generous funding in 2024 from Arts Midwest as part of the inaugural (and sadly only) Midwest Creative Media Cohort. Through this, I was able to amp up the quantity of writing, hire contributors, pay artists, and print a special issue.
But these things come at a price. For me, Dovetail is and has always been a labor of love. When something doesn’t pay the bills, but it costs money to maintain and it requires a lot of time, it can’t be anything else. That’s why, earlier this year, I decided to give the project another break in order to step back and reassess what it meant—what it means to me.
My mind automatically wants to systematize and expand everything I start. I’m not sure if that’s a deeply ingrained entrepreneurial/capitalist mindset or just something that’s wired in me à la, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” But with Dovetail, I find myself actively challenging this compulsion. When I relaunched the project in 2023, I started with the aim of keeping it simple and doing it entirely on my terms. Ironically, the grant facilitated new ways of thinking about it, and a lot of that “simplicity” went out the window as I strove to find ways to spend all that money in 12-month period. Don’t get me wrong, it was fantastic—but it was also exhausting. I also wish that funding could have stretched for 2 or 3 years instead, as it could have taken the publication far over a more prolonged period. Still, it was a boon. But regardless, in the overworking, I lost sight of the core ethos that makes Dovetail worth doing in my spare time.
This time, Dovetail is back with a renewed focus on slowness and intentionality. I plan to dig deeper into the ideas and stories that I choose to publish here, crafting longer articles with more of an editorial tone, while perhaps publishing fewer of them. And as I increasingly contribute to the travel writing sphere in my day-to-day work, I aim to include more travel elements here as well, tied closely to contemporary art’s relationship with site, movement, history, and culture within the context of place. I’m interested in connections between artists and the land, the climate crisis, public interaction, and unique ways of experiencing art “in the wild.”
Much of this ties into my own personal journey, as I work toward purchasing and converting a cargo van into a camper in the spring of 2026. It’s not an exaggeration to say that next to art, it’s all I think about. Naturally, my travels will propel me to parts of North America that I have never been able to experience before, taking time to immerse myself in nature, see art, visit studios, explore landscapes, and meet people for whom these places are central to their sense of being. For me, the movement and everyday discoveries are where I find the most natural, beautiful, and surprising creativity.
So, consider this a slow beginning. I’m looking forward to exploring stories about not only land art, conceptual practices, and art history that I am personally so moved by, but also the travel and experiences that form the lens through which I view them. Dovetail will likely be more introspective sometimes—more personal. I view it more as a creative outlet than a receptacle for work, and I can’t wait to embark on this new journey.
Thank you, as ever, for following along.
Kate
Photo: Point Beach State Forest, Two Rivers, Wisconsin, 2025.