Ever wonder what happens when you toss The Berenstain Bears, '90s grunge, and a dash of existential questioning into a creative blender? Welcome to my world of Spiritual Archaeology, where the creative blender is the studio in my childhood bedroom, and where childhood nostalgia collides with angsty guitar riffs to birth something… well, as Monty Python would say, something completely different.

Let me take you on a journey through the creation of my "Bear Country" series. It all started with a kernel of inspiration: those Berenstain Bears books. But here's the thing about my brain – it doesn't just stop at one idea. Oh no, it's more like a hyperactive squirrel on a caffeine binge, leaping from branch to branch in a forest of associations. So that kernel of inspiration sounded more like: “What if Mama Bear was a wine mom?”

This idea wouldn’t let go! So I gathered a stack of Berenstain Bear books, decided on a color palette, and set to work. There I was in my bedroom-turned-studio, flipping through these old books, when Pearl Jam's "Better Man" started playing in my head. Why? Who knows! Probably because I used to fall asleep in that room listening to my brother’s 90s music through the walls; maybe because Papa Bear is exasperating. Maybe a secret third reason! But in that moment, my critical analysis of the Bear Family collided with the raw emotion of '90s rock, and I knew I was onto something. This is where the "archaeology" part of my process kicks in. Like an enthusiastic (if slightly chaotic) excavator, I started digging. Each layer I uncovered – a snippet of lyrics here, a remembered illustration there – added new depth to the concept. Suddenly, I wasn't just painting bears; I was exploring themes of growing up, family roles and expectations, and the bittersweet nature of nostalgia.

As I peeled back these layers, carving out meaning from this peculiar mash-up of influences, the guts of the series began to emerge. It was a process of discovery, something that was both deeply personal and relatable to a lot of people who grew up with these books.

In this post, I'm going to walk you through this archaeological dig of the mind. We'll explore how a children's book series and the soundtrack of my youth combined to create something entirely new. Buckle up, art adventurers – we're about to get weird, nostalgic, and maybe a little profound. Ready to start digging?

So what if Mama Bear was a wine mom?

I saw a meme, and confirmed with some deep research (a.k.a. Google) that Mama Bear is 27 years old. Twenty-seven! That age comes directly from author Stan Berenstain. This makes Mama Bear the perfect demographic for Wine Mom culture, which was my initial inspiration for this collection. It was COVID lockdowns, everyone was distance learning; my friends who were fellow educators were burning out, my friends who are parents were burning out, and I saw a huge display of kitschy wine mom stuff at Target. I thought, oh my gosh. We’re selling wine as a self-care solution to isolation in parenting.

And seriously, if Mama Bear was dealing with all the crap in the books, plus all the crap we’re dealing with now, would she not make a great wine mom? The poor woman doesn’t even have enough time or energy to herself to ever change out of her housedress and bonnet. She is permanently exhausted at 27, and this was the nuclear family that was sold to us in our children’s books. See why this was interesting to me?

The illustrations

A picture is worth a thousand words. And to be fair to the Berenstains, the books do have a decent amount of text in them! However, by focusing on the illustrations for my collage work, and in some cases the facial expressions on the characters, I could distill entire books down to an essential concept or emotion. Half a dozen illustrations of Mama Bear bending over to pick up toys sends a pretty clear message.

Another clear impression? Papa Bear shouting the word QUIET! How many of us have memories of our parents doing the same, or of accidentally becoming our parents after vowing not to repeat the same patterns?

The music

I listen to music while I paint. The playlist for this collection still exists in my YouTube Music library, in fact. I curated the list from friends, asking friends who are from the X and Millennial generations for songs and albums that played critical roles during their formative years. I got a lot of 90s music, of course, which is what I was hoping to get. But I also got 80s music and some early 00s music, and all around the playlist was a great background for painting.

The title of each painting is a lyric from one of those songs, and this was the final bit of archaeological magic.

It’s like this: imagine you stumble upon a dig site, and all you see are bones. Without context, the bones are just bones. Give the bones a context of a geological era, and the bones start to mean something. Find how the bones fit together, and then you really have something. Label the bones and put them in a museum, and then you can communicate the importance of the bones to other who were not at the dig site.

The paint and the illustrations I tore out of the books are just the bones. My mom came into my studio and saw a mess where I saw Important Work happening. Add a title to the painting? Well, now we can communicate about what is important about this mess. I like to use music because it’s another shared point of contact among people. A lyric already has a context and an era; put it with a painting, and it lends some of that context back to the painting. The mess becomes a living fossil that communicates something about the artist (me) and my context.

Completing the dig

I loved every piece that came out of Bear Country. I was (and I still am!) so proud of that collection, as it was the first collection I completed as a full-time artist post-burnout.

In my opinion, asking an artist —or at least this artist — about their favorite painting is like asking a parent about their favorite child. I mean, my mom’s favorite child is my dog, but other than that, who picks a favorite?? That said, I do have one piece from Bear Country that felt so so validating when I hit that breakthrough moment when everything came together. So I am going to do my best to walk you through the how the pieces of that one painting all came together.

I was flipping through The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Pressure. This title centers on the Bear Cubs increasingly harried schedule of activities and lessons, and Mama and Papa Bear’s increasing stress trying to balance it, along with their own activities and parenting and school.

This book came out in 1992, by the way. I was 8 years old, and I am pretty sure 8 years old was the last time I had a free summer. After that it was camps, 4-H projects, and fairs. I was involved in 4-H until I aged out of the program, and it ran my life. In high school, I was in most of the non-athletic extracurriculars. I started babysitting when I was 12 and got my first real job when I was 14.

Basically, this book is about me. So it had to be part of the collection.

I ripped out the best illustrations. My favorite was probably the nightmare of Papa Bear riding a giant calendar like a magic carpet.

I thought about all my friends whose kids are hyper-scheduled. About my friends who are doing their best to resist hyper-involvement, and mindfully choosing one activity per semester. About all the pressure for kids and teens to build their resumes. About the pressure I felt to build my resume.

As I painted, I thought about the pandemic, and the panic that our kids were falling behind. I thought about kids playing sports younger and younger because you have to start young to have a chance at varsity. About how much pressure that puts on a first grader to excel at soccer when they might not even want to play varsity in 10 years.

Too Much Pressure, indeed.

There is so much pressure to keep everyone entertained, busy, occupied. When do we get to just… be? I had already used the song Under Pressure for a painting where Mama Bear is laying awake in bed contemplating All The Things. And that’s when Nirvana saved the day. (Look at me, bringing it back to 90s grunge!). Even our idle time is filled with STUFF! So the title of this painting? “Here We Are Now, Entertain Us. / Here We Are, Now Entertain Us.” The English teacher in me loved what happened when I moved the comma, so I kept both titles.

The painting felt good. But something was missing. I had used mostly the three contemporary primaries in my series: magenta, yellow, and cyan. I mixed up a nice pop-y orange and added a bit of a frenetic pattern to the final layer and then, it felt finished. That final scream of color tied it all up for me.

One fossil among many

I worked on the whole series simultaneously, with intense focus on the final touches of each individual piece at the end. I didn’t call it Spiritual Archaeology yet. However, the process I carved out for this collection, in my bedroom-turned-studio in the house where I grew up, laid the foundation for the process I still use.

As they say, that’s history. Or archaeology. Or perhaps a secret third thing.