What's New

The Crucible of Friendship

For Zion Canyon Mesa's In Site Podcast, Teresa Jordan and Judith Freeman, two old friends born and bred in the American West, examine their own enduring relationship through the lens of Judith’s latest novel, the incisive, insightful, at times ruthless “MacArthur Park.” Listen here ...

Mesa Refuge

Teresa is honored to be awarded the Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellowship at the Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes Station, California and will spend two weeks there this fall, working on a proposal for a book based on her Year of Birds. The Mesa Refuge offers time in retreat for “writing at the edge," and focuses especially on writers looking at nature, economic equity, and social justice. Since 1997, the Mesa Refuge has hosted over 1000 writers, including Michael Pollan, Terry Tempest Williams, Krista Tippett, Natalie Goldberg, and Rebecca Solnit.

Radio Elevated

Utah Public Radio chose Teresa’s design for the mug it will feature in its 2022 Spring Pledge Drive. You can see the full design and learn more here.

A Conversation on Practice

Kim Stafford, who recently retired as Poet Laureate of Oregon, and Teresa engage in a far-ranging conversation about practice For In Site, the new podcast series produced by Zion Canyon Mesa. They talk about the benefits of cultivating a daily practice – whether it be writing, meditation, art or something else entirely – not just for deepening your spiritual awareness or becoming a better artist or writer, but also to live a richer life. Zion Canyon Mesa is a nascent arts and humanities residency center in Springdale, Utah, surrounded by Zion National Park. You can listen to the podcast through your favorite podcast provider, or access it and learn more about Zion Canyon Mesa here.

StoryCorp Interview

EQUAL: A Show in Progress

Kristi Hager and Teresa Jordan interview each other for StoryCorps.  For Kristi's exhibition titled EQUAL, now on exhibit at the Missoula Art Museum, the Montana artist created large-scale portraits of nearly two-dozen women, including Teresa. Painted on scrim, a light-weight diaphanous material, the giant portraits hang from the ceiling. With the light shining through them, the gentlest current of air brings them to life. StoryCorps asked Kristi to do mutual interviews with some of her subjects, and Teresa and Kristi spoke about their nearly 40 years of friendship, the creative process, and the changing roles of women from their childhoods until now. You can listen to the interview here, and learn more about the show here.

Vancouver Riverfront Park

Riverfront Park is now open in Vancouver, Washington. Teresa wrote the text for this monolith, a celebration of the Columbia River Basin, which proved to be a particularly challenging assignment: to capture the geology, hydrology, anthropology, and metaphysical resonance of this amazing watershed in less than 500 words. The project was designed by internationally renowned public artist Larry Kirkland. You can read Teresa's text here.

Film & More

Birds of Praise

In this short film, Teresa reflects on what her pandemic "Year of Birds" taught her about art, nature, and our connections to each other in a time of challenge and distress.

Covid Pops Up in Art

Early in the pandemic, The Sears Gallery in St. George, Utah, mounted a pop-up exhibit of artists' response to Covid, each artwork accompanied by a story. Teresa contributed “Sheep on Hot Ground,” a portrait of three of the Navajo Churro sheep she and her husband, Hal Cannon, raised on their small farm in Virgin, Utah. You can read the backstory here.

Perfume

A few years ago, Teresa created this "illustrated moment" in memory of her mother, and posts it anew each Mother's Day. Click here to view on YouTube.

The Big Book of Hal

Teresa's beloved husband, Hal Cannon, has just turned 70 and she created this memory book as a tribute to a visionary and restless spirit who is defining his senior citizenship through outrageous creativity. He is not, after all, a normal person. Through some mutant quirk of culture and genetics, he is the sole specimen of a unique species, Heraldo magnificus....Read more here.

Remembering Ursula K. LeGuin

A visionary with "a knack for home life."

I have been terribly blue these past few days over the news that Ursula LeGuin has passed out of this world. I came to know Ursula in the 1980s, when we lived a few houses apart in Portland, Oregon. We had a mutual (and mutually dear) friend in Andrea Carlisle, and we connected initially through our love of cats. We each had male cats of extraordinary character – Ursula’s Lorenzo, Andrea’s Max, and my Abraham – and soon we imagined a newspaper that they produced, The Cat News, “By Cats, For Cats, and About Cats.” Read more ...

My Ranch, Too

The University of Oklahoma Press has just published Mary Budd Flitner's wonderful ranch memoir, with a foreword by Teresa Jordan. As Mary relates her family's ranching history in Wyoming–a story that began in the 19th century and continues into the 21st–she paints a remarkable picture of resilience. Nine out of ten families have left the land in the span of a single lifetime, and the story of those who have survived generation after generation and still look to the future with a degree of confidence is something not only to celebrate but to study. Through the gift of her storytelling, Mary gives us insight into the combination of grit, adaptation, creativity and interpersonal dynamics that make such resilience possible. This book has lessons for us all, on the land and off it, as we struggle to stay relevant in the face of ever-accelerating change.

Sketch Artist

Teresa was the official sketch artist for the 35th anniversary of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. This is her sketch of Pipp Gilette, who ranches near Lovelady, Texas and is a keeper of the old cowboy songs on guitar, banjo, harmonica and bones. You can see more sketches, as well as videos of the paintings in process, here.