“If you are in a fragile or stressed state, it may help to think of yourself as a garden. The more attention you give your unseen garden, the more you may come to understand it. Every act of feeding, digging, and pruning will reveal a new truth.”
Cortney Cassidy is an artist and horticulturist using text, image, and sound to write poetry.
“I knew that something was wrong with the way I used my body. On the computer, I was only using my mind. The garden helped me identify that I needed to engage my whole being: mind, body, and spirit. I needed these three pillars to hold me up, instead of trying to balance everything on one.” A Pious Work of Salvage is an ongoing project to build a singular portrait using found fragments. “Leonardo da Vinci wrote that an image is poetry seen not felt, however, a maker of images that abandons true nature for false beauty is unable to make anyone see.” “Written language has a long history of influencing feeling and thought. In our current era, we often rely on images to evoke emotion … The future of accessing visual media is not only about who or what makes the images, it’s also about how we describe them.” “Language is a product of observational learning, so gaining the vocabulary requires first noticing the smell, the environment around that smell, and the reactions it prompts. There doesn’t seem to be any way to represent smell other than to physically present it or describe what kind of attention it attracts.” “Terms like spinster and old maid are still attached to women who exist outside the Home and the Church, declaring that these women disrupt social order and can no longer be called women. I can’t think of a more comfortable, self-reliant life for myself than that of a woman who holds onto her autonomy” “It is impossible for most to write well on a first try. Excessive language is how a writer digs for the actual point they can eventually say better. I must say a lot of useless things to find out what I’m really trying to say. The useless is useful even after it’s gone.” “Feelings are ignored and overlooked as potential evidence-based resources, but since they are a part of the human experience, it seems possible that they are essential tools in both the construction of our world and our understanding of it. Using that tool to access possible alternatives might help us fix what’s not working.” “Keeping an unserious record of my mysterious sensitivities led me to see patterns, like how I seem to have an easier time dealing with my body when I am alone, instead of pretending I am “normal” while my internal reality slowly bleeds through to the external reality of a very long work meeting.” “The hard truth about being an artist within an economic system that favors private property, a price system, and competitive markets is that the artist often needs full-time paid work to exist. That job takes valuable time and creativity away from the artist, which means this system defines who gets to be an artist and when.” “Through forming my framework to create in, the return investment is not a monetary profit. The gain is my revolutionized vocabulary of art in a softer space.” “As all colors we can and cannot see differ depending on their surface, surrounding, and our state of mind—they will always in some way share their brilliance.” “The more I learn, the more humility I feel. By expanding our exposure to ethical thinking, we can better understand who we are, what we could and should be doing, and why we’re doing the things we do. With that self-awareness, we’re in a much better place to understand where we can be most effective.”
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Designer of the modern dark mode, architect of dynamic theming, former editor for Google Design, and design ethics advocate. I worked as a horticulturist for the High Line during a career break followed by a sabbatical to write a book (forthcoming). If you are interested in engaging with my multidisciplinary hybrid practice that balances artistic sensibility with strategic clarity for your project, send me a message at cortneyvcassidy@gmail.com.
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© Copyleft 2026 Cortney Cassidy