About

Hi, I’m Ginnie.

I’m an illustrator, writer, professor, flower farmer, and avid gardener.

I’ve illustrated picture books and spent years teaching students how to see, draw, tell stories, and pay attention. When I’m not in the studio or the classroom, I’m often in the field planting, observing, and working with my hands.

I made The Open Spread because I needed a place to think slowly about drawing, story, sketchbooks, and creative life.

This is where I gather what the page, the garden, and the studio are teaching me.

What You’ll Find Here

I write about things that aren’t always easy to categorize. Sometimes it’s about pacing in picture books, or how a single gesture can shift a scene. Sometimes it’s about drawing when the work feels stiff, unfinished, or off-course. Sometimes it’s something I noticed in the field, how a seed waits, how light changes a bloom, how silence can hold a story.

This space holds sketches, stories, process notes, small observations, and half-formed thoughts.

What This Is, and Isn’t

The Open Spread isn’t a portfolio, and it’s not a how-to site or a place for perfect process shots. It’s a creative log, a quiet archive, and a place to follow the work as it changes across seasons and disciplines. This is where I let the drawing go off course. This is where I write like I draw.

At the beginning of each month, I send out Studio Letter, a monthly note from the studio, sketchbook, farm, garden, and creative life.

It’s part update, part reflection, and part seasonal fragment. You can read or subscribe here for free.

For deeper posts, videos, process notes, sketchbook reflections, seasonal essays, and longer creative studies, you can join The Studio Table.

It’s where I share more of the thinking behind the making, and where your support helps keep The Open Spread growing.

Thank you for being here.

I hope something you find here lands softly, like a page turn you didn’t expect, or a bloom you didn’t plant on purpose.

Ginnie