Recently, Pantone announced their Color of the Year, an annual choice that often influences fashion, design, and color trends. This year, they chose Cloud Dancer, a soft shade of white.

My immediate reaction was, really??

White?? A white palette felt bland and completely bored me. Hearing it framed with broader cultural and political associations genuinely angered me. I was annoyed that somewhere, a boardroom full of seemingly intelligent people sat around talking about what’s happening in global culture right now, and all they could come up with was off-white. Seeing a tone that is essentially the absence of color elevated as the color of the moment was, honestly, irritating.

Now that my 2025 show season is officially over, I find myself in that familiar, slightly terrifying place every art-show artist knows well: starting from scratch. The cycle begins again almost immediately—applications for the next year already sent out into the universe, waiting for results. Because every show I do is juried, each year is a gamble. I never know what my schedule will look like until the decisions roll in. I throw all my cards into the air and hope something lands.

Have you ever heard the story Who Moved My Cheese? (I’m not even sure I have the title exactly right, but you get the idea.) It’s about two mice navigating a maze in search of cheese. Every day, the scientists put the cheese in the same spot, and the mice run through the maze and eat it.

Then one day, the cheese is gone. The mice retrace the same steps that always worked, but no luck—no cheese. Finally, one of the mice tries a different path and finds it. The other mouse refuses to try anything new and keeps coming up empty.

The moral is simple: to keep finding the cheese, you have to be willing to adapt.