It is different from painting. Painting makes me work for it. I have to adjust, ruin, fix, repaint, and negotiate with the thing until it finally decides what it wants to be. And even then it sometimes likes to continue to argue.

Digital art gives me a little instant gratification.

I run a filter. I push the contrast. I tweak the saturation until it sits right on the edge of too much. It feels a little like putting on makeup.

Same face. Different vibe.

The photo is still the photo. The place is still the place. But the color changes the mood. The contrast changes the memory. Suddenly, the image starts telling a different truth.

That is what happened with this Taos image.

I didn’t know I needed this version until I made it. The original photo held the place. This version holds the feeling.

Maybe that is what I am doing with memoir too.

Taking the same life, the same memories, the same old photographs, and adjusting the contrast until I can finally see what they were trying to show me.

It wasn’t the biggest thing in the landscape. It didn’t demand attention. But something about it held the entire scene together. Quiet, grounded, completely itself.

I kept thinking about it after I left Taos. So I painted it.

This is my way of holding onto a moment that didn’t ask to be remembered—but stayed anyway.

Here’s the time lapse video.

When I started Skewed North, I thought I was simply writing stories. Stories from movie sets. Stories from chasing inspiration across continents. Stories about love, loss, chaos, and the occasional WTF moment that makes you stop and ask, wait… what just happened?

I didn’t have a grand plan. I just needed somewhere to put the stories that kept piling up.

But over time something unexpected happened.

The stories started organizing themselves.

Patterns began to appear.

My life—like most lives, it turns out—has chapters.

There was the Globe-Squatting era, when my sidekick and I tried to house-sit our way around the world. There was Panic Quietly, when everything looked fine on the outside but was quietly falling apart underneath. There was the Wandering Widow era, which changed the way I see the world—and myself—forever.

And then came Recalibration: the slow process of figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of my life.

Somewhere along the way I realized something important.

Skewed North isn’t just a blog.

It’s the field journal of a life lived under the influence of inspiration.

And the more I wrote, the more I saw that everything I do—my art, my film work, my travels, the strange detours life keeps throwing at me—comes back to the same core idea:

Aesthetics and awareness shape the way we navigate life.

The environments we build, the stories we tell, and the attention we bring to the world all influence the direction we move.

That realization led to something bigger than I originally imagined.

So I’ve spent the last months quietly rebuilding the structure around the work.

Think of it less like a rebrand and more like a map finally coming into focus.

What Skewed North Is Becoming

Skewed North is still the storytelling heart of everything I do.

But it now sits inside a larger creative ecosystem that connects the stories, the art, and the philosophy behind both.

Here’s how it all fits together.

Skewed North (here on Substack)
This is where the stories live.

It’s the ongoing field journal from a life spent following inspiration across film sets, continents, heartbreak, reinvention, and everything in between.

The publication now has three simple sections:

Skewed North – (for free subscribers) with long-form essays and stories.
Field Notes (for paid subscribers) – shorter dispatches from movie work, the road, the studio, and the in-between moments.
The Atlas (for paid subscribers) – the deeper archive: memoir drafts, journal entries, private podcast episodes, and the behind-the-scenes creative process.

If the public stories are the road, The Atlas is the deeper map.

Skewed North Studio

This is the philosophical home of the work.

After more than twenty-five years designing cinematic environments for film and television, I began to see how deeply environment shapes perception. The spaces we inhabit influence how we think, feel, and orient ourselves in the world.

Skewed North Studio is where I explore that intersection of aesthetics and awareness—and how intentional environments can help people realign their story, their space, and themselves.

Made by Dames

Made by Dames is my online shop.

This is where my paintings, photography, and creative objects live—things designed to bring inspiration and intention into everyday environments.

Some of you have already seen glimpses of this work over the years. The shop and the collections are now being organized in a way that connects directly to the philosophy behind Skewed North.

In other words: the stories, the art, and the environments are all speaking the same language.

Why This Matters

For a long time, these pieces of my life existed in separate places.

Film work over here.
Art over there.
Writing somewhere else entirely.

But the truth is they all come from the same place.

The same instinct that leads me to design environments for a camera is the one that leads me to paint, travel, write, and pay attention to the strange signals inspiration sends.

Everything I create is really exploring one question:

What happens when you trust the compass—even when there’s no clear road?

That question is what Skewed North has always been about.

Now the structure around it finally reflects that.

What This Means for You

Not much is changing about the spirit of this space.

You’ll still find:

🎬 stories from behind the scenes of the film world
🌍 travel and inspiration from around the globe
💔 honest reflections on grief, love, and reinvention
🎨 glimpses into the studio and the creative process

But the publication will feel a little clearer and easier to navigate.

New readers will find a Start Here guide that points to the key stories that shaped this strange map.

And paid subscribers will see more of the deeper material appearing inside The Atlas—including audio dispatches, private podcast moments, and fragments from the memoir I’m currently writing.

Yes, there’s a book coming.

Probably more than one.

Because it turns out when you start writing the map of your life, the roads multiply. And I am also like a run-on sentence that sees all things interconnected.

A Note of Gratitude

If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the reason this work exists.

Substack has become the place where I can write in real time—without a publisher hovering, without a production schedule, just the stories as they happen.

That freedom matters more than you might realize.

It’s what allows this publication to remain a living journey, not just a finished narrative.

So thank you for riding along.

Whether you’ve been here since the early posts or you just stumbled in recently, I’m glad you’re here.

The map may be skewed, but the road is getting clearer.

Hop in the sidecar.

We ride at dawn.

A Note for Paid Subscribers

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’re riding a little closer to the engine of this whole operation—so I wanted to share something with you first.

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But this one feels different.

It starts in Alaska—with a voicemail that changed my plans.

It leads to a birthday I’ll never forget, standing on set while Tom Hanks sang to me.

And it ends with something I didn’t expect at all—

a handwritten letter that reminded me what it means to be human.

It moves through a birthday I’ll never forget, standing on set while Tom Hanks sang to me.

It holds a tragedy our film community endured together.

And it ends with a handwritten letter that arrived in my mailbox weeks later — a letter that reminded me what it means to be beautifully human.

I think it was August 2018. I had just boarded a train in Alaska. Alaska was the last state I needed to see before I had officially seen all 50. On a whim, I booked a flight and wound up there. I had planned to stay at least a month.

I had just stepped off the train in Talkeetna — which, yes, is called the climbing town with a drinking problem — and my cell service came back. There was a voicemail.

It was the Art Director I’d worked with before.

“Hi Jolene. I’m wondering if you want to be the on-set painter for the Tom Hanks movie coming to town. It starts next week.”

Now. I had only been in Alaska for a week.

But Tom Hanks?

Of course I was going back.

I boarded the train as fast as I could to get back to Pittsburgh — but not before I had one more little adventure with my newly found Russian friend through Talkeetna and up to Denali National Park.

I started the show right after Labor Day. Tom Hanks would be arriving on 27 September.

My birthday.

That morning, I got into the shower and, as I was getting ready for work, I looked up at the ceiling and said to my late husband, “You better show up for me today.”

Little did I know what he had in store.

I went to work and everyone had that feeling. You know the one. The “Oh my gosh, Tom Hanks is coming in” feeling. And he was playing Mister Rogers. Which felt kind of surreal.

As a kid, I didn’t really watch Mister Rogers. There were too many other things happening in our household for me to relax and watch him. If I did, I don’t remember. But I knew who he was. I knew what he stood for.

We were filming in a house on location. I was in a back bedroom aging down a picture frame. On set you always wear a walkie, so there’s constant chatter in your ear.

I was about to walk out into the living room to hang a piece of artwork when someone said over the walkie, “Tell Jolene happy birthday.”

I’m standing in the hallway when I hear Tom Hanks say, “Jolene? Jolene? Who’s Jolene?”

I had to step into the room anyway. My face was red as a beet. I popped my head around the corner and gave a small wave.

And he started singing “Jolene” to me on set.

Then everyone chimed in.

It was one of the most amazing days of my life.

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Film sets that disappear into dumpsters. Paintings that get stuck. Worlds designed to exist just long enough to be believed.

And I loved it.

B…

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And something in me knew.

Not logically. Not rationally.

Just—knew.

I front-loaded my life. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I never thought I’d live past 22. And, as fate would have it, when I met him, he felt the same.

I’m not privy to the mystery of signs and synchronicities, nor do I ever want to be. All I know is what I am about to tell you as I remember it. Even 26 years later, I see it clear as day…

Across a dance floor. The lights attached to his face. In a moment, my brain hitched onto a ride. The colors of the lighting design revealed him and I, tripped though spans of time and people on the dance floor to get to him.

He barely noticed. I never forgot it.

From that moment forward, I was committed.

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I’ll open my computer with one idea in mind, and then Facebook memories start popping up…
This time last year. (You were working on Ma…

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I don’t.

I treat them like weather.

I operate under a different assumption:

There will be feelings.

Not as a threat. Not as a flaw in the system. Just a…

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The confusion of feeling invisible and needing to be seen created a split within my internal guidance system- my inner compass. It was impossible to feel connected to people when I felt like I didn’t exist. To make matters worse, I was living in an environment where being seen meant you could get hurt.

Creating and making art would be how I would learn to survive this split. It satisfied the need for safety and being seen. I could choose when I was visible because it was up to me when I made something, and the art was proof I was here.

As years passed, the chaos got bigger, and so did the split within myself. It was so disorienting that I only felt at peace alone, making art or writing. I couldn’t wait to get away from it. Traveling would prove to be the way out.

When I started driving at sixteen, I found great freedom in being alone in my car. The chaos allowed in the front seat was up to me. Driving down long stretches of highways became a form of meditation for me. Traveling allowed me to get to know who I was outside of all the chaos. Something I ached for.

As I got older, this invisible feeling manifested in ways like working “behind” the scenes of movies because I was too afraid to be out in front. Working as a scenic artist, painting sets for theater and, eventually, television and feature films was a way I could prove my existence yet still be invisible.

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