Veronica Sawyer
Age 28
Normandie is our nickname for the duplex just south of Griffith Park in Los Feliz where I still live and where some of my closest friends—
once-in-a-lifetime friends like Veronica—shared common spaces and built the lasting trust and ease that forge life’s surest connections.
Veronica’s wedding lit up our yard at Normandie, and a thousand other fantastic and mundane moments transpired here. Veronica, with her incredible memory and huge heart, is a very best friend.
At 36, considering the passage of time and her portraits each year in the project, she was philosophical about the kind of mindset that begins to free us from comparison and self-imposed parameters.
“It seems like the people that I'm surrounded with are very motivated in terms of careers and making a name for themselves and standing out. … It feels like well, if you're going to do something different with your life, now is probably the time. … Maybe I've only got 20 more years to create whatever in business I want to be real for me. … My biggest question in life … on a psychological level … is this idea that I'm somehow doing it wrong. And I feel like, just in the last year, I'm on the brink of recognizing that there's no such thing [as doing it wrong] for me personally. … [I’m] seeing the horizon, the sort of freedom that comes in that.”
Age 29
Age 30
Age 31
Veronica was careful not to minimize the experience of her younger self.
“From this perspective [at 36] I think, ‘I was so carefree at that time in my life [at 28]. I was living with friends and playing a lot. It felt like … my life had a lot of space … it’s more malleable. But of course, if I were able to put myself back in that place, I'm not sure that I would have felt that way when I was 28. I think that it might just be this perspective [here and now] that allows me that insight.”
Age 32
Veronica became a working actor early in life with roles that included a part in an iconic 80s film. Her views on Hollywood and professional acting “have really changed.” She explained,
“I still consider myself an artist, an actor, and a performer. But if I were to pursue those things more, now, it would be in pursuit of pure enjoyment, in pursuit of just the creation of [art], rather than having some financial benefits or some recognition from a larger community. And that would be more personal. And that's kind of exciting.”
Acting imparted a deep and responsive empathy in her for others. Her personality is driven by it.
Zola is Veronica’s daughter. At 33 she was pregnant, and at 34 she gave birth. She pours her whole self into Zola’s well being. Finding balance between what drives her own spirit and what nurtures her daughter’s love and independence was on her mind.
Age 33
Age 34
“I think that the two year mark really hit for me … this is when I'm supposed to be experiencing my own life, as much as experiencing hers, and it feels lopsided. And so it's been a year of searching for me.”
Age 35
Age 36
Age 37
Age 38
Burning Man is a soulful adventure that Veronica and I share, but it’s been more than that.
For half a dozen years in our late 20s, she and I immersed ourselves in it, in building infrastructure and art, in setting up a desert camping base for our friends and spouses that we could be proud of.
As builders and producers and artists, the work was joyful and hellish—and worth every moment. Veronica summed up not only an essence of that desert community, but also her journey over the last decade,
