I think these rows of clay beads look like little french confections from a black and white world. I am gearing up for the ArtChics Sale, November 2-3. I tend to make an array of small gift items for this sale, which gives me a chance to experiment with various techniques and ideas, then maybe later apply them to larger work.
learning the language
Honestly, I don’t speak fluent cucumber. I can tell by the many yellow ends and odd twists in my harvested cucs. If I spent as much time watering, weeding, and generally listening to my garden as I do drawing and stitching it I’d have a veritable veggie jungle.
found heart
I saw this freshly cut branch on a walk in Yachats Oregon. After spending this weekend with a tribe of vivacious, incredible women and then spending today alone in my studio with only the rain in my gutters to talk with, I feel somewhat like this exposed heart. We humans are meant to sit in circles, laugh together, eat together, link arms and walk together. What I do in my studio, I do alone. BUT, I have this potential to create things that will possibly touch or inspire another person in some future moment. Art can be communication across time and space.
if I could knit...
I’d make me one of these! This photo is from a NG article, Tangible Spirits, but I can see a practical use for these costumes. We are on day ten of my mother’s visit. Were I to wear one of these around her it would hopefully serve to distract her from the various unhappinesses and internal conflicts that plague her. I love my mother, as many daughters love their mothers, with deep affection and a spoonful each of frustration and exhaustion.
cultivating patience
..something that does not come easily for me, protecting that small idea, believing in it enough to imagine it in maturity, planting it, nourishing it with a thousand tiny efforts and affirmations, waiting for it to grow. How many great ideas have I lost patience with and abandoned just prior to that moment when they sprung glistening from the soil?
clay
Last night I did a wheel throwing lesson with a friend’s daughter. We worked at Clay Space in the Whiteaker. What an amazing public facility! I had such a good time getting muddy. Yes I am thrilled by fiber, endlessly excited by the vast and brilliant spectrum of recycled color, but clay is my first love. It will always call me. I will always answer.
Fantasy A
I hired myself a secretary last night. His name is Charlie, but I call him hun. He irons and cuts fabric into tiny perfect squares for me, answers emails and phone calls, gets me coffee, formulates innovative marketing strategies for me, builds my frames and my customer base, and compliments all my work endlessly. This is a photo of him. You can’t see his face because he’s drowning in a field of tasks.