And time marches on...

With or without art, sometimes. Solve one thing and while you are holding that thing together something else creaks and crumbles behind you. I remember vowing no negativity and next thing you know my last type here was mid-October. Day by day we measured whether or not to go on vacation later that month...I was sick in one way or another all the time...we went and didn't regret it. Cape Cod has a healing effect for me, and has served as cure more than once, and I haven't been able to spend much time with the photos I took to add to my "sketch later" pile, but it is the quality of light that brings me back to North Truro, year after year. I could feel it even through my closed eyelids in those short days, but it shines through in the photos, and I am glad I opened my eyes long enough to snap the shutter. As always I got my falling stars, and a sunrise, with the ocean at my feet. This year's Christmas card from the cottages' owners, the Greenes, has a photo of a stubborn wildflower dug in stairs up the dune, and that is who we are this year too. With CT gay marriage legal it seemed a good time for us to set a wedding date. Our plans are modest...a close few to share. After more than a couple of decades "out" it seems sentimental but still important to speak a vow, though none are needed. Unspoken has served us well too.

November brought the election of a lifetime and news and news and news...I wept the weekend of my birthday when I found a way to make wedding rings for Donna and I and 2009 (rings up to my standards!), and wept more that month in sorrow and joy than in a very long time. Sharing our news (and dealing with the reprocussions) made me set the modest wedding plans aside, and weeks without decent sleep due to more and more severe back pain took a huge toll. Several people were the recipients of long, rambling e-mails. To not stretch my electronic ties further, I stayed away from the computer until today. It has been the most insane of sane times in my life. Maybe I even courted madness briefly...desperate for an excuse to get away from myself.

December has brought the gift of cards and letters, updates from our all-over people. December brought much-needed back surgery, and we will have a very quiet holiday. Let me just say that medical technology is amazing and I am recovering spectacularly (time to get out of the chair now, though), and our health-care system is insane. The surgery was the 17th. On the morning of the 19th a passing doc gave me a quick nod and I caught the fast train...my folks and our van...to recovery OUTSIDE the haunted hospital halls.

Cassandra is starting to make her meows louder. If I am up she wants a lap. So Donna can keep sleeping for that one more day of work before she can be home for a week I will quiet her by quieting me. There is too much fun for kitties here and this is not my office!

2009 will be as amazing and more productive than ever...with only physical recovery for me...and whatever else lies wait. I have hope...even in uncertain times. Hope will carry all of us.

technical troubles

Hey~

I have been away for a while, at the moment I am not feeling all that much better, but that was somewhat expected. My $1.99 "crakes" (croc fakes) are retired for the season, put away for all but use in the basement. They are day-glo ugly but convenient and now I fall down while wearing them...not helpful.

Movie from the last post won't play, too much data (gotta have music AND images AND animation, right?) I am learning, I am learning.

I am going to attempt to send out a "mass e-mail" that will let folks know we may be even MORE out of touch for a while. Our internet provider (Cox) has had consistent troubles throughout the area and I have been working on it from my end, assuming they would eventually clear it up, but it isn't looking good. With ongoing health care stuff and our MUCH NEEDED trip to the Cape, catch us by phone. Those of you who need those #s have them. Laughs delivered via phone from friends who loathe email have also been VERY welcome.

The collision of health issues and economy and internet/computer technical difficulties is turning out to be a bit of a blessing, despite the Halloween style (this "scorched earth" painting comes in handy for all kinds of references!) disguise. It is giving time to heal, regroup and prepare for winter, on the outside and inside. I can get by some of the personal trauma and we can keep on and get back to the new work. New work is always good~ the cure all.

I have been doing my best to follow my father's lead...that any day with time spent outside, even on the smallest chore (or in his case, HUGE chores) is a good day. It is best to take a walk, soaking up in the beauty of brightly colored leaves wafting by on the newly crisp wind catering in the new season. I have come to not only appreciate but adore the rare gems his (and our)gardening friends pass on, THOUGH I STILL WANT TO DIG THE DAMN HOLES MYSELF! Ah, to have it all. Before I was gifted with this life long dream of living on this Broad Brook land, I read and clipped WAY too many pictures and articles about what might seem to make up the perfect landscape. After more resistance than I would like to admit, I have learned there is no substitute for hands-in-the-dirt experience and the zig-zag way life has of bringing new and surprising influences on our now more user-friendly Better Home and Garden. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Speaking of growing things...Anyone need a houseplant? My indoor gardening sufficed during my urban living phase and the population is WAY out of hand. This is Diva and her leaves are not supposed to be wilted like that. Everyone else is MUCH lower maintenance and like me, she is far too needy. I suppose my curtailed email time could be used to re-pot the poor thing and give her some crystals so she can hold her water better. She needs just a few gently drops...otherwise she pees her pot. But the potting bench is full of woodworking tools and it all seems...overwhelming. If she gets a new pot shouldn't everyone else?

Fa has been working on a big indoor project, pulling together more family genealogy than I had any idea we had, and there is plenty that is of interest to us. So we pass around plants, and new and old letters, and books about weather...the weather obsession is probably genetic, but luckily Donna shares it.

Mom has been dutifully dragging me about, stuck with the more mundane chore of sitting in waiting rooms, bringing necessities and her home-cooked specialties, both sweet and savory. I am afraid I am sometimes too exasperated to be as grateful as I should be and I am quite sure the protein shake recipes I mix up and walk over to share are not comforting in the same way at all, but the folks smile and politely thank me for my effort. Other friends have shared the driving/dropping off chores, and I have been grateful not only for those interventions but the moments I get to find out what THEY are up to...always welcome news.

Donna and I have the bizarre luxury of ignoring much of the news...not much we can do about most of this. Unsure of how I would feel after the November 3 go around with the oral surgery, and sure the lines at the polls will be LONG, Donna and I cast our absentee ballots a couple of days ago. What will be will be.

This is our first time our October/November trip to the cape will coincide with a presidential election of such contention. Those blessed "no computer no television" beach days may, for the first time ever, send us to the local tavern just to peek at the news once or twice. Our neighbor in the next cottage can give us the Boston Globe's view if I am desperate...this time Ken will be tracking more than just sports. Yeah...sad to say the cell phones go these days...until the last couple of trips we were glad to go without phone as well.

As always, thanks for the support.

Movie struggle

I created a simple movie using the beta version of Picasa 3. It is there, but I know it is fuzzy. Working on it with other intense users and techs. Will republish after sleep. recuperation.

like the poltergeist, I'm ba-ack!

Movies

Okay. I was going to give this up, this blogging, but I have a lot to say. In rereading many of my entries I keep seeing the word ANGER over and over again. Most of the country is angry, frustrated, agitated...I certainly am not alone. And I have made my point. Enough about the anger.

And the blog is about art, but art is a process, a process about living, about seeing. For me it is mathematical, it is literary, it is contemplative and it is technical. Photography helps. I often do a great deal of research, both of the materials and my methods. This makes me a little bit of a know-it-all. One of my character flaws. What I don't know I ask about. I have a box full of cast off failures from 2007, but not so this year. Lately I have just sat down with a book or board and thrown down line after line, or in the case of pastels, gentle touch after gentle touch until it satisfies. There has been very little waste, there are only three or four pieces I would not present here, or offer for sale.

There is a huge historical perspective I often ignore. I have experimented with all kinds of media tools...the computer software being a large part of for a long time.It was too long ago now, lying on the floor in an icy Princeton computer lab, working with a bunch of guys to stretch code to someplace that would work for what I wanted. I didn't know what I wanted. While I was in college I had the chance to intern with some of the most well-known artists of the time, at full tuition cost of classes and dorm fees. It was hard to make that make sense when I would be a mere 2 hours from home, not the normal 12. Those internships evaporated without the direct educational institution link. And I believed my college art professor when he said I could paint and even sculpt but I would never be an artist. I sat in his studio, tears and snot running down my face at his pronouncement, after 4 years of hero worship. He might have clued me in a little earlier and I could have freed myself up more for writing and French and literature. The bastard had one of my art papers published, under my name of course....he had to think it was good, right? He had little comfort to offer beyond a rag tainted with turpentine (of course we had no idea we had been poisoning ourselves all that time). I knew I wasn't Van Gogh but it took me what seemed like an eternity to get over what was probably a simple, common, sexist assumption on his part...perhaps even merely a bad day. His education was from professors who used and threw away women, men who drank themselves to death and abused others in name of their art. The masters suffered for their art, it was natural too assume we must too. Sobbing at my last critique as not the kind of suffering I had in mind.

These harsh lessons made me a passionate and empathetic teacher, not afraid to push hard for good work but unwilling to tear anyone apart to get at it. My poor parent's car was so loaded down with bronze and metal and canvases and tools that the trip home ruined their shocks or struts. I was so car sick we had to stop at every gas station until my mother pitied me and road in the back. Fien time to tell me all that work was for naught.

When I graduated from college with my very classical art training (experimental materials required such bold in-the-face-of-the-masters when I did dare I was punished with b grades).There was plenty of greatliberal arts education. With my specialized Bachelor of Fine Arts I got 2 offers...I could earn $13,000 as a junior designer for the Boston Museum of Science exhibit department or at the Smithsonian, for just under $12,000. Really great jobs in very expensive cities. I thought of my friends in New York, sleeping in closet size rooms and fighting roommates over noise and food and money, slamming the toaster on the counter before making breakfast so they didn't toast any cockroaches. I had never seen a cockroach before. Sure, we have mice and rats and crickets and stuff out here in the "country" of Connecticut, but could I adjust to urban noise and smells, conquering my fear of the unknown for a spectacularly great job at a really low wage? I stayed with my cousin and his wife in Washington D.C. and it seemed a more plausible city to live in, but I didn't know where to find an edgy art culture...that was easy to find in Boston and New York.

One of my fellow art graduates lived alone in a storefront, which she accessed by raising and lowering those rolly metal doors that protected her from break-ins I couldn't comprehend. At 17 someone stole a good pen that was a graduation gift, right off my classroom desk, probably as I turned in a test. At 18 a poor unwell soul broke into my parent's house and stole underwear and dresses from my sister, mother and I. At school my dryer was mysteriously emptied of panties. Other than that my sister and I only stole from each other. Of course we each remember it all differently and I am finally old enough the details don't matter, but my elephantine memory can be inconvenient.

I went and stayed in Brooklyn with a good friend who found a low paying teaching job at a very progressive school. He was thrilled with the way he had adapted, and he was a genius teaching the children of well-known authors, artists and designers in any subject, without a teaching certificate. It wasn't too long after that the first Mac was released and hypertext became my obsession. It all moved so fast, and I loved riding the wave. His desk at home(with the required little Mac)was an ironing board. I was impressed yet still somehow horrified. There was a toaster oven and a hot plate and one of the things my mother taught me very well was how to cook. I did not gain weight as a freshman off to college...the food was so substandard I refused to eat it most of the time. Life still seemed doomed to Ramen noodles and tea even beyond college! The subway and train rides seemed long out that way but didn't scare me. I did cry about half the night sleeping on the floor, and sadly I have lost touch and not found him again, I was an unapologetic, ungrateful wretch as my farewell. Even if I could land a good gig what would I do with the car I just bought and how on earth would I find a date? Newly "out" as a lesbian (and a rabid feminist) I was horrified that it was $9.00 in 1984 to get into a club for lesbians. No addresses were published...you walked up and down a rumored street and the street hoped for a nod from a bouncer, so you kind of had to look like you belonged in the club. I did not look like I belonged in the club. It was a lot of wandering alone in dangerous places for a costly maybe.

I headed back to the folks' house, uncertain of what to do. That short sordid story ended with getting fired for taking the bookkeeper to a gay bar and off I went cross-country, determined not to humiliate my family by residing nearby.

Out West I did graphic design and illustration for print in a VERY low-end way. I utilized the first releases of most of the new stuff as the technology improved. I got so I could draw as well with a mouse as I could with any other tool and I played around with animation, but my New York fellow grad friend went off to Canada as a less expensive place to learn filming and film editing skills. She blew me away with her productions, with fabulous control of voice and music. MTV production remained hot dreams for many creative types I knew.

Computers couldn't hold that data, I kept maxing out my memory and waiting forever for graphics to load. It didn't take me long to figure out that I could make a lot more money in much less time selling printed products than I could designing, and the world of design was still very sexist. Men did concepts, women slaved at keyboards for much less money. Then the low-end women's jobs disappeared. If you didn't keep up, you were simply erased from the industry. I decided being reasonably dressed with earning power I directly that increased with good work made more sense.

The story is long and I am so very tired. Hopefully I will have correctly finished my play with a free software toy and you saw that already. I don' care if nobody reads it. I am back, and the word anger is banished.

and so what now?

Yesterday, after not having slept for a very long time, I published long pieces here on the blog written from a place of despair. I deleted them but one thing remains: rage.

I am an angry woman, and I have been angry for longer than even I imagined. For this moment I am going to set aside my gratitude and relentless pursuit of God's grace and voice the darkness alone, without trying to balance the madness with words of hope. I am going to falter, maybe for just a moment, in my faith that what God asks of me is good works, and that even the smallest good works meet that mandate. I am going to rage against powerlessness. I am going to doubt out loud that there is a higher power who can hear prayer, any prayer; those spoken with grand passionate volume or the silent and softly whispered prayers of the naive, straight from the pure heart of just one child.

I am so angry at the greed that clearly infected an entire generation of what should have been vetted financial geniuses, greed that endangered shareholders and every citizen of an entire nation, greed that brought us to an unprecedented financial collapse, a collapse that will require a unique description, not "recession" or "depression". I am infuriated that there is even a concept on the table in Congress that any of these people would have any kind of "parachute". They should go the way any of person caught stealing..."please leave your keys and your badge on the desk, security will escort you out. We will send you your personal belongings after we have searched them for evidence of any further wrongdoing."

I am angry at the suicide death of a man who I have always silently believed saved my life. This man was a good man...a brother, father and husband. I only had a couple of opportunities to wander around the woods and rivers of Connecticut with him and a crew of others, and now he is gone we have lost a person who taught many about the wonders of nature with his own contagious wonder. I am the only one who knew he saved my life once. He did it so deftly and with such skill that my fear was instantly evaporated. I wanted to appear cavalier about what happened, and so I did not laud his heroism...I kept the depth of peril to myself. I only spoke of it in the abstract...rules of the river or other fast water. Those closest to him fought for him valiantly, but the disease he and I both have took his life anyway. Perhaps he will have saved my life twice...his suffering and that of those around him may have led me to a path of safety from suicide, and his death will heighten my vigilance against the symptoms that can sweep me swiftly into dangerously fast water.

I am angry that another family, stewards of our agricultural heritage, could not set aside their differences, differences I understand very well, and save a farm. I am angry that farmers are dying breed. I am angry that as much as I love the land and the Connecticut River Valley's rich and fertile soil I could not, physically or financially, grow food or flowers for a living.

I am angry that my personal struggles keep me from waging war to preserve open space for agriculture and nature...and that in my town more taxpayers think that we can magically keep development away by simply pulling the "no" lever on every budget vote. I am angry that some of our best and most skilled citizens and staff can be silenced, chased and beaten away by those who believe everything can stay the same as it always was.

I am angry we can only shrink what we teach our children in schools strapped financially, we can not expand or explore progressive education designed to nurture the skills our next generation will need to win the battles we are losing now. This kind of education must be smuggled in the back door, by teachers and leaders who bravely teach their best, always refusing to leave any hope for any child behind, despite the hurricane force winds of a national education crisis that has broadly painted all who educate incompetent, or even more ridiculous, greedy for pay. I am angry as I watch children skimmed off the top of urban schools and whisked off to new magnet schools. The progress "no child left behind" has made is that only the poorest of the poor, the most educationally needy, will be left to flounder in schools labeled "failing". They will have lost their only entitlement, their right to an equal education.

I am angry that few understand poverty is and will remain the powerful undercurrent at the bottom of every crisis we face globally and locally.

I am angry our health care system is broken, not by the greed of medical professionals, but by the insane costs of monstrous government bureaucracy, greedy pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists, and insurance companies who have needed to keep their profits high enough to invest in now failed financial institutions. As a country we are nowhere near prepared for the costs medical advancements have made that lengthen our lives, longevity we should celebrate, but that will force more and more of our elderly into unresolvable poverty and perhaps even a longevity that severely diminishes any quality of life.

I am angry government has cost all of us our individual rights, at the hands of a political party built on the value of individual rights and LESS government interference. I am angry the same people set back science in our country, not just on one front, declaring any single human cell life, and at the same waded in to a marriage, into the sanctity of a "proper" marriage, to deny a conversation between husband and wife is not enough to fulfill an expressed desire, a right to die with dignity, after all hope for a meaningful life is lost. We are not free to choose what "meaningful" is. As we battle over single cells, entire species are wiped away and climate change is declared a myth~ just climate change, just pure empirical data, before we even begin discussing what is fueling it. Individual rights and scientific pursuits, swept away, perhaps unrecoverable for a lifetime.

I will never stop being angry at the spectacle of watching poor people die days and days and even weeks after Hurricane Katrina had long passed through. It was a national shame I hope we will never repeat.

I am angry our larger health care advances have been to repair brains and burns and the lost limbs of soldiers who would still serve their country given a chance.

I am also selfishly angry. I live with the kinds of chronic illness there are no big fundraisers for, that have no cool little rubber bracelets, the kind we don't talk about, the kind that people whisper about. I am angry that there is some reason pharmaceutical companies spend huge money to advertise anti-psychotic medications. Are there enough psychotic people out there to warrant that kind of advertising? Then again...do you have any idea what these medications cost? Who is the intended target of these advertisers? I am betting your average psychotic joe or jane isn't rushing to the doc to get a script...not like, say, the little purple pill.

I am angry at the new assaults on my body. They are temporary and should resolve in a few months, but they are side-effects of my treatment, not new disease.

I am angry I must depend on the generosity of others, like my parents, who should not have to be caring for their 46 year old daughter. They drive me around when I can't drive, and launder money for slow-to-pay insurance companies, enabling me to keep seeing the specialists who help the most, specialists who must employ huge staffs so they can accept insurance, but who must pay themselves and their people this week...not in 90 days or six months or even, in some cases, more than a year.

I am sad that this will be my last blog entry. My desire to work and sell what I am good at is under assault...by the economy, by my health, by my desire to make art AND still teach. That art and the students I tutor must come first. Teaching any subject feeds my soul in the same way making art does. I have surveyed those who have purchased from me, those who are my friends and any one else I could ask. The message is clear: the easiest way for them to see exactly what is for sale is a website. This week I also learned that one of the other tools I use for marketing is technically flawed. I will keep journaling, on my own, and maybe someday find a way to write something more useful. I have a lot to say.

Maybe there is one bit of gratitude that will surface here. Thank you, Helene, for reading and encouraging me. Your words are not lost on me and they will keep a dream of mine fueled for a different time. In the meantime, to my great fortune, you are right next door.

good friends, neighbors, and our favorite things

I could write and write and write. Instead today I will simply say that our neighbors, Fred and Helene, have been a great gift in our lives. We spend time together impulsively...when we find ourselves with a moment or an hour or so to sit and enjoy the fruits of all that planting labor and can share and catch up on each other's doings...and try to worry less about the "not doings".

A recent Friday they kindly had Donna and I to dinner...it all came together perfectly. Before Donna got home from work Fred and I were chatting, looking at this gorgeous gate and enjoying the day. Helene came along then we had drips and drops of rain. Faster drops moved the conversation to their screened in porch and before long a spontaneous dinner plan was hatched. Donna came home, delighted to celebrate Friday with friends. We shed the worries of the day, grabbed some melon we had to offer for dessert.

The food and company were joyful for me. Helene is an outstanding researcher so she has all kinds of stories to tell about her finds and people she corresponds with. Fred dreams big, like me, and we commiserate about the demons of perfectionism. Our conversation topics range from tools and yard maintenance, mowing and weeding and cute furry garden destroyers, on to local history, flea market finds or religion, literature and philosophy. Nothing is off limits.

They are away this week, being grandparents in California, but their cottage garden is keeping us company in their absence, and you can see how heavy with morning glories the gate that leads to Fred's young orchard is. The variety, Heaven Blue, is a favorite of my father's, and he generously shares seedlings he gets from a local nursery. The row of 4 homes, from Voto's to our house, the farm house and my sister's place all have some, and this year they have been better than ever on picket fence, a comfort~ joy in the dawn stretched into the afternoon as the oaks across the street keep the blooms open far into the day.

We share plants back and forth....well, between my folks as the other next-door neighbors Donna and I have been lucky recipients. I am hoping that we can offer from our own divided perennials one of these seasons. Fred salvaged some Rose of Sharon, almost bare root sticks, set aside to be thrown away at a local nursery. He nursed them along himself and the rewards have been wonderful. This is the best shot I could get of one bloom of vigorous plants on the path through the garden gate path has at least 4 different colors, if not more. There are so many more blooms and colors and I am hoping those flowers will give them joy after a a happy journey.

My folks have at least one of his offerings and we popped one into my yard to replace a red maple sapling that did not winter well.

Maybe it is maturity that makes it easier for people of may parent's age to approach a stranger and ask about their plants or their bird feeders or life in general. My father saw a woman working in her garden and stopped. She spoke of her morning glories coming back from seed...as "volunteers" but what she shared with my Dad turned out a little different, The variety did not Heavenly Blue, but I adore them. The star of pinkish violet set in the purple pops out of the grand green leaves in a small but majestic display. The buds are a swirl of white and pink and purple. The folks used to grow clematis at the back step and it was not doing well the last couple of years. I put my vote in early for a repeat of the annual. We are sucking the marrow out the bones of summer's end and allowed ourselves to enjoy the sun, read and snack on our inherited lawn furniture.

There is always something to see and watch for in just a moment's walk in any direction. I hope you find the kind of treasures we are rich with around here.

work in progress

I am losing my mind.

There is no other
explanation for this
I just wanted to show
the two painting sketches
and new scrafito I am working on,
as of Friday 9-19
and I seem to have a
very ugly conflict of
software applications.
That isn't relevant to the actual making of art
(well it is if you count the lost hours in computer hell)
so I will be away from the keyboard
and working my a** off on actual art-making.
It took 9 days to recover from the
first dental/jaw procedure,
the first of three between now and 11-3.
So I am drawing and working like a fiend
when I feel well, working indoors
rather than haul all my
tools and paper outside and back in again.
Though I canceled participation
in local group shows
I can't let go of the hope that somehow I can pull off
Open Studio in Hartford, but I am only working on the stuff that will be pricey
and in this economy I should do more of the pieces (jewelry and such)
that people are comfortable nibbling up.
Ah well. Back to the drawing board.

back to anger, chasing wildflowers

I have been editing pictures this day until I could not work any more, until I was in so much pain I couldn't bear my glasses on my face. My blogging intent today was to show off my father's wildflower photos. Their blooms will pass but the grasses will change colors as the trees do and there are gorgeous paths to travel. He sought out the rarest sites this time, a yellow patch of flowers that appeared last year but are even more prolific this year. He got close but after a photo or two he very carefully retreated from what may have been an underground yellow jacket nest. He and I both have had very many stings from that kind of encounter and there are chores we save until hard frost, when the risk has passed.

I couldn't resist throwing in the holly hock photo in and if I feel better soon I promise more photos, I will make acrylic paintings or pastel paintings of them. Our neighbors to the North, Fred and Helene, have a gorgeous cottage garden and the gate is loaded with hundreds of blooms of morning glory, and I intend to photograph them too. Fred shared with us some Rose of Sharon he nurtured from teeny tiny plants and they are doing well in all three yards. The cameras are always at the ready these days, both at the farmhouse and here, next door. Dad (Fa, as we call him) has answered my many questions, identifying mystery patches of different colors of wildflowers in new places.

I am back to anger because I loathe this process I am in. I planned the fixes my face and teeth need as carefully as I could, only imagining the three seperate days of the procedures would keep me from work, and to be realistic, a little more, especially in October. I did not plan for complications immediately, or the need for rest. I was thrown by not being able to eat much, making a desperate run to the store for ingredients that would make healthy shakes I could drink more easily. Tea and soup... yogurt and cottage cheese. Donna was very creative with those over the weekend but I must admit I didn't even try to eat when she was at work.

Desperate, I called the dentist Saturday, through his answering service, and he suggested the complication was allergy. It was humiliating to call Fred and Helene, and ask them to list the ingredients of the excellent spontaneous feast we shared Friday. There was no change in our environment or foods that would trigger an allergic reaction. I have never had food allergies. 24 hours of benedryl did nothing to ease the swelling of my face, tongue and throat. I couldn't ignore it~ I headed for our primary care doc, grateful it didn't get bad enough for an ER visit.

There is a saying among physicians...something about when you hear hoof beats they are more likely horses than zebras. I have quite a few zebras in my health history.The discouraging series of events over the last couple of days has more details, and they do not belong here.

As fast as I can there will be more work. While I recover I have been using classmates.com to find old friends I left behind. I was not in touch, fearful that the lesbian thing was too much, fearing my "crash and burn" pattern would horrify someone. I have to say the process of letting people know what a difference they made in my life has been rewarding, I feel a bit redeemed each time I come across someone. It is making my little infirmity into grace, chasing wildflowers and old friends, finding both.

on the run, practice stillness

What do you pack when you don't know where you are going or how long you will be? If I can't do that for my purse right now, in this moment, what can it be like to be in the path of a deadly storm and trying to choose what to bring? What can it be like to not know if your home will be home anymore?

I want to help. I just want to just help... fix IT. Turning off the news doesn't help.

Did you ever just get in a car or a plane or train or bus so you could get there NOW? Get to your loved one, get to a stranger alone, find a way to do something, anything?

I have run toward things like that, but not in a long time. Never too late, right?

And no, I am not driving to the southeastern US right now. I am having lunch and packing a purse full of practical things. I will figure out what to pack for the longer journey later. For now I will just be. Stillness is a hard thing to practice, and it is going to take a mammoth effort. It is temporary, this stillness, but it serves a purpose.

I am up to the task.

always blog when grateful

So I had a bad day, but the blog is about art so the topic is art and here is the latest work. These things have been around here and it is time I get this stuff posted. Then I have to do more! I am thinking I may have to do the darker stuff on a nameless, traceless blog, or bury on my computer as a novel, perhaps a thinly disguised memoir.
I have been very grateful to get good feedback on the writing and I haven't journaled in too long. We all have plenty of stories to tell and I love to hear them as well as tell them. I have this luxury of time right now. Well it isn't a luxury actually. But I am going to make it one.

Let's just celebrate life. I am going to take advantage of this "luxury" of time to tackle a painting series I have had planned for a while.

Autumn is upon us and the colors of the sky and intensity of light can't be matched. Good painting weather. This monarch color is going to give me momentum to the new paintings. The photo this is from Connecticut Wildlife, a photo by Paul J. Fusco. I have tracked butterflies and identified them since I was a child, drawing them in less and less childish ways as I grew older. Paul works for CT Department of Environmental Protection and his photos and illustrations are admirable. I went to Sessions Woods in Burlington for a birding walk he did and I must do more. I am grateful to have completed the Master Wildlife program offered by DEP and enjoy the volunteer assignments I have taken. I have plenty of my own monarch photos that will work as well. I was pastel experimenting and the picture was right there. Because it is not from my own original art references I would not sell this piece and the Broad Brook Art watermark was accidental.

The black and white works are 5" X 7" scrafito . I may have mentioned this before, but a thin layer of india ink is applied to a layer of fine white clay on compressed board. I wear white cotton gloves to keep any oils on my hands from hardening the surface of the ink, otherwise the lines are not as easy to control.

I use various tools and I the very fine lines I do wearing a magnifying glass. The detail I can get this way pleases me. Crazy detailed black and white birds and smudgy thrilling color sketches. Woo hoo!

My college art professors were always saying you have to pick something...printmaking or painting, sculpture or pottery. You have to specialize, have a recognizable, signature style, something everyone who sees it will know who made it. I peaked, learning art, my junior year of college. Maybe because I couldn't choose. And not choosing gave me all kinds of other opportunities to learn and teach all kinds of subjects.

If you study the long careers of artists like Picasso you know materials are fluid, colors and styles keep evolving. Then there are the tortured souls like Van Gogh, who can't shake the image in his head; painting must happen, over and over, like breathing. The paint was giving him his whole breath. He made most of his entire body of work in about 4 years. He was manic depressive, like me, although the used term these days is bipolar, and there are shades of grey within that definition, kind of like the spectrums of autism. When I see Van Gogh's work in person and I want to weep, not just because the color is delicious beyond words, the brush strokes genius, but because I know he was afraid his illness would rob him of the paint...his mission in life. You can see it in his eyes, one self-portrait after another.

I have had that all-consuming fear. We have treatments now, but when the pictures won't come, when the brush and pen are uninspired, life just isn't the same. The illness itself is shameful enough, but the loss of the pictures that filled your head as long as you can remember, the way you have always seen the world...it can be an unbearable soul sickness.

And I never struggle with that these days. If the art isn't working then I can spend an hour or two with the kids I tutor and my spirit is bursting. For me, teaching kids, especially struggling kids, you have to pull out all the stops, you have do your very best to see through their eyes, what they connect with. When you do that, when you see that magic moment when a child understands he or she can really see their own thoughts in pictures or letters or strings of movements, something magic happens...something they can carry into math and music, foreign languages, language arts, social studies or history. I feel like I can see firing synapses, like watching fireworks. Sometimes I have to reign in my excitement a little...you want them to keep making the connections, creating connections to language, to equations. They don't need to know their sports talent or outdoor recreation can be informed by geometry. It just happens for most. for some, you have to teach it on the court and finish the lesson back in the book. The best teaching tools come from the learner. then I have the advisory crew~ my best teaching tips come from the world of expert teachers all around me.

never blog when angry

Good Lord, save me from myself.

I haven't written in a while for many reasons. I am one angry woman. I want to control things that are not mine to control. I want this blog space to appear spotless, but not without thought. The problem is that reflection is slowed when one is battening down the hatches against the wind, finding shelter in the midst of storm after storm. Maybe that is why running is so good for a body. It might bring time of reflection without being immobilized, paralyzed by rage...or sadness...or any of the other common human conditions.

The collage of people pictures is of Barbette, my sister, and her significant other. He has been quick learning the outdoor chores and he provides a new perspective. One picture is of Mia, his daughter. I didn't have one of Grant, Nathan's son, but we sure like having them here. Nate is very funny and between Barb and Nate the two of them can get laughter going easily. Both Barb and Nate are working long hours so we will see them much less. We will have to make dates to play indoor board games. I wish for them the happiness they deserve.

I want professionals, like the specialist we saw for Donna, to never, ever show the kind of homophobia he did, and I never again want to be immobilized with shock as she was treated so badly. I have to forgive myself for not intervening...but there was so little time for me to act. He spent 8 minutes with us, after a 40 minute wait. He roughly examined her, so roughly I should have slapped him, truly, and I have not smacked anyone since my sister and I wrestled over clothes and games and car seat space. With false authority this "doctor" pronounced that she should "get on with her life, this is stress and you just need to stop taking medication for your pain and discomfort..." I didn't necessarily need to intervene. Donna can take care of herself very well, better than ever, and she has soldiered on, in spite of not feeling well since April of this year. Whither thou goest I shall go. I want my love to feel better, and I want us to have found the answer months ago.

I want my aunt, who has been a role model for me my entire life, to be cancer-free.

I want my partner's father to be safe and warm and happy. I want to help and I can not.

I want none of us to be allergic to anything.

I want to forget the savage crime I survived 13 years ago. I want to be able to face these final physical repairs without fear, eyes wide open.

I want to erase the shame I feel when I am forced to share the truths of my body's uneases. I want to be tough and rugged and unstoppable. I rage at the possibility that I may have to surrender more of my freedom. I want to be lifted above the endless, endless exhaustion. I want to be like all the other kids on the playground. I want to be the sturdy oak, not the fragile orchid.

I want nicotine to be not addictive.

I want world peace, and I want to be naive enough to believe anything harmed can be reversed in the next four years, no matter who leads us.

I want to be calm and joyful and only use this space to show the light side, to show the art work I have been blessed with.

I want to never feel self-pity, and to never blame anyone else for my shortcomings.

I have never been good at the powerless thing. Surrender is not an option. So I will wait as this anger transforms, I will use it as fuel, I will remember it but not forget all I have to be grateful for.

Although, I may have to make some anonymous blog somewhere for the darkest of the dark thoughts, a place to hide the sarcasm and cruel ironies, a bucket to hide revenge in. I may need a place to hide the thoughts of revenge; the messy addled mind of a woman who has endured plenty and knows that many others endure far more.

Have you seen the art work lately?

Posting backward, I reviewed the set of photos that was linked here when I realized it had more old work than I wanted to show, and some more personal work I didn't know I had left in. Yes, yes, we all know about Freudian slips, but this was more a banana peel.

In the releasing of the name "wishhorse studio" and the change over to Broad Brook Art I apparently lost some art publication in the transition.

The hour grows late and the race is on between now and the mouth mess, with the first 3 hour procedure under anesthesia on 9/9. My battle with this seems epic to me...but as 7 of 9 would quote on the television show Star Trek Voyager, "resistance is futile". It would seem that I am trapped, rocketing toward better health despite my fear.

With hurricanes and elections bearing down on us few will have much peace. Be the calm in the storm, follow your heart.

Divided we fall, united we stand

This is when that old phrase "the personal is political" and so the political must also be personal comes into play. No matter where you turn there are lessons in freedom of speech, the health of the and wealth of a global community and when a local economy can be altered in an instant with the departure or arrival of industry.

I firmly believe that each and every citizen should exercise the sometimes hard won right to vote. There are three homes on this family farm turned compound and each home has a different political mix. I am not sure what my parents intended as we grew up but time with family friends meant spirited discussions with many points of view. Recently I remembered a moment I had at my mother's knee...literally, her knee. The neighborhood women were having a spirited discussion over coffee about the politics of the day. I preferred the company of adults at the moment so I sat under the table at my mother's feet. In our neighborhood people with very disparate views seemed free to present any viewpoint. I have no idea how old I was, but I fit easily under the table without coming into contact with anyone. I knew the posse did not all agree, that was clear. The thrill for me was hearing all the sides...the disagreements that dissolved the second any one of our neighborhood crew of children needed something, anything. Every mother was on hand to dispense band-aids or advice and would call your won mother well before your arrival on your own front step.

As children will do, we tested our boundaries. We rode our bikes well outside of firmly defined areas. We read things we were not supposed to know about, and with glee we shared the greatest discovered contraband. Our games were of our own design, with rules that changed as needed. You might guess that the rules changed to ensure the success of our playground-style picked teams, but the opposite was true. We would change the rules to ensure that we were all equally invested in the outcome,

Full Production Gear

Donna has been busy finishing the set-up of her production area, mostly the wood lathe. We don't have much...Norm Abrams wouldn't consider it a "shop" at all, but it has been a labor of love since February and it is easy to spend time there. There has been a lot of finessing setting up areas. We are trying to avoid needing to change the power outlet locations...one of those "if I knew then what I know now..." situations.

A guaranteed gorgeous weekend will most likely keep us outdoors. There hasn't been much time for that and sure enough weed monsters from the ground level are creeping up through the deck, a full 8 feet above the ground. I kid you not!

I have finished another set of scrafito pieces based on birds and trees. I am using a magnifier to make the smallest lines and the detail of the work pleases my obsessive tendencies. Within a couple of days I will have the new pastels photographed and ready for purchase. They are currently unframed although I will offer them framed as well.

Donna did win a local contest with her fledgling owl photo and we have had some great luck with new photos of wildlife. We have a compound-wide wildlife alert system~ simple phone calls telling what and where...no time for chit chat...fast fast fast to cameras and binoculars. Often the alert includes our neighbors to the North. Fred and Helene's yard and gardens are the epitome of the English countryside they love and I can see all the best parts right here out of the studio window.

This doe and her twin fawns have visited a couple of times. The meadow grasses are too tall to spot them and it is nice when the fallen fruit in the orchard lures them into the mowed areas. I am quite sure Fred is torn between the love of the wildlife and the love of his gardens. Often his best heritage specimens serve as lovely meal to the deer and chipmunks and woodchucks. They can undo countless hours of work in one evening. I bought a special variety of tomato this year and it was eaten~ fruit, blossoms, and stem~ by the chipmunks who would like to rid themselves of the pesky humans in their home. They chatter indignantly and loud enough to attract the attention of our indoor kitty Cassandra. She would like just a minute outside...the regular yips and howls of coyote, fox and fisher assure that will never happen. We know the predators are helping us with the garden pests and the kitty does well patrolling the downstairs for mice. That will have to do.

Often we view things that fully demonstrate the cycles of life and death up and down the food chain. A cooper's hawk has been using the top of this bluebird house and a branch in the hackamatack trees as a place to enjoy a meal. The bluebirds and swallows are long fledged but the relentless house sparrows have been spooked away from this particular box.

I have taken several weeks away from the website to edit and organize photos of art work. We have well over 500 images and the cataloging and editing have taken more time than I anticipated. I finally decided I needed to spend as much time on art work as on the computer and that has worked out better all around. I hope this all will lead to faster editing and uploading.

To that end we are adding a new backup system. I suppose we might be called too cautious but it's easy to lose something or everything. Mom's computer bit the dust last week and we were not able to salvage the folks pictures from their Audubon tour in Texas. The new computer should be in any day and when we set Mom up she will have a sure-fire way to back up those photos from their trips. They added plenty of new birds to their life list and hopefully the other travelers can share some of their photos so all is not lost.

Soul Bared, Soul Barren

We have been away. Not physically away, but far off. For me there has been a struggle to find the boundaries. What do I share here? This venue is about publishing the art fast...the learning curve on some of the web tools is steep, and I have not had the the time (or focus) to tweak each line of HTML in the way I want. Now I remember a conversation I had couple of months ago with my father. The business end of our art needed attention and I was consulting him about how to manage it best. He listened to all of my analysis, my endless myriad of options, leaning back on the chair at his computer. At the end of my detailed explanations he quietly urged me to "keep it simple".

That may seem like common sense, knowledge I should have acquired already. But those who know me understand this is my greatest challenge. I made a collage a 15 years ago that included and image of Thoreau's "simplify, simplify, simplify". I had read an article about a man managing his property and one piece of it had an outbuilding. He carved Thoreau's words into a rugged slice of granite, kept in a building next to his pond. In spite of this man's wealth the outbuilding was spare. The interior was painted completely white and every wall had an attached bench, nothing more. There were no doors to close, just sizable openings, so I imagined perching quietly inside, observing every detail of the teaming life surrounding the shed. The stone was perched on the bench inside, and its bold presence seemed noble to me. I transfered a photo of it in the middle of my chaotic collage and always kept it where I could see it while I worked. I put it away when it seemed I would never make another piece of art again.

Just now, as I ponder all of these VERY serious philosophical questions, baring my soul, Donna has been playing games on her computer...a game we are both addicted to. She was sure she had leaped over the last hurdle, completing the final puzzle. But NO! She had been betrayed! I was having a sip of soda and sure enough I could not contain my laughter...I spewed a mouthful soda all over my desk, keyboard and monitor. I walked into her office with soda still dripping from my face. These are the laughs that save me. Donna frequently laughs in her sleep. How can life be any better? Well, my monitor could be cleaner.

So there is the boundary, the outer reaches of what is real. Some higher power intervened and I was rightly pulled back to what is real, what is not barren, what will never be barren.

Gardening

More appropriately I should say "leeching from the bounty" because the folks have done all the work and we have simply taken advantage of the harvest. The garden reminds me that I have to lighten up...rain comes when it does, one year has zuccini and one has none...this is my zuccini year!

My parental Master Gardener likes summer squash better so I have been lobbying for a zuccini plant for a couple of years. I am sure anyone who grows vegetables knows that you can't plant just ONE. What would you do with the other 5 plants in the six pack? How long will leftover seed keep? And what about the extra one that the bugs or woodchucks or other pests need?

So it all grows up and the vermin leave it alone and suddenly we could open not just a farm stand but a full zuccini-only organic grocery store.

Mom has been a constant supplier of delicious, moist zuccini bread. Turns out the whole compound is having the stuff for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack time! It seemed only fair that I take my turn baking. After all, I have whined about the zuccini. And we should share the burden of oven heat in the summer kitchen. Theoretically... but this is a perfect example of what a great baker I am. The recipe I used was exactly the same as Mom used, except I decided mini loaf pans would make it easier to share. So cute! So fun! So yummy!

So RAW.

The recipe said that if you used the small loaf pans the bread would need 30 minutes of baking time, instead of the hour the big pan takes.

So I set aside the raw loaves and started over.

I wanted to be SURE they weren't raw, so I baked the little buggers for the full hour.

Now I could build myself a little wall out of cute little zuccini bricks.

Of course there was enough zuccini to try another batch. I am a bright girl...what else could go wrong? Live and learn, right? Here's my problem...I can't taste test the last loaves. Turns out I can't even look at the fruit of my labors, nevermind taste it.

Maybe I will go look for some tomatoes in the garden. Wait! I don't have to. Fa has made a batch of one of my all time favorites...garden stew! His tomatoes, peppers, onions,celery...most anything harvestable all simmered together. It's the only "stew" I eat.

Good thing I can draw. Being away from the computer can be good. After a little while I pick up the pen or pencil or pastel and get going. I clearly can't make a living as a baker. I am hoping we can all laugh about it and relax while floating a bit in the pool. I will draw another one of these after dark.

Summer is fleeting.

Website setback

I am racing the severe thunderstorm warning, so excuse typos or rambling. If you have seen the blog before you know I have altered the look to make it easier to read and added the "new" logo that is included in the unpublished website. All of it is done except the display of the actual work for sale! A problem with my directory tree has to be resolved and I lost the edits on nearly 400 photos. Each set of photos has to be imported again into the two programs I use to make them web-ready.

Barbette's partner Nate has his daughter here now and perhaps her nimble young mind and sophistication might lend me another viewpoint. Mia is a great budding artist and reminds me of myself at that age with all of her extra projects and interests. Both Mia and Grant, Nate's children, are very impressive and enjoyable. We had a great family dinner over at Barb's though we opted out of croquet. My favorite lawn game is bocce ball and perhaps I can persuade them another time.

All this computer action has kept me from making more artwork and these deadlines are looming. I am going to work on the photo situation, but I will not publish the website this week so I can catch up on production.

Perhaps you can relate to my dilemma as the summer flies by~ to spend a spectacular day out of doors instead of holed up in here. Balance is required. Donna helped set me up in the sunnier portion of the house and we are going to savor the summer while we can.

Bad weather is upon us now. Soon I will share the fall show schedule and I will be patient with myself as I sort out the photo thing. At least I lost none of the originals. Time to get an external hard drive to protect the computer catalog.

Let me know what you think of the logo and I will publish new work here on the blog. Donna is having her lathe repaired so we are stalled on more than one front. We are pleased with our 2008 progress and we will keep you up to date. Thanks for the kind words and feedback.

Networking

I really have to get out more, it is time to build a network of artists in this area. I have worked in isolation since moving to Broad Brook from ArtSpace Hartford. I miss the collaboration, the spur-of-the-moment critique~ and political and philosophical debate. Music drifted or slammed into the hallways and we traded work for theater tickets, or simply dropped a friend's name at the door, hoping for a seat.

Perfectionism has transformed the studio into a spider hole. Cassandra (kitty) is vocal about how much time I am spending here so I have brought some kitty toys in. This morning she crept behind a stack of canvases and meowed, then ran down the hall at full gallop to flop down on the rug. Then she walked over to her box of toys and just stared at them, hoping a person would animate them. How could I resist?

Enough. I am working with one eye closed again. No rest for the wicked.

Rain and rain

But we aren't having a hurricane.

Cassandra the kitty is not liking Day 2 of thunder and lightning so I won't tarry here at the computer. She will urgently claw everything we own until I settle in to comfort her discomfort. Cheyenne was the same in a storm. I miss her.

Is it only Tuesday?

Maybe I am just having a week of Mondays. 4 hours ago work was taking a good path. A few years back one of my students told me his martial arts trainer had passed along a new point of view, some sage advice. When things don't seem right, change the channel. It sounds simplistic but part of its beauty is the simplicity. I have adopted the words and practice for my own and now is a good time to practice it. Everything I am working on seems like it is written in a different language, as if I need to wade through some sort of thick slime to make sense of it.

So I am off, changing the channel.

Is it only Monday?

I have always liked to believe that I broke the rule on "spacey" artist types. Clearly after today I may have to admit I might be a member of the stereotype after all. My sister, Barbette, views me as the Van Gogh type, quick to turn tragedy to epic proportions. Though it has never occurred to me to slice off my ear and send it to the local prostitute as a demonstration of love, I must admit I have come close. Today's absurdity takes the cake; whatever cake Van Gogh might have been eating whilst asylumed. I looked for angel food but the store-baked version would feed 60. I tried the idea of a Marie Callendar's pound cake and lingered quite a while over an Entenmann's butter thingy. No cake was suitable, but there was no denying I flaked out in every other respect.

As I drove away from Enfield, talking with Donna via cell phone with the speaker on (it IS illegal to hold it up to your ear, which makes sense), I yelped in disgust! I thought I left my glasses back at the lab or something. I had gone about 1/10th of a mile and I panicked. I told Donna I did not have my glasses and I was going to retrace my footsteps to find them. Sianara sweetie! I abruptly hung up, made a U-turn, and then suddenly drove right by the place I thought I left them. Another U-turn (not in the street~ in a parking lot) and I automatically punched the center of my nose. There they were, more clean than usual, on my face the entire time. I AM AN IMBECILE!!!

I headed home, tail between my legs, all the while laughing at my moronic behavior. The humilation is not just forgetting the glasses were on my face, it is knowing that I rely on them now for distance as well as reading. I am still adjusting to the idea that I will see better if I keep them on while looking through the binoculars. Figuring out that fractal truth is near impossible to me, kind of like Captain Janeway and her despised quantum mechanics on Voyager. Not only am I dim-sighted, I am such a Star Trek groupie that I see my problem in the fictional space/time continuum. So so SO very sad little geek girl.

By the way, I loathed the series prequel. What was that called? "Enterprise"? Or something equally unimaginative. I used to cook dinner to Voyager reruns, but now that TV has died and I have to live with merely with my own thoughts as I cook. Good or bad? Remains to be seen. Where is that nano?

A stormy night kept all of us restless, at least the 4 of us Northward. Time to sleep. I HATE THESE DAYS. I HATE THEM.

Of fear and alligators

In just a couple of hours we here at the compound will have a visit from one of our long-time closest friends. We don't see her often, she lives quite away, but she still has friends and family near us and this trip she has time to stay a little bit here at Mulberry Hill Farm.

I am trying to figure out if it is rude to pack up my current work and haul it over to my sister's, where dinner will be. She has not met Donna or Nathan yet and the last time she was in my house it was for my sister's surprise 40th birthday party. Barbette's cancer treatment was done and her hair was growing in.

Her visit is important to me. Mandy is 4 years older than I am and it is not an overstatement to say I worshipped her. She was kind and didn't mind little girls following her around like a puppy dogs. My sister and I would share her room on visits up to her family's Vermont farm and the only time she was ever frustrated with us was when we sniffled and snored kept her awake when we slept in her room.

We all had something we collected. For me it was butterflies. Barbette collected frogs and my mother collected owls. Actually, we all still do. Mandy collected mice, and I drew and drew and drew mice on everything. I had different mouse formulas, a certain way to draw the heads, bodies, ears and tails. Then of course I drew them doing different things. Out of fear that my childish works might be discovered and embarrass me I do believe I threw out any that might have accidentally survived. I pictured myself dying, like some artists and poets, and in the throwing out of my things these would accidentally be discovered with other hidden artwork, art I made that I never expected to sell or be seen. Other secrets I could tolerate reveal of, but not artwork that was inferior or childish. Yet, I would be dead. The idea of fearing judgment post-mortem is ridiculous...still, it lurks.

Every time she liked something I drew I was encouraged more, and I am grateful that I was encouraged by everyone, from the moment I put anything down on paper. I could go and go and go and have all kinds of compliments. I copied all of the images of the late sixties and early seventies. I drew fashion designs, imagining that I might someday be able to have my own fashion lable. I thought I might have a future designing album covers. They were the dreams of a child and I carried notebook after notebook, and drew on scrap paper my father brought home from the data processing center at Travelers. When we went to the dump we would scour the piles of trash for discarded office supplies or paper I could use. One of the best trips yielded a variety of ink pens and my affair with ink drawings began. For Christmas and birthdays I always had the latest art supply and I squirreled them away, afraid to use them up. Recently I discarded a box of pastels my father gave me when I was in my early teens. There were only very small pieces left but those pieces had moulded a bit and I knew I would finally have to part with them. The company that manufactured them is gone, and the pastels I was required to purchase for college art classes were inferior. Just over the last several months I have begun collecting and using pastels that finally, finally measure up to the intense pigments of long-ago, and I am very happy with the work I have done with them so far.

Back to Mandy...I only shared elementary school with her for a couple of years, but when her class line passed ours in the halls on the way to lunch or another class she always waved to me. Imagine! A fifth grader waved to me! She taught me to ski and once we needed to get down the mountain fast, so she skied me down the mountain road tucked beneath her. All four of our skies road aligned together, faster than I had ever gone. I have no idea who carried our poles or why we had to get down fast, but the feeling of that speed has never ceased to be alluring. I have only had cross-country ski equipment for years and Donna and I have adopted snowshoes so we can track the local critters. No speed there.

Mandy invented a trivia game that we would all play when we were inside. I can't remember what the subjects were and I vaguely remember something about a radio station contest. A close guess would prompt her to say, in a very official way, "be more specific please!" and the contestants of the moment would keep guessing until she declared a winner, though she was winner when we couldn't guess it. She always kept an eye out for my little sister and me. She taught us how to horseback ride but I preferred motorcycles to horses and still do. Horses smell my fear and I have never been cured of it.

So here is the quandry. Should I haul some of my current work along to show her? When I sent her the rabbit moon card it came back to me and I found I had an outdated email address. This is where I stumble. In my mind it is rude to ask for such individual attention when everyone catching up. That is the purpose for the gathering for all of us. Should I simply ask her to come by the studio and take a look while she is here? My only hesitation there is that the house is in upheaval. I have been single-minded to build inventory, to get the word out with the new business name, finish designing logos and website. I have barely tended to anything else...Donna will periodically set a meal in front of me, or lure me out for a little time. In my imagination my home will be substandard due to my neglect, somehow invalidating the artwork.

How pathetic am I? So much worrying what others think...so hard to set aside the fear of disappointing, the stigma of underachievement.

The pit of alligators I thought was next to my bed as a child yawns open yet again. Then, as now, I am afraid to put my foot down on the floor lest I might be eaten. But the imagined yawning alligator jaws are my own fear come to feast.

silly troll!

I have felt like the troll under the bridge, waiting for someone to trip-trop overhead, like the three billy goats all name Gruff. My father used to read the fairy tale to my sister and me and he made the best noises and voices, completely different for each character. Do you know the story?

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html#gruff

Barbie (we must use her given name now, Barbette) and I would poke him and climb around him or jump on him to get him to make those funny noises. Just a few months ago we regressed to play one of our favorite tricks...we would each grab one of his stocking feet and tie a knot in his socks at the toe. He grimaced and growled and squeaked and roared, the same as when we were little, and we laughed hard at our triumph, both socks firmly knotted at the toe.

Well, a lovely person is coming to trip-trop over my bridge and I am going to emerge and enjoy some sunshine and splashing and good company. There will be lunch of treats made from the garden plenty. It would be just silly to miss this chance! Already the days are short enough that we need lights on when we get up for work. It is always a bad sign when I am reading with one eye closed, reading and computer fatigued.

I hear the trip-trop now and I am off to play.

Overly Optimistic? I think not!

Optimism is always good. In fact, optimism has helped me slog through some very difficult times. Eternal optimism can go too far, blinding one to danger or difficulty. I also know a couple of self-described "realists" who are plagued by negativity, always poised for the worst possible outcome. Their realism is blinded by pain and the past, rendering them unable to see subtle shades of grey.

I like to think I live on Middle Ground, a little known island paradise off the coast of anywhere and everywhere. But apparently there is no Middle Ground off the coast of the World Wide Web. Like Dory in Finding Nemo, the fish with eternal optimism, I must "just keep swimming, swimming, swimming".

We are swimming, and I have been known to carry a metaphor off the map, so I will not say we are "treading water" or "riding the wave". Instead I will not tell you that something on the website will appear by such-and-such a day. Donna and I will e-mail links and announcement directly and privately, to our mailing list customers and other friends.

We expect the best but prepare for imperfection. For now I can be found in the studio at my computer, on hold for my technical support person in India.

What to tell?

Again I come back to blog and struggle with the idea of conceit: what could I have to say that is unique or important enough to post? But the creation of both fine art and crafts requires interaction. By making art I show you what I saw or felt. I feel most successful when the thing I have made is meaningful to a viewer in some way. It is like an invisible strand of thread, reaching out of my experience into yours; something I experienced is similar to something you once experienced. I am not there, with the piece, but you know something about me anyway, and maybe it reminds you of something that is unique to you. There is common ground yet perhaps we never meet.

I used to use the words "organic" and "dynamic" when speaking about change, about inevitability, and about evolution or destruction. Any art I see brings me to the brink of understanding SOMETHING, and is worth looking at, even for a split second. In that split second I can love or loathe, I can be moved and look closer or I can be angry, irritated or indifferent, and dismiss it. Maybe in another few seconds or other interval I will change my perception. Maybe I will take the art home, or revisit it. Over time I will have changed, and I will see something new even if the thing itself seems to remain static. All of that is organic, changing, living even if lifeless, unique and yet similiar.

Currently the word "organic" is being beaten to death, overused and at the same time undefined. How can a massive organization like Wal-Mart suddenly have found or created a source for all types of produce grown in soil that has no chemicals in it, without processed fertilizer, without the use of pest control? Even my local farmer has to do something to enhance crop production, to prevent being robbed of income by birds or bugs. Here at home I can pluck the damaging insects off, leaf by leaf, plant by plant. Anywhere else I have no expectation of such vigilance. It is in nature to act in self-preservation. Birds will pretend they are wounded and limp about, dragging a wing, to lure you or any other predator away from its young. They will lay their eggs in the nest of others and let others raise their offspring, offspring who will shove the smaller out of the nest to die. Butterflies lie and so do people, for simple self-preservation. I won't be able to use the word "organic" any more to describe something that is in the midst of change, moving toward something different, to an unseen future.

Okay. I got carried away by "organic". I won't go there with "dynamic". Although consider, for a split second, that fire breathes and continents move and heave, and water wears away anything and everything to be at the bottom, to be even with the sea. All that is true regardless of what temperature the globe is.

I am sure no one questions how I get lost in my head.

How important is it to find a way out?

Evolution

So there is a new incarnation in this business of art. My lovely "wishhorse" served me well for a decade but we put the sweet mare out to pasture after she pulled up lame on the web. It was just too confusing. In person, with an artist statement, the meaning of the granted wish horse was clear, but it was hard to find us on the internet.

So here WE are, newly founded as Broad Brook Art.

Donna and I have been together a little less than 5 years. When we met I was sure I would never make my own art again...I will skip the indulgent sob story. An old friend of mine came to our house for the first time and asked me where all my work was. Slowly I started to excavate pieces I hadn't shown in a very long time. Donna also had photography worthy of display. Unearthing all of those artifacts was inspirational. We took a seminar class at Maine College of art together a couple of years ago and we really loved it. We needed to find a way to do more.

I think most would agree that it is easy to get sidetracked. Flowers, trees, neighbors, gardens and grass are distracting enough. Add in a periodic crisis and the next thing you know another day and another week slips by. Discipline is the key. I feel a little like a troll these days, indoors all the time to build inventories for Fall shows. I will post the specific dates and places shortly and I am very happy with what I have to show. We have secured the new domain name and within the next week or so we will unveil the website. I have a new mailer in the works so look for us in the mailbox too.

It is thrilling that Donna will continue to do her wood-turning. We already have ideas for pieces we can collaborate on and this week we are expanding the workshop area, downstairs from the studio. A lightning strike last week had consequences in all three houses on the compound. I was so grateful I had all the equipment upstairs shut down and unplugged, smug even, but I didn't think about the downstairs. We are hoping to have the casualties restored this 4th of July weekend.

It has been great to have the ongoing support from friends who have encouraged the works in progress and offered sympathy when Cheyenne died this Spring. I feel very fortunate to have these friends who are willing to read my lengthy e-mails and set aside any pressure to type back, picking up the phone instead. I feel blessed.

Anything is possible!