"Catch 22" or "Running Around with my Hair on Fire"

I will likely do more to edit this little me character as I go forward (insert flames), but one of the things that makes me feel like I am doing just that....running around with my hair on fire...is begging people to "like" me or "click this and that" in an effort to get "the word" out and show off more art work. Most of my artist friends agree...we could spend 85% of our time on the computer or phone, marketing and maintaining communications, and a mere 15% (or, sadly, far less) actually making the art.

It isn't a balance that sits well with most of us. It isn't balanced at all.

We artists dream that we will simply "be discovered" like naive potential starlets in the early days of movies. We extract great joy from the process of creating, and then again great joy when a viewer really, really likes something we have created. From the drawing board to the wall there is so much to do! Now with facebook and websites and pins to manage as well as the old-fashioned finding gallery or public space to display the business of art has changed in a fabulous way. In a really fabulous sucking-all-the-time-and-life-from-you way. Like running around with my hair on fire. I am not really sure if I should just scream "look at me" or beg you to put it out!

With just two weeks until I unveil the new work going into the show "A Sea in Myth and Reality" things really are very busy, but here I am typing a blog entry. My first instinct is to keep the computers off, lock the door and stop answering the phone so I can get everything just right...but when I don't let you in on what I am up to then I don't sell a thing. And the only way to keep making art is to sell some.

So follow me, would you? 

Everything Little Thing It Does is Magic

Maybe "It" is New England. Maybe "It" or "She" is the community of humans experiencing this life and smashing into each other like the movie "Crash". I think "It" or "She" is the whole dang planet and everything IS magic.

Case in point: Donna helped me hang 26 works at the Simsbury Public Library, which is a great place within a great place. We popped across the streeet for a great lunch at Peaberry's and hit Rosedale Farms on our way back home. http://www.rosedale1920.com/about-us.html. They were having a wine tasting of their own vineyard's product...6 one ounce tastes for $9.While it seemed like a good deal we thought we would move on with the corn, peaches and strawberries we plucked from their stand.

In the meantime I am keeping pace with Audubon's education regarding arctic creatures you might not be aware rely on the arctic. http://policy.audubon.org/alaska-arctic-page

Each animal is becoming an art piece that works with the Inuit legends and stories that are told and retold to this day. One of the ways the Inuit coped with cultural change brought on by contact with other peoples is to make art...does life get better than that? All right, I am biased. But dramatic climate change is pushing up the pace on change all around the arctic, for human and animal alike. The Audubon Society wanted to know if I knew peregrine falcons relied on arctic wilderness. Yep. Knew that...but I didn't have any idea I would look up from my perch in our living room to find a peregrine falcon clinging to the deck. I assume the gorgeous bird had just missed a bird snack at one of the feeders but it was an amazing site that has yet to be repeated. Suddenly, what the arctic and I have in common closed it circle. Every little thing she does is magic.

When you live in a small town gossip and innuendo are your bedfellows and I had heard (but, truthfully, not believed) that a peregrine was nesting on the high power lines about a mile away. I still have no confirmation except for that one winter moment when the unmistakable peregrine mask stared at me from 20 feet away on my own deck. Recently we have had suspicious sightings of small falcon shapes...not quite sharp-shinned hawk definitely not american kestrel (goodness I miss them). Crank open my identifying mind and eye? Again, yes. Always look for the magic!