Tooting my own horn!

Two of my pieces have been accepted into the 6th Annual Fernwood Juried Landscape Exhibition.  The Clark Gallery is located in the Visitor Center at Fernwood Botanical Garden, a natural wonder and worthy of a visit. The galleries and gift shop are so lovely and (bonus) their little cafe is a real treat. 

 The opening reception is this Sunday from 2-4pm and the exhibit runs until December 31.  13988 Range Line Rd., Niles, MI. Hours Tuesday-Saturday 10-5pm Sunday 12-5  (Beginning November 25, daytime garden hours are Tuesday - Sunday 12 - 4 )

What’s in a name?

This Saturday I’ll be taking these two pieces to (I hope) be juried into a show. Do you know the hardest part of getting them ready? Deciding on a title…… currently I call them the rocky one and autumn colors but that really doesn’t do it for me. 

SOLD

It’s all in the details

I get lost in the details to a point and then really appreciate the obscurity of edges. A lesson I should try harder to apply to life-connecting to those who are near (not necessarily geographically) and that I love; attending to what is important and letting go of things outside my reach.  

EARLY MORNING RAIN (SOLD)

12x6 Watercolor on YUPO

This is done with a very limited color palette then much of the detail with charcoal or graphite and black colored pencil

Small Stuff

Small stuff……..don’t sweat it, right!  I’m wrapping up several small (4x4inch) watercolors. Mounting them on 5x7 flat cards with envelopes so they can be framed or mailed. There are a dozen I did in a series called  “Treetops”. 

“Treetops”

4x4 watercolor on YUPO

Saturday…..Play Day!

 I came into my studio today to have a good clean-up but………..what can I say?  Gelliplate printing, YUPO and collage. 

And the studio still looks like this……..

Like Sea Glass

“I want to age like sea glass……..”

Beach Glass

Watercolor on 140lb Arches

7x7 matted to 8x8

I love this poem by Bernadette Noll……..

I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.