Great Day

Today was a very good day! I walked with a friend, worked on my book, met with my Acquisitions Editor, had a doctor's appointment and found a place to write without interruptions!

That last bit is the most important.

I set up a meeting with Stephanie, my editor (still love saying that!) at a locally owned coffee shop. This shop is ALWAYS open, has great coffee and tea, a couple of sofas lots of tables and chairs -- and free wifi access. It came to me like a lightening strike as I was getting ready for this meeting: "this coffee shop is your new workspace!" Well duh!

I won't be interrupted by phone calls, or knocks on the door. I won't have to get up and take out the dogs every hour. I won't have to choose which dog gets to sit on my lap to help me write my book.

I will purchase coffee or tea.

I will move my car however often is necessary.

I will be grateful for the quiet, anonymous space. Yea! (and I won't abuse these priviledges.)

Back to the meeting: Stephanie was quite impressed with the work I have done so far and told me that I was right on schedule. I thought I was running behind. We had a great brainstorming session and I feel like I can take on the world, one chapter at a time.

Yes, today was a very good day.

Roses are red, and blue and yellow, and . . .

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=36352&in_page_id=34

Happy Valentine's Day to all my artistic, colorful friends and fellow bloggers. Have a great day!

Scary Friday the 13th? Happy Valentine's Day!

This Friday the 13th wasn't such a bad day -- in fact, it was great. The evening before, I had a bit of a mental/emotional melt-down and had a heart-to-heart with my beloved husband. We decided we would start Friday off with two hours of serious cleaning, well -- sorting and tossing. Cleaning comes later.

I'm a hoarder, a pack rat, collector of junk.

There, I've said it.

Our home is not so much our castle as a rubbish heap. I have a VERY hard time letting go of perfectly good clothes, magazines, useful potential art supplies. In fact I have a hard time letting go of just about everything but junk mail. But even that chokes up the already cluttered works. Junk mail is my sweetheart's bailiwick.

Over the years my messy little office/studio space has spilled into almost every room of our little house. I hate it and I've been hating myself and beating myself up inside because of it.

But I'm not lazy. I work from home and I teach at university. I have a very full schedule of teaching, meetings, volunteering, etc. I have to stop and start my projects in mid-stream. I'm writing a book, I'm working on jewelry, I'm staying up late to grade student works online. I just never got in the habit of tidying up before I go to bed, like my mom has suggested. So stuff has just piled up.

So. Today was very good. I have momentum. My husband understands me a little better (after 18 years of marriage).

This Valentine's Day I have a new, deeper love for my beloved. And I feel the tender, caring love of my sweetheart in a new and more profound way.

He loves me warts (and wrinkles and love-handles) and jewelry-finding and fabric swatches and all.

The Joy of Teaching

This week I am lecturing about Earth Art/Environmental Art and some of the great prehistoric sites I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I get all excited about this material because I have personal experience with it. I have walked around Castlerigg, the oldest stone circle in England (NOT Stonehenge). I have traipsed through sheep pastures to visit the Neolithic burial cairns at Kilmartin Glen. I've placed my foot in the spot where early Scottish Kings proved their worth to be crowned on Dunnad Hill Fort. I have also visited Orkey and encountered the wealth of Neolithic remains of astronomical technology and housing settlements.

Castlerigg in the Lake District of Cumbria, England

I try to share it with my students to varying degrees of success. It is hard to "get it" if you haven't actually "done it".

This section also introduces them to Andy Goldsworthy and his art. This they get -- mostly because they can relate to a guy working patiently on a fiddly project, only to see it collapse before his (and their) eyes. I also have them create works inspired by Goldsworthy. It is a real treat for me, because I never know what I will be opening up in the next email from the students.

A few years ago, I developed the visual arts aspects for a team-taught Study Abroad program which travelled to Scotland for four summers. To see students "get it", to have students take me by the arm and tug me to a specific location so that I could experience their vantage point in a newly learned experience just gives me goose-bumps. So often, I plant seeds and never see the fruits of my labor. But in an experience like those Study Abroad learning environments, the seed is planted and grows to fruition before my eyes -- not always, but most of the time.

I love planting seeds and seeing them flourish. I also love to see the lightbulb go off over someone's head. It thrills me to teach and to help students "get it". That, for me, is the joy of teaching.

If you teach, what excites you? If you learn, what helps you "get it" the best -- experience, observations, kinetics (hands on), listening to lectures? What has been your most exciting learning experience?

Be prepared

I've been making Anglican style Rosary bracelets for about four years now. I haven't taken them to a wider audience, such as an etsy shop (I have a storefront, but haven't move in), but word of mouth has been good.

This weekend, the visiting mother of a friend sought me out at a meeting to ask about a special order. Luckily, I had several bracelets in my purse, ready for such a request. However, she wanted a special cross that I didn't have in stock. After doing some research with my sources, I discovered I wouldn't be able to order the cross, so I made one.

What do you think? Have you ever had a situation where you had to 'punt' to make a sale or meet a deadline? I know a lot of us wear our pieces, but do you carry stock in your pocket/purse?

I have not posted in a while. I look over at my blog list and read the posts of those whose blogs I follow and discover that there is something keeping quite a few of us from posting daily. Maybe it is the cold weather or the allergens in the air -- that certainly has kept me under the weather -- or it could be the winter doldrums. I don't know.

I am just not a "daily" gal. I'll probably never post on a daily basis, but I am thinking, and I am writing-- just not here.

I have been working on my e-textbook this week, especially the introduction to the Earth Art section. This past summer my husband and I visited Orkney, a series of islands off the far north of Scotland. (Click on photos for larger view.)We experienced the Neolithic village of Skara Brae and also the associated standing stones of the Maeshowe complex. That experience has found its way into the writing I have done in the past two days. The stone circles we visited three years at Kilmartin Glen and at Castlerigg have also shown up in this section of my textbook.

My first encounter with the work of Andy Goldsworthy in the National Museum of Scotland is also inspiring my writing muse. I have been a fan of his Earth Art almost from that instant. Andy Goldsworthy creates the most evocative, intuitive, whimsical, temporal works of art from natural elements such as stones, leaves, icicles, or sand. There are three or four permanent works by him in the museum, most of them act as a backdrop to the displays in the most ancient part of the collection. However, I was most dazzled by his sphere created from all the bones of a pilot whale that washed ashore. No wires or pegs are used nor any kind of glue to hold it together. It is amazing!

Each semester I introduce my students to Goldsworthy's art and ask them to create a work inspired by it. I am constantly pleased. Today I stumbled upon an artist who is also inspired by Goldsworthy, Richard Shilling. In truth, his earliest post and photographs are his attempts to "emulate" some of Goldsworthy's pieces, but as he continues to work and make art, he finds his own voice.

So, that is what I have been up to. What about you? Or am I just talking to myself here?

Ta-Da!

As promised, I have photographed the necklace I made using Lynn Davis' Dutch Red Zephyr Connector I posted yesterday. I have trouble wearing heavy necklaces, but I have not had any at all with this little beauty. I've been test-wearing it for the last two days and have received a dozen of compliments. No one can believe the focal bead/connector is made from polymer clay. It looks like porcelain and is as light as a feather.

So, what do you think? I have another connector and can't decide if I want to make a twin or to do something different. Help me out here.

And Lynn, you are a most generous soul, thank you!

Thanks Lynn!

A few weeks ago, I was reading the always wonderful blog authored by Lynn Davis, who had created some terrific connectors in polymer clay. She asked for suggestions for their use and offered to give away a set as a prize. Well, there were six of us that responded and she decided that our ideas were so good that we should all get a set!

I received my set of Dutch Red connectors (right) on Christmas Eve. It has taken me this long to 'get to it' and create the lovely, long necklace I had suggested and, I must say, I'm quite pleased. I'll be taking photos later on and will posted them and send them on to Lynn. Thanks again Lynn, for your wonderful generosity!

A New Year!

After the holidays is nice to come back to the regular world and do regular things. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm in a game of Fruit-Basket-Turnover.

I'm losing my campus studio at the end of the month and I'm having to move the contents of my office home because I will be sharing an itsy-bitsy, tee-niney cubical of an office with five (no, 7!) other adjunct faculty. I have no room at home for an office AND a studio.
I'm going to have to find a place to work, to write, and to create.

It's unsettling, to say the least. And just when I have all these wonderful ideas swirling in my head!

And all was for and apple, an apple that she took . . .

After church today I was reminded of a 15th century English carol I first heard about 25 years ago called "Adam lay y-bounden."

Some of the folks were decorating the parish hall, what I call the church's living room, in preparation for this week and all the activities that will go on there. One of my dear friends was placing shiney, red plastic apples on the mantel above the fireplace and I remembered that carol. It's about the fall from grace and the need for salvation caused by an apple.

"And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,

As cleckes finden writtein in their book."

In Medieval and Renaissance art there was a parallel drawn between Adam/Christ and Eve/Mary. One of my most favorite Romanesque sculpture pieces is an Eve figure from the lintel of the cathedral at Autun in France. Eve looks forward with a tear in her eye, while reaching back and taking an apple from a branch held up to her by an evil, clawed hand. The Adam is missing, so we don't know exactly what the whole compostition looked like. I find it quite moving, all the same.

I created an interpretation of the beautiful sculpture in a small wall quilt which includes the snake instead of the clawed hand.

"Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been,
Ne had never our Savior, our Redeemer abeen."

Do you have a favorite carol? Does it bring about special memories?

Enjoy the seasons and the memories it brings you and yours.