the date on the photo tells me this was may 2. this year. 

amazing. 

and why is a photo of my shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor so amazing? 

its amazing because that's where i took them off as i came in the back door that evening after a night out with eric (the love of my life, the father of my child, my best friend for the last 6 years) at a friend's birthday party where we had some much needed fun. together. sans child.

we had hired a babysitter and gone out for real.  he told everyone we saw, with his arm around me, and smiling into my eyes, that we were getting married in june.  on the beach.  in florida. just me, him and our beautiful daughter. like i had always wanted. like we had always talked about. we finally had the money in the bank and an upcoming vacation. and it was on!

and then, the next weekend...he was gone.

and i am so lost.

feeling discarded and abandoned just like those shoes there on the kitchen floor.

so i am trying desperately to make sense of it all. to come to terms. to get a grip. to grit my teeth and bear it. sometimes that works. mostly not.

everything is changing and my daughter and i have to find our way. a new way. 

muddling thru.

and trying, really trying, to find the beauty that is left to show to you. 

but you may have to be a bit patient with me, as everything looks oh so very hazy and distorted at the moment.

a look at some of the color popping up in the garden...trying to find beauty wherever i can these days...

Organization Just Makes Me Feel Better....

whenever i returned from artfest and got back into the studio i simply couldn't do anything productive until it got organized.  really it had been a good year since that had been done and i was to the point of not being able to find anything.  just makes me feel better not only to know where things are, but you know it's gotta look good too!  here are a few shots to show you what i mean....

a must-have...the post-artfest-octopus inspiration station...


and of course, i had to show ya'll my most precious work of art...this was last weekend right before she went onstage at her very first dance recital.  she and all her little friends tapped their hearts out to" lullabye on broadway" and i couldn't have been prouder of her!

Listening...

i discovered several years ago, during an opportunity i had to spend a couple of months working in the caribbean that i am a beach girl.  i am a water girl.  i love the feel of the sand, the smell of the water, and the sound of the waves.  i feel more relaxed and more like myself when i can wake up and go to sleep at the ocean's door.  

and although life (really parenting) has prevented too many trips of any kind for the last 6 years, the cold waters off the washington coast have served to give me a bit of life breath for the last 2.  no bikinis here...sweaters and boots instead...but in the company of my art sisters, searching for beach glass and listening to the sound of the surf has never been as comforting.  if you are very still for just a moment i'll bet you can hear it too...

and if you are really lucky you can also hear stephanie's laugh just as clearly...

202 up33, and my girls, and the beach...(and this lamp) and that's all i need...

really and truly, the best thing about artfest is the people!  i have found, as an adult, and the older i get, especially, the harder it is to make new friends...even more especially those that "get" you...as you.  not as a mom, or so-and-so's wife or the receptionist for him, or whatever...but as YOU.  and they love and appreciate you for who you are and you feel so comfortable for these few days out of the year that you can truly just be yourself, no reservations, no guards up, and they love you anyway!  

for some reason this year our room became the designated hang-out spot every evening...sitting in a circle, sharing our creations from the day, our vendor-night finds, our thoughts, dreams, fears, wine, snacks, laughter, and hearts!  just look at these beautiful ladies!  i heart you all!!

another great thing about these evenings was that everyone felt free to just be and do their own thing...and i thought i would just go ahead and let the cat out of the bag...i secretly want to be a sunny carvallo painting...or at least own one!  (thanks, nikki, i accept. :~)
pam sat and crocheted one night...just taking it all in, i'm sure...
michelle was always the resident photographer of beautiful treasures...that girl's got an eye!
alex is french...an artfest virgin this year...and one of those women i just felt like i have always known...love this girl!  my egg-nest sister!
julie, julie, julie...how is it even possible to still be this cute after such a long day, and several glasses of wine??  one of my roomies, and such a love...
and jill literally created our room for us!  she drove up and brought a table with a cute little tablecloth, coffeepot, complete with sugar cubes, and even fluffy white towels and soft cuddly blankets and pillows...girlfriend, if i haven't said it enough...thank you!  thank you!  thank you!!  sweet, generous, beautiful, talented...i feel so lucky to be able to call her "friend".
laughter. so much laughter.  it fills my heart just thinking about it...nikki, cheryl, alex, michelle...so cute!  i'll leave my camera in your room for sure again next year!
dona and nikki...beautiful, authentic, fun...i can't believe it's a whole 'nother year before i get to see you again...
just look at how cute she is!

nikki and amy all bundled up at the beach...
the gals of 202 up33...my roomies...my art sisters...steph, jill, julie...love and miss ya'll so much i can hardly stand it!!
the first heart rock...
how i felt the entire time...

Artfest!

i don't think i've ever told ya'll about how i came to be involved in this wonderful world of mixed media art, have i?  and above and beyond that, what certain people within this world have meant to me in the last year and a half.  yes, that is really as long as i have been actively involved in this "medium".  (well, i've come to understand that this is what i've been all my life...a mixed-media artist...but i've just never known what to call it until i found this beautiful, welcoming, amazing community of artists.)  and i continue to be entranced and amazed by the talent and vision generosity of spirit of the women in this "world".  but i digress.  

i promise to come back to the tale of how i ended up making mixed-media art as my day job, but let me just say that, even though i know she doesn't realize it, nina bagley played a large part in my story.  she showed me that whenever you follow your passion and remain true to yourself, success will come.  she raised two children on an artist's wages.  she gave me, just by showing snippets of her life through her beautiful blog, that if she could do it, so could i. 

 so last year, my first at artfest, (which is whole other story in itself, of how i got there!) i had the opportunity to meet her...at vendor night...where i purchased one of her beautiful pendants.  it says "seek".  and i remember her saying to me, "that is a good word for you".  and i cried.  (and i'm crying now at the memory of it.) i cried at the realization that "seek" was the perfect word for me, i had been doing that for so long, and i had really just begun, that this woman that i felt like i knew, who had meant so much to me without even knowing it, was standing in front of me.  it was real.  i was really doing this thing...this artist thing...i was out on the proverbial limb, 3000 miles away from home in this otherworldy artsy place surrounded by kindred spirits...and there she was.  i cried and i couldn't stop.  i don't know how else to explain it.  it was just one of those moments in time where it feels like everything stops...

so this year at artfest i had the opportunity to spend 3 whole days in her classes learning from her...and i didn't cry this time...i just smiled a lot.  a whole lot!

and these are the pages that i made for my book....much, much more to do of course, but what fun to step out of my paper and paint and medium into a whole different world of ways to attach.  she just demystified the whole process, and i can't wait to get back to it!


these are a few pages of her sample book...created during her trip to australia...so beautiful!  i never tire of looking at it...




my friend jo liked it too!  (missin' you!)

and this is how we had to take notes...since there was no paper in the building!  just kidding...isn't she the cutest??
and of course, since nina (like me) has a "thing" for hands, i had to show hers at work...
but we won't talk about how it went when i tried this technique....not pretty!  broken beach glass, bent diamond drill bit, and 2 classmates drenched.  nice.  
maybe i will stick with the paper, paint, and medium after all....or if i try this again, i'll be alone!  

Beauty Doesn't Grow on Trees

Wow.  What a month it has been!  So much has happened, so much to tell...Gosh I've missed this place...my little corner of connectivity!  Thank you and I'm sorry to all of you who have been checking in on me here and worried....I'm ok!  I've just been unplugged for a while, but not by choice!!  My old clunky 9 year old, (yes folks, you read that right, 9 year old) computer finally gave up the ghost just before Artfest.  So I am writing to you now from my brand new MacBook!  Yeah!  Only I still can't figure out how to move these pictures around to put them in the order I want, so if any of you have any tips on that I would certainly appreciate it! (click, shift, and move doesn't work the same way for some reason...) My friend Stacey said that I was going to feel like an abused woman that had been set free after working on a new 'puter ....and boy, was she right!!  I'm free!  I'm free!  lol!  I cannot even believe how painless it was to upload photos!  I'll spare ya'll the ordeal I've had to go thru every time in the last year!  I'll just say it was a little like pulling teeth, with no novocaine!!

But onto the doors...I actually finished and delivered them the Monday before I left for Artfest, which was on Friday, March 27th.  And the client could not have been happier!  We took these photos outside the studio, right before we took them over, and a few days before I cut most of that hair off! (you'll see photos of that soon!)  Sorry about the glare...but they do give a sense of the size...

The buttons around her waistband were a last minute addition to camouflage the glue that wasn't drying clear like it was supposed to...I love it, though...a happy accident.  And her skirt is 2 pieces of tulle...a tangerine color and a yummy green layered on top and left open at the bottom for movement.  Did I say these were going to hang on a bight red wall?  And there are lots of other bright green walls in the salon, so these pieces, as large as they are, helped to "pull" the color around the room....they really look great in there!

The butterfly wings are real...a Kennedy find!

And her eyes got quite a bit more attention...eyelashes helped a lot!
A tree trunk...broken mirrors and buttons...also not planned...but definitely what "makes" it, I think!
Remember those pieces that I thought were going to be her skirt?  They got used to hang the little scissors from tree branches....

This one was taken inside the studio...with all the "stuff" behind them the entire time I was working on them I kept having to remind myself that they would be hanging on a solid color wall...that they weren't getting too busy...
it felt so strange in there for so many days after they were gone...in both a good and a bad way...what a wonderful learning experience these pieces were!  And as hard as I worked on them, I really would love to work on this scale again!  I know, sucker for punishment, I guess! We'll just say I love a challenge...

Next up....Artfest!!