present paradigm and directions

Read Marija Gimbutas - the fact that there was actually a culture that choose their home sites based on beauty rather than defense was clearly indicates an enlightened culture- no weapons of any kind were found. They honored the woman's body and it was an honor to make love to her. The color red was sacRED, as it was the color of our life giving monthly cycle. It is a fascinating read, as well as introducing us to an aspect of our herstory that most women do not know about.
Of course, than the eastern steppe raiders came with their patriarchal structures and mowed down those poor defenseless peaceful people. This followed women throughout the next thousands of years, slowing replacing and rewriting the Greek myths to making it illegal for wise women to help the sick, etc. The more your read... There is an EXCELLENT 3 part vidio called Woman and Spirituality by the Wellspring Media from The National Film Board of Canada, based now in NYC. You can try to google it. They are titled Goddess Remembered, The Burning Tomes, and Full Circle.
The present paradigm is non- supporting for our men and sons too. So any work done on this level is good for our society. In a way, we are reformers.

Art Quilt Elements

Back from Art Quilt Elements- What a whirlwind trip! Lots of wonderful art pieces and quilts. It was really nice meeting people and putting names to faces, esp. from the yahoo list. Kathy Angel Lee and Linda Wickey and I faced the highways in NY, NJ, Conn, MA and NH to arrive at Wayne PA!! The show was beautifully hung. My piece was in the main gallery. I was really surprised and pleased!
I took the Digital Approaches Workshop with Leslie Noble Farber. She is a assisant professor at Paterson State, near where my father lives in NJ! What a jam-packed eventful workshop! Lots of things were happening right from the beginning and continued to stimulate us the entire 3 days. We immediately started out preparing a variety of substrates, surfaces to print on, these included collage techniques with gel mediums and ink aid to fine papers. We learned how to set up the image in Photoshop and send it to the printer driver and print out our prepared surfaces. We printed on all kinds of fabric, a variety of pellon interfacing, and even plastic! Once everything was ready you inserted your substrate into the printer, talked nicely to it, coaxed it along and prayed!
We experimented with a variety of other techniques of photographic transfer each day such as ink jet transfers, decal sheets, T-shirt transfers, and sticky paper transfers to paper lithography. We touched on resists and methods of spray fixatives- that definitely need to be dried in a well-ventilated area.
This workshop was a great introduction to basic digital printing using your computer, Photoshop and substrates.
Glad to be home!!
Now to get back to work an finish a bunch of pieces for my solo show in May at the Lincoln Levy gallery in Portsmouth. I am so inspired and itching to get at it!
I did, however, get a phone call from a writer from New England Home Magazine, a regional version of Architectural Digest and he also writes for Readers Digest. He is coming to interview me and view my work at my studio in Rollinsford on Tuesday! Yikes! I am so excited!! Of course the place is a mess as I am getting ready for the show and classes at Exeter Fine Crafts. He'll get the real deal!

Currier Museum Opening

I went to the new wing of the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH with some friends. I saw for the first time, that I recall, Jules Olitski. Beautiful name, loved his work. Sky alight! I goggled him and here is a quote- just wonderful!

“I decided to be a painter when my grandmother died. And there was something about that that made a number of things clear to me. I was a kid... and I loved her very much and feel that in some way she was one of the few people who supported me. That is she loved me. I got, nonetheless, the sense of an absolutely wasted, thrown away life. Like a dead cat on a garbage pail heap. And it made me get a very clear look on a all the people around me... My family, their friends... And the one thing that got through to me was the notion of... If there’s one thing you want to do, that’s meaningful, in my case it was painting, do it. Do it.”

“If I could just get a spray of color in the air, and somehow it could stay there– _that would be it.”