Day 2 -- meandering return trip through the beautiful Allegheny region (June 24)

but seriously, i am missing my studio at i-park

even the simple view looking back toward my studio windows, i miss these things...

and all those crazy, bowling, hardworking, and playing artists who taught me more about the nature of human kindness--Tony (below in the thralls of bowling a strike), Nathaniel, Shireen, Jeannie, Margaux, and Lalie.

and obviously, i miss the the nest at the pond i acquired for the month

Day 26 -- closes with leaving the reservation (and a "chatty Kathy" moment. be warned)

goodbye. it was absolutely awe inspiring, healing, and just a plain dang good thing. the very thing I needed, at the precise moment i needed it.

again for the briefest of moments, I second guess my directions as I broach this narrow dirt road in my departure.

ahh. I make it to the little restaurant in Colchester I spied on an artists' grocery run.

Ahhhh. Red meat how I've missed you! The mushrooms and risotto were fabulous. My red meat...well, how do I politely say this? No way. Trust me this isn't gonna be pretty or polite. I am a Texas carnivore and I expect my cow to xxxxxxx (original content edited to protect my veggie friends). Perhaps this was a Connecticut medium rare? The balsamic drizzle sorta saved it and i am still too timid to return a well done steak when medium rare was ordered...seems wasteful and it makes me uncomfortable to send something back and then actually attempt to enjoy what they do send out (dysfunction i am sure). Bob the chef would be proud of the balsamic drizzle attempted recovery. To top it off, the waiter was wonderful and, perhaps, almost, barely, just 15 (no facial hair yet). He had that borderline still thin and small boned boy look, not quit teen-man yet. He'll do well at whatever he tackles. It's just obvious by his disposition, attentiveness, intelligent eyes and smile. I hope life is good right back to him; i think it will be. I liked my waiter so that probably really saved the meal and his rec of the tomato risotto. Of course the setting was beautiful on an old front porch protected from the light rain that brought a coolness to my evening (and a diverted plane and overnighter for my Dad in the Dulles airport) Ohhh, I am so full.

"chatty Kathy" moment edited away (mostly) for self respect purposes...if you didn't see it, too bad. it happens often with my blog and then it's gone.

Closing thought that opened my morning with some words from Thomas Keating that i have been pondering.

love can release another the obligations of indebtedness from a wounding, love holds nothing against another, but love cannot penetrate the presumption of pride. The false self does not want to be transformed. It wants to hide everything negative about itself and pretend it can run our lives or someone else's.

there are so many ways to think about this text, this idea, to understand it and learn from it. i will try.

Now I am done with my "chatty" Kathy moment...for the moment.

Day 26 -- last morning at the pond

The bullfrogs withhold their dialog with stretched out moments too long to count of silence. The sun is shining but as yet she to holds back her sting of warmth upon my neck and the moon's chill has already dissipated with the dawn. The lilly's have eased out on the pond over the past weeks and near their full encircling of the artists' pier. They litter the lake with their upturned snow white flowered faces in their morning bloom. The faintest residue of pollen spent pushes gently cross the black calm pond riding the softest of breezes. The row boats red belly lays unused. SNAKE. no. One of the as yet still dainty turtles breaks the surface near, long is his pause at my presence. He is gone without a murmur or a whisper. As do I, finally, just as she begins to kiss the nap of my neck with her morning warmth.

Day 26 -- grief released

i haven't finalized/realized the title yet, but i do know what the piece is about. it is a visceral manifestation of the uncontrollable nature of grief, the way in which it is a total reaction of mind, body, and spirit. its overbearing weightiness. its ebb and flow. it cannot be stopped even if others think one has no "right" to grieve. grief does not listen to the rules or expectations of others or even one's own mind. it just has it's way with you, all of you. the only way i know to survive it is to let it flow through me, letting it do its work in me.

i suppose i could try to deny this grief, as apparently is the expectation of some for me. grief is. it will run its course. i do not hold it, though for a time it holds me. it will flow through me if i let it. as it does, the weep holes will open up because it and i can simply not contain its force. the openings make room for relief; they allow in the light, like the dappling tree canopies allowing the light to stream into and onto the soft life filled forest floor; they reopen the soul. they let the grief pass.

i have accepted that this is the nature of it within me. the work is an expression of this.

i was comforted at the piece’s reception at the open studio event. several people quietly came up to me and spoke to me of how they connected to the work and their own lived experience of grieving. that meant a lot to me.

i believe that the nature of my work has historically connected with various visceral experiences not just that manifest in me, but that seem to be true for others. the works connect to the internal non-language based experience of living, knowing, and a depth of being. the work reads very differently in person than as a reproduced image (as is true of all my work, as is true of life).

Day 25 -- any questions

OH YEAH! Ending night celebrating art man style!

Day 25 -- round the beast

Day 25 -- in the round

I can see many things I'd like to add and adjust, but time says,
"done." :)

My favorite part is looking in through the mouths of the piece. And
when the sun comes out, the interaction of the light as it piercesthe
piece.

Day 24 -- almost done. a couple of hours in the morning

and then i'll be as done as i am going to be on this trip.

Day 24 -- laying under the belly of the beast

The view from down under. Think I should do a serious tick check tonight after laying in the pretty meadow under the hood of this piece. Just because the little mini meadow in the glade is pretty, doesn't mean I didn't roll around with the bugs and a bit of poison ivy.

Day 24 -- working. really!!

Day 24 -- working.

Day 23 -- yes i will be done! (enough)

I love the patina of the fleshy surfaces of the tubes.

Day 23 -- ohhhh it was time

They took my man toy back to do its real job...oh darkness!

Just kidding. I think. :)

Oh goodbye my sweet blue, blue, but now gone, man toy!

Day 23 -- dangling

Wrapping and interweaving my legs round the outside bars of the cage, just as the monkey bars of years long gone by, I dangle out pseudo-freely...and sew, paying attention to not get to cocky since there is no back up system but my legs. And to facilitate Mason not being trapped up here while i stay suspended to sew from my temporary man toy, we have dragged a ladder up, up, with us. So off (or down) he scampered to get his work done. Now back to mine, which currently is sewing the neck of the fluted, sieved funnel-like suspended object back into a single unit from its move to this location. Just what every woman should be doing twenty five feet up in a forest glade...absolutely!

In my opinion of course!

Day 22 -- will finish enough by sunday but...

I can just imagine a series of extension like the fluted section here spilling out a number of the orifices... OOo-awe. OK well at least for me. The parts you are looking at aren't finished yet so there are still awkward and incomplete sections. Should all be resolved end of day Saturday.

Day 22 -- vacation or work?

Does an artist's residency count as work or vacation? I suppose it depends on how you classify that big French bike road race thingy Lance Armstrong rides in? Work or vacation? Or perhaps just a job he loves and has a few awesome perks. Hmmm a job I love with this nice I-Park perk. Oh yea!

i am not sure i can go back to a regular camera. i love just touching the screen on the object image i want the phone to focus on...it just jumps to macro, balances the light for that area. the no zoom is problematic. as a phone, iffy, but as a camera, gps, dictionary, blogging utensil, googling, and even a level (really, it even has the little bubble...you calibrate it with a real level and then wa-la), it rocks

Day 22 -- still inside the belly of the beast

Day 21 -- the messy, limp, as yet to be completed, end

Day 21 -- aaah a kazillion feet of number 9

Just makes the mind race with possibilities. Ok well maybe not race but definitely ooo-la-la. Number 9 is a new discovery this month and boy will it make my hands tough!

And freshly bloomed today between my morning down at the pond and return. It seems a different strains bloom each day. Even the birds change. When I first got here there were robins out the wazoo. I rarely see them now but in their place are an assortment of much more petite birds--vivid yellow, I am looking at one now that is a soft brown with some muted red around its eyes and a dark crew top dew on top. All interesting.

My time at the pond never gets old. It also varies from day to day. As today, though the sun was out in fullness this morning there was a nip of chill and no morning kiss of warmth as there was yesterday. But beautiful as always. Wonder what it all looks like blanketed with snow--perhaps magical in a totally different way.

No Diana, the picture is right side up. :) That sky is but a mirror reflection in the still quiet waters.

I think i like me skewed view because it moves the image away from landscape and toward abstraction...in that unique place between the poles of representational and abstraction I find I notice more deeply the things of nature I might normally passby in my routine rightside up world. I see what is really there instead of seeing what I assume.