"And it was at that age... poetry arrived in search of me"

-Pablo Neruda

I love this crazy beautiful/ugly hand kit blanket I got at Savers years ago. The relationship I have with it represents a calling of mine. The color thing. I have felt shame in loving the crafty grandma nightmare and haven't known why. The love part was about each square. Every one a very odd combination of colors, stripes that seem randomly put together but when you stop and look.. yikes. The combos take my breathe away. Such untraditional beauty. Black and seafoam green and orange and brown and lime. Did I mention grey and pink? So off the radar. Each square a tiny Sean Scully painting. The shame came when I step back and see a candidate for Stitchy McYarn Pants. It seems there is such shame in the obsessions we all get into. I felt so funny years ago at ad agencies spending sooo much time with my pantone book. I mean 4 days to find 3 colors for a brochure. It just would not leave me alone. I wasn't sated with color at my finger tips. Give me a daily bath in it. My color muse had arrived and wasn't going to let me go till I picked up a brush and started making my own paintings. We can get so panties in a bunch about making the money, becoming famous, accomplished but maybe we just have to allow the obsession to claim us. It's friday. I'm headed to my dear friend, Bruce Winn's pottery studio today. To play with clay. So fun to watch his gigantic hands make tiny teacups. Mud claimed him years ago.

"He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals"

-Oscar Wilde

The other night I got to hang out with some of the fabulous and fierce woman of as220's print and design shops. Julia can make me laugh my butt off. She has a way of turning a conversation around? sideways? She threw out the question "Did the film Uncle Buck glorify suburban life and the nuclear family?" Got a hmmm... wha? response. But what followed- "How do we encapsulate this past decade?" Now this was at the very tail end of my Day of the Dead party, and the as220 chick click showed up fashionably late, but we were able to toss it around a bit. Of course it got me thinking about. Color. Some of you may be familiar with my color/politics theory. It's basically this- every wave of political atmosphere can be represented by a hue that explains it all and was frequently used in that decade. A few samples to consider- Turn of the Century- Queen Victoria's mourning kept everyone in check with corsets (Black) but a little ocd had to come out somewhere (Those crazy acid pastels) The 50's- Happy happy happy everything and we are happy (Red) The 60's- Play play play so hard with all of the new chemicals we find in nature and labs (psychedelic rainbow) The 80's- We are rich and little kings and queens that rule the world but not really (The soulless mauve of the Reagans, the fauve color) and then this last decade. Not sure I have a handle on it but I think it might be the color of fear (that baby poop yellow with black in it) All of this has to take in to consideration the scientific and industrial discoveries that got textiles, paint and plastic covering new ground. But I like to think about color being equal to emotion. And maybe that's why I'm heading toward this next decade with as much sun reflecting white I can put in my world. I may miss the baby poop a tiny bit. But then sometimes fear can motivate us to better things.

"Yes! I have found the cure for cocklaphobia!"

-Alyn Carlson

I'm making a fresh batch of paper party hats for a little girl named Lucy. Finding some great stuff in the paper bins. She's turning six and that's the age that pink rules. So cute you just want to bite them. Is it because of the missing teeth? Eight is pretty good too. You know how everyone has an age in their mind they are eternally? Mine is eight. Got red sneakers that summer and I think that's why I can never have enough red shoes. Puts me on my bike, going down the big hill on Viceroy Road, trying not to stare at my new Keds. What my paper hats do to people has been fun to watch. Hats are tricky. Everyone says they look awful in hats. I would say 9 out of 10 people checking mine out, say that to me. Actors are the exception and will plop any hat on. But the average person needs a little coaxing. And they find the paper hats are a little more approachable. Paper hats are without question, not to be taken seriously. They aren't made of felt or fur or wool, stuff that's expensive or more enduring. Mine are ephemeral, come from what is headed for the recycling center. They give all the timid cocklaphobics permission to not take themselves seriously, either. To feel 6 or 7 or 8 again. A relief, don't you think? And all of my paper hats look great with red Keds.

From Charles Seliger's last show, Ways of Nature.

"God has put a secret art into the forces of nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system"

-Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural and the Theory of the Heavens

This is a painful one. Ever feel extreme gratitude and pain at the same time? While creating a link for my first posting of this blog, I learned Charles Seliger had died at the beginning of the month. He was 83. Self taught and the last living abstract expressionist from the original group that created the term. Just 17 when Peggy Guggenheim saw his talent and decided to show him. And as often happens to me, he was a person who came across my path at just the right time in my life to answer questions and confirm some things I was wrestling with. I found a book on his work about 6 years ago in NY, thought it was interesting, then put it back on the shelf for a future read. 4 years later, on a cold winter Sunday, on the couch with a fire and Paul, I opened it thinking I'd just take a look. But instead I got a little weak in the knees and even weepy discovering his life, his process and seeing his art. Small paintings that were packed with so much life, I quickly realized that's what he was actually painting. The stuff the makes life, life. Paintings that drew you in and said "Come close, no really close". I felt tiny and in awe. His work and story haunted me so much, I some how found the ovaries to track him down and call. His wife Lenore answered the phone. ME-"I'm a huge fan, blahblah, trying to make paintings, blahblah, self taught blahblah" Long silence. LENORE- "Well I think you're very brave. No one does this anymore. Just call people they admire. I used to when I was younger" Then we had a great chat about how they met and she passed my info along to Charles. He called me the next day and it was like having 70 compacted years of the study of art, poetry, history, music and the NY Public Library on the other end of the phone. Tempered with kindness and compassion. In the last year and a half we've exchanged some letters (his written in the tiniest cursive on very cottony paper) he's sent me a beautiful collection of catalogues from his past shows, and Paul and I got to meet he and Lenore at his last show at the Michael Rosenfeld gallery. He's taught me so much and will continue to be my teacher. I've learned I'm autodidactic, I'd been naturally using automatism when I paint, he got me feeling less guilty about my massive book collection, tiny is fierce and beautiful, and that the constant change or chaos in nature within us and outside of us, is what makes life deserve the name life. Like I said, sad and grateful.

"We are family. I got all my sisters with me"

-Sister Sledge

My peeps. My clan. Seth Godin calls them tribes. Our family we join not because we were born into it but because we grow into it. In this clan the same things make us itchy, bitchy, smile and want to take action. But there are so many endless options now because of the internet. It's like you're in your favorite store but can only carry so much. I went to the New Bedford Antique Center on Sunday, just to cruise with Paul. I was dizzy in 3 minutes. Trying to keep my pocketbook healthy, I hadn't been in awhile. I got the gimmees so bad. I was overwhelmed, wanting to own so much. I could be so organized with all these great little cupboards and file cabinets. Make so many hats with all these pieces of ephemera. Meditate so comfortably in this chair. My muse was messing with me bad. Needed to put her in her place. Then my dear friend, Arley-Rose's obsession with the font Hobo came to mind. She's always snapping pictures of this crazy little font and posting them. You go on flickr and those tribes are everywhere. So with my little iphone I began to shoot what I found inspiring. I walked out with the same abundance of cash I walked in with but feeling really full with the treasures on my phone. And funny so much of it, related somehow, to a logo I've been struggling with. Got some clarity. One of my wonderful wise daughters once reminded me that in many cultures you eat only a handful of rice because that's what fits in your hand. There may be abundance but without the supa sized bowls we have, your hand serves as the bowl. It's in direct proportion with your stomach. Full and content. One tribe at a time. Now I just have to edit those photos.

Attracting and Saving Sunshine

"A day without sunshine, is like, you know, night".

-Steve Martin

It's here. The end of the summer and I'm saying good bye to walking out my studio door barefoot into my backyard. Summer has really just been 15 minutes long this year. I'm also saying good bye to two fabulous 3 month long projects. My Smoke and Pickles shoot with Dan George and The Dunn family's Mole Hollow Candles shoot. Two dream projects Paul and I have worked our tails off on. How did we get so lucky? Two companies that let us create beautiful photos of what they work hard at and infuse with love. Dan's project entailed jumping in to many of his catering events and on the sidelines capturing his incredible feasts. On non event weeks we got to trace his shopping path by shooting the small businesses that feed him- fisherman, cheese merchants, vegetable growers, and meat purveyors. The Dunn's make a candle that is hand crafted and just makes everything around it beautiful. Staging backyard picnics, a birthday party, a woodland wedding, then inviting some handsome friends to be our models gave us some shots that show off that magical candlelight. The thread through all of this was love. Love in how the products are made, the talented artists that helped, and love of the beautiful and capturing it. Winters can be dark and cold in the church but producing the websites to showcase these photos will be sunshine for me. Thanks for the vitamin C- Smoke and Pickles, Mole Hollow, Roanne Robbins, Cody Nowel, Roseberry Winn Pottery, Beehive Kitchenware, Milk and Honey Bazaar, Charlie, Peter, Alison, Sophie, Lydia, Hillary, Levi, Cameron, Laura, Ian, Abby, Christen and Marc.

Summer Shoots

Just the tip of the iceberg. These are snapshots of the body of work Paul has shot for Smoke+Pickles and Mole Hollow this summer. Stay posted for the new sites in the works now.

"Are You My Mother?

Last Sunday my two neighbors, Tanya and Bill, my housemate, Charlie, Paul and I built a chicken run for our chickens. We started with a flock of 23. We have 5 now. Coyotes. Do not get me started. My free ranging days are over. Back in March the chicks arrived from the post office just 48 hours old. They can survive fine without food and water for the the first few days after hatching. Opening that box and having the sweet little fluff balls ask "Are you my mother?" is powerful and humbling. Dip each tiny beak in water, feed and then set them under a heat lamp at 90-95 degrees. The frightening ordeal of traveling in that ventilated box for a few days can cause something called pasting. Yup, that means daily washing each chick's bum with warm water and q-tips. So there's a lotta love getting the chicken to adulthood. And giggles. As those personalities and sex traits emerge, pecking order and a rooster's first attempt at crowing on the tiniest scale is the best after dinner entertainment. And that's where I've been every night for the last few hanging out with the girls in their new run. Technically they aren't all girls, 3 hens and 2 roosters. But did you ever meet a rooster who couldn't use just being put in his place a little? Eggs are coming any day now.

Some of the feathers I've collected through the years. I might try some quill making this winter.