One of the my groups in Calgary has had some really interesting professional development discussions at the meetings.  We each take a turn hosting and leading a meeting each year.  My turn comes up in March and I’m starting my research. Although I have participated in many group shows and have continued to do so throughout our travel years, I have only had a couple of solo shows and they preceded our travel departure date in 2009 so I...

Has anyone noticed my absence? For the past ten days I have been nose-to-grindstone doing the slug-work of cleaning up a blog that was moved from Blogger to a WordPress template and from there into a new ‘made for all gadgets’ template that magically transforms my art website from computer screen to tablet to smart phone format. That involved editing every post and re-entering all the photos so they would be resident on the site...

  I’m in search for the name for a species of lichen found and photographed in the Ancient Forest, an inland wet belt rain forest found in northern BC. along the Yellowhead Highway (Hwy 16).  More information about this site can be found at http://wetbelt.unbc.ca/Inland-Rainforests.htm   It is the subject of my current art piece and I would like to know more about it. A friend has comment that it is one of the many umbilicate lichens...

Today was a retreat day – a day of doing things that really don’t require a lot of thought.  My sister arrived on January 8 and my routines immediately went for naught!  Blog time, journal time, ‘me’ time disappeared into a daily round of trying to find new things to do in very cold and often stormy weather.  We did manage a trip to Lake Louise for lunch on the only sunny day!  She has now returned home, so life is...

It looks like weekend blogs may be hit or miss!  Especially when it is granddaughter visit time!  This weekend was especially busy as I am preparing for the arrival of my sister and that means moving my dining table ‘office’ to ‘neater’ locations, clearing my ‘studio’ so that it can be a studio and not just a storeroom, and generally putting Christmas behind me. Since New Year’s, I’ve given...

Happy New Year everyone! I was going to wait until tomorrow to do a post but thought better of it.  I need to put down a marker – a marker for a new beginning, a new direction, a new focus. It’s been a pleasant start to the New Year.  A leisurely breakfast, some work on a major fiber art piece neglected for a couple of years because it is too large for my work area in the RV, preparation for some journal work this year, topped off...

Last fall I started to work on what I am calling my ‘Re’ series.  You may ask, what is my ‘Re’ series.  I’ve always been fascinated with trying to use things that might other wise be discarded and of course that opens the door to using processes that ‘Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose, Reclaim, Reprocess, Restore, Rescue, Relove, Recondition, Remodel, Regenerate’.  Of course if you are not a purist you could...

I want to wish everyone a happy and productive 2012. I’ve been quickly scanning the blogs of a number of on-line friends and I am amazed at how ambitious everyone seems to be. I continue to struggle to find blocks of time to focus intensely on my art and have to keep reminding myself of what a wonderful gift my travel experiences are. That said, I have decided that this year I’m going to choose a word to remind myself to find the...

Last week, before a long weekend filled with visitors, I worked on a couple of watercolor paintings. They were definitely ‘painterly’ and not ‘artistic’. The effort left me decidedly frustrated and I turned for a short time to a beading project (to come) while I processed what had happened and strategized on a new approach.  I’ve been away from my brushes and paints too long!  I’ll share my initial efforts...

I can’t believe that it’s eleven months since my last post!  It’s not that I haven’t been playing, experimenting, painting, stitching, beading and in general creating!  The rambling lifestyle (check out my other blog) has lots of benefits but it does take a toll on serious ‘studio’ time.  Not to mention two years of recovering the use of my dominant hand and wrist after a serious break have taken their toll...