Shall we begin again?

I have to ask myself, "When will I begin again?" Certainly I will begin again by Thursday! It has been a long, grinding haul since I came back from Ragdale Foundation. Reader's Art, in the Susan Hensel Gallery right now, is my favorite show of the year. It is dear to my heart. I love showing the world the bookish side of the arts. But it is the hardest show to pull together, taking hours upon hours of administrative time...lots of databasing, writing of publicity, emailing, photographing, painting of walls, catalog design and printing, arguments with shipping agencies and installation design. But, it is here, it is up ( more than 80 tiny books) and it is beautiful. So, NOW, I can reconsider the work of being an artist! I went to hear a talk by Betsy Dollar this morning at Susan St. John's Private Art in St. Paul. I showed her Wedding Party in my gallery last summer ( You can find it in the gallery archives) The show she was talking about today was a group of photo collages using her torso embedded in photos of the natural world, reminiscent of Ana Mendieta. Beautiful stuff that reminded me of work I have left to do. SOOOOOO....STAY TUNED!

A night in the Tropics

It was a night in the tropics at Gallery 406 last night. It may have been foggy and cool, but the parrots were hanging out and the ukuleles were playing.

Ragdale let-down

The drive home was rather lovely and uneventful. I went north to Shebygen to pick up my repaired electronic spinner (electric spinning wheel) and went across Wisconsin on WI29. Little traffic, much sun, wind polished fields, sculpted windbanks of snow, listening to Louise Erdrich read her book the Master Butcher's Club. But now gallery work overwhelms. I wish I could have stayed at Ragdale longer.

2 new drawings

After a bad night's sleep, 2 new drawings are well under way.

The Ophelia Project

I accomplished a lot today on the OPhelia Project. It is now a 2 person performance and Installation. It began the day looking like this. And ended the day as below. They are not done yet, but are getting close.

grounds at Ragdale

It was a beautiful day for a walk around the grounds. The first photo is Ragdale House where most of the writers are housed. The second is the new Meadow Studio, which has glorious light and difficult heat(now fixed we all hope). The red is the back of the Friends Studio which houses the composer in one side and, this time, a dancer/performance artist in the other. The rest are just phots on the walk around the prairie.

wall solution

It took some doing. I drove to Waukegan to find a JoAnn Fabric store. I needed iron on interfacing (and an iron) so the paper would not rip in this process and a cheap glue gun. Where JoAnn's was supposed to be was now an Off Track Betting Facility. Back to Ragdale. Back to the internet with my Rand McNally Atlas by my side. I drove to Vernon Hills, and could not find it in the maze of malls. This time I had brought the phone #. It was next to the Home Depot, deep into the maze. When it was time to glue this afternoon, I realized I had bought the wrong size glue sticks. So, back to the internet to find a local hardware store and make the call. Sucess. So, I think this is the solution. The question is, should I spend the rest of my time painting striped paper yardage? Or work on something else? There are still issues to solve that might best be solved at home.