Fermentation

Nope, I haven't taken up wine or sauerkraut making. Just lots of fermentation going on inside me. The "sabbatical" I have been on for the past several months is nearly over. The final stage consists of moving my studio from my little seasonal cabin in the woods to my Pink House right in downtown Saranac Lake. With much help from strong, kind friends, that process began a couple of weeks ago. My wonderful (incredibly heavy!) work table, my sewing machine and its cabinet, my flat files of papers, an impressive stack of boxes, and more stuff are sitting in their new home now.

Besides the sheer volume of art supplies I've accumulated, there are folders and boxes full of drawings, watercolors, prints, and doodles resulting from years of studying and experimenting with a huge range of mediums and techniques. And there are a surprising number of journals from my days in graduate school when I was studying the reproduction ecology of native orchids, with loads of handwritten notes and sketches. I'm going to take some pages to make into some "history" collage work. I see that this stage of my adventure must include a long look back and a refining of the images and techniques that speak strongly to me now. There's not much time for going through all of this detritus. I have to get my personal stuff moved in this week, along with my Self. But it's worth spending some time to pull out the gems that still grab me and to toss them into this fermentation vessel I've been tending.

Chaos Reigns!

This space is the only tidy spot in my new studio right now. The movers made me promise I would never move this huge wooden cabinet again! But it's from my mom, it holds tons of stuff, and it's beautiful. Not sure I can keep that promise but it will be parked here for quite a while.

The rest of my studio looks more like this. Do you remember that game in which you had to move several squares in the plastic frame to move the one key square into its place? That's what my whole life feels like right now!

One of these days ...

I'm getting used to it. Certainty and control are WAY over rated, right?!

In the meantime, I'm working on my blog posts for "... And Then We Set It on Fire" as Resident Artist for the whole month of June, on the topic of Fabric Collage. I am so honored to be part of this stellar group of artists!