Month: October 2015

 

Another great thing about a Ministry of Encouragement is that when you’re busy encouraging other writer’s and artist, you have less time to worry about if you’re any good or not.  You actually find more time to make art and collaborate.

That’s what happened to me after work.  

A few days after being a guest artist at the Open House at Bedlam Farm, the buzz was starting to fade, and I was already counting the weeks until the next one recharged the creative sparks in its guests.  This years’ connections are still connecting, however, and another Open House guest and I began picking each other’s brains.

I tend to be pretty introverted, faking social skills only for short periods of time, and I would not have chatted her up first even though we really hit it off at the Open House. Fortunately, my partner in crime was Jean Glaser, an amazing painter specializing in animal portraits, didn’t have the same hesitation, and we were soon trading tech tips for new insights on how to hold a pencil and drawing board.

A few 10 minute exercises later, a new world was opening up.  Loosening up has its benefits.

Thing2 is about to be nine this week, but we celebrated last weekend when his grandparents (Grandpa was here celebrating his 75th birthday) were visiting.

Saturday Grandma and Grandpa suggested a late  lunch and invited T2 for a birthday shopping trip afterward.  We went home and didn’t see them again until the sun was behind the mountain.

T2’s hands were empty when he walked in the door, but his smile confirmed that the afternoon was a ‘success’. The shopping trip had taken them to the bookstore and village market in Cambridge, NY.  On the way home they stopped by Norman Rockwell’s covered bridge for a walk, and T2 got to have a Grandma and Grandpa to himself for a little longer.

The Big Guy and I dragged Thing1 to see a production of ‘Lion in Winter’ that night (culture and a bit of history for the PSATs – what more could a 15 year old kid ask for on a Saturday night?).  And Thing2’s special day with Grandma and Grandpa stretched into the evening hours. The master of the 72-hour playdate, Thing2 decided to extend the special day even further on Sunday by inviting himself to go for a walk with Grandma and Grandpa after his party guests had left.

For some reason, he seemed to have forgotten about picking out a present.

I’m one of the guest artists at the Open House at Bedlam Farm this weekend and spent last weekend going through sketches and paintings to sell.

We spent about 10 days in Washington State, so there were a number of drawings from that vacation.  It was fun – kind of like going through a scrapbook.  This is a painting from one of those drawings at Puget Sound.

This is the rain-soaked calm before a weekend long storm of activity.  I’m looking at  an action packed weekend of creative workshops, art, poetry, parents, theater and nine-year-old birthday parties.

I’m waiting for my parents to arrive so we can celebrate my Dad’s 75th birthday.  Then I head to Pompanuck Farm in Cambridge, NY for a Creative Workshop engineered by author Jon Katz and his wife, artist Maria Wulf.

The Creative Workshop is the kick off of a weekend of poetry, art, and theater, of celebrating the anniversary of becoming a Mom a second time and feeling strangely optimistic about a future that includes a life as a working artist.  And in the quiet of my kitchen, the only thing I can feel right now is incredibly grateful for this life.   I’m even grateful for the rain.

It’s about to be a good apple harvest.  When I go out to the laundry line near our apple grove, the air is thick with the scent of ripe fruit, and the occasional boxes or laundry baskets of free apples alongside the road suggest quite a few other families are having the same luck.

Apples may be in danger of becoming the new zucchini.

The white junk that must not be named is coming, and I didn’t need any mystical signs to tell me so.  It was actually a piece of calico covering the Fresh Eggs sign that hangs over the cooler – normally loaded with an honor box and recycled, fabric-covered cartons of large brown eggs – at the end of the town road that signaled that the town’s poultry population has moved into winter production mode.

Okay, maybe a fat quarter is a pretty mystical signal.  Either way, it looks like S*%@ is coming.

 

The problem with kissing frogs is that you can actually get pretty close to a handsome prince and not even know it until you’re ripping the paper on your watercolor board because you couldn’t wait long enough for it to dry.

The other problem is that you get to like kissing frogs. So much so that at 1AM it’s really hard to decide if you have time for just one more smooch or if sleep is really all that necessary. I’ll let you know how it turns out.