I feel sometimes that I am just picking things up off the floor of my studio and finishing them. I had these three rivers from last year but they were not quite done somehow. I had some blue beads I’d made from colored porcelain and a friend had fired for me, and the yellow shells from the last several summers on Mohegan, but it took a while to settle on all those red buttons for the last one. And then they were clearly related, and also clearly done. I will frame them up as a trio in a single frame, and call it good.

I had two pieces accepted to the Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Ohio. That feels like huge compliment. I was looking at the classes offered, but couldn’t swing it financially.

Closer to home, I had another piece accepted into Catch and Release, a show at the Great Falls Discovery Center in Turner’s Falls, Massachusetts, just up-river from us in Northampton.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at other peoples’ work, looking for the things I find compelling. That is always interesting. I’ll show you my scribbled notes on that sometime!

I finished two new pieces and took them up to visit Lesley at Grow Gallery. They are both showing New England in early spring.

Sugarloaf south, spring

Last night I took a bunch of old work that could not be fixed or finished out into the back yard, and with a small amount of ceremony, burned it. I started a fire in the new fire pit (bought for the purpose, but clearly a very promising addition to the back yard) and waited for the first star to show, and then, piece by piece, said something nice about each thing, or what I’d learned, and set it on the fire. I had also acquired some packets of salts that color the flames, and I sprinkled those on the fire at the end, and invited the ghosts of old pieces to visit me now, when I have better skills and can do better by them. Alice roasted a couple of very stale marshmallows, and we waited for the International Space Station to go overhead, and then we doused the fire and were done.

I am temporarily obsessed with fish. A different piece I finished looks like this:

Resin fish, paint, and a lot of stitching. Can you find the stitched fish? Contra-fish….