Superfine! art fair at Miami Art week 2016....

and I am going!  I had been looking at Emerging Fair venues during some of the major art weeks across the US to see if one might be accessible to me.  In my research, I discovered Superfine! and was really excited about the possibility.  Then comes real life in the form of basement water and mold, possible job status changes and coming cat dental bills, and I figured I better hold off.  But with the sale of my grid last week, I decided to go for it.  I applied, have been accepted and am starting to prepare my curatorial plan for the fair.  I am really excited about it!  I know many of the dolls will go, and I have some small framed stitched pieces I would like to include as well.  I am thinking about two bigger stitched pieces, but I don't know that I can get that done.  I am so excited for five days in Miami in December and ALL THE ART!  

The Thyroid is such a beautiful organ....

I finished this drawing recently as well.  You can find it as a print at Forager, or shortly on my etsy site...I am a little behind in getting things listed.  And cleaning.  All the cleaning.  

Skeleton hand drawing finished just in time....

So I have work going up in this beautiful local, Rochester, Minnesota restaurant called Forager this weekend.  I finished the text on the drawing yesterday and got it cleaned up in photoshop just now.  I will be selling this image as a framed print, along with prints of the rest of this anatomical series.  I can't wait to see them in the space.

The reception for the exhibition will be 10/23/16 from 4-6 pm.  Hope to see you there!

Sold!!!!

So excited to share that I sold the piece "Graft" at the Rochester Art Center Artbash 2016 auction!  It sold for $2500, the most I have ever sold a work for, and I am happy to share half with the Art Center for their 70th anniversary.  RAC, thank you so much for this opportunity.  I am looking forward to installing it in it's new home.  

new book, "The Untethered Soul: the journey beyond yourself"

just came in the mail from amazon a couple of days ago. I actually saw it in a girlfriends bathroom and I thought it looked really good.  I was looking at it last night before bed, and started on the first chapter "the voice inside your head."  I am so familiar with mine.  I have gotten good at watching it. It is just so amazing when you can observe all the buzzing in your mind; it is like a little movie running.  Since I have started to observe it, I have noticed it can be more in the background instead of drawing all my attention.  Michael A. Singer, the author, says "you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it."  The voice is incessant, it makes both sides of an argument, it can be hateful or kind, it is just a running narration...and when you realize you are not the voice, you don't have to figure out if the voice speaks the truth.   

So I was dawdling on Instagram a couple of days ago, and thejealouscurator (who I am slightly obsessed with) asked with an illustration, "what does your inner critic say to you?" She has a new book coming out about your inner critic being a jerk.  And the responses...well, our inner critics are just bullies.  But I think I am able now to see the inner critic (that voice that I notice) and let it be.  I don't have to argue with it, or wish it away, it just happens to be there and I can go about my work.  I am so thankful I am learning this skill.  

Making artwork and Fargo season 1....

So I have either been teaching, prepping to teach, stitching, sleeping or exercising.  Occasionally I have made a nice dinner or a batch of cookies.  There has been no cleaning.  My house is filthy.  But, I have gotten some artwork done.  I have work going into a local restaurant, Forager, at the beginning of October and I am desperately trying to finish two stitched pieces and two drawings.  And then I hope to make one more drawing; I don't know that that is going to happen. I have watched the first season of Fargo on Hulu.com while I was working on this piece:

And it was fabulous.  Like I would watch it again fabulous.  It was a ten hour miniseries, and I finished stitching on all the little eyes right as it ended.  Now I need to cover it some with massed thread clumps.  Might have to buy myself season 2 for that work.

Sitting as a practice....

I sit.  I sit at my desk and work, on the couch and space out, in my bed up against the wall reading.  I also sit as a practice.  And it is not even sitting really right now...my back and neck hurt to much to hold myself upright; instead it is laying on the floor with my knees bent and lower legs resting on a chair.  I do this for twenty three minutes usually, most every night.  It is meditation, but that word makes it seem like something more than it is.  It is just noticing.  I notice my breath, and my weight and how it meets the floor, and the sounds.  There are so many sounds in a house to notice.  And there are so many thoughts in the mind to get lost in, so that you lose the noticing.  When I realize I can't hear the sounds, I realize I am listening to my thoughts.  Then I can come back to the noticing.  It happens over and over; there is something so comforting in that.  

I was talking with my brother a couple of days ago about some changes he is making in his life.  Difficult changes.  He knows the changes are better for him, but he still wants the other.  He told me he can allow the desire to be there, but he doesn't have to do anything about it.  He can choose.  That choice is so powerful. I find the sitting helps me make those choices with more peace.  That is why I will keep doing it. 

Elizabeth Gilbert's brilliant advice....

Do you ever listen to the Krista Tippett radio show/podcast "On Being"?  I do, but am way behind.  So this friend that I was visiting said I really needed to listen to the episode with Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote "Eat Pray Love."  I did today while I was at the gym, and it had me smiling the whole time.  The episode title is "Choosing curiosity over fear" and it really resonated with me.  I don't often address my personal life here on the blog, but so much of the discussion addressed questions I have had in my own life and artistic practice.  

Elizabeth Gilbert said creativity is our "birthright" as humans, that we are the "maker apes." And then somewhere along the way, we lose this sense of naturalness or innateness to our creativity.  Many of us don't recover it; but that living a life of curiosity is also living a life of creativity.  She said that you may not may an object/an artwork, but that you make a life, which is a creative act.  She seems to have given herself permission to follow her curiosity, wherever that may lead.  

"I think curiosity is our friend that teaches us how to become ourselves. And it's a very gentle friend, and a very forgiving friend, and a very constant one. Passion is not so constant, not so gentle, not so forgiving, and sometimes not so available. And so when we live in a world that has come to fetishize passion above all, there's a great deal of pressure around that."  Elizabeth Gilbert

I am finding now, in my mid-life, that I am changing, that the people I love are changing, and that being fixed on passion, or your younger self's expectations. leaves little room for this organic growth.  Isn't it so brilliant to give yourself permission to explore in ways you might never have before....and then to have no judgement about that exploration?  

To choose curiosity over fear means to choose possibility.  One of the things I have struggled with is not wanting to feel the fear, or to know it.  But there is no way around that.  There is no life without fear.  There is however that moment, where you recognize the fear and want to run.  You can say hello to it instead, and then choose to not let it make your choices for you.  It is so difficult but unbelievably simple all at the same time.  I think I am beginning to choose curiosity; to explore because it brings me joy.  There is some good stuff in their talk about joy, and gladness, courage and compassion...just some wonderful words that will continue to resonate for me.  I hope you will have a listen if it is of any interest to you.