When the ice storm hit a few months ago, I was very very sad to lose most of the pecan trees my late father had planted and grafted, including the best producer.

But as I puttered around pulling weeds yesterday I noticed a trade off. As those trees had grown, parts of the garden became shadier and shadier. So now, with the pecans either gone entirely or stripped nearly bare, the old climbing roses are blooming more fully than they have in decades. I had even considered pulling them out, but now they have made their case for staying.

A moral to the story? I know there is, just not sure how to put it in words. It reminded me of the cyclical long-term nature of gardening, and the pains and pleasures of knowing one garden for a long time. And also, the whole thing about silver linings, and closing doors/opening windows.  I’ll miss the pecans, but enjoy the roses.

As you can see, I have transferred my blog to WordPress. It may take a little while for it to look the way I want, but for now it is ok. I think it will be more flexible and allow me to be more active.

The weekend flew by, I don’t have my new web page published yet, but here are a couple of the paintings I’ll be adding. The green one was in my show at the Tulsa Artists Coalition last March, and the red one “Rising” is new. These photos were just snapped where the paintings are hanging, so they are cropped slightly.

I’m back after a four day workshop at the Fall Art Institutes at Quartz Mountain. While I was there I realized it was my eleventh year to go to the mountain for one reason or another, starting as a writing student in 1979 – the summer of my senior year in high school. I was a camp counselor 3 years after college, and have since been to seven of the fall adult workshops. So, from the days of sitting on bales of straw, to before the fire, to after the fire when the dining hall was a tent, and now a few years in the beautiful new facilities shown here. This year I took a very good course in intermediate darkroom with Luther Smith, (assisted by Konrad Eek) where I mostly concentrated on print quality. I really enjoyed learning to use filters. Maybe I’ll post my best photo later in the week.

This second picture shows one of the two entrances to the darkroom – just to the right you can see the large deck overlooking the lake. Working in all this natural beauty is one of the main things that make these workshops so important to my life as an artist. The third snapshot was taken between the studio pavilion and lodge.

One of my student’s families has begun a large vineyard not far from Quartz, and since his mom is our high school art teacher, and also at the workshop, we stopped there on the way back and took pictures for him to work from in class. One of his classmates liked the picture of the deer skull hung from the fence, and is working with it.

A few days ago I posted the unfinished version of this painting, and over the long weekend we had, I finally have it just where I like it. It has been a very agreeable painting to work with. Some pictures seem to work against me until they finally let me get them where I want them to be, and others seem happy to go along with whatever I want to try. It is 30″ x 30″ on a cradled panel that is 2″ deep, and painted in acrylic.

Here is my latest painting, it is 30″ x 30″ on a cradled panel. It was photographed before being hung, and I will have a better photo of it later. It was commissioned by a family for their mother’s birthday gift to go in her newly redecorated living room. I developed the design after talking with her about some of her own ideas, then surprised her with it this weekend.

Working in my small studio space, these 30″ x 30″ panels have seemed large, but seeing this painting on her enormous walls made them look really small!

Summer went fast, but fall commitments are suddenly picking up.

The “Suite Oklahoma II” printmaking portfolio is complete and has been displayed at ArtsSpace Ponca City, and opens today at Milagros print studio in OKC. It is also available for viewing by appointment at the Lachenmeyer Art Center in Cushing. It is a portfolio of work by…I think*… 18 printmakers across Oklahoma, including me. Hopefully it will be available for online viewing at some point. *we are still waiting on one print to be finished — not mine!

Last summer 3 friends and I visited Italy thanks to a fellowship from Fund for Teachers. In two weeks we open an exhibit of art that was made in reference to that experience. It will be a mix of photographs, including a couple of my pinhole photos, some jewelry made with Murano beads, a couple of serigraphs, a large woodcut, and maybe a painting or two (if I get them finished!)

I am still working on emptying my childhood home in preparation for a major remodel. Yesterday I finally worked up the courage to “process” my mother’s dresser drawer, which was pretty painful but ok in the end. I’m going to make that room my studio.

Summer is really slipping away, between art camp and traveling. Art camp was a great success. The first group of kids was perhaps my most engaged and enthusiastic ever. The second week, well, I really wondered about them at first. Seated in front of paper and piles of crayons, all twelve of them just sat there. My helpers and I told them they could draw while we waited for everybody to arrive, and nobody bothered. I thought “oh dear, a week of this?” Who could imagine a dozen third graders with no interest in coloring? I suggested they do something with their names…..so a few wrote their names, and that was it.

As it turned out, these kids had great imaginations and remarkably long attention spans, they just weren’t into drawing. I asked them to choose an animal, and I made them a wire armature of it and had it waiting for them the next morning – the wire is too stiff for little hands – then they built up the bodies with newsprint and tape, and we covered them with plaster gauze and painted them. I was amazed with their ideas and the fact that they happily spent an entire morning on this one project.

It never fails to interest me that classes of kids have a kind of groupthink.

While taking a break from clearing things out of the family home, I’ve taken a couple of entertaining “personality tests”. The first was on HGTV.com, a “Style” test – I came out “Eccentric with a touch of sweet”, and then my “Personal DNA” report was that I am a “Respectful Creator”.

both tests are fun and free.

Thanks to Judy Decker on the artsednet list for directing me to this wonderful thing.