beadmajik

Check out the polymer clay beads that I made at Jan Thompson's studio last week. I was fascinated with the bits and pieces that were in her scrap bucket and rolled bits of this and that into this strange little grouping. Great garbage, Jan. I'm afraid my Magpie brain went quite over the edge when I got a look at all the Shiny things there are to play with and all I could come up with was a little "pill rolling" activity like they do in mental wards. They make me smile though.

Peace at Home

I love getting good news from home while I am at the office. Jim just sent me this picture. Now, if I could only teach them free motion quilting.

Is it Thursday yet?

It's been a helluva weekend. I spent too much time at the computer getting entries ready for two different shows and I'm starting to feel a real need for keeping track of what gets entered or promised where and when. Friday night at Fiber on a Whim listening to Pamela Allen talk about her career as an artist and the evolution of her work was fun and turned out to be revelatory. The last piece she showed us was a subject matter and technique departure for her and I was quite captivated. I've been so far out in whole cloth, dye-painted country that I was beginning to think I might fall off the fiber sphere altogether and just go back to paint on canvas. Pamela reminded me of some of possibilities of working with fiber that I had forgotten about. This "Horned Newt" is hot from the design wall in just the last two innings.

Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance around the studio.....

My friends are helping me celebrate! Yesterday I got a letter from the Woodstock Byrdcliff Guild in Woodstock, NY, notifying me that "Cellular Seizure" has been juried into their first Biennial mixed media exhibit. Juried by Nohra Haime, my piece was one of 46 chosen from over 290 entries. "Thrilled" comes close. My first reaction was "that one?" and I dragged out the bundle of quilts that I had submitted and remembered why I like it so much. It had an unhappy start, languished with the "somedays" for a long time and then suffered a LOT of manipulation and changes before I called it done and still I had second thoughts about it probably because it's more subtle than a lot of what I am working on right now.I rummaged around in my files and found a picture of the whole cloth that CS was based on. The best part about this piece was that it was so difficult to photograph and it looks so much better in the "flesh" the juror will be glad she took a chance on fiber art. My next thought was "phew!". I wasn't expecting notification until the 30th and there were two other shows that I wanted to enter with some of the pieces that I entered in the Woodstock. Now I have to hustle and juggle and make decisions about what goes where and when.

Acres of Fun

You thought the last one was big, Hah! How do you like my new device for indicating scale? It's actually 40 something by 70 something. It's a good thing I'm going to Fiber on a Whim in Roswell on Friday night - I need thread, LOTS of thread. Some 20 wt sail repair rope please. Something that will make a real impact on this riot.

Pamela Allen will be there to give a yak for Fiber Art Fusion and I am looking forward to hiking over there for the evening and opening my ears. I have had my hair-hat aired and a designated driver lined up.