It's been a few days off work and I am still tremendously inspired. My friend and fellow painter, Karen, and I wandered and wondered and helped each other sort some things out simply by talking and listening and eating. She's hunting down a good MFA program that will keep her painting for a couple more years, build her skills more, and let her be her. I'm wondering how I do and will keep balancing making and learning, teaching and working, and anything else life sends.
Karen and I didn't take a camera with us as we left for our roadtrip last Thursday. We packed our sketchbooks, a slew of apples, a bunch of sweaters and with our eyes open and our watches back at home, we discovered the greens and oranges and reds and yellows and white streaked bluish light grey skies of miles of road between Rochester and Ithaca and New Haven, Connecticut.

The road itself was mad inspiring, although I'm a bit guilty still that I didn't drive.
I had a chance to hear The Avett Brothers
We started with a few hours in Ithaca where we randomly and wonderfully discovered The Plunger Press which seems the natural heir to a legacy of social protest printmaking and clever critical/commercial enterprises like Oldenburg's Store. Below is just one of the magic heads available for purchase and perusal at Plunger...

We had more experiences in Ithaca and New Haven but they're stories not to be told today. Except I will share the Martin Johnson Heade I looked at in the Yale art museum (though the dirty rats wouldn't let us in to see the rest of the museum because it's closed for renvovations though it just seemed closed for big-wigs until December 10.) It's OK, this smart Heade was the only thing I really needed to see.


OK, then, I'm back to being busy and Karen's back to the paint and the applications and Georgia...
take good care,
Rachael