OK, don't worry about us but while I was away on vacation there was a fire at our house. No one was injured. Cat is OK. I have only some of the story of what's gone and only some sense of reality. Better I guess that we are both not coming home to a shell of what was but nothing clarifies perspective than a loss. I'm a lucky kid with a wonderful husband, great friends, and a charmed life. I simply don't know what survived and what didn't, but that's just stuff.
Atlanta is the same fabulous city I left, and while happy to be here, I'm just a bit anxious to go back to give my husband a hug and start to rebuild.
Take good care and learn your fire exits right now,
Rachael

I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow to slip back into the comfort of friends, familiar sights and smells, and the treat of teaching drawing. I escaped yesterday into Marjane Strapani's Persepolis (magic reading, sad and honest, funny and strong), and will escape tomorrow into my sketchbook. Drawing on planes is one of my favorite things.
Here's hoping that the show invite is viewable on your screen but if not, the story is: Lisa Alembik & Rachael Baldanza call Show & Tell (an art party, an open studio, a show & tell really) Saturday June 11, Art Exchange Gallery Atlanta, from 6 to 9. Will be plenty of fun and you oughtta bring your friends.
Gotta go pack those bags... take good care,
Rachael

Email me and I'll send you the directions. This will be fun.
take care,
Rachael

A year ago I was working on my exit strategy. Cleaning up this mess of a (productive) studio and sorting through all my crap so we could move to a new blank slate in a new (old) city.

Today I couldn't help but compare recent past as a working artist in the South and my current situation working in the arts in the Northeast. I guess I am still a working artist, I do still make art but my output now isn't as large as it was. And it has changed.

Atlanta was a fine place for me to come to my skills and confidence as a painter, a place to teach, live, love and eat well. Fine people, fine music.

Today I fell asleep reading in the backyard. Yesterday we played with the baby niece. I walk around this city with a comfort it took me many years to find in the South.

I've noticed that the art I make here is...different. I'm still getting my sea-legs for sure, I don't exactly have a full-on studio set-up, the clay obsession is really fun and I have less to prove and more to...say? I don't know. Something is different about the voice I use here and the tone I had a year ago. I'll share more I guess when I figure it out. Maybe when the recent paintings and drawings are up in Atlanta will I be able to articulate it. Or maybe the articulation isn't as important as regaining the confidence and the disipline with which I worked before I left. And that may simply take time and more work.

Never easy to assess where you are or where you've been, but I do know that where I'm going is to bed. Peace and take care,
Rachael

I spent some time in the clay studio today. Just me and what remains of my bag of clay (went and bought myself another, even). I've been trimming pots all week (OK, this is hard when everything is awkward and slightly off center) and glazing and today I tried my hand at pinch pots and slabrolling and coil construction and slipping and scoring.

The newness of clay for me is a such a fun thing. I wonder how as we grow conditioned to one set of ways of working (I draw, I paint, I write, that's what I do) we close off others. It took me a good half a year of watching the potters and noticing that the ceramics studio always draws someone to quietly, carefully work the wet mud, before I signed up for my beginners class. My teacher told me I was 'cleared' for intermediate next go-round if I want it. And I think I do. My cylinders are getting taller and that slipping and scoring seems quite promising.

I slip.
I score.
I will return to the site of my last adventures. Yep, in less than a short week I'll spend a long week in Atlanta where my husband and I lived for many years up until last July. We skipped town for a laundry list of reasons, not least of which was that the pace felt wrong, we couldn't save a dime and we missed our families. Of course, we'd formed new families through a network of friends and the live fast, spend freely life is fun for a vacation. I've custom fit my vacation, actually. It's work, it's play, catch-up, nostalgia and new adventure. I'll teach, I'll treat my friends to stories of our new life up north and I plan to draw again. Maybe I'll finally check out Mudfire or spend a big chunk of time watching my great friends great kids run around like they have no worries. It's sunny and seventy. What's to worry about?

For those of you in Atlanta, news will follow shortly about a fabulous art party and for those of you about to rock, well, I salute you.

Sorry. I slip. I lose points.
Ok, take care,
Rachael