Thanks everyone for the support and just so you know my visit to Atlanta is still (given circumstances) going great. The open studio is still on for Saturday night June 11th at Art Exchange Gallery, 750 Kalb Ave, Atlanta GA (6-9pm). My friends are amazing hosts, the teaching gig is a treat, and this city mercifully let me slip back in like I never left. My wonderful husband is putting back the pieces as I work down here.

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