We're inching closer and closer to our first house as we listen to the news reports of thousand fo people displaced and simply gone. I'm spending lots of time wondering where the systems problems are in my job and my country while at the same time I'm just following routine.

Unbelievable to read Charmaine Neville's story, more unbelievable to hear her tell it (follow the video links in the article if you can, trips me up top link it here). We let so many people down. We do this daily when we ignore poverty, when we destruct, destroy, and send hate out there.

Perspective helps all things. Loss and growth are connected deeply.
That said, goodnight.
take care,
Rachael

This week we started the process of buying our first house. I can't stop drawing it; all the leded glass and hardwood floors and original gumwood trim inside has me excited. There is space for me to paint (a sunroom and an attic with heat and lots of windows, backyard and front porch). As two non-profiters with small savings and little hope of amassing more we knew we'd never be able to buy a house in Atlanta but here they aren't expensive and pretty easy to find. We have to go through some more hoops of course (closing is a few weeks away so our fingers remain crossed) but we are excited. Below is a drawing in process of the house and a small picture, I don't want to jinx the closing process any but am pretty damn excited about the whole thing.



Thursday, I started a class in counseling because I am curious about, pulled towards, and interested in helping people solve their own problems. I am not so sure I want to be a counselor but I want to know how to help others, advocate for children, and push, prod and plead for greater compassion. Who knows if I will be a counselor or anything else but learning is important and learning to help seems most important.

Don't know about you but I can't keep my head and heart away from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for long. The National Story Telling society has a blog of stories about Katrina, it's an honest and powerful spot to witness some stories. Gulp.

Take care of yourselves and your fellow man,
Rachael

oh the new header is a maybe, I oughtta fix it up some but those paintings to the left are examples of the work damaged in our fire earlier this year. A reminder, I hope that all things can be rebuilt, renewed, redone.

Among factors outside our human control:

• hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, natural disasters
• much invasive and scary disease
• um...lots

Not unlike everyone else outside the Katrina belt, I am obsessed with the images of uprooted houses, trees and trucks, people on rooftops, and the utter horrible loss. Maybe it's wrong to look at CNN photos and be pulled back to thinking about paintings, but while we have little control over nature we have lots of control over art.
All of that destruction, sad sudden change for millions (?) of people, and pain has me thinking also of how artists use images as catharsis and catalysts for action.
Katherine Taylor is an Atlanta based painter originally from Biloxi, Mississippi. She shows with Marcia Wood and for years has been painting images of the Mississippi coast (all casinos and neon lights or hurricane ravaged in 1965). I used to be in the same studio complex with Katherine and we'd have plenty of talks about home and family and the places we were from. She spoke of Biloxi and the Mississippi coast with a love and mixed emotion as the casinos and disparity between poverty and glitz grew, surface and substance. When the New York Times tells me Biloxi is practically gone , I gulp and hope Katherine's family is OK, I hope she is not shaking from the loss. I hope the eerie similarity between what she painted (the destruction wrought by the last horrible storms) and what has become real points only to a future in which we have sustainable coasts and more respect for factors outside our control.

I guess now, we can only watch the images, witness the stories, and give help in whatever way we can. Take good care of yourself and friends and family who've been uprooted,
Rachael

Well, there's not much honest art talk because I haven't been having many honest art thoughts. We are so very close to buying our first house, very family oriented, and exhausted from this summer's breakneck pace. I'm so very much in need of the vacation days I've got lined up. A whole fat week of days I plan on drawing, thinking, starting some new projects and processing the change of seasons and changes in our lives. We forget how every single messy day is a gift.

I've looked closely only at Ben Shahn's drawings and John Marin's watercolors. Images are in my head; this photo I took in Atlanta in June keeps lingering.

The only music I've been listening to isorchestra baobab . Even though I have no idea what it means I've been running around singing Soldadi, among the most hypnotic songs I've heard in a long time.



Ah, OK, before I forget: If you are a New York artist, you should know about these grants.

That's it, then, my report.

Take good care,
Rachael

I haven't been around here much, not even to straighten up the messy links in the corner over there or to clean up all the spammy comments that collect in old entries. Busy is as busy was this summer. Blink and it's almost september and I've put away most of my clay, picked up the paintbrush, taken up temporary residence in the squatter studio, and started to brew some more drawings and ideas.

There is still a stew of stuff happening around us. We're house searching still and working and working and working. Solving other people's problems all day is less satisfying than the painter's truth of creating one's own problems.

But I'm noticing, remembering, being reminded that if I don't make art I get grumpy. Really. My jaw gets set a little tighter and I am just a little too pissy. Today was a messy morning of sorting and starting and spilling and making tentative marks. I remain (8 hours after) refreshed and excited and unsure of what those things will be when they grow up and (maybe) become paintings. Or maybe they'll just remain the same smoky smelling, sad and sorry scraps they are.

Either way, I am less pissy and more strong to fight the good fight. Even if I don't really know what it is. To tell the truth, to encourage others to make the art they want to make and the art they need to make and the steps to change their world, to be better. I will try not to be a stranger in these parts.

take care,
Rachael