Not a bad thing to read this conversation and feel like yep, gallery packets are opened. I liked the honesty and approach of these two gallerists even if as a rule I run screaming in the other direction from commercial gallery spaces. Jerks.

OK.

I been a jerk. Plenty of folks have left me plenty of messages via email and letter and phone and carrier pigeon but I have not shared with Julia my thoughts of southern artists (really I'll always be keen onBill Christenberry even though he doesn't like to be called one) or with my former students the excitement I have to hear from them or even with my brother. I'm the queen of unreturned kindnesses lately and that's not my proudest role. Publicly apologizing is only the first step. I'll reply, I'll send the letters, I'll return the calls.

But first I have to tell you that it's been warm here (eighty degrees and this is October) but tonight through this open window the breeze is just right. That breeze, the sound of the leaves shaking, a branch hitting the side of this place snaps my memory right back to my kidhood staying up after everyone else was asleep to draw comics and dream and listen to latenight talk radio really low on my clockradio in my stupid purple room. What is it about season and memory? I think of the Adirondacks every fall. I see the trails I ran in cross country races, I think of my friends halloween costumes, I choke up when I drink apple cider. I oughtta go back to my hometown, even if only in my sketchbook. Anybody else (slick?) remember Barbers market or Binley's florist or the basement of Crandall library? The power of remembered places is the specific detail (how the curve of a road is seen clearly even if you haven't been on that road in 15 years.)

Seeing as how the breeze stirs my memories, gets me going, has me half gone and keeps me awake and babbling into this box, I will spare you. I'll close the window, get to bed and come back around when less lost in the past and more present in the future.

Take care,
Rachael

Damn, where have I been. It's October and I haven't said a word yet. Forgive me as I forgive myself, dust myself off and stand back up on my soapbox/pedestal/folding ladder that's about to topple over. I've been painting and working and daydreaming and buying new boots and thinking I'm an art star (fart star is more like it) because one of my paintings has been chosen to be on the next edition of some of my favorite chocolate bars. An excuse to eat a lot of chocolate and be in an art show in the People's Republic of Ithaca is a good thing. If you can get to Ithaca for the gallery night in December I'll be there, eating chocolate bars and meeting other artists. I'll tell more soon.

We still don't have a closing date for the house but that doesn't mean I'm not still obsessed. Here's my latest painting of it, perhaps the picture that will someday appear on our moving card.



And then speaking of home. I'm from Glens Falls, New York, a tiny town in the Adirondacks. This week I've been saddened, crazy saddened, to see Lake George in the news not as a beautiful lake (as in this Steiglitz photo) but as the place twenty people died when a boat tipped over. It was sad when that glass ship went down and to see the pictures and the story told by the people in the community I grew up, reminds me again of the value of these small towns. I hate that there was such a loss of life, but the people of Lake George and Bolton Landing and Glens Falls will give comfort to the people of Michigan who can't quite figure out how a pretty day turned so ugly.

Be good, be giving, be kind, be not afraid to go out on the water and see what a beautiful day can bring. I give a little image of gathering clouds, or storms, or whatnot, salvaged from the floor of my old fire damaged studio and reborn and revamped in a new space as a testament and a hope.



Take care,
Rachael

I just spent a few hours fighting the good fight in my squatter studio, spilling and splashing, and desperately trying to revive some paintings still injured from the fire way back in june. These paintings have been sitting in a portfolio smelling slightly smoky and feeling abandoned. I may write some obituaries up, but I also figure if I'm going to fight my big stupid fear every time I have a day off I might as well fight another one and paint. A low level fear of making miserable, pointless things is always present in my studio. Maybe someday I'll manage to get rid of it, but today it served as a pretty good motivator. I paint because I have to, because there is a reason to use these forms, these colors, these ideas in the haphazard way I do but also because I'm be a big liar if I don't paint and because enough people think my work is worth looking at that if I make crap I'm disappointing them as well as myself.
It's no big secret that anxiety motivates artists, it thoroughly did in the nineteenth century, and it seems like the more worried we all are about the world falling apart, the more we run to the studio and try to patch it together again.
OK, so then, more soon I betcha. Take good care and keep on fighting the good fight, comrades,
Rachael

Alright, I'll tell you... it's been a while since I went to a gallery and looked at pictures (unless my frequent stops in front of Ben Shahn's lithographs count ) but I have been thinking about the skills artists have and the skills artists need.
My ever wise and talented ceramics teacher tells her beginning class (this is my second time in it after all) that the most important things we'll need in working with clay are: patience (sit down at the wheel, sit down at the wheel, sit down at the wheel), a sense of when to stop (after you've pulled up the sides but before the rim folds in), and how to let go (the kiln ate my baby and still I will feed it more pots and plates). If we don't have them, she says with a smile, we can learn them.
My counseling class tonight stressed the importance of recieves a rejection and chooses not to send it back in an angry huff but instead takes a deep breath and sends another proposal out will eventually and sucessfully get their work seen.
That's all the wisdom I have tonight but I also have great pride in Nancy's new grant (yea bugs!), in my exciting chocolate news (more to follow), and in the thought that soon soon soon we'll be in our new house.
Yea!
take care,
Rachael

I spent some time today facing my fears, getting good news, and writing. Not much here but lots in my notebook, simply needs to be focused and figured out. I am still learning to write.
My pottery class starts up again tommorrow night and I might go back on the wheel or I might try handbuilding again. All this and as soon as we close on the house I plan on setting up my studio. A sunny place in the attic where I can spill paint all I want. Cue recent painting, subtle and small...
I really like Danny's simple and straightforward approach to perspective and am impressed also with Libby's attending and Vic Muniz giving a
family drawing workshop
John Dewey's pedagogical creed fits in here somehow, if only because it is currently flavoring my stew.
goodnight,
Rachael