Focus is a little tough lately. I'm wrapped up in responsibilities and trying to say goodbye to a dying loved one while supporting family in the process as well. I'm spending all my freetime trying to tread water and keep some prespective. Death is inevitable, growth is too.

I simply wanted to say something in this forum and maybe that something is best by showing some little things that help.

Watching Rauschenberg talk about erasing DeKooning

Looking at Hans Hoffman

I can't promise new content too often, but I'm not entirely swallowed by circumstances and hope you are not either...

Artist Richard Wicka in Buffalo has a long running project where people tell their short stories on video. My favorite is when Mari talks about her early endeavors as an avon saleslady.

Don't we all know what it is to lose the basket contest? May you continue to make the daisies, tho, they are certainly full of artistry...

that's all for now,
Rachael

John Baldessari. (American, born 1931). I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art. 1971. Lithograph, composition: 22 3/8 x 29 9/16" (56.8 x 75.1 cm); sheet: 22 7/16 x 30 1/16" (57 x 76.4 cm). Publisher: The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax. Printer: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Lithography Workshop, Halifax. Edition: 50. John B. Turner Fund. © 2007 John Baldessari

And I can't tell you how often I've told others and thought to myself that my sketchbook is a tool against boredom. If I am making lines and shapes on a piece of paper, I am not sitting in a lump doing nothing. Only the boring get bored.

Lately, though, as the busy has overwhelmed my day job, my free time, my spare moments and other moments and I've been pining for the big nothing. Time to simply be. Moments not promised to anyone else and the art that might be spurred from that time, place, lack of pressure.

Don't know what it would be but it would not be boring. Couple of days off this week won't hurt...

take care,
Rachael

Sherri Wood was the amazing quilt/community artist I met this summer at Penland. She's got a new project and was blurbed on NPR a few days ago.

I met Jeanne Beck recently by catching a glimpse of her work and being literally drawn into a conversation. I found her site tells me more about her work, ideas, and beautiful studio. She tells me she'll be posting more work in a few weeks.

I can't get enough of Lee Krasner's work lately. It's damn sharp, loaded with ideas, strongly crafted, and full of dense energy. Why does her dead husband get all the rah rah? Even as her work is described, it seems always to be in the shadow of J.P...

And then today I found a fabulous package from Deb Lactiva in my mailbox. A fabulous sketchbook and more fiber artist's work.

The thing about being inspired, is that it's time for me to go back up to my studio and paint...

see ya,
Rachael

There's no escaping the busy right now, but I'm working to embrace it. Within a week that whirred by;

I learned more about how to look at ceramics, how to temper the passion and power of radical history with the trying so-hard-to-be-objective book history (Ward Churchill and Arthur Schelsinger), how to explain to my students how artists can make images as classical and abstract as this in the same year, and how to use a sock puppet for stress release.

I didn't paint much this week but yesterday I made a quick porcelain vase (slab and score and slip and poke some holes in it). And all week I've been able to steal a few minutes up in the attic (at the top of the world) where I mostly make lines.

This morning I woke up to a vivid image of whirrling dervishes, thanks to a lyrical interview between Krista and Fatemeh Keshavarz

that's all I can tell you now as I'm about to escape back up to the attic... best, Rachael