Oh Liz....Where Are You?

Gee, I wish I knew....someone mentioned the time when we are not busy making art as fallow time but I really believe it is a time of contemplation and, if willing, a time of openness to all the visuals and emotions around us.

I have been playing with collages still, doing gel transfers, aging wallpaper samples, pulling apart textile sample books from the local design store, and thinking about ways to incorporate all this texture.

I have also been playing with my images on the computer, working on various textures...oh, how I love that stuff! The fun is that I can turn them into silk screens and make magic fabric with multiple screens and colors...then the question is, what to do with the new fabric. However, like Rayna Gillman, if I throw it up on the wall and look at it, something will stir in my brain and lead me on.

Speaking of Rayna, she was out here last week on business and I got to take her out to dinner Thursday night. Oh what fun that is! Rayna had the hardest time getting her martini just right but since I don't drink martinis I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Not shaken, rocks on the side, olives, etc...took a couple of trys but they finally managed. We shared a tremendous artichoke and king crab hot dip with wonderful frocacci (? I'm not Italian so I don't know how this is spelling), followed by wonderful salads with grilled steak, Maytag blue cheese, caramelized onions and all sorts of wonderful things. And, being gluttons, we topped it off with a piece of Key lime pie...each...when we really should have shared it. But most wonderful of all was the chance to just sit and chat for a while...we always get together between classes or something or other but this was nice.

Nothing to show anyone yet... but should have some stuff next week, after a week in the Sierra at our little cabin, with grandson, daughter and her husband. We will stay several extra days as they can only come up for the weekend but it will be nice to relax. I am taking my mother's scrapbooks from when she took my son to Austria and England many years ago and putting them together in a more archival manner, without all the extra stuff, and will give them to my son. This will be a good time to do this as it gets pretty warm during the afternoon. I am trying to decide if I want to take more stuff or just a couple of books to sit down and read...my, but that sounds like summer time! Just what I will do.