My husband's new girlfriend

I was at the post office waiting for my sister to come out. A guy comes out and points to the truck next to me and says, "There's a cat under there." I thought he meant under the truck, so I said I'd tell the guy when he came out to be careful. He gave me a funny look.

"NO, under the HOOD!" he said.

Well, I've had very bad experiences with that before. Terrified, I ran into the post office to find the owner of the truck. He came out and popped the hood. I expected carnage, but instead found a tiny, starved, ratty little orange kitten crouched on the air filter lid. He didn't know whose kitten it was, probably a stray, but it seems like she'd ridden there to Magdalena all the way from the Navajo Reservation, about 45 minutes away. Poor little thing. But she was completely unhurt, just hungry and thirsty.

I know. We have a non-profit animal rescue group and I should have tried to adopt her out to make room for future rescues. But it was love at first sight. It was mutual until she met my husband, and now I'm just the Food Lady. The kitten, Penstemon, and my husband are in love. And I have the photos to prove it.

A Note About Inspiration

I used to think art was about vision. About seeing something in your head and then having the skill to translate that into something other people could see. And since I couldn't go directly from seeing with my head to creating with my hands, I thought art wasn't for me. But art is really just taking what you see and pushing it around and squishing it and holding it up to the light to see what ELSE there is to see. With your head or hands, makes no difference.

Then when you see what else there is to see, you suddenly can see how another thing can squish or twist into the first thing.... viola. You made something squishy and twisted. :)

Little bone skulls in a seed pod, strung with picture jasper beads. Sold it at the Festival of the Cranes this past weekend. I'm happy to say this did NOT come directly from my head to my hands, it was very much more experimental squishing.

Bosque del Apache

It's that time again! The cranes are flying into the Bosque. We went this weekend and saw lots of whooping and sandhill cranes. ducks, geese, some sort of cool chirpy blackbirds of some sort in the rushes, and a huge hawk. It was a beautiful day.

Even if you don't particularly like birds it's an incredible experience. The Festival of the Cranes (there are shows at the Bosque and throughout Socorro, I'll be showing at the Finley Complex) is usually the third week of November, but you can see the cranes flying in through December.

More experiments...

I've been having so much fun lately with mixed media pieces (thanks Denise, for the kick in the ass). So far I've been doing magnets, I love the instant gratification and it lets me experiment with techniques on a small scale, but the real challenge has been to combine the beading with the mixed media stuff!

There were samples of some in my last post, but lately I've been making them like a crazy person! My favorite these last couple weeks has been polymer clay pendants. My mom uses polymer clay on her gourd Santas, and I've used it before for the Magdalena Egg Show for my Egg Snake sculptures. It's great to work with, but I'd like it to be a bit heavier for pendants... I'll have to think on that.

I want to go back to my work table but it's too cold in here! I can't wait until the construction is done. But I have two shows coming up... Festival of the Cranes in Socorro and the Cavalcade of Arts at Isleta.... Oh, and the joint show with Denise... If you don't know Denise's work, check out her website http://www.desertglassdesigns.com/ I made the website, but of course I can't get one done for myself... maybe I should do that and stay here by this space heater.

Anyway, I'm babbling, here are some photos of recent work...

First, here's one of my Mom's gourd art creations. Her favorite. Isn't it amazing? She has some of her work for sale on Etsy:http://www.redbarngourds.etsy.com/

Pics of my jewelry...

Mama's Minerals Fall Art Show

My first jewelry & mixed media show in Albuquerque! It was at Mama's Minerals, right next to the Albuquerque Arts Alliance gallery where I was in that Chinese Splash Ink show. I should post pictures of my paintings some day...

Mama's Minerals is great, a fun place to shop and they were very good at organizing the event. The weather was terrible though, so everyone had slow sales. Windy, cold, scary clouds. We made a run for it just after 3pm and we were one of the last vendors standing.

I was thrilled to sell some of my mixed media stuff - a sun magnet and "La Rosa" which I hand painted and then "glazed" with wine! Mimbres Red from the St. Clair winery in Las Cruces to be exact. I'd had wine one night and the next morning the wine in the bottom of the glass was a gorgeous deep red/clear gel - I just knew I had to drip it on something! (And yes, I did leave a dirty glass out all night. And now I've proven that cleaning is detrimental to creativity.)

I also sold a few jewelry pieces, nothing major. Weather, gas, stock market... people don't want to buy. Hopefully as Christmas gets closer it will pick up. Strangely, the Farmer's Market in Socorro has been excellent for me. Go figure.


Here are some more pictures of my table at the show: