Spring is Amazing and Fabulously Beautiful

I’ve been getting comments about the lack of action on my blog, which has set me to thinking about what I AM thinking about and what I’ve been doing. Some of what I’ve been doing is Daily Life, focusing on garden and barn.

So I went out this morning and took pictures of the things Outside, especially flowers, and especially flowers that will turn into yummy things to eat, like strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and apples, and I’m running them along here, as they run through my life, as a constant, wonderful presence.

I’m not a landscape, flower, or still-life painter, but I understand what other artists find compelling about these things that are so alive, awake and essential to our life on this planet – the things that grow, that we eat, that we smell, that are so full of color, complexity, and their own life that continues with or without our intervention.

Much of what I’ve been doing art-and-work-wise has been at the computer. Suddenly I’m working on four different curatorial projects:

• My job with the Art of Action through the Vermont Arts Council. There are 26 different sites for the tour, five of which are in galleries and/or museums, and the remainder in non-traditional downtown locations, where I will need to install work on five standing panels that are being created just for this project – and it will move to a new location every two weeks! The ten artists involved in this project are a wonderful group of people, all interesting and incredibly hard-working.

• The Circus! Show at Studio Place Arts, which I will be installing the week of June 8. The opening reception will be on Friday, June 19, from 5:30-7:30 PM. I hope you’ll come – I think it’s going to be a really fabulous show.

• The On The Planet exhibit in Nagoya, Japan in January, 2010 and in Vermont in September, 2010. I’m working with three other artists (Janet Fredericks, Sophie Hood, and Riki Moss) on an installation for Nagoya, and working with Sue Higby as co-curator to design the Vermont component, which will be installed in three locations – Studio Place Arts in Barre, the Historic Quarries at Millstone Hill, and Flynndog in Burlington. This morning I was up early working on ideas for paper pieces for my own contribution to the Nagoya show. We feel a need to have things that are light and easily shipped, so paper fills the bill. I don’t usually have anything to do with paper (except reading it), so this is a challenge.




• And finally, I worked on proposing a retrospective exhibit at a gallery in a nearby state for a friend. The proposal is in, and I’ll let you know if we get it!

From the top: apple blossoms, strawberry bed with blossoms, dandelions (ubiquitous, irritating; I've made them into wine in the past, but now I just ride it out and wait until they go away), raspberries (I'm terribly proud of my row of raspberries, beautifully pruned and weeded), and my wonderful husband R.D. Eno with his own outdoor project.

Tomorrow I'm going down to Dartmouth to meet with the other people in the Nagoya group, so I'll take some pictures and maybe put up something about that.