DUMBO Arts Festival--this weekend!

The DUMBO Arts Festival is this weekend and I have one painting hanging at Realty Collective, 25 Washington Street, suite 501. The festival is a lot of fun and DUMBO is such a great part of Brooklyn. Even though it's being completely bombarded with high end coop apartments and cutsey shops on Washington street it still has a great aura to it, with that wonderful bridge always looming over you. There's usually lots of food, live music and events, as well as ton's of great art.
For information on the weekend's schedule of events, go to http://dumboartscenter.org/festival.html.

Late night, Dreary day......

Kind of a gray day today. I was up super late again last night, watching the re-broadcast of the Democratic Debate. Late nights are usually when I work but having a roommate sleeping in the next room has completely cramped my creative flow. It's been over a year that I haven't had my space to myself and it's really starting to get to me. I have begun a new project though--collage shadow boxes--which I hope to sell around the holidays. Hoping to incorporate some of my unused ceramic "doo-dads" with encaustic, photos, clippings and whatever else I can find. I saw the Joseph Cornell retrospective in Salem, Mass this summer and was completely inspired by it. I've been thinking about working with collage and shadow boxes for a while and am now finally getting to it. Funny thing, Joseph Cornell was a complete recluse and although I am not quite as isolated as he was, I do feel I am a loner and I relate very much to his somewhat "offbeat" personality. I think shadow boxes often provide a "safe" representation of the little bits and pieces of one's inner life without really exposing too much of the real thing......

Work comes hard and infrequently these days.

I haven't been working much at all these days, and this is the last painting I did several months ago. It's hard to get much work done in my studio, which is just a room in my apartment. There are too many distractions and I rarely feel free enough to dive in and create havoc. The day job saps my energy and the evening hours drift by quickly leaving me little time to get anything done. Winter is approaching, so I'll be spending more time at home--which is good for my art, I guess. But the early onset of darkness does little for my frame of mind and just makes me want to crawl in bed with a movie at 9:00pm. Unfortunately, the summer was not very productive even though the long days invigorate me and I am usually up and feeling energetic until 2:00am. I may just have to start waking with the early morning light and jump right into the studio before I leave for work. It may be the only time my mind and body are in harmony and when I can get my creative juices flowing.....we shall see.

President Street, early evening in August

This is the view from the tiny windows in my bedroom, taken one August evening when the beautiful Park Slope sun is still high in the sky.

A happy moment in Montreal this summer.....

This August, I had a wonderful reprieve from an otherwise brutal summer in New York --- six fun-filled days in Montreal Canada. I spent the first four days alone trying to quiet down the constant dialogue in my head, and then my friend Dee joined me and kept me in stitches laughing pretty much every moment we were together. This photo was taken during one of the utterly European meals we prepared for ourselves on the little terrace outside my adorable room...fresh tomatoes, spinach dip, yummy fruit, and French bread. And of course no meal involving a Scotish chick and a Sicilian chick in French-speaking Montreal would be complete without wine. We had two bottles -- a red for Dee and a white for me.