Mojave Light Musing

  Hello friends, I have been digesting the weeklong cyanotype collaboration with my friend and art collaborator, Ellen Dooley. So many takeaways from that venture. I am still letting the energy settle.  To briefly recap, Ellen and I challenged ourselves to make a print every day for a full week. We limited the size to 5x7ish, had to use UV sensitive chemistry, natural fiber papers, freshly made each day. Whatever else we chose to throw in there was up to us. It was uncanny how we ended up making something akin to what the other did - you can see that in our diptych presentations which are all in the slide show below.  Here is one... my skeleton leaves (l.) mimic the bare tree branches in Ellen's image (r.). We both also added elements on top of our prints.   We did not confer with each other prior to making our prints... A few personal interpretations of my experience:  1. I learned the importance of DAILY time and space to create - even if all you do during tha...

Here's the short version: The rest of 2017-2018 is a blur.   Left a 35 year career in public education halfway through 2019. Gifted myself a custom built camper van to freely travel and be a full-time artist, open land advocate, and whatever else I wanted. In February, 2020, we were planning a wedding and awaiting the arrival of a new family member - my first grandchild.  Covid hit shortly after in full force. Granddaughter arrived despite Covid restraints and world events, healthy and as adorable as can be, thank God and FaceTime. The new little family is thriving and safe. Everything else turned to shit... Like you, I am trying to figure out what 'new normal' looks like as every day unleashes old and new circumstances to make sense of and navigate through. Grieving and creating are simultaneous, daily rituals. My thread of sanity is that I am not in this alone but in good company - as sad and frightening and frustrating as it all can be - I remain hopeful, most of the t...