My day was special to me with friends and family, a phone call from Spain, great presents…and in one of the cards a friend wrote a poetic note which included these words which describe so nicely the way I feel today: “The longer we live the more we fathom, the more it is a mystery, […]
Recent Posts
MY LIFE SO FAR
I first published this on my birthday in 2009, but I still think it tells my story…and now it comforts and delights me to see it and remember. Today is my birthday and I’ve attained a certain age. I have plans, things to do, places to go. But today I’m looking back. (I tried to […]
Remembering George Johanson, 1928-2022
This is no orderly remembrance, no chronological marching down the years. This is a combination of memories and joy in the life and deep regret for the loss to our art community. George has left the room. George liked art and making most of all, and the people who understood that. I composed many sentences, […]
Well, There Went the Summer
Greetings friends. I was somewhat dumbstruck this morning when I realized August was history. September hours begin tomorrow at the food cart, school starts next weeks for the grands, I bought a boiled wool sweater. Oh yes I did. I saw it coming. This summer was hot but it was the summer we finally got […]
Keeping in Touch
A few years ago I bought some cards from MOMA. I ordered a box of cards by the artist Louise Bourgeois called “What is the Shape of this Problem?” But when the cards arrived, there were two boxes of 18 instead of one. I wasn’t sure I knew that many people who would “get” the […]
Graduation Day
It’s graduation day, June 13, 1970. Dyche Stadium, Evanston, Illinois. The young man came to Northwestern University in 1966 from Whitman College, and in four short years earned an MA and a PhD…and found a wife. Soon after the photo-op they hitched their VW Bug to a UHaul truck and headed west…he returning to the […]
Open Studio
Last weekend was the “Sheep to Shawl” event at the Willamette Heritage where I (and 10 other artists) am lucky enough to have studio space. We chose this moment to reopen studios…for the first time in two years. Since the last open studio I’ve moved to a bigger studio on the main floor, where many […]
The Girls
A rainy, cold, dreary February Saturday. There’s a war. There’s illness. We can’t go for a walk. In an effort to find something positive to do, I decided to fix the girls’ heads and for a moment, it was an antidote. The doll on the right was my mother’s doll, now about 100 years old […]
The Search for Hall’s Violet
in 1871 Illinois botanist Elihu Hall took the train to Oregon to collect botanical specimens. Sometime in the 1850’s Hall had discovered there was a market for specimens of native plants from the west…plants that had never been collected or identified. His first collecting trip was in 1862 to Colorado, accompanying Dr. Charles Parry (the […]
Depth of Field
Collector/Donor Bill Rhoades has been finding and donating art work to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem since its inception in 1998. In recent years he has focused (no pun intended) on photographs made by photographers from the Northwest or with a Northwest connection. This late winter/spring (until April 23rd) you have a […]
On The Way 