In April my long time friend Carolyn drove from California north to Playa retreat in Summerlake, Oregon. I drove south to same from Salem and we spent five wonderful days, talking, laughing, working in the studio there. It was quiet…only two other people there and we rarely saw them. It was beautiful. Birdsong all day. […]
Last night was the opening for an exhibition/installation at the Salem Art Association’s Focus Gallery, a long time in the making…16 years to be exact. It is some of the 5000+ postcards I’ve received from my friend Ellen Crockett in Vermont…one a day every day for 16 years. For her it became a meditation, a […]
Yesterday I found this box in the studio…while searching for something else. I’d forgotten about this series of collages I made sometime in the last decade…using old photos and other bits and bobs. I called them “Notes to Myself” and I still understand what I was telling me and they delighted me, as old work […]
My friend Christine is an artist, a long-time teacher, a good listener. A friend. We’ve been drawing together for years, over lunch at hers or mine. We know a lot of each other’s stories, the same stuff makes us laugh…she’s a gem. The foundation isn’t that though, it’s drawing. We both have the habit of […]
Well a lot has happened since I addressed this blog. I’m out of the habit of musing (except internally). In early October The funny, thoughtful, handsome and gifted Roger Hull left this world after a long and often harrowing battle with prostate cancer. He remained interested in the process of dying until the very end, did a […]
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 […]
This Friday and Saturday (November 5th and 6th) the Willamette Heritage Center (1313 SE Mill St SE) will be hosting Quiltopia, 2021. Like everything else, the popular annual exhibit was cancelled in 2020, but is back this year! Because my painting studio is part of the Studios at the Mill (at the Willamette Heritage Center) […]
As Covid-19 surges once again, cutting us off from ease of viewing and motion, we are particularly grateful for three exhibits in Salem of the work of three very different but talented artists from three generations of art making…all still working. Jon Colburn, at 85 the oldest of three, has been in Salem about 15 […]
Two exhibits open this weekend at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. We got to preview the fantastic George Rodriguez show during installation the other day and really…this shouldn’t be missed. The scale is huge and the work is gorgeous… Here are a few of the “Georges” Rodriguez was born in El Paso of immigrant […]
I’ve written a lot about Jon Colburn and visited his studio many times, since his partner is my long-time friend and garden mentor Irene Longaker. The other day R and I were in the PNAA (Pacific Northwest Artist Archive) and archivist Mary McRobinson had a nice painting of Jon’s over her desk, on loan from […]
On The Way 