SAVANNAH!

there are these mornings when I lay in bed and my heart feels like this. today was certainly one of them.

back in Savannah, how sublime. I got here last tuesday. Ever since, I've been cleaning my house, hanging out with some good friends and all of the dogs and just being here.

I've been making lots: for the clawfoot tub in Amherst mass. for essentials in Northampton mass. for specific people and for myself. here are some table runners.... my new favorite thing to make:

front and back..... REVERSIBLE--- pour qua pas?

I started a new book--- one that Brooke made for me a few birthdays back. I'm going to try to do a page every day. one intentional page. next monday school starts, I'm more excited about it than ever. I'll be taking two classes. Screen printing and embellished surfaces. I'm trying to make space for all the pieces that I want at this point. I'm working on calming down and getting back to the garden, of my dreams, thoughts, ideas and wonderings. It, like my real back yard needs a little slow attention. (like slow food. slow craft. everything that we make by hand everything that we know by heart.)

here is a kid painted OBAMA from massachusetts. ... what a fall this shall be.

savannah RECYCLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

after much much ado and years of waiting! check it out:
http://www.scaddistrict.com/?p=730

CURB SIDE RECYCLING!!!!!! i'm so thrilled on so many levels............ including that my deck can actually be a nice place to hang out rather than the crazy collection spot of cans and bottles!!! HOORAY HOORAY.

music!

i just discovered the joys of project playlist!! I'm not sure if this will work, but here is a link to some songs that you should really go listen to!!! http://www.playlist.com/node/43525674

xoxo

ordinary town

dave carter + tracy grammer said, " raised on punches and junk food lunches and punch-drunk ballroom steps. you get to believin you're even- steven with the kids at fast track prep. so you dump your bucks on a velvet tux and run and join the dance. but your holy shows and the romans know you're just a child of circumstance..."

jenny lewis says, "it's fifteen miles to the promised land and i promise you i'm doing the best i can."

natalie maines, martie mcguire and emily robinson say, "i'm taking the long way. taking the long way round."

bean + i just went and lay out in the rain. it is in these fleeting moments that i know that where ever you go, there you are. you are. you are. you are.

some people let their hair grow into dreadlocks because they don't want to interupt the natural systems, rhythms and patterns of their own being.

eat pray love

monday monday. I have an early break at work today, it's kind of nice to have some free morning time. I'm eating my new favorite snack--- a "fitness muffin" from Woodstar. it's sort of a carrot/rasin/ bran muffin.... de-lish!

as usual, the post trunk show period has me a little worn out in terms of studio production. I'm getting back into some fine art after last weeks total break in which I don't think I made a single thing. artist + writer Sabrina Ward Harrison started the true living project a few years ago this is what she wrote about it:

Two years ago I ended up in a field of grass hip high. This is where I began to make the body work that has come to be called The True Living Project.

E.E. Cummings said a poet a “someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement”. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being.

On a daily basis we teeter on the edge of humanity losing history through the fading cultural landscape of our country and our interconnectedness as human beings. Though unconscious development and historical neglect. As we have barreled deeper and deeper into a technological / result driven 21st century, now more than ever I do believe we need to be brought home to the presence of our living. To allow the restful validation of your own tender true humanity, may this work be a living ode to our living.

I am striving to create both a visual and emotional unfolding through the textural interchange of photography, sound, collage, film and found objects.

As you observe, as you listen, may you rest into that place where this moment, and your memory, exist.

*** I think that the true living project is a fabulous title for a body of work. I've been using the ideas and the title as a way to think about and process my own work. at this point, I know that my work falls into a couple of categories. the first is the studio work--- items which I make many of. the second is the fine art, the true living project, which is the work that I do to document, memorialize, record and at the same time figure out how I feel and what I think. here is the beginning of the most recent piece (quite recent too, I started it yesterday afternoon!)

so we'll see where that one goes.......... I can't wait to work on it more this afternoon. this work is so freeing, it's good to be without that pressure of craftsmanship. it's good to work with things that I've collected and which are not yet tamed or designed.

I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book eat pray love, I just read the part when she meets a 9th generation Balinese medicine man named Ketut. He tells her, " to find the balance you want, this is what you mush become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world thru your head. You must look thru your heart instead."

pre- MAMMA MIA

here I go again........... my my, how can I resist you?!?!?!?!? this has been a honey of a day. the kids were easy as pie + exceedingly cute. bean + I are about to set out to see MAMMA MIA. I am SO excited. jittering with anticipation, infact.

I'm trying to think of a cute little good bye present for the preschoolers........... ideas? nothing too complicated, because I will be making 14 of them. ANYWAYS, much love, many rainbows + refreshing storms. xoxo m

LA LA!

saturday's trunkshow was a great success. We had a lovely group of dear dear friends and it was a blast! here is the statement that I wrote for the show + it is very true of this moment in our lives..

betty+isabel. high summer. 2008.
Much of our world is comprised of loops, links and tangles. Each thread and every color seem to have their own intuitive route. Birds migrate the same route every year, intuitively. I try not to interrupt the intuitive and the naturally occurring, but to internalize each loop and link, to really know every tangle. The name betty+Isabel, comes from an e.e Cummings poem about patterns which simply happen, and we may not know why or how, but we accept them. We accept them as we do everything which we have made by hand or know by heart.

Anyways, I'm getting back into this one thing at a time groove. it's feeling pretty great. the day ends when it should and I am making specific things for specific people. I am finding that life as a maker is rather like life as a farmer. you have to make different types of work at different times, forming a cycle in order to stay alive, awake and excited......... just like the wisest way to farm is to switch up the crops in your field from time to time.
I feel pretty relaxed and just pretty happy. here are some ingredients for that:

- simon + garfunkel -- first thing in the morning + in the car
- these amazing chocolates from my friend Kait which were waiting for me in my cubbie at the preschool today
- good talks and cute phone messages from/with dear friends like Jen, Nora, Joellen, Djerba, Lexi + Jess.
- RIVA, world's greatest dog
- my wonderful Mummay
- these glorious, sunny days