montana musings…. continued.  (more and more to come!)

“Science works with chunks and bits and pieces of things with the continuity presumed, and the artist works only with the continuities of things with the chunks and bits and pieces presumed.”

~Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance

Last week I traveled to New York City.  This was only my third visit to the ginormous metropolis but it was the most relaxed visit I’ve had thus far due to a comfortable home base and a good long time to stay in town, not to mention friendly locals.  The primary reason for the trip was to accompany my friend kim on a music trip but I also knew that it would afford me the opportunity for some time on my own to think, draw and write in my sketchbook.  The week was filled with music, coffee, more music, amazing salads, subway rides, dog parks, more coffee, lots of thinking, writing and a bit of drawing.  From an art making perspective it felt very deep and nourishing.  Un-rushed, with very little schedule to adhere to, I just wandered around NYC some, watched Kim make a few new songs, and thought a great deal about art making, my career, and this balancing act called life.  It occurred to me that I don’t often have so much time on my hands to think and it felt really great.

Lately I have been so wrapped up in the business of art and the teaching of art that I haven’t allowed much time for the making of art.  My sketchbook is a great place to keep myself drawing and noticing the world around me, but I have not spent enough time actually working on the more conceptually sound art work that is a bit like therapy to me.  It’s been months since a concept has grabbed a hold of me and begged to be made into some semblance of a body of work.  A visit to the American Museum of Natural History reminded me of what makes me tick artistically.   The displays at the museum are nothing short of art in and of themselves.  I really loved all of the fossilized bones in the paleontology wing.  I find myself looking at these collected specimens and wondering where people fit into the puzzle.  We are the cause of so much extinction and yet capable of such beauty as well.  This dichotomy is interesting and worth exploring through visual art.  I wondered why we are compelled to make art when so much of nature is so beautiful to look at already.  Like I said, deep deep stuff.  But good to ponder.  A bit existential maybe, but healthy over all I think.

Some early drawings….

I look forward to pouring over my photographs from AMNH and hitting the library for further inspiration.  As usual, the sketchbook is capturing whatever pours out.

Besides the museum, a trip to the Tompkins Square park was another fun venture which resulted in a few dog drawings.  It has been quite awhile since I have made a point to draw dogs.  I suppose there is just no one to draw quite like old Caskie.  But I need to get back into dog drawings.  They are tremendously good exercise.

All the while I doodled and pondered the trappings of the visual art world, Kim was hard at work in the studio writing and demo-ing, meeting with important people and doing a show.  It is interesting to me how much work goes into art.  All forms of art are so much more process laden than most people ever realize,  and music is no different.

One new song has a line in it, “What do I know?”  That’s a good question.  I am often so filled with questions about what’s around the bend, where to go from here, what next? etc. etc. etc.  But when I think about what I do know instead of what I don’t, or even can’t know, I find some comfort.

I know that I am incredibly grateful for what I have.  I know that I may love traveling but I also love coming home to my quiet little acre and the group of people that I love most.  I know that I love the work I do and that while it hasn’t paid much quite yet financially, it’s rewards have been priceless in the form of growth and experience.  I spend quite a chunk of my writing and thinking time contemplating the financial end of my work.  While in NYC, I met up with a fellow artist who is also straddling the lines between business and art and making a go at life as a working artist.  It’s an adventure ride for certain.  But we plug away at work we know is important.  This is all we can do.

It’s been a whirlwind, maelstrom of a time around here lately.  Months of work suddenly seemed to come to fruition recently and I have been working feverishly to keep it all afloat.  Drawing Down the Vision has had multiple pilot workshops and, coupled with a new and improved website, is ready for sale to receptive corporate audiences and beyond.  My business partner Adam and I are tremendously excited to see almost a year’s worth of work and research finally see the light of day.

The Artworks project for the Cincinnati Convention Center is “rounding third and heading for home” as they say here in Cincinnati.  Tina and I are in the finishing stages of making this huge project a reality.  We are technically ahead of the long list of things that need to be done, but it is still stressful as we prepare to move the work in a few weeks to the auto body shop for a finishing clear coat, and then finally on to the Convention Center for installation.  There is still much to be done, but we are plowing through it.  Yesterday I worked on two more faces, those of Christian Moerlein and Louis Hudepohl who will be in the part of the design that looks a bit like a brewery…

Being springtime, at least according to the calendar, it is also tornado season and that means puppets!!  (At least for me and my fellow Red Cross puppeteer Jeni!)  We did our first show of the season a couple of weeks ago and made it through with no discernible mistakes.  It is amazing to me how well we can remember our lines after only a couple of run through rehearsals and months off before that.  The depths of memory have no bounds it seems.

The Make a Book/ Fill a Book class at the Art Academy is approaching week 6.  Cody and I have a great group of 10 students who are bravely forging their way in their newly-made “re-purposed” journals.  Cody taught us all how to take an interesting old book cover and fill it with blank paper using traditional book binding techniques.  I have been introducing students to the various materials and techniques I use to then make a blank journal into a one of a kind, personalized sketch-journal.  The results have been delightful!!

Often, when I am in the midst of teaching this class or when I have a time of great externalized efforts, like recently, my sketchbook is along for the ride in my car or my bag, but doesn’t see much action inside.  I can go for weeks sometimes without sketching or writing.  This is a pattern with which I am familiar and I have learned not to be to hard on myself; that I will get back to it when things settle.  Last week, this pattern was shook up a bit.  In the middle of everything - I took a trip.  A badly needed respite from all of the work as well as the stress and grief from the trial of Esme’s murderer.  Although work has been so wonderfully busy, this trial opened up and salted wounds that had only gingerly begun to heal over the past year with all of our positive efforts to create a lasting legacy to someone lost so young.  Some time away was in order.

Months back, Tony and I had planned to join a group of Cincinnati area kayakers on a trip to the Gulf coast of Florida to swim with some manatees and to enjoy everything the Nature Coast has to offer.  We set up a hip yet responsible house sitter to hang out with the kids and dogs and off we went for paddling, snorkeling, and for me, some serious time in the sketchbook.  I am excited to share the fresh pages with my students this week when I get back to class.  Here are some highlights from my trip and from my sketchbook….

The drive to Florida was just under 900 miles and I slept a good bit of the way.  Once I awoke to look out the window at a huge peanut on top of a building.  Ah, Georgia.  We wound up in Cedar Key, Florida, a sleepy little island town and I was instantly smitten.  (My good ol’ friend Carol did remark, when have I traveled and not fallen in love with my surroundings?….. I think she has a point!)

We had hoped to paddle in the morning but awoke to storms.  Instead we walked around town and visited the museum and some little galleries and had some wonderful chowder at a place called Tony’s.

By the time we got to the campground the rain had pretty much stopped.  We were in for a week of majority sunshine!

Day one, Rainbow River.  It was the clearest water I had ever seen!!!!  So many gorgeous colors.  We kayaked and snorkeled and by the end of the day, I knew I needed a new wet suit top if I was not to suffer hypothermia….

Day 2 - Three Sisters springs, and swimming with manatees!!!  Thanks to my new friend and awesome photographer, Jamie Trammel, I have some shots of our time in the water with these gentle giants.  I could have done just this every day and would have been satisfied.  We wound up going back on day 4.  I love manatees.  Simple as that.

Under the water, they are very purpley in their grayness.  That is how I sketched them.

Day 3 - the Weeki Wachee River.  More clear blue water, snorkeling, rope swinging and even a few manatees toward the end of the paddle!!  This place is famous for its mermaid shows but we simply paddled and swam it’s waters.  Given more time, I would have liked to see the show.  Maybe next time!

While part of the group took the cars to the end of the line, those of us left behind arranged the kayaks for a colorful picture.  Here’s to random acts of guerilla art.

Later in the week, at the end of the trip, a few of us headed back to Cedar Key for a paddle to Atsena Otie Island which used to be where the actual town of Cedar Key was located.  It was washed away by a hurricane in 1896 and only a cemetery and building foundations are now present.  It is a lovely, quiet and haunting place and we spent quite a bit of time there poking around and drawing.

While paddling over, our friend Don picked up a little swallow that had died and brought it to shore so I could sketch it.  A sad but beautiful little thing.

I also sketched some horseshoe crab shells.  Tony found this one, completely intact.

The gravestones at Atsena Otie are old and beautiful and covered with lichen.  I took some rubbings into my book and wondered about the people that somehow managed a living on this far flung island.

So here I am, back in Ohio, on a cold, rainy Monday.  Vacations have a way of shaking up things and getting me far enough away from the norm that I can really take stock of things.  While away, I made working in my sketchbook everyday a huge priority, even forsaking the occasional paddle.  I simply can’t express how soothing this was and a huge reminder that I need to make it a priority in my daily life here in Ohio.  I found upon returning that I am feeling more centered and focused than before I left.  This is due in part from just resting and getting away from it all.  But I attribute it also to all of the drawing I did in my sketchbook.  As Adam and I move toward marketing our Drawing Down the Vision workshops to the generally non-drawing corporate crowd, I plan to practice what I preach more than I have been amidst recent stresses.  The act of picking up a pen and mapping out ones surroundings on paper (be they internal or external worlds) is crucial to staying centered and seeing broader connections.  This past week has reminded me of that.  I am grateful for it.

I had a meeting with Troy Brown today, head of the Community Education program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, about plans for a travel sketching class to Taos, NM.  Since my trip to Taos late last summer, I have dreamed of taking a group of students there to soak up the beautiful light, Pueblo architecture and art history that the little town has to offer.  I would be ready to launch the trip now and make it happen in the spring of 2010, but alas, to make this class a reality I need to take into account the time frame that the proper level of preparation and advertising will take.  And so, we are scheduling the trip for the end of May/ early June, 2011.

On some level this feels really far into the future but actually, it’s not.  This time next year, the Art Academy Winter/ Spring catalog will go out with the trip to Taos offered as part of a package that includes preparatory sketchbook classes to discuss supplies, techniques and general plans for the trip.  If we get any takers from afar, I will work with those students independently online or via telephone.  In the meantime the next two catalogs, Summer and then Fall 2010 will give the Art Academy plenty of time and opportunity to make the class known and available to a wide range of potential students.  Perhaps I will even have the opportunity to head back to Taos between now and spring 2011 and seek out even more spectacular little places to sketch.

It is said that patience is a virtue, that good things come in their own time.  I am trusting that this is true.  My work cup is tremendously full right now with Drawing Down the Vision pilots happening this week and next.  I also received word late last week that I am to be the teaching artist on an ArtWorks project to be created for and installed in the Duke Energy Convention Center here in Cincinnati.  I’ll be working with project leader (and dear art buddy and friend) Tina Westerkamp as well as with local high school students who will be hired specifically to work on this project during January and February.  I will post photos from this new art adventure each step of the way here on the blog.  I am tremendously excited to be a part of an ArtWorks project, as usually their work happens in the summer time when I am feeding my gypsy soul.  There is much to keep me busy and engaged artistically between now and Spring 2011.  For this I am filled with gratitude.

Last weekend I was able to steal away to Sheboygan, Wisconsin for a visit to my dear friend and fellow artist Michelle Miller.  She and two other Sheboygan based artists, Gregory Brulla and Erica Jane Huntzinger opened a gorgeous show at a place called Ebco saturday night.  All of the work was beautiful and thought provoking.  I took a few pictures that evening but was having more fun meeting new people and simply looking at all the great art.

Michelle’s work uses a slew of interesting materials from panty hose and potatoes to mylar which is used to encase batteries.  She utilizes a dialogue between the work and architecture putting the viewer in the position of being in the middle of it all.  All three artist’s work blended nicely together and for a small town, Sheboygan turned out a pretty large group of art lovers and supporters making for a great evening over all.

So why Sheboygan, of all places?  Well Michelle was part of a project awhile back called M.I.K.E and fell in love with the place.  After a stint in Brooklyn, she made the decision to head back to Sheboygan where nature is closer, rent is cheaper and art can be made without carrying one’s supplies on the subway.

There is a great art vibe in Sheboygan, thanks in part to the Kohler Art Center. We visited to see some amazing art there but alas, the only thing I was permitted to photograph was the tiling in the bathroom.  It was worth photographing, for certain!

Not all of our time in Sheboygan was spent geeking out on art.  Most of our time was actually spent out of doors (ok, no surprise there).  The town is situated on the shore of Lake Michigan.  Having traveled to Lake Erie and now Michigan, I am thoroughly in love with the Great Lakes and plan to spend more time there in the future.  Although the air temperature was fairly mild during my stay there, the water temp seemed frigid when I touched it.  Even so, I was pining to be ON the water instead of just next to it.  Maybe next time.

For this trip, I was happy to gather a handful of pebbles, spend time with a dear friend and partake in local things such as honeycrisp apples and cheese curds.  Honestly, they are not that bad.  They only sound gross.

Now I am back home, inspired and working loads.  It’s a good place to be.  I have some new images to share of wax work but I think I will save that for my next blog.

Yesterday was a gorgeous fall day.  A good day for gleaning the banks of the Ohio River for found objects and other detritus that can be found on the edges of an old city.  Ok, old is relative, but Cincinnati does have some history dating back a ways and bits of it can be found in odd spots along the river in make shift dumps from the 1800’s and early 1900’s.  A fellow artist, Amy Wallace, showed me her favorite haunt and I came away with some good finds.  A few buttons, made of slate and shell, a piece of a print block, a jack, an intact vase and all kinds of pottery shards that have been stained by time and the river’s own special blend of patina.

I have no idea what I will actually “do” with any of these things.  More than likely they will serve as an abstract impetus to an idea of some kind, artistically speaking.  What I find fascinating is that most of these objects were held in someone’s hand long ago and may have been important to them, or at least useful.  I wonder about the stories of the lives of the people who owned and utilized this stuff before it was broken and cast away into the dump.

Having spent a good deal of time paddling the waters of Ohio, particularly the Ohio River, I find myself curious about the subtle histories that can be gleaned from poking along the riverbank.  On one trip a number of weeks ago, Tony and I launched from a place called Chilo.  For awhile Chilo was a bustling town centered around lock 34, part of the dam system that kept the river from getting too dry or flooded to prevent commerce.  There is a really great park with a visitor’s center near the boat launch where you can go in and learn all about what Chilo and Lock 34 once were before being replaced with a more modern set up sometime in the 1950’s.  Chilo is now pretty much a park and just a ghost of a town.  I am guessing that there are many little towns dotting the Ohio River that have interesting and potentially ever fading histories.

For years now I have been fascinated by the idea of maps.  Many of the bits of pottery I found on the river bank are cracked and stained and if looked at closely, resemble maps in a way.  I think these are really beautiful and could very well be translated as such, at least abstractly. I intend to spend more time on the river in weeks and months to come, continuing my exploration of it’s quiet history and landscape.

However, today it’s raining.  I’ve made a pie, and I plan to plant some lettuce (while dodging rain drops).  Then I’ll start to read these maps of mine and see if they might lead to a painting or two at the wax table…

There is a wonderful scene in the movie Finding Nemo where the little blue fish, Dori, helps Nemo’s dad overcome his anxiety about going into a great, dark chasm.  Her advice is to just keep swimming.  I subscribe to this philosophy myself on many levels, not just to stave off anxiety or depression.  Swimming, running, walking, hiking, biking, kayaking - any kind of movement…. are all great tools to get my brain to side step itself, leave the inner critic behind, and create.  I get my best ideas while on the move.  Recently my favorite activity has been kayaking where I am not only moving, but moving on water.  Balancing in a boat requires a different sense of the physical body and for me this translates into feeling quite far away from my daily self, and closer to the magical art realm within.

Recently, my hub Tony and I headed to Lake Erie with some friends to Kelley’s Island for a Poker Paddle.  The idea was to paddle around the island, pick up a hand of 5 playing cards at 5  different stops, then “play” the hand at the end of the journey for prizes.  Due to a pretty stiff breeze the night before the paddle, we stayed on one side of the island to get our cards and for two legs of the trip were faced with the biggest waves I had yet to encounter.  4-6 foot swells was how it was described to me by those in the know; fellow paddlers literally disappearing behind large waves.  It was a little scary at first but very exhilarating and I am thoroughly hooked!  So now I find myself watching youtube videos of sea kayaker Freya Hoffmeister teaching people how to roll (Greenland Style) in their kayaks and reading about her adventures circumnavigating Australia.  I find this all very fascinating.  My goal is to roll in my kayak, some point soon hopefully, but I’ll leave places like Australia to Freya.

Our trip to Northern Ohio was more than just kayaking.  We got to visit Marblehead Lighthouse on the mainland which struck me as a rather small lighthouse compared to the ones I have visited on the East Coast.  But it must do the trick for it has been working to keep mariners safe and informed along Lake Erie’s coastline since 1819.  There are a number of wonderfully charming homes to see on Kelley’s Island.  My favorite of all of these is this Steamboat Gothic style home still owned by a member of the Kelley family and built in 1861.  Lovely.

We did some hiking while on Kelley’s Island and I have loads of new images that I find inspiring for a series of encaustic paintings I am working on.  Here are some shots of world famous geological formations, The Glacial Grooves, found on the island… among other cool stuff.

Lake Erie is not the only place I have been collecting images to feed my paintings.  On subsequent more local kayak trips and even in my own back yard, I have spotted some beautiful mushrooms lately thanks to a juicy humidity that blanketed our area for days.

Along with researching textures and imagery for the wax work,  I continue to work in my sketchbook almost everyday.  While on our Kelley’s Island trip  we stopped in the post office to buy a stamp and get it canceled in our books, a great little souvenir of our time there.  I also did some drawing here and there when I wasn’t busy hiking or kayaking….

The sketchbook realm is feeling really active.  My class at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, How to Keep a Sketchbook Journal - Getting Started will start up again mid-October.  I love teaching this class as it feeds me artistically and I always learn a lot from from students.  My project with my former student, now business partner Adam, Drawing Down the Vision, is nearing completion of stage 1 and ready for our initial pilot.  Adam and I recently attended a lecture by artist Someguy, Brian Singer, who is responsible for the highly successful journal based social experiment The 1000 Journals Project.  This project is a sign that the notion of keeping a journal or even participating in a group journaling experience is alive and well.  People are feeling the need to make their mark in the world.  I am thrilled by this and intend to get anyone interested out there picking up a sketchbook and taking note of their lives.  For me it’s a way to make sure time doesn’t slip by me too quickly and to take note of the little daily stuff that really adds up to the richness that is my life.

Now it’s time to go live it.

“I found out that the sunshine in New Mexico could do almost anything with one: make one well if one felt ill, or change a dark mood and lighten it.  It entered into one’s deepest places and melted the thick, slow densities.  It made one feel good.  That is, alive.”

-Mabel Dodge Luhan, from Edge of Taos Desert, Escape to Reality

The weekend before last I went on an amazing journey out west to visit a long time friend of mine who has relocated to Denver, CO.  I spent almost 5 days taking in as much as I could of the beautiful and strange landscape that is The West.  Below are a few of my highlights from Denver and Boulder CO and especially, Taos, New Mexico.  It is all too much to cover in one small blog such as this, and I don’t plan on trying.  I am still working to get it all into my sketchbook!  But I hope my list of highlights, and the accompanying snapshots are enough to encourage a visit out there yourself.  They call New Mexico The Land of Enchantment.  I found this to be true.  I plan to go back.  Hopefully, sooner than later…. I’ll keep you posted.

Denver & surrounding areas:

~Museum of Contemporary Art, in their awesome new building, and especially the lovely exhibition of work by Arlene Shechet.

~Colorado Horse Rescue Farm (I got to spend a morning with my friend Sheila volunteering at this amazing, warm hearted place)

Taos New Mexico, etc:

Adobe!  It’s everywhere and so earthy.  Like buildings just sort of grow out of the ground there.  Which I suppose they do.  I get the sense that living in these earthen buildings must give the folks who live there a sense of being at one with the earth.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House (also of Adobe) - I’d love to teach a travel sketchbook workshop here someday…. it would be a wonderful excuse to get back to Taos!

Old Trucks:  Fun, fun fun to draw!  These old beauties are almost as common as subarus…

Pioneer-like ingenuity: From breathtakingly high bridges to houses built from recycled materials, people out west somehow seem to make it work.  Check out these Earthships!

Below you can see how they dot the landscape.

Here’s a view of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  Dizzying, to say the least:

And then there’s the guy who has been adding to his house with recycled materials for years.  I think he may actually be located in a little town in Colorado which we drove through on route back to Denver.  Our guest house owner/ operator Judith Duncan told us about him and said some people think he’s a little off.  I have no idea, but either way, he’s an artist at heart…

Yep, those are hubcaps.

Speaking of Judith Duncan, Amy and I stayed at a magical place called Duncan House in Taos.  Our host was welcoming and full of ideas of things to see and do in Taos.  Her place is a lovely little oasis garden that we thoroughly enjoyed.  I highly recommend it as a place to stay, just off the beaten path.

In Taos there is plenty of shopping to do.  My favorite place was a vintage cowboy themed shop called Horsefeathers where I picked up some cool postcards and souveniers that couldn’t have been found anywhere else.  The owner Lindsay, and his doggie ambassador are always ready to greet new guests.

Orlandos.… best chili in town!!

The vast sense of space and landscape is overwhelming.

I have been thinking a lot about a top down notion of landscape as inspiration for my encaustic painting imagery.  Somehow it fits my recent time spent on and around rivers.  Getting a view from the airplane reinforced my excitement about these ideas and I am thrilled to be back in the studio where I can begin the distillation of all that I took in out west.

In the end however, no matter the beauty of the landscape and charm of the buildings, or all the interesting things to fill my sketchbook.  What has really been a blessing on the trip to Denver and Taos, and my subsequent whirlwind trip to Rochester NY just this past labor day weekend is the opportunity to be a friend to people I treasure.  I had the gift of time in the car with girlfriends as we traveled the miles in between destinations.  Travel fills my art cup, surely, but more importantly I get to spend time with my far flung friends, and that for me is the real gift of travel.

There has been a lot on the proverbial plate here lately which is mildly stressful.  But mostly, excitement reigns as I navigate an increasingly busy schedule.  Our kids are back in school now and we have settled into something of a schedule with new bus routes and school hours.  Having them take the bus to and from school most days has opened up some more time for me in the studio and I have been taking full advantage.  The wax table has seen some activity and I am enjoying creating new works involving stones and pebbles.

For years (as long as I can remember actually) I have collected small stones from everywhere I go as minute physical reminders of a place.  Once at home, these pebbles are usually to be found lying around here and there as decoration and inspiration.  Sometimes I just like to carry one in my pocket.  I like to think I am borrowing them for a time until someday when I am done with them and they will go back outside.  I know other artists who use pebbles as not only inspiration, but as material.  Jennifer Neilsen of Solstice Designs creates beautiful jewelry out of stones she finds on the Maine coast and I am a proud owner of one of her pieces.

In recent encaustic work, as well as in the sketchbook, I have been meditating on how lovely each and every stone is and how no one is like any other.  They are a good bit like people.  I don’t use actual pebbles in these paintings but rather create simulacra of stones and pebbles that look as much like the real thing as possible.  I like the effect and the pebbles are convincing, even in person.  But why re-create pebbles?  I don’t really know the answer to that at this point.  I just know that I enjoy making them, which for me is half the battle in the studio.  If I am not engaged with my subject, I get easily sidetracked.  So for now, I am sculpting little stones and considering the notion of landscape from a top-down perspective.  Years of beach combing are finally paying off perhaps.  Here are some samples of what’s cookin’ at the wax table…

Kayaking continues to be my new love as I learn more about being comfortable in my boat.  We have had numerous opportunities to be out on the water recently which allows me to gather stones, take photographs and draw.

One of the unexpected things about kayaking that I find particularly enjoyable is the solitude and quiet to be found when out on the water, at least in mild weather and calm waters.  I get time and quiet to think about things, which is something I don’t allow enough of in my daily life.  Even when paddling with a group of people, there is enough space and time to do my own thing here and there and I love that.  Here’s a sketch I did the other day while out on the Ohio River at Manchester Islands.  Instead of swimming, I sat and drew.

Drawing is the other thing that has me busy in the studio right now.  Funny thing is, it’s not so much the act of drawing, but rather research and writing about drawing and its inherent value as a quintessential right brained activity.  For the past few months, a former student, now friend, Adam Siemiginowski and I have been developing a new course in drawing and visual communication in general which we intend to pilot locally to large scale businesses.  We call this project Drawing Down the Vision.  It all started when Adam, a systems analyst, data sort a guy from P&G took my class at the Art Academy.  He was looking for a way to synthesize disparate ideas into one concise place as a way to monitor trends in his own thinking and idea gathering.  By the end of the course, it was clear to both of us that my relatively simple process of keeping a visual diary (i.e. sketchbook) could potentially be a powerful tool in knowledge management in the corporate sphere.

So we began working together.  I have a fairly steep learning curve when it comes to business lingo and navigating the corporate way of doing things.  But I am learning.  The more we research what boils down to a discussion of creativity in the work place, the more there is to discover.  Everyday there is more and more evidence that the old models of generating creative solutions to problems (be they business-esque “bottom line” solutions, or an outside of the box new medical breakthrough) are outdated.  Dan Pink’s recent TED talk speaks to the power of this changing landscape of problem solving.  He is one of many who believe that inspiring creativity in the work place may involve a new approach involving mixing the boundaries between professions such as business, art and science.

All of this is tremendously exciting, and scary, and I write about it here because writing helps me organize my thoughts in a way that simply thinking or list-making can’t.  In the end that is why I blog.  I sometimes discover a way of viewing my own work or thought process that I hadn’t considered.  So I’ll certainly be writing more about DDtV and its progress, as well as keeping you posted on the more day to day simple things that keep me not only occupied but in awe.  Thanks for reading.

One of the highlights of the summer time for at least part of our family is a week of Irish Music immersion in the form of an intensive camp with classes everyday and sessions and concerts and ceilis in the evenings.  This year we decided to try a change of scenery and headed south to Warren Wilson College, home of the Swannanoa Gathering.

The nice thing about the class schedule at Swannanoa is that we can take classes in multiple subjects.  I took whistle with Kathleen Conneely and flute classes with Kevin Crawford. Jack got to have Martin Hayes as his advanced fiddle teacher and Angelina Carberry for mandolin.  It was, as usual, exhausting, but - also as usual- we had so much fun.  The Irish have a sweet way of saying something is of quality.  “Absolute class”.  I cannot tell you how many times I heard that expression during Celtic Week.  Funny thing is, that pretty much sums up our experience at this camp.  Classy from every perspective.  Much of the food is grown at the campus farm and was generally delicious.  Every morning between classes, we were treated to coffee and muffins.  This is key during a week of very little sleep.

A highlight of the week was thursday night’s Old Farmer’s Ball, held on campus at the pavillion.  Dancers come from all over the local Asheville area and the band is made up of the instructors for the week.  Think Ceili Band Dream Team.  It was amazing…. Thank you to my son Jack who is not only a fabulous musician, but also a really great photographer.

In the evenings there were sessions to be had all over the place.  Often instructors were to be found playing right along with the more advanced students.  They love the music as much as we do which is why they travel so far to teach at these camps.

I could go on an on about the fun at “band camp”.  But I find that it really defies description to anyone who wasn’t there or who isn’t into the Irish Music.  For Jack and me it’s a shot in the arm musically, providing us with tunes and techniques to work on for the next year, until next time.  I think we will probably go back to Swannanoa again after the experience we had there.  We missed being in lovely Elkins, WV, home of the Augusta Heritage Center’s Irish Week and we missed all of the friends we have made there.  But the pace at Swannanoa is a little less harried (even with the different class offerings).  There was much more digging into the history and tradition surrounding the music and a little less peacocking during sessions.  It was nice.

Once home, I had the opportunity to finish up a kayak course I began before camp.  I am a newcomer to this sport and have still more to learn but already I am hooked.  It is a wonderful way to see nature.  Last weekend Tony and I went to Cowan Lake to visit the American Lotus which grow there.  Below are some photos of these spectacular plants.

As I get more into the sport of kayaking, I am going to need to learn to “roll”, which means get myself back upright when I tip over.  It is not lost on me that I spent all of Irish Music camp trying to get a handle on rolls on the flute, only to come home and realize that I’ll be working on rolls in this realm as well.  Maybe the Universe is trying to tell me to roll with the punches or something.  Hmmm.

Anyway, I have a brand new watercolor set (Jack calls it the mac-daddy of all watercolor sets) and I am having fun drawing the forms from these lotus plants.  I’ll try to post some in the coming days.  But for now, I’m putting this blasted computer aside for a few and going to go practice some tunes.