Most of the artists who are participating in Gallery 99 dropped off their work today.  They are asked to fill out their own tags with information about their pieces.   I like it because they have to hang around longer and you get to catch up with people you know and meet new people.

In between artists coming in,  Diane and I got to unpack and look at all the art.  It’s always lots of fun to see the work for the first time.  Then we started placing it (more fun)  matching up pieces  from different artists with similar colors and  themes.  It’s usually slow going at first then comes a point where something clicks and it just starts to flow.  Both of us swirling around moving art from one place to another then stopping and looking and moving it some more.  Then we hang it on the walls and move it around some more.  Eventually it’s just right, or we’re exhausted or we run out of time.   So far it’s always gotten done and always looked good.  I love working with Diane, and each time I do I think that we should do it more often.

Tomorrow I’ll try to remember to take some pictures of the work to post on my blog.  We could have a mini-virtual Gallery 99.

Our first viewer and the show isn't even hung yet!

The artists have begun dropping off their work for Gallery 99 today.  Diane and Patrice are at the M Dolan Jr Building in Glens Falls checking the art in.  Tomorrow  Diane and I will begin hanging  the Gallery 99 Show.   I made a few Goddess Potholders to go with my streaming wall hangings.

Jon will be selling matted photos and his note cards.  That’s a picture of Meg on the hay feeder.  (She’s looking for the  seeds  that drop from the hay, smart chicken)  And Nancy dropped off her lampwork jewelry at my studio today to bring with me tomorrow.  These are her Chinese New Year Earrings. (Oh that red and orange)

We’ll be hanging the show for 2 days then reception is Thursday night from 5-8 at 3 Broad St Glens Falls NY.   You can meet the artists, there will be food and entertainment.  The gallery will also be open on Friday from 9am-8pm and Saturday from noon -6pm.  Monday we clean up and it’s all over till next time.

A few weeks ago I began a healing drumming class.  It immediately opened something up inside of me.  I couldn’t stop crying in class and became very anxious out of class.   I felt such an old sense of vulnerability  I thought about dropping the class.  It was taking me to a place I didn’t want to go.  But, of course, that’s why I was there.   I may procrastinate, but I’ve come too far to stop now.

The anxiety finally  got so bad I couldn’t stand it anymore.  So I went to see  Mary Muncil, my spiritual counselor.  She  guided me through a visualization that put me face to face with a very old fear.  The little girl I met there, took back her power and drummed her way to safety.

When I began this streaming piece I had no idea what it was about.  But now I know I was telling myself to open my heart and step through the threshold,( just the opposite of my original impulse.)   The girl standing on the drum came after my realization.  She now occupies that place where fear and vulnerability were for so long.  I have a feeling she may show up again.

“Stand in the light of your soul, there’s an ocean in my heart, trust the beat of your heart.”  This is my latest wall hanging for Gallery 99.

Another piece of Gallery 99.  I didn’t get to finish this today, but three quarters of the way through I saw it was about movement.

This is it, my first piece for the Gallery 99 show next weekend.  That means I have to make all the rest of the pieces between now and next Tuesday when Diane and I hang the show.  But I confident about what I’m doing now.  Originally I thought of having a central image, but it somehow didn’t feel right to me.  The size throws the whole thing off somehow.  This piece is about 12″x 15″.  I think because of the limited space and the size of the images they relate to each other differently than on a larger piece where some of the pictures get lost.  Here they are all of the same importance so they effect each other more directly.  This piece seems to me to tell a story without a linear narrative.

When I finished it and looked at it I was struck by a memory of being in music class in junior high school.  It was the first warm spring day and I was standing by an open window feeling and smelling the warm spring air.  And I just wanted to run out of the class room and keep going, I felt like a Monarch Butterfly feeling the call to migrate.  I think it’s the story of escaping to myself.

The words are “tears turn to stream when the teapot screams, my work is divine.”

The Gallery 99 reception is next Thursday February 2nd, from 5-8pm.  I’ll be there and working the rest of the show too.  It’s   Friday the 3rd it’s from 9am – 8pm and Saturday the 4th from noon to 6pm.  This Gallery 99 is in the M Dolan Jr. Building 3 Broad St Glens Falls NY  12801.  Check out my Events page for more information about Gallery 99.

It always takes some getting used to being back in the city.  One of the things I get used to quickly is the constant noise.  I only realize just how noisy it was when I get back  Upstate and experience the quiet.   I guess going to the Opera made me even more sensitive to the sounds of New York.  I was thinking about sounds/noise and lines when I made this video.

Last night at the Metropolitan Opera

I grew up listening to Opera.  On the radio and when my mother would play her records on a Saturday afternoon.  I didn’t like it or dislike it, it was just a part of life.  Opera was the only thing I saw my mother get really passionate about.  She would sing along and cry and sway to the music.  She was a 1960′s housewife, who didn’t have friends or hobbies. Her life was given to the idea of family, but the Opera belonged to her.  It was a secret window into who she was as a person not a mother or wife.

Before she was married she would get standing room tickets at Lincoln Center.  The music  initially drew her but she soon learned all the stories, made a friend waiting on line, and  would go whenever her favorites were being performed.  Once married she stopped going to the Opera.   In the late 1980′s the idea of  hearing  Luciano Pavarotti live  inspired her to go back again .  She’s gone off and on since then.

Last night I took my mother to see Tosca at Lincoln Center.  I liked everything about it, the music, the sets, the costumes the drama, watching the people and being able to bring my mother there.  But I didn’t experience it like she did.  For her it goes deep.  It touches a part of her I’ll probably never know.

Rebecca sent me this photo of her cat Abby laying in the sun on Red Garden, one of my quilts.  My streaming pillow Open Your Heart is in the background.  It’s so fulfilling to see one of my quilts in use and not just by people.

Oh, and it seems sunglasses was the consensus on Zombie Goddess.  But a few people wanted her just as she is.  One of them will take her home.

This is obviously one of the potholders that didn’t work out.  When it happens,  I either realize it right away or  get the whole thing done before I know it just doesn’t work.  Sometimes I know it won’t work but I just keep at it hoping I’ll feel differently about it when I get done.  Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.

This Everyday Goddess’s eyes were wrong from the beginning.  Then when I tried to fix them I turned her into the walking (or dancing) dead.  It’s actually very telling how important the eyes are.  The thing is, I was having so much fun making her.  Her hair looked great, and her shoes… they were the first ones  I made with laces.  But as much as I liked them (I’ve found that I like doing their hair and shoes most of all, I’m beginning to become the stereotype of a girl, something I never saw myself as) those Zombie eyes just turned  it all bad.  She looks crazed instead of dancing for joy.

But I’m not ready to trash her yet, I’m not sure why, it may be her enthusiasm.  She does have personality, even it it is creepy.

It’s true, she does have that Cindy-Lou-Who, cute, modest and vulnerable look, but she’s also has a bit of “I’m so pretty” (as you all picked up on).  But she’s  honest about it, all of it.   She is what she is and isn’t afraid to be it.

I woke up with so many words in my head this morning and Stand in you truth were the only ones that stuck.  I knew who  they belonged to.