Re-Openings, Re-Awakenings

In the past three years, I've moved from a vibrant arts city to a small town far away from everything. I closed my studio, finished up my Master's degree, adopted a child and adjusted to a new life as a stay-at-home-mom. It's taken me a Herculean effort to adjust, but now I find myself more peaceful, healthier and happier than ever- even if I do miss Frederick, Maryland and her beautiful downtown, arts opportunities, and glorious spring weather! (Not to mention my dear friends, a fantastic organic co-op, Clay Oven, brunch at Firestones, Baker Park, etc. *sniff* *sniff*)

Enter the fall of 2011, I am preparing myself to be a working-outside-the-home mom! I have contracted with St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Carnegie, Pennsylvania to sculpt four niche sculptures: Sts. Joseph and Mary,  St. Luke, St. Ignatius, and St. Vincent de Paul. My hours and the nature of my work will not be typical for working moms, but it will nonetheless require a significant amount of time and energy. I'm working hard to be more organized at home and to focus my attention on my daughter while we are home together. (Our time together is still quite significant, but compared to all the time, it seems like a lot of time away.)

I have also partnered with two other wonderful artists, Stacey Hogue of Green Pine Tree Studios and Grace Ellis Barber. (Yes, that very same Grace with whom I showed together for our senior show way back in 2000 at Hillsdale College. It's been a dream of ours for eleven years to have a studio together. Here we are!) We are working together to get a studio downtown Grove City (location TBA). It will be a sanctuary for the three of us to get to work as well as a place to host open drawing night, workshops, lectures, film night with discussion and open studio. We also want to be a place of sanctuary for other artists who may not feel supported or nurtured in their art. Artist's Way group, anyone?

On that note, I leave you with a fabulous quote from Chuck Close:
"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.".

 (HT Mary Landavere)