Ghost Ship #3

About a month and a half ago I went on a photo shoot with Alder.  I shot 5 rolls of film and there is all of ONE photo I'm actually interested in.

I'm looking for something very specific in my photos...but it's more like this:  "specific, but undefined"...I don't know what, exactly, "it" is.  But I know when I feel it there.  Enter Ghost Ship #3, "Untethered Pearls," from a previous shoot.  I created this using the F-effect, and I love this piece.  I love the length of the form, the way the hand stands out a bit and is backlit by the window.  I like that it requires extra time to see the person on the ground, and I love the inset at the top and the stitches going across the bottom...holding the letters on.  Some are floating...because that is just what letters do, I suppose.

"Untethered Pearls" 

(because pearls of wisdom come in the form of text.)

(right?)

a door.
a peephole.
me,
in what feels like a wooden chair (rickety -yes)
in a room cramped with clanking ductwork.
looking at...there! across the room:

a door.
with a peephole.
a small circle of flickering light
copperdust
cobwebs.

"what are you doing here?" (an unidentifiable voice)

"i was sent here to contemplate the problem of nuclear fusion, to unravel the mystery of HAARP; i was sent here to achieve psychic contact with sasquatch, to discover the origin of belly button lint...yes indeed...i was sent here to determine how many 7-and-a-half inch forks laid end to end it would take to get to the moon, but right now i'm trying to calculate the measure and quality of force necessary to rearrange my DNA molecules. i wanted to be a newt and now look at me."

"no, YOU look at YOU...look, for instance, at your hand" (the voice...identifiable only as the last unidentifiable voice)

and i put my hand out, palm side up. it's covered with ant-sized words and letters all scrambling around, scurrying up my wrist and to my elbow.

"you are swarming"

"i am gathering"

"you are swarming."

"ok."

i get up, scared.
what does it mean to be swarming?
what DOES it mean to be swarming?

and now a tentative shuffle to the door.
dust, scraps of foil, bullet casings and mouse turds part like the red fucking sea, carving out my destiny in the form of a straight line from chair to door.
"hey, wait...wasn't there something in there about smelling the roses?"

"in where?"

"ummm...this life thing. in there."

"there are no roses, sorry. "rose" is not even in the dictionary. there is the path. that is all. you are either on it or not."

"my choice?"

"your choice."

ok...(press "play")
(tentative shuffle re-begun.)
i can see it more clearly now...
that delectable flicker.
like a candle, with all of the sensual associations of fire and candleness.
mothlike, i approach the door. it is made of flesh and blood. i can feel its warmth, its pulse, its rhythm & churn from yards away. i know this pull.
opiatic and necessary, and me: as predictable as the next addict.

i am there.
my hand on the door disappears into its wooden fleshiness.

"stop...look before you leap"

i retract my hand...but oh!...my fingers are bent this-way, that-way. they don't fit together. and the words that once were random are now forming into patterned, illogical strands.

"just because you don't understand them doesn't mean they're illogical"

without touching the door i put my eye to the peephole.
there, in a rock room lit only by torches: a girl and cat.
familiar and completely alien to me.
she turns.
i know those eyes.
i know that gesture, that ridiculous haircut.
she is me.
she is me at 7. and upon closer scrutiny i see that she is only letters, held together by... gravitational pull? by elmer's glue?
she looks like swarm of bees, like televised white noise...a pixelated hologram.

Another member of the Ghost Ships project

This photo is shot on film and is printed on Foma MG Classic Matt (not really matt), OLD STOCK...I have a small amount of this paper left and am trying to use it judiciously.  The staining process is something I thought of doing after seeing hundreds of crazy colors appear in photo paper after a day of being in the trash can at school!!  I decided to control that process of staining and then stumbled upon this effect just because I had this particular kind of paper at hand. 

I recently purchased a new box and the emulsion is not the same...very unfortunate, but that happens a lot these days.  I mean, that products you love simply disappear or change.  This piece is already framed in an antique octagon with domed glass.  It looks awesome and is part of the Ghost Ships series.

I think I already have all the photos for that series and just need to go in an edit.  I will be using photos from across about 15 years of shooting.  I need a few new ones, too, of course.  The one above is new. 

Oh Fun!!!

I just Googled myself to see what my site looks like from a search engine perspective and discovered that someone at the Lomography site blogged about my work after seeing the show at Davis Orton!  So nice to see something positive like this at the end of such a difficult week!

Here is the entry!!

The Process of Critiquing (in photography class)

One of my best students posted an entry on the school blog about critiquing.  His name is Thien, and this is his second year with me.  He started out Year 1 by consistently stating how much he disliked all his classmates' work, and we got to chuckle a lot because "There goes Thien again hatin' on another photo!" 

Towards the end of last year, he figured out that he was not acting the same as his classmates and he made a decision to change...he stopped speaking his mind, basically.  His opinions were the same, but he learned to STFU. 

Yesterday during crit a different student sitting in the back row critiqued the critique by complaining that everything was just kinda roses and daffodils during critique.  This was a bit of a head-scratcher for me since I'd just had 2 students tell me they're scared of me, but ok.  Well, Thien really picked up on this dude's comment and re-blossomed in full form!  Then last night he made a post about it entitled, "How to Critique"  What I'm posting below is my reply to him.  

I have thought about this topic A LOT over many years. I have tried a lot of different approaches.  I started out being very blunt and honest. Then one semester I watched something happen…I watched a student wilt under the weight of my words and decided it wasn’t worth it. Because at the point where a person is feeling injured, they stop listening anymore and all my “words of wisdom” (i.e., my opinions and honest assessments) don’t matter anymore.

Here are my current tactics:
1. First of all, I try to notice something good in the pictures, something i can say that will start the conversation off in a direction of OKness.
2. Then I add “things that could be better.” or “what I would do if this were MY picture.” At this point, the more difficult messages come out, if they exist.
3. Then I close by adding something nice.

So the difficult part is surrounded by the softness of positive messages. See, I want to say the truth of what I see, but I want people also to know that I appreciate the things that are right with what they did. Also important to realize, is that people see their photos as extensions of themSELVES. so when you critique a photo, they FEEL it as a personal experience and they understand it as a critique of their value as a person. I think this is an important thing to know. Also, I don’t think it works the same way for you. It seems to me that when you speak about your own work, you are very clearly talking about the photo and the properties it has. I never get the sense that you feel personally attacked by a critique, but I can promise you that others do.

Sometimes people put stuff up and I cannot find the good in it. When that happens, I have no idea what to say because I am not a convincing liar…I have also had students in my class who realize that I unconsciously make faces during critiques that reveal how I am actually feeling, and they watch me for clues, which I probably should not admit here in public, but oh well.

One thing, Thien, that is different between me and you is that you mostly DON’T like stuff. I mostly DO like stuff, and there are all kinds of pictures that are fun for me to look at for many different reasons. I like work that is completely different from mine, and I even like photos that are not "good" when the concept is so extraordinary that I just don’t give a shit about the photos anymore…like, their idea hit me regardless of “do I like it?” I also really appreciate small, personal photos…I find them beautiful and touching. I like monumental photos, I like quiet ones and loud ones. To me, on some level, all photos are expressions of being alive on planet earth. that is so beautiful, even if yeah I know I’m a dork.

So for me it’s relatively easy to say a difficult thing, because I can also say good things. For you, your window of “what makes a picture good.” is very narrow. At one point I thought, “Well, he doesn’t like anything, so it doesn’t matter.” If all you see sucks to you, then your belief that something sucks doesn’t mean much. Another thing, even in pictures that do not touch your heart…isn’t there something there that is also good? Usually, yes. But what I’ve learned over the years: It is hard to see the good properties in things we don’t like. Just like it is hard to hear wisdom from the lips of someone we don’t respect. It’s easier to paint everything with a broad brush…but the broad brush cannot get into the cracks where all the good shit is.

Another thing that is different between me and you is that I am the teacher. So my words carry a certain weight just because I’m the Queen. I need to watch myself for that reason as well. Sometimes in class I will call on people who I know will say what I think, and it relieves me of the responsibility of having to say it. I don’t want to say it….but I have sworn I will always tell the truth.

I think learning how to speak has been the biggest challenge of my sober life. How to say something that is both critical AND constructive…very, very hard. and I’m still learning.

The City Inside Me - thinking phase

The Simple Things

Three years ago this weekend, I trapped a litter of 5 feral kittens.  Ok?  I was totally ready...I had read every website dedicated to taming feral cats & kittens and watched every Youtube I could find on the topic, and based on my extensive online studies I concluded that I could have these li'l guys looking adorable and adoptable in 2 weeks. 

WHAT A JOKE!!    Maybe the makers of online information about feral kittens had tamer versions than I did, but mine?  They were like wild squirrels...terrified, frenetic, racing into the walls, hitting their heads on the cage, not understanding they were INSIDE a place.  They wouldn't eat.  Then they wouldn't eat with me in the room...then I could be in the room, but at a distance.  Eventually I got them to lick food off my fingers, but that took some time and patience.

I bought a mattress for myself and brought it into their room.  All told, with both waking and sleeping, I spent 40 hours a week with them for a month and a half.  Interestingly enough, the sleep hours were more productive than one might think, because when they thought I was asleep they were brave enough to come and explore me.  I was walked on, sniffed, my hair was played with, and one of them actually slept by me.  Then another slept by me.

Once they braved me at night, I was less scary to approach during the day, and they LOVED to play, so playing eventually led to touching...very carefully, but still:  baby steps.  baby steps.   

I decided after a month and a half that I couldn't do it anymore.  Two of my kittens never made much progress and I put them back out to the colony.  Everybody was neutered by then, and very well fed.  One of them, Rocky, I found a home for.  I wanted to find homes for Jinju and Punkin, too, but they were not really adoptable until very late in the game, and by the time they were tame enough to try adopting them, they were mine. 

Now, every morning when I sit on the edge of the bed to put my shoes and socks on, Punkin comes and sits on my lap.  So every morning I take a quiet time, a pause from getting dressed for work, and I focus my attention on the simple act of Being with this amazing little soul, who trusts me and who has made this place his home, and this person his person.

Just grateful, really.  That's all.

Crow, crow, disc

chapter 1
the world, awash in light, blinds me.
and now: a heliointerference...an uncertain shimmer, a wavering iridescence.
my radio on crack, snapple, pop -a static blur of knitted brows and tightly pursed lips.
and then...
power off.

chapter 2
the world, awash in light, blinds me.
and there, in the distance, the wavering iridescence of heat off baked sand.
i am white linen and lavender oil
and now...
ribbons tied to my fingers fly like anchored kites in the desert wind.
i am not thirsty or hot, or tired or depleted.
i am
just
h e r e
there, on the horizon where the air rises like mirrored mylar: a tiny form.
it wants me.
and perhaps for some deep seated need to be desired,
or because i am attracted to things i don't know and can't see...
maybe just because i'm a material girl and this is the only material for miles around,
or maybe as a result of some scientific necessity, i find myself levitating and gliding -like on rails- to the stain on the horizon line.
and now i wonder if, from its distance it sees me as i see it:
as a rupture in an otherwise sterile-white landscape.

chapter 3
ribbons now streaming behind me and linen pasted to my belly by sweat.
my approachment tells me this unimportant thing: the stain is only a wooden box (no wonder it looked like a stain) and there on its side, a series of chipped and faded gold leaf letters -the only ones i can read, say:
V I * T * O L *
i raise my hands, palm side up and ribbons are flying everywhere.
they are one with the wind,
they are knotted in my hair
they encircle my throat. and they wave in flaglike fashion around the box as it rises to waist level.
i reach down and lift the lid.

chapter 4
crow, crow, disc
crow, disc, crow
disc, crow, crow.

2(crow) + disc = box

i say:
"why are we here???"
the sound of my voice triggers a hidden Something and the disc begins spinning. crow(1) places her beak onto the spinning disc and it makes a weird, scratchy sound, and then crow(2) opens her mouth and says,
"why ARE we here?"
silently, i think "oh...so this is like a tape recorder." and say,
"testing, testing...ONE, TWO."
and the noisy crow looks at me dumbfounded while the silent crow lifts her beak from the disc and says, "OH GAWD!!! they sent us another CRI-A."
confused, i say, "what's a CRI-A?" and the silent crow replaces her beak onto the disc. and the noisy crow says,
"a CRI-A is a puppet, full of Empty and whales."
"oh...I am not full of Empty. and i am not full of whales...that doesn't even make sense...i mean, what would a whale be doing in the desert?"
"not WHALES, stupid...WAILS...W-A-I-L-S. and so i have a question for you: if you're not full of Empty, what are you full of?"
"i don't know how to say it...i guess...um...i guess i'm full of me."
"yeah, you're full of yourself, all right...fucking CRI-A."
"NO. you're wrong. i am this breath, this floating, beribboned spectre. it's because i opened you that you speak. without me, you're invisible at best. i see you; i hear you. i verify your existence. you ask me what i am full of? why not just ask me who i am? i'm a weaver. an alchemist. i am the thing that juggles light and silver, sand and sweat. i don't need you to validate me, so let's just say it this way,
FUCK YOU
and the noisy crow smiles at me and says,
"you are right; you are VITOL."
and her wings unfold and her skin cracks open and underneath the feathers and skin i see fur and flash of green. and the skin peels back and now black and brown and white and green as simon emerges from the crow's dessicated form. and now both crows vanish and it is me and simon and one deaf and dumb disc, spinning for no reason at all.
and simon says to me,
"we gotta get out of here...oh god...it's too late." and he is looking at my chest. i follow his gaze to to a rapidly growing stain upon my dress: red on white linen. but i say to him, "no, it's never too late." and i grab him and say, "where are we going?"
"down."
and the desert floor becomes as quicksand as we pass down and through it and wind up in a cavernous space i know so well. home. i put simon down and follow him the length of our torch illuminated corridor to my stone bedbroom. the linen dress is gone and i am whole. and we lay us down and we sleep.

Successes and Failures

"It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how the athlete stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is no effect without error and shortcomings."     Theodore Roosevelt edited by me.

I lost 40 pounds this Summer.  What a challenge!  I wrote down everything I consumed -every corn chip, every leaf of kale.  Man, I have been so proud of myself as I've struggled with weight issues for about 8 years now!!  Then on Monday I went in to get my bloodwork done and found out almost immediately that my cholesterol and LDL levels have risen to an all time high.   My cholesterol comes in 325 mg/dl.  (standard range is anything UNDER 239 mg/dl.)

OK, so I just have to fix it, right?  Right!  But the interesting thing is that this little tidbit of information hit me EMOTIONALLY like a ton of bricks.  Partly, I had this sense of immense well-being because of the weight loss.   I don't actually feel any different physically than I did on Monday, but my sense of well-being has vanished.  I am upset by the numbers -what they mean.  I feel defeated. 

This will never do.

So I woke up 2 days ago and decided that I needed to put my Bad-Ass Suit on.  I have scoured the internet for information on how to reduce my cholesterol without going on artificial statins.  I am making a choice today on which kind of personal training I want to partake in, have gotten the right foods for this, ordered a natural statin that is arriving Tuesday and bottle of Co-Q10 which arrived this morning.

I am 99% certain my doctor will tell me to get on Big Pharma statins, but I want to try to beat this the natural way, and I know I can do it!   I am going to suggest she let me try for a month and a half to 2 months.  If there is no change in my numbers at the end of that time, I will concede and join the dark side.  But I have got to try this first, because yes: I AM bad-ass....iamiamiamiamiam....

Life and Busy-ness

Boy, do I have a lot going on...School is bustin' my butt as usual, I have a photo shoot with Alder tomorrow at the crack of dawn (10 AM).  I have a doctor's appointment Monday at 9 AM, and then a sewing class 10:30. 

There is so much I want to do!!!  I want to create clothing that extends or truncates the human form...I want crazy huge dresses with weird shit hanging off them, I want wrapped bodies concealed by yards of gauze, I want random fingers sprouting from waistlines, head coverings that sculpt the human cranium into an unidentifiable biomorphic ovoid...

And I need to clean my garden.

And build my studio.

Yay! Pictures!!

FINALLY!!  a photo shoot that I was actually able to do, to spend a bit of time exploring with, and that I enjoyed.  What a great way to wrap up the summer!

My friend, Alder, let me into a building in Vancouver.  Her partner, Joey, says they are not going to destroy the building but will maintain its beauty much the way it was originally intended.  Gosh, I sure hope so...I'm pretty dismayed by all the old buildings that are being demolished in Portland, and this one is just gorgeous.  Anyhow, here are some shots that show what that space is like.  In a couple of weeks Alder said she would do a shoot up there with me!   

The Good and the Stressful

First, the good, yes?  There's a call out for small and affordable work at Radius Gallery.  I had wanted to create frames for my little painting collages for awhile, so I made a couple of frames for them (even though, my flippin' scroll saw broke).  I made 2 frames.  um.  THEY SUCKED!  I mean, my idea for them just did not pan out at all.  And I didn't see how I could change my idea or the materials to make it work so I bailed on it for now and fell back into my comfort zone, which are the boxes. 

This is my first mini-box:

"Ode to Dorian Gray"  2016

It's very small; it fits in my hand.  The scroll is simply placed in and can drop out if it's not wedged in quite right, but for the most part it stays put.  To me when I see it on my wall it reminds me of a piece of jewelry...ok, much too large for jewelry, but you get the idea.  The sunflower hook is an antique, and adds a certain vibe that I like a lot.  I consider the photograph side the "outside" and the old decomposing tintype the "inside," though I have spent time with it hanging both ways and like it equally well no matter which side is hanging.  I feel like the scroll and the broken personal photo have a private feel to them.

The scroll looks like this:

Inside with scroll unfurled, "Ode to Dorian Gray"  2016

I've "signed" the inside underneath the scroll.  The quote is from Oscar Wilde's creation, "The Picture of Dorian Gray."  I've also shown the edge box because the wood is pretty, and by holding it, you can get a sense of the size of the finished piece.

I have 2 more coming out now, and I love them both...will post as soon as I get them finished.

The rather unpleasant bit that happened isn't real...or maybe it's more accurate to say that it is a dream, but says something about where my mind is at.  In the dream I traveled across the country to attend a show I was in.  I had sent a lot of work to this gallery, and was excited to go see it. 

I walked into the gallery and nobody knew who I was, but they were all friendly-seeming and were milling about drinking wine, and laughing with each other.  I did not see my work anywhere, so I began to wander in search of my pieces.  A smaller gallery branched off behind the bigger one, and I entered.  There was nobody in there.  There was work on the walls, but no viewers and none of the pieces were mine.  And then a hallway...that took a turn and made a slow curving journey to a back closet-like area.  I went through the closet area and into another gallery.  It was miniscule and decrepit and my work was there.  It was not even hung on the walls, it was placed face up on cheap metal shelves, and two of the pieces by the door had paperwork thrown on top of them...bills of sale for artwork sold from the front gallery.

That's it...no neat ending, no punchlines, no redemptive glow at the conclusion...just this, and the shitty feeling of self doubt it left in its wake.

I remember once hearing an interview with Dustin Hoffman on NPR.  He was talking about how full of self-doubt he was...now it's been a very long time since I've heard that interview, but I remember him describing his feelings, and sometimes when I have dreams like this, it's good to remember that people like Hoffman have similar feelings.

Elin Spring's Pick for September!

So delighted to be on Elin Spring's "Picks for September!"

Thanks Elin!  and also thanks to Susan Nalband at Gallery 555.

Yay! Missoula show gets reviewed!

It was really great to see the review in The Missoulan! 

My box, "Dust" was one of the pieces singled out by Cory Walsh in his review of Radius Gallery's "The Changing Moment" juried exhibition. 

Math Made Simple

math made simple:

pearl + coffee = bird

dektol + tulip = coffee

(therefore)

pearl + dektol + tulip = bird

bird - tulip = dektol + pearl

(but)

dektol + pearl = nest

(therefore)

the nest is in the bird. it is a matter of biological determinism. inevitable...immutable. please don't ask me about the egg.

it

was

not

necessary

in the first place and

not

desirable

in the last.

Susan Sontag on keeping a journal

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one's private, secret thoughts--like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate.  In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood.  It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent.  Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather --in many cases--offers an alternative to it.

There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions towards a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal.  But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep.  Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions.  I am thinking now of what I read today (when I went up to 122 Boulevard, St Germain to check for her mail) in H's journal about me --that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn't like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune.  God knows it hurts and I feel indignant and humiliated.  We rarely do know what people think of us (or rather, think they think of us)...Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes?  No.  One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal.  Will H ever read this? 

A couple of thoughts skipped through my mind as I read this 1957 Sontag entry -written just over a year after I was born.  I have always seen my journals as a way of re-writing myself.  So much so, that at one point I began creating false entries that were exciting to me -that I would have liked had they been true.  It had occurred to me as I crafted these entries that I may become forgetful one day, and that I might go back and read my own journals as a way of reacquainting myself with my(former)self, and that with "journal augmentation" I would come away with the sense that my life had been crazy-full of adventure and madcap exploits.  I no longer craft such entries...I think it's because my desire for adventure has been usurped by a bigger desire:  to stay here, exactly where I am and create objects and images in my studio.   I think this desire to be exactly where I am is a huge gift. 

The other point she made in her entry that I connected with is this idea that there can be contradictions between how we act towards others and our feelings for them.  I think that in dealing with people -both others and ourselves- contradiction is the rule.  I have been most surprised -sometimes for the better and sometimes not- by the contradictions I find in myself.

Ghost Ships Image Set

So here is one of the images for my Ghost Ships project:

I have this image framed in one of the vintage frames with the convex glass, and am presenting it as a diptych.  Here is a low quality photo of how the set is hung:

It's a bit hard to see, but the bottom piece (also convex glass) is a photo of cupped hands, there is aMorpho butterfly inside of it...I wanted to draw a comparison between the moving arms in the top image and the wings and motility of the butterfly below.  I was hoping that -together- they would give a sense of fleetingness.  Anyhow, the butterfly is iridescent -I've only ever seen this species of butterfly before in photographs and photos don't show their iridescence very well.

The small piece off to the side...not sure I'll put it in the gallery, but I like the shape and difference it adds to the grouping.

Ghost Ships

Last year I was given a solo exhibition at a new gallery in Portland.  I was SO excited to show in my own hometown and since I was given the liberty to do whatever I wanted with the space, my imagination ran a little wild with it. 

I first considered creating a murmuration out of paper birds, of creating this piece in my garage and making a set of tintypes with it...then re-creating it in the gallery as a huge, ceiling installation.  Prints from my tintypes would adorn the walls.

*side note - this is a murmuration for those who don't know:

Then that idea ebbed, and I found myself wanting to channel Leonardo Drew...to create a large scale, modular photographic installation.   I had actually began making objects for this, but I simply lost interest in it. 

Then, one night I was listening to an episode (#36) of Lore Podcast called, "When the Bow Breaks" and became entranced with in the notion of Ghost Ships.   Ghost ships are real...they are vacant vessels that just float around out there on the open seas.   The crew is either missing or dead.  Ghost ships are floating equivalents to abandoned houses, but more mysterious, I think, for their rarity and for their peculiarity...I mean, there's no reason for a ship to be sailing without a crew, whereas houses stay right where they are long after the inhabitants have all left.

One of the things that appealed to me about the idea of ghost ships is how it might work as a metaphor for human beings as we are all just passing through, really...slipping silently through the waters of life -waving to each other as we glide by.  The human body is also a vessel of sorts...and though we may not be empty, we are certainly haunted -both culturally and individually by our histories.

For my show in Portland, I had decided to present a show of photographic images & objects that work within the theme of "Ghost Ships."  Each piece was to be presented in an antique/vintage frame -the kind that has convex glass in it.  The convexity of the glass leaves room to add items to the work...so in Untethered Pearls, for example - I was able to put a few alphabetical symbols in there that appear to be floating.   I also liked the way the frames echo port holes in a ship.

By the time my show was cancelled (yes, I really did just say that --it was cancelled) I had already spent just under $1500 on the frames.  Unfortunately, the gallery folded.  And here I sit with 19 antique frames and 5 finished pieces. 

I decided to celebrate the fact that I now have these gorgeous frames that I would never have purchased without believing there was a destination for them.  And I'm going to create this body work anyway.  I have time now to think about how I would really like each piece to be.  There's no rush, and I love the objects I've already created. 

Anyhow, that's it for today...maybe tomorrow I'll post pix from the Ghost Ships series.

Goodnight, world.