Snapshots from my evening: Sparkly red shoes...chocolate...crisp clear starry skies...filling up the house with music. Here you go:

You will never wake up slow and sleepy again and kick your feet in your sheets and not think about these images ever again...Here's another one for you.

...:) It's narcotic, isn't it? Like rubber ducks and puppies. I don't care what kind of bad mood your were stewing in before, you're irrationally happy now, right? I have others. Regina Spektor, the Noisettes, and Oren Lavie are providing the soundtrack right now to my life. Overwhelming idiosyncracy and Quirk. I know. 

...Still no real snow, but deep deep cold. My feet hit the floor in the morning and the impact hits the top of my skull and I skitter across the floor like a crab, stuffing my feet into my wooley boots, yipping and whimpering...Longjohns and getting dressed in front of the woodstove...it doesn't sound fun, but I really do love this time of the year. It's so clear outside tonight, deep dusting of stars across the sky. 

            With the cold weather, I've been drawing in the evenings...sort of quasi-architectural things, inspired by House of Leaves (Mark L Danielewski) and Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)...I don't have a lot more to say about these yet. I'll be showing them in April...along with some other pieces.

And! I'm back blowing glass next week with Jeremy Newman!...I can't wait to be back in the studio. Not sure yet what we'll be making, when we left off we were working with lunar imagery, moon cycles, large flattened blown glass discs...
              I'm making a new series of smallish hourglasses to start; I have a ream of sketches for a weird steampunk-inspired chess set. And then some more experimental things. I'm looking at a few artists, but somebody brought up Remedios Varos to me the other day, that they saw a lot of her influence in my work. I hadn't considered that, although I studied her intensively in school. Here are some images, if you don't know her work...

There's a fantastical dreamlike enigmatic quality to her work that I love. It's nice to reconnect. 

               PDA design charette all day today. I want to write about it, but it was an exhausting process in the end, though exciting. I'll try to collect my thoughts and write more about that the next time...the last bit of the design process mentioned building/reclaiming a fire lookout tower in the space. I love it. 

          The fire has gone out while I've been typing...the room lit up by the blue glow of the computer screen. Time to slip off to dreams, myself. Goosedown comforter waiting for me...

Reasons I love the Northwest:
- The Bad Things. My new favorite band. Check them out! 
- Listening to KEXP while stuck in traffic on I-5 and actually being disappointed when the traffic starts moving again.  
- channels of deep crimson maple cut into the deep green pine of the mountains.
  - the way the frosted top ridges melt into the autumn colors.
- Chocolate martinis. The Wild Ginger.   Anything with wild mushrooms and brown rice. YUM!
- White caps and furious grey clouds on the Puget Sound, with the ferries serenely passing by...
- Driving along Diablo Lake by Colonial Creek in the late afternoon sunlight.
   - Driving in the middle of nowhere and suddenly picking up a really great radio station that is going to   
   exclusively play gypsy jazz and Django Reinhart for the next hour.  And then it snows. <siiiiiigh> Bliss.
- Ross Lake turquoise blue with Mt. Hozomeen, the old ancient Buddha, peeking out from the mist.

I made it back from Seattle by dinner time yesterday. It was a beautiful drive, but by the time I bounced my way down the dirt road that leads to our house, the golden interior light from our house was a welcome sight. I could smell the smoke from the chimney as I crunched up the path, and the anticipation of the warmth from the fire was delicious. 
             
                   The Pilchuck annual auction, as anticipated, was an amazing event. Set-up went smoothly, and it was lots of fun to see old friends from over the summer. The auction itself is an incredibly lavish affair, and it was hard to not feel intimidated by the pageantry of it all. I got teased for looking scared and downing my first two glasses of wine rather fast. But really, this is a major fundraiser for a really magic and truly unique place, and as such, a celebration of everything that makes Pilchuck and art-making so great. So I bucked up and in the end had a GREAT time. AMAZING art, amazing glass collectors and art supporters, great food, and for a great cause. And I got to wear sparkly red heels too. It's like Disneyland.

            Plus Cosmopolitans. Did I mention the Cosmos? And chocolate. And this really simple delicious squash soup. Sheesh.

The live auction raised over $900,000 for the school, which is incredible generosity. My piece did well in the silent auction, and I was thrilled to actually meet the couple who were the successful bidders. As I've said before, that Coyote piece is very very important to me, and it was an incredible boost of confidence to have it received so well. It was really the first piece in a series where I began to move away from strictly functional vessel-making and re-connect with art-making and content in my work. It was an incredibly silly, serious, joyful experience making that piece, and I couldn't be more happy with where (and with whom) the piece is going. I don't very often get the chance to meet the people who acquire my work, and it's always a treat. Thank you, again! !!

Speaking, incidentally, of my utter social ineptness, I want to thank Heather Ruhl for coming with me as my lovely date for the evening and being SO supportive and a bit of a buffer for me. And also have a pre-auction dress-up party with me, with nail polish. And shoes. Hooray! Love you sweetie. Here's a picture Jay MacDonnell took of us at Pilchuck this summer.

More leaf pictures. Because I can. They really were pretty amazing on the drive back.

I attended the first meeting of the Twisp Public Development Authority today at the old Forest Service Complex. What an incredible, exciting dialogue! For those of you outside the Methow, the Town of Twisp acquired an old forest service property, which consisted of a large campus of buildings, offices and housing. Here's what the PDA has to say:
 
                  " The Twisp Public Development Authority was chartered by the Town of Twisp, WA and is a partnership with the Methow Valley community that fosters and promotes economic vitality, local agriculture, arts and culture and innovative educational opportunities. We work with individuals and groups to advance sustainable practices...Like many rural areas in the modern world, the Methow is experiencing the growing pains that come with the expansion of a service economy. Housing is scarce and expensive, office space is limited and at the same time the cost of living is increasing. Exceptional arts groups, civic enterprises and a thriving organic agricultural environment are all constrained by slow physical growth in Twisp, at the heart of the Methow Valley.

The Twisp Public Development Authority Complex is ideally situated to correct the current trend and to assist in the development of a healthy, multi-faceted economy. "

          You can read more about the project, including a great blog, at:  http://www.twisppda.org.

In essence, the project has been divided into several sub-committees: Green/Innovative Technology, Agriculture, Education, and Arts & Culture. I am serving on the arts and culture subcommittee, and I will be attending a larger meeting later today with the other groups.

What we're interested in initiating is: an incredible space including freelance artist workspaces, rental facilities for ceramics, glass, metal and textiles; an educational center; and artist residency programs. In other words, a program very much built around the model of a Haystack or Penland, but with the addition of a year-round artist community working space. Other suggestions today: filmmaking and performance space, a digital media lab...cross-desciplinary spaces, in which for example textile artists could network with farmers who sustainably raise sheep and goats for fiber...apprenticeships....classes. This is so exciting, and I am so thrilled to be part of the core team that will see this thing to completion.

        I can't wait to here the ideas that the Ag people and the Green people came up with. I think ultimately there will be a lot of cross-over for all of our ideas, and it has the potential to reinvent the local economy as well. Twisp is already known for its extensive arts culture...but this next step is huge.

         I'm still playing with the idea of returning to school next year for my Masters degree in Arts Administration, since so much of what I do at the Confluence as well as my experiences at Pilchuck have made me really aware of the difference that non-profit arts groups make in the lives and work of artists as well as the amazingly potent impact they have on the culture at large...this project that I am now embarking on only strengthens my resolve to pursue this.

                The possibilities are filling me with euphoria and heady enthusiasm. I'll keep you posted on where this project goes!...next blog post, I'll talk a little more about the next body of work. I'm still at the sketching stage, but I have some really exciting ideas about what is next!