Getting Ready...Open Studio Tomorrow!

I have been having fun and working hard this week getting the studio ready for my Fall Open Studio tomorrow, Saturday, October 5th. It's always a treat to re-hang my art for these events and see it fresh. Plus I have been organizing paints so kids can decorate flower pots, and baking biscotti and other treats. Here are a few photos of the studio as it is getting ready. If you are in the Bay Area it would be great to have you come by!

Muir Beach Open Studio & Garden Sale
hosted by Mary Daniel Hobson, Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick
Saturday, October 5 from 10am - 4pm
1795 & 1815 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach, CA
Offering fine art, organic plants, art activities for kids and tea & treats and more.
Questions? Please email me.

Image #1: Machu Picchu II, Conserve Ecology, Ascend, and a new piece called Open.

Image #2: I always love offering some of my favorite quotes about the creative process - folded up so people can pick one intuitively. 

Image #3: A panoramic shot of three walls of the studio

Celebrating Fall with an Open Studio

I have always loved the fall season. The back to school energy feels like a fresh start. The abundance of apples and garden vegies makes me appreciate the generosity of nature. The summer fog of Muir Beach gives way to crisp bright sunshine. I feel sharper and brighter myself. 

It's a wonderful time of year to open my studio, and so I will be hosting an Open Studio in Muir Beach on Saturday, October 5 from 10-4. There will be a wide assortment of my mixed media art from photographs bottled in mineral oil to layered collages and more, plus postcards & notecards for sale. There will also be art activities for kids and tea & treats, and my neighbors, Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick, will be opening their home garden and nursery too. Please see details below, and contact me with any questions. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, it would be lovely to have you stop by!

MUIR BEACH OPEN STUDIO & GARDEN SALE
hosted by Mary Daniel Hobson, Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick
Saturday, October 5th from 10am-4pm
1795 & 1815 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach, CA  

Image Above: Sanctuary #9, archival pigment print, 16.5 x 11", ©marydanielhobson

New Ideas

"New ideas always find me this way way, ramshackle, delightful, and unexpected. And I am convinced that ideas are everywhere, like wild daisies, there for the picking. We all have access. Anyone can snag the corner of an idea and give it a tug, pulling down from the firmament some fragment of greatness. It's not a lack of ideas that stops us from creating great work; it's that we make too many excuses and lack the courage to dream thing real. It's that having the guts to yank an idea out of the ether and toss it into a cycle of rapid prototyping, drafting and revising requires focus and risk. The creative process is always an encounter with the unknown, and demands a willingness to veer off course and be transformed." - Christina Rosalie from A Field Guide To Now

New ideas are finding me. I am working with them, chipping away and bringing them into form like the new series of prints in progress pictured here on my studio work table. I am practicing diligence and patience. And I am feeling very blessed to have the capacity - the space and the time (though I always crave more) - to take my visions and make them tangible and real.

Clearing the River

"Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down." -Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves 

I have been blessed this week with time to "clear the river" --  meaning large chunks of time in the studio to open the flow of creativity. Today I started a new journal with this quote above, cleaned my space, and shot fresh images of my hands. I am excited to see where all of this will take me. 

Image above shot this past Saturday at Muir Beach with my iPhone 4S ©marydanielhobson