Into the Studio

Benefitting Art

2011-11-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

I am pleased that my art can be used to support these two great Bay Area organizations - SF Camerawork and the Bolinas Museum.

I donated Evocation #020 (picured here) to the SF Camerawork Benefit Auction. An exhibit of all donated artwork opens November 3rd - tonight! It will be up until the auction on December 3rd. You need not be present to bid - they have a great online system set up - click here to check it out. This print is one of my favorites from the Evocation series which explores the tension between internal and external space and the distortions that can happen between the two.

Then I am working away in the studio on some new pieces for the Bolinas Museum Miniatures Exhibition - an annual benefit art sale of works that are 6 x 6 x 6 inches or smaller. I love the scale of this show. It's a wonderful assignment to make something for this exhibit that includes many talented West Marin artists. The show will open with a reception on Saturday afternoon, November 19. If you are in the SF Bay Area, I hope you will get a chance to check out both events.

Springtime Open Studio & Garden Event

2011-03-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

I am so excited this spring to be having another Muir Beach Open Studio and Garden event with my neighbors Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick over the weekend of April 9 & 10.

I really love opening my studio this way and having a chance to talk with people, sharing my creative space & working process. These events also provide such a wonderful way for me to combine my professional and family life. My studio is just across the yard from my home in Muir Beach. My mother Sandra Hobson will be here signing copies of her book, Rituals for Life's Milestones. My daughters Anna and Jessica will be here, and we invite other children to come play outside in our large yard under the budding apple trees.

I also love collaborating with Wendy and Peter who are such artists of the garden. Together they used to run the gardens and farm at Green Gulch Zen Center, and now they have a home nursery selling organically grown vegetable, herb and flower seedlings as well as perennial and native plants. You can find a complete plant list on their web site at www.gardeningatthedragonsgate.com. A portion of all sales will go to benefit public school garden programs in the Bay Area.

If you are in the area, I hope you will celebrate springtime with us and come by for tea and treats, garden inspiration, new plants, fine art, and fun. See details below.

Muir Beach Open Studio & Garden Sale
Saturday and Sunday, April 9-10
Mary Daniel Hobson: Artist Open Studio
open 11am-4pm at 1815 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach
Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick: Open Garden & Spring Plant Sale
open 10am-4pm at 1795 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach
For directions, click here.
Please park along Muir Woods Road.
Questions? Email me or call 415-383-5617.

IMAGE INFO: Above: Evocation #14 ©marydanielhobson.
Below: A photo of Wendy and Peter's nursery

New Show at Cavallo Point

2011-02-12T12:20:00.000-08:00

I am delighted to share that I have new solo show at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA - both in their art gallery (pictured here) and in their healing center. This lodge at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge has a unique art program. In addition to the gallery, each guest room features original fine art work on extended loans by wonderful local artists including Linda Connor, Judith & Richard Lang, Candace Gaudiani and many more.

I was thrilled when curator Anne Veh contacted me last fall about showing my work there. I have to say I hesitated though when she told me the dates because the show was to open January 5 - just two days before the due date of my second child. Fortunately Anne was open to creative solutions, so in mid-December when I was very round with pregnancy, we met in my studio and selected all the work, wrapped it up, and she took it with her and stored it at her home until she installed the show a few weeks later. I had to really let go in a way that I don't usually with an exhibit and let Anne truly "curate" - a word whose etymology means "to take care of." She has attended to all the myriad details of the show beautifully.

One of my favorite parts of this exhibit is the spirit of generosity that is present. 10% of all sales proceeds go to the non-profit of my choice. I selected Lily Yeh's outstanding organization Barefoot Artists which "works with poor communities around the globe using art to bring healing, self-empowerment and social change." And then at Anne's suggestion, we created a give-away for every visitor. In the center of the gallery is a wooden bowl filled with rolled scrolls tied with ribbon, and inside each is one of my favorite quotes about the creative process. There are 11 different quotes, so each visitor can intuitively pick the best one for him or her. As you can see from the photo above, the bowl was empty the day I visited as these have been so popular that it has been hard to keep up with the demand, but I have been assured that the bowl is replenished often. If you are unable to attend the show, but would still like the creative inspiration, please email me and I will send you a pdf of the quotes.

One of the quotes is George Braque: "Art is a wound turned into light." Anne as a curator really understood right away the healing inherent in my creative process, and chose to emphasize this aspect in the show. She selected a very nice group of over 40 pieces from 5 different series including Mapping the Body, Milagros, Evocations, and Sanctuary (pictured in the photo above). I do hope if you are in the Bay Area that you will get a chance to see the show and/or hear my artist talk on March 22.

Mary Daniel Hobson, Creativity: A Journey of Transformation
Cavallo Point Art Gallery & Healing Center, Sausalito, CA
January 5-April 3, 2011
Special Program & Artist Talk on Tuesday evening, March 22, 2011
For directions & more information, please see www.cavallopoint.com or call 415-339-4740.

New Year, New Life

2011-01-30T14:33:00.000-08:00

We celebrated the arrival of 2011 with the birth of our second daughter - Jessica Ann - born on January 2. Since then we have been living in that tender space of nurturing a newborn - not much sleep, but lots of grace. I love how well Andrea Sher describes this time in this quote from her blog, The Superhero Journal...

"There is a way that birth opens you up, not only physically but in other ways too. This birth cracked me open, not in a traumatic way, but in the sense that I am more open now than I have been in a long time. The feeling that this is a window of opportunity is almost palpable-- a crack letting more light in, more love, and more healing than I ever could have imagined. I am treading lightly with it, not wanting this window to close, wanting to be as conscious as I can to take advantage of all this moment has to give. I almost don't want to say too much about it, just to acknowledge that this time feels sacred and fleeting, and that the possibility of miracles feels unbearably close."

Art Everyday Month Starts Today

2010-11-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

November 1st marks the beginning of Art of Everyday Month! I have never participated before, but was intrigued this year after listening to Leah Piken Kolidas, the founder of Art Everyday Month in an interview with Britt Bravo for the Arts & Healing Podcast. The premise is fairly straightforward - do something creative everyday for the month of November - no matter how small or what the form. It need not be serious Art with a capital A, but rather any creative process you choose. For example, one woman kept it simple and purchased an itty-bitty sketch book and put at least one line on a page per day.

If you like, you can share the resulting art online. Leah offers options to sign up on her web site as a participant, to share your daily art on a Flickr page, or to track your journey on your blog. You can also make it a private commitment and just work away at it knowing that many others out there are engaged in the same practice this month. If you get stuck, Leah has a great advice in the her "Art Everyday Month Survival Kit."

For me, my life is so full right now that finding the space to be creative has been challenging. I am taking inspiration from Art Everyday Month to add some little doses of creative expression into my life. The first step today was to set up some art supplies (pictured here) in my sun room where my daughter and I could work together, playing with colored paper, scissors, glue, and more.

Harvest Celebration

2010-10-18T05:44:00.001-07:00

Wendy Johnson (pictured here) and I are getting ready for our Harvest Celebration: Open Garden & Open Studio in Muir Beach, CA on Sunday, October 24 from 11am-4pm.

I was so inspired by a recent visit to Wendy's garden and nursery that it made me want to come right home and get my hands in the earth. She and her good friend Martha de Barros have planned a wonderful array of fun and inspiration for Sunday including garden tours, organic plants ready for the winter garden, lavender crafts, autumn bouquets & other garden goodies, plus harvest wreath making from 2-3pm.

I am getting my studio all polished and ready for visitors. I really appreciate the chance to share my art work and creative space & process with others in such a direct and immediate way. There will be a nice selection of work from the past ten years including prints from Sanctuary & Evocations, collages from Milagros & Mapping the Body, and bottle sculptures from Bottle Dreams. I am also excited to share that my mother will be at my studio in the afternoon to sign copies of her wonderful book, Rituals for Life's Milestones.

If you are in the Bay Area, I hope you will be able to come by and say hello. Kids are welcome. Bring friends. Please park along Muir Woods Road, and let me know if you need directions.

Muir Beach Open Studio - October 24

2010-10-09T08:53:00.001-07:00

I am pleased to announce the date for my next Muir Beach Open Studio which is happening on Sunday, October 24 from 11am-4pm. I had so much fun doing the last one here in the spring, and am so looking forward to doing it again. My neighbor, master gardener Wendy Johnson, will also be opening her garden and home nursery too. If you are in the area, it would be lovely to have you come by and enjoy tea and treats, new plants, and fine art. Kids are welcome. Click on flier here to see more details. Please email me if you need directions. Happy Autumn!

Moo.com

2010-09-22T07:54:00.003-07:00

One of the great things about taking workshops like the one I took a few weeks ago at the SF Center for the Book is connecting with other creative people in the class - sharing insight, advice, and practical tips about being an artist. At that SFCB workshop, two of the artists in the class recommended Moo.com as a great place to get business cards made. I went online and ordered a batch of their MiniCards - which are half the size of a regular business card and allow you to choose as many images as you want on an order of 100.

I have always been a lover of small things - it's part of why much for the work in Mapping the Body is small scale. These cards are right up my alley. On the back of each is my name and web site, and on the front I selected a range of work (all cropped a bit to fit the card size). Here in this photo you see along the bottom the following images: A Creative Fire Within, Flight, Sanctuary #5, and Evocation #018, plus in the box Encyclopedia and Embolden Wishes for Positive Change. I love it that when passing out cards people can choose their favorite image.

I also ordered from Moo a nice case to keep the cards in my purse - but beware if you have a two year old in your household. Mine has co-opted the case as her new toy, and buried it in her room somewhere. If you are new to Moo, you can get a 10% discount on your order if purchased by September 30 by using this code: BVJH7H.

Evocations in Tricycle Magazine

2010-09-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

I just received a nice package of 10 copies of the new issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, which includes reproductions of my series Evocations. They have paired my images of bottles, maps, and bodies with an article on the 5th precept of Buddhism - the non-use of intoxicants. I am still not exactly sure how my work connects to the writing, but I like the poetic stretch of having it appear in a new context. Also in this issue is a great article on the Gulf Oil Spill by my neighbor & gardener Wendy Johnson, plus an inspiring piece on "Yoga and Creativity" by Anne Cushman. I love what she says here about writing, which is also applicable to photography:

"I used to believe that writing was a way to create a kind of back up life for myself, to pickle reality in paragraphs for future consumption. I thought I could capture life's precious, fluttering moments in a net of words. But through yoga - and growing older - I know that writing can't trump impermanence. What I've mounted on the head of my writer's pin are just cocoons. The actual butterflies have flow away long ago."

Until today, I had never read Tricycle before. They contacted me out of the blue to ask permission to use my work in this issue. What I love is that my art is exposing me to new ideas - it's as if the pieces themselves have a life of their own, traveling out into the world and connecting in new ways with words, ideas, and people - giving me back the gift of new experience.

Modern Book Moves to San Francisco

2010-09-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had a nice visit to Modern Book Gallery at their new location at 49 Geary Street in San Francisco. Previously on University Ave in Palo Alto, they are now on the fourth floor of this building known for housing top-notch galleries like Fraenkel, Koch, and Stephen Wirtz. The space looks terrific - bright and elegant. I particularly love this corner dedicated to books published by Modern Book, including titles by Maggie Taylor, Fan Ho, Fred Lyon, Brigitte Carnochan, and an about-to-be-released retrospective publication on Jerry Uelsmann. They will be doing a book signing and closing party for Fred Lyon's series of vintage San Francisco photos on Saturday, September 11, 2-5pm. I am crossing my fingers I can get there.

My work has been represented by Modern Book since 2003, and you could find a large selection of my work there in the back room. I just delivered 10 more pieces from Mapping the Body for them to take to several upcoming art fairs including - Art Toronto, Art Miami, and Art Chicago. I have so valued working with Mark and Bryan and having my work included in their stable of artists as they have grown and evolved over time.

Altered Books

2010-09-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent a blissful six hours at the San Francisco Center for the Book ripping, sewing, gluing, and cutting -- transforming books into art objects. It was with a little trepidation that I made my first tear into a book called The Long Tomorrow, but after my initial hesitation, I got quite into it - sewing pockets, gluing pages together, and even dismantling books entirely to discover their beautiful string bindings. The instructor, Jody Alexander, offered all kinds of great tools, examples, and techniques for working with found books. As an artist who loves containers (i.e. bottles and frames), I really love the idea of using the old discarded book as another form of containment. In particular, I really enjoyed turning this book (pictured here) on Australia into a "safe book," with all the pages glued together and then an opening cut out where some kind of art or poetic meaning could be placed. So many possibilities....such fun to open up to new techniques like these.

French Flea Marketing

2010-08-28T06:36:00.000-07:00

Early last Saturday morning, I took my inner artist out for a morning drive to Mill Valley for Maison Reve's French Flea Market. I am already a big fan of Maison Reve's aesthetic, and over the years, have found some wonderful gifts here. Once a season they fill their back yard with french-inspired treasures, and open their doors at 8am. My creative mind gets inspired just by being around all these wonderful objects - bottles, weathered wooden boxes, french street signs, cigar cases, hat boxes, bird baths, bicycles and much more. This time, I found a few treasures to take home to the studio including a bottle with a bright red metal lid, another bottle filled with blue sea glass, and an old book on mathematics that I want to take with me to this workshop next weekend and turn it into an art-altered book. All in all a soul-inspiring excursion.

Walking Through the Weeds

2010-08-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

The path to my studio is covered with weeds. Walking here today I was filled with the urge to pull them and create beauty and order everywhere around me. But instead of pulling, I stopped, took a deep breath, and acknowledged what the weeds can teach me. They are an invitation to prioritize in the midst of a busy, chaotic life. I can't do everything. I can, however, sharpen my focus on the things that really matter most to me. Rather than be reactive to my environment and all its overgrown disorder, I can instead walk through the weeds to the studio, where I can do the work that truly calls me today. Once inside, I made a handmade birthday card for a dear friend, packed up my art for the next venue of The Seduction of Duchamp exhibit this time at the Museum of Los Gatos, CA, and filled my journal with new ideas for my art. These activities made my soul smile.

Inspiration from the Open Studio

2010-04-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

My Open Studio earlier this month was one of my favorite I have ever done. The weather was warm and bright. There was a steady stream of almost 100 terrific folks who inspired me with their interest and appreciation of my work. Above all, having the Open Studio at my home studio in Muir Beach allowed me to integrate my home/family life with my art/professional life. My mother signed her books on the deck. My daughter played and laughed in the yard with the other young children. My neighbor sold her wonderful plants. I felt so wrapped in the spirit of community and family in the midst of being a professional artist. It was a magic day for me.

I hope to keep that magic alive by offering another one of these events in October, partnering again with Wendy Johnson and her Dragon's Bend Nursery. I will keep you posted as soon as I know the date - we are thinking late October when the pumpkins and apples are ready for picking.

While preparing for this last open studio, I could feel my creative energy rise. I wanted to share some of that enthusiasm. So I printed up copies of my 11 favorite quotes on the creative process, folded them, stamped them with a red butterfly, placed them in the white basket picture here, and added a note that invited people to select one as a gift of creative inspiration. It was my way to say to visitors that day "thank you for coming and inspiring me to keep going on this exquisite & challenging path of making art, and may you too be inspired to follow your own calling." Many of these quotes I have shared on this blog before. I share one more now...

You’re a song

A wished for song

Go through the ear to the center

Where sky is, where wind, where silent knowing.

Put seeds and cover them.

Blades will sprout where you do your work.
-Rumi

Rituals for Life's Milestones: A Booksigning at my Open Studio

2010-04-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

I am getting very excited about my Open Studio on Saturday and am extra delighted to share the news that my mother, Sandra Hobson, will be there all afternoon signing copies of her book, Rituals for Life’s Milestones.

My mother has always known how to turn special events into meaningful rituals. As a child, birthdays in our household were celebrated every year with breakfast in bed, and Valentines Day often began with a trail of paper hearts leading to the dining table. Over the years, my mother has honed this gift for ritual by studying different indigenous cultures around the world and bringing that wisdom back home where she can share it with friends and clients, helping them navigate life’s passages with more grace and meaning.

She has captured 15 of these rituals in her book, Rituals for Life’s Milestones, which has been beautifully designed by my father, Charles Hobson, in a limited edition of 500 copies. Each copy has an actual stone glued to the cover, referencing the use of elements from nature in so many of the rituals described within the book. If you would like to learn more about her book and the healing power of ritual, you could listen to a podcast interview I did with my mom for the Arts & Healing Network by clicking here, or download it into iTunes by clicking here.

If you are in the Bay Area, I hope you will to stop by and enjoy all the great offerings of the day on Saturday, April 17 from 10am-4pm: Wendy Johnson's Garden Sale, my Open Studio, and my mother's book signing. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Open Studio & Garden Sale on April 17

2010-04-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to be hosting an Open Studio at my Muir Beach studio on April 17 from 10am-4pm. This is where most of my creative work gets made. It will be a nice chance to share with visitors my creative process as well as a selection of finished work.

Not only will my doors be open on Saturday, April 17, but just two doors away, my neighbor and extraordinary gardener, Wendy Johnson, will also be having an Open Garden and Plant Sale featuring organic plants, starts, and seeds as well as tea and treats. Wendy (pictured below) is one of the wisest gardeners I know - she used to manage the gardens at the Green Gulch Zen Center and is the author of Gardening at the Dragon's Gate. You could listen to a podcast interview I did with Wendy for the Arts & Healing Network by clicking here, or download it into iTunes by clicking here .

My home studio has always been my inner sanctum - my ultimate place of refuge, renewal, and creativity. For many years, I have felt the need to keep it private and quiet here, but lately, I have been dreaming of doing more events here, and so when Wendy invited me to share my art on the day she is sharing her garden, I leapt at the chance. If you are in the Bay Area, I would be delighted to have you come by and say hello, enjoy fine art, new plants, and tea and treats. Children are most welcome - my daughter Anna will be here most of the day. Click here for directions, and please email me with any questions.

Living with Art

2010-03-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

A good friend and collector sent me this photo from her iPhone last week. I was touched to see how she has arranged on her mantle postcards of my art with the three collages she owns. Pictured here left to right are two small-scale collages from the Milagros series, a postcard of Creative Fire Within, the collage In Memory from Mapping the Body, and postcards of Flight, Evocation #001, and Sanctuary #1.

This photo was such a great reminder that my work exists and lives beyond me. It is easy to forget when I am working away alone in the studio that my art is out there enriching the experiences of others. I am so grateful to Nell for the gift of seeing how my work is installed in such a graceful and beautiful way in her home.

Dialoguing with Nature

2010-03-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

“Wait. Observe. If you are very still, not impatient, quietly receptive, at some point Nature will make the first move to initiate the conversation. To the exact degree and moment that you are ready to receive, Nature will ever so slightly disturb the equilibrium between the two of you, will reach toward you.” – Peter London

Today was so warm again that I could actually sit in the hammock and read outside (a rarity in West Marin). Peter London’s Drawing Closer To Nature: Making Art in Dialogue with the Natural World is a book I bought a few years ago, and today it yelled at me from the bookshelf – “Read me!” I am so glad it did. He writes so well about how to attune oneself as an artist to the natural world and to use that connectedness to nature as a way to make deep, authentic and meaningful work.

Inspired by him and by my respite under the pear tree yesterday, today I began a conversation with the apple trees in my garden. I had a vision of the trees themselves acting like easels. I went outside with a big white piece of paper and used the recently trimmed sapling branches to weave the paper onto one of the trees. I had brought crayons and pencils and pens, thinking I would draw. But something magical happened as soon as I attached the paper. The wind blew and the tree's own shadow danced across the paper – like a photogram. I went running back to the studio for my camera and shot 80 pictures of paper dancing in the wind – one of them here. I have no idea where this is taking me, but it feels fresh and exciting. I look forward to where this conversation with the apple trees will take me next.

www.marydanielhobson.com

The Art of Sitting Still

2010-03-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

This week has been graced by gorgeous weather. Today, the warm air called me outside where I took root under this blooming pear tree. I sat still there for an hour and half – journal in hand – occasionally jotting down an insight or an idea. But mostly I just sat, and let the earth hold me while my mind emptied.

I looked around and saw how often my perception of my garden is colored by all the work I see that needs to be done. I am almost always outside with clippers and digging tools in hand – keeping busy, not missing a moment to improve on this place. Today was a like a mini vacation – I relished the beauty of the natural world around me as it is right now, with no need to change it.

So often as an artist I forget the importance of sitting still. My time in the studio feels limited and precious. I tell myself I must be productive and busy to justify claiming this time for myself, time away from my family and other responsibilities. Yet today I was reminded how stillness is in itself an action. With it, comes a deep sense of renewal and connectedness that makes me a better artist and a better person.

Coming back into the studio, I took heart from Mary Oliver’s wise words tacked to my bulletin board…
“Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.”

Beginning...Again

2010-03-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

I find myself at a place of new beginnings in my art. Ever since my daughter was born in May 2008, much of my creative energy has gone toward parenting. Now, as she is getting bigger and a little more independent, I find myself itchy to dive more deeply into my creative work again – yet I feel like a novice, hungry to make progress and yet uncertain of how to proceed. So this morning I did some journaling about how in the past I transitioned from one series of art to the next. I discovered some commonalities…

1) It seems to take about 2 years for me to fully develop a new series - two years of experimentation, some false starts, some breakthroughs and then refinement.

2) I like to work on two projects at one time, so that when I get stuck working on one, I can move over to the other one. Bottle Dreams and Milagros were both born together and so were Evocations and Sanctuary.

3) There are false starts, there are one-offs that never become a series, and there are pieces that never go anywhere, but making them was really important in the overall development of new work.

4) Gathering and collecting are a big part of my process. Getting the right bottles, maps or other objects around me in the studio is essential.

5) New technology, tools and materials helped me grow as an artist – whether it was taking classes on alternative photo processes that eventually helped me make Mapping the Body, or getting a digital camera which led me to make Evocations and Sanctuary.

6) A deadline has been a key factor in moving the work from experimentation to manifestation. Having a solo show on the calendar usually does the trick for me.

7) I don’t work on my art everyday. I never have. With a child in my life, this is even more true. My creativity lies dormant within me and then explodes with the right combination of prep work, materials in place, concentrated time and a deadline. A lot can come to together very quickly.

Sitting here today, this list becomes a kind of road map for me. I am setting out on what may be a two-year journey. I am looking for two ideas to work on in tandem. I will play and experiment and gather the things my intuition says to collect. I will look for some new tools and materials to inspire me. When I get a little further down the road, I will set up a deadline to accelerate the creation of new work. In the meantime, I am going to do my best to relax and trust and enjoy the process.

Image Above: A Creative Fire Within from the series Milagros

The Artist's Way For Today

2010-03-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

“As artists, we must learn to try. We must learn to act affirmatively. We must learn to act as though spring is at hand – because it is. We are the spring that we are waiting for. Wherever creativity is afoot, so is a blossoming. All creative acts are acts of initiative. In order to make art, we must be willing to labor. We must be willing to reach inside and draw forth what we find there. On an inner plane, we are all connected to a larger whole. This is what is meant by inspiration, this connection to something greater than ourselves. But it begins with where we are. It begins with possibility.” – Julia Cameron

This quote is the bit of inspiration for March 15 in Julia Cameron’s new compilation called The Artist’s Way Every Day. I turned to her book this morning to help invoke my creative spirit. I have a week in which I have carved huge chunks of time out for the studio – four days, 7 hours each. How bountiful it feels. Everywhere around me nature is blooming. Fruit trees are flowering and new leaves decorate the branches of deciduous trees. Spring is here. I want to use this time of rebirth to catlyze something new and tangible in my creative work.

Prints Byte Exhibition

2010-02-02T20:52:00.001-08:00

I delivered several of my large-scale collages from the Milagros series today to SomArts Cultural Center in San Francisco for an exhibition opening this Friday, February 5. Curated by Hanna Regev and Justin Hoover, the show is called "Prints Byte" and examines the cutting edge of printmaking today.

It was exciting to walk into the expansive space "under installation." I arrived as Justin was hanging Enrique Chagoya's art - prints that had been converted to lush textured tapestries. Several large installation pieces had already gone up including a magnificent waterfall piece constructed of probably 100 small abstract blue prints by Seiko Tachibana. I look forward to seeing the work altogether on Friday night at the reception.

Prints Byte: The Cutting Edge of Printmaking
February 5 - February 27, 2010
Reception: Friday, February 5 from 7-9pm
SomArts Cultural Center
934 Brannan (at 8th), San Francisco, CA
Gallery Hours: Tues-Fri, noon-7 and Sat: noon-5
www.somarts.org

Image above shows three Milagros pieces each 28 x 10"

Wishing You a Fruitful New Year

2009-12-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

Sanctuary #9

Thankful

2009-11-26T14:47:00.001-08:00

I am so grateful for the abundance found in small things....my daughter's bright smile...this pile of apples gathered from our tree...enough for pie to complete tonight's dinner with friends. It is Thanksgiving Day and gratitude is in the air and definitely on my mind. And so I thought I would share a few resources on that topic here.

The Arts and Healing Network's current issue of AHN News is dedicated to gratitude and includes a review of CD set by Angeles Arrien on Gratitude which has touched me deeply -- her use of storytelling is captivating.
Jennifer Lee's recent e-newsletter was also full of gratitude resources including this iPhone App for tracking gratitude and this great web site.
Christine Carter has a great blog post about inspiring Gratitude within families and teaching it to children. I love some of the ideas she has for creating gratitude calendars and using photographs to honor people.
Shopping at the Paper Source yesterday, I saw that Chronicle Books has published a new Gratitude Journal - a nice way to track daily one's thankful moments.

Wishing

2009-11-13T10:31:00.001-08:00

I just completed my piece for the Bolinas Museum's 21st Annual Miniatures Exhibition. I love the scale of this show - everything is 6 x 6 x 6" or smaller. It's for a good cause - 50% of all sales go to support the museum which is a charming space in West Marin for gathering art and creative people.

The piece here is titled Wishing and is 6 x 6" framed. Lately I am really interested in how art can be used to capture one's wishes, hopes, and aspirations and anchor them in a concrete, visual way that makes the wishes more likely to come true. It is a theme that resonates throughout my series Milagros and is likely to continue in future work of mine.

You could see my piece in person at the Bolinas Musuem from November 21-January 3, 2009 at 48 Wharf Road, Bolinas, CA. For more information, visit www.bolinasmuseum.org.

Above My Desk

2009-11-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

I spent some time this week re-doing my bulletin boards – making sure that all the images and quotes above my workspace best match what I need for inspiration at this time. In the center is lots of bright white space for new items as I find them. Now I can look up while I am working and see…

My daughter’s inked footprints at around 3 months old
A photo of the ocean I took just north of Muir Beach
A CREATE necklace by Kelly Rae Roberts
An image of butterflies nailed to a wall by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison
A photograph of me around age 5 making art in my dad’s studio
An old rusted door hinge that feels like a portal to me
The sign language alphabet spelled out in hands
A Joseph Cornell puzzle and a Frida Kahlo puzzle produced by SFMOMA
Key words like GENEROSITY printed in red ink by the Paper Source
Several poems including the following one by Rumi

You’re a song, a wished for song.
Go through the ear to the center
Where sky is, where wine, where silent knowing
Put seeds and cover them.
Blades will sprout where you do your work.

And this quote by Agnes de Mille

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never really knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

October Open Studio

2009-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Anna helped me deliver my piece, Sanctuary #2 (in the center of this photo), to the annual San Francisco Open Studios exhibition at SOMArts Main Gallery. This show features work by all the artists participating the in the city-wide annual open studios event sponsored by Artspan. Each weekend is dedicated to different neighborhoods where artists open their doors to the public and share their art and process.

I am getting my studio ready for the weekend of October 16-18. This time in addition to a wide assortment of my work from the past ten years, there will also be trade edition books by my father, Charles Hobson, and a chance to view recent publications that include my work, like The Map As Art and Mapping the Journey. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area it would be great to have you stop by.

OPEN STUDIO
Reception: Friday, October 16, 5-7pm
Saturday & Sunday, October 17-18, open 11am-6pm
3069 Washington Street (at Baker), San Francisco, CA

For Marcel Duchamp

2009-09-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I packed up my pieces for the "Seduction of Duchamp" exhibition and sent them north to the Slaughterhouse Space in Healdsburg, CA. I thought I would share the pieces here, so that if you can't make it to the show, you could still experience the work.

The first piece is a mixed media collage called Invocation and is a new addition to my Milagros series. In it, reproductions of Duchamp’s art surround the photograph of my arm, literally inspiring my hand in the creation of new work. This piece contains a handwritten wish for myself and the other artists in this show – that the spirit of Duchamp generate “new works that delight, humor, and provoke.”

The second piece is called Rose-Sea-La-V. Inspired by Duchamp’s use of glass in works like the Large Glass and Ampoule, I have used old bottles to hold symbolic elements that when pieced together reference Duchamp’s pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy.

The show will open this weekend - I will be at the reception on Saturday, October 3, 5-8pm. For directions, click here. It would be great to see you there.

Invoking Duchamp

2009-08-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

"With Duchamp, there's no choice but to penetrate about two inches behind the eyeballs into the brain." -Francis Nauman quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article on Duchamp

This week I have been working on art inspired by Marcel Duchamp for a show this October at the Slaughterhouse Space in Healdsburg, CA. The curator, Hanna Regev, drew her exhibition concept from the location of the Slaughterhouse Space which is surrounded by the vineyards of the Duchamp Winery. Owned by artist Pat Lenz and her husband, the winery includes several of Pat's outdoor fiberglass sculptures - including this one pictured here of Marcel Duchamp with a trellis of roses growing from his enormous head - alluding to his pseudonym Rrose Selavy.

It is fitting that Pat chose to depict his head so large - over nine feet tall. Marcel Duchamp has always struck me as being very dry, witty, and conceptual. Like the quote above describes, his best art makes you think. And so I have been thinking a lot about how to fuse his sensibility with my own and create something new. Below is a photo of some things in process - I will share more as the work evolves.

Creating in Chaos

2009-08-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

Today I sit in my studio and think about my garden. This year’s vegetables are beset by weeds and critters. Gophers have eaten whole heads of lettuce and bunnies have gnawed down kale and broccoli. As the parent of toddler, I just don’t have the kind of time I used to have to devote to weeding and tending. Yet, things still grow, and this weekend, I harvested fresh lettuce, some broccoli shoots, a couple zucchini, fresh herbs for tea, and three artichokes.

Similarly, my studio is beset by clutter. I have to fight the urge to clean and order and get rid of anything that does not feel current. I simply don’t have time to be organized. I have time only to create. So I am learning a new way of working - quick and fast and focused. Once I get moving, the clutter becomes peripheral. It is just me and the project at hand. And things are growing. I seeded a new series last week that I will share more about soon. I also laid the foundation for my next open studio on October 17-18. In the end parenthood is teaching me a good lesson – being comfortable and creative in the midst of chaos.

Ersatz Exhibit: Installed

2009-06-30T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Ersatz Mail Art Exhibition at SF Camerawork opened recently. The curators (one of whom is a UPS driver) hung the work salon style as pictured here, which is a nice way to emphasize the sense of community in the show – every entry represents a different SF Camerawork member. You can see my work in the upper right hand corner, or click here to see a close up picture of my piece on my earlier blog post about this show. A nice example of how artists used the theme of mail art is the large piece in the center by Chris McCaw, who folded his large photograph and sent it through the mail un-enveloped, so that the wear and tear of being mailed became part of the piece itself.

I was invited to talk about my process and my piece in an interview about the Ersatz Exhibit with Inside City Limits: San Francisco, a Comcast cable program about arts and entertainment. If you use Comcast cable, you can download that program and check it out. The exhibit is up at SF Camerawork until August 22, and I believe they are still accepting entries of mail art for the show, so if you are inspired, join SF Camerawork and mail in a photo-based piece.

The Map As Art

2009-05-25T08:43:00.001-07:00

I just got a delightful surprise in the mail - a preview copy of The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon. I am a big fan of her earlier book, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (which informed my thinking about maps in my series Milagros), so I was quite honored when she asked me to submit work for her latest book. My piece, Territory, from the series Mapping the Body is reproduced on page 144 as an example of "Personal Terrain: Maps of Intimate Spaces." I am in some very good company - the pages of this book include works by 350 artists including Maya Lin, Olafur Eliasson, William Kentridge, and more. Katharine Harmon writes in the introduction:

"Spend time immersed in the world of artists' maps in this book, letting it steer you through familiar landscapes revealed in new ways and over strange topography resonating with hidden meaning. Contemplate each artist's use of cartography and consider maps of your own journey. Discover how mysterious, jarring, thought provoking, and gorgeous artists' maps can be. Wayfinding documents as artworks have never been as diverse, or as stimulating. Mapmaking as a whole is enhanced as each artist makes a mark on a bigger map, calling out I AM HERE."

My foray into maps began with my series Mapping the Body, in which I often layered maps under kodalith images of the body to convey a sense of a pschychological inner world. I am most often drawn to older maps for both their beauty and their errors. Just as early navigators set sail on uncharted seas, so does the explorer of the self. Some contours of one's world are known, but many others shift and change and surprise.

The Map as Art will be released this fall by Princeton Architectural Press. You could pre-order copies at Amazon by clicking here.

The Creative Entrepreneur

2009-05-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

I am so inspired by Lisa Sonora Beam's book, The Creative Entrepreneur. It feels so good in your hands and the lush color illustrations make you want to dive right into it. Lisa's book offers a terrific synthesis of right-brain creative processes and left-brain business planning, making things like marketing and sustainability so much more accessible and fun for artists. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa recently for the current issue of AHN News. Below is an excerpt - to read the whole interview, please click here.

"It took many years before I felt like I was living my creative dream and had the resources to support it. And I did it all by intuition, without having any specific tools or teachers. It was all trial and error, and believe me, plenty of error! By the time I went to business school, I had already run several successful creative businesses and worked internationally as a creativity teacher for individuals and in corporations. I went to business school because I thought it would honestly help me understand the world of money better -- making money, that is. I'm quite skilled at spending money. I wanted to launch a new business and was worried that all I had was my intuition, and that it wasn't enough (which is true in some ways). Business school (the useful parts) helped me develop a solid set of tools to test and back up my intuition. It was like learning a new language. I learned the language of business, and that helped me greatly speed up the trial phase of an idea and eliminate a good deal of the errors. Eventually, my creativity classes that I had been teaching since I was a therapist in the late 80’s, morphed into teaching business strategy to creatives, which is how the book material was tested and documented.

With The Creative Entrepreneur, I wrote the book I wished I had when I was struggling and trying to figure out how to make a living doing what I love (without selling my soul). I include the essential business tools you need to know, but it is all based on and taught via the creative process. So your new, healthy relationship to your creative process informs and guides the business essentials. Plus, learning about business this way is just so much more fun and engaging. When we learn something new with a sense of play, and using our creativity, that knowledge becomes deeply absorbed in a very practical way that can be used immediately."

Ersatz: Mail Art Exhibition

2009-04-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

I just completed a piece today for SF Camerawork’s Ersatz Mail Art Exhibition – the front side of that piece is pictured here. There are a couple things that really appealed to me about this show. The first is that it is open to all SF Camerawork members who want to mail in a photo-based contribution – it’s egalitarian – no judging. The deadline is May 1, so there is still time if you would like to participate. The second is that at the end of the show, each work gets mailed back to a different person. So my piece becomes a gift to an as-of-yet unknown stranger, and I will receive a surprise in my mailbox. I love the sense of chance and possibility here.

In making this piece, I dug through piles of prints and ephemera in my studio and finally settled on working with the print pictured here – an early test from my series Milagros. I have stitched this print together to a piece of BFK Reeves paper and sandwiched between the sheets is a secret message – a blessing of sorts – which I hope might bring the recipient luck. On the back side, I have handwritten the required address info as well as a little inspiratioin in the form of this poem by Rumi.

Every part of you has as a secret language
Your hands and your feet say what you’ve done
And every need brings what’s needed
Pain bears its cure like a child
Having nothing produces provisions
Ask a difficult question
And the marvelous appears.
-Rumi

Packing Up & Shipping Out

2009-03-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

The studio is now a mess of bits and pieces of cardboard, tape, and bubble wrap. I just packed and wrapped artwork for transit. Sanctuary #4 is headed to a collector in New York. And five Bottle Dreams pieces are on their way to the Houston Center for Photography for their upcoming show called Human Nature. Curated by HCP director Madeline Yale, the show “raises questions about the current state of our relationship to the natural environment.” It includes the work of 9 artists and I was delighted to see Paula McCartney’s name on the list, as I really love the cleverness and subtle beauty of her series, Bird Watching. I recently purchased a print of hers on the affordable art site, 20x200. The show at HCP will open with a reception on April 3 and will be up until May 11 with lots of great public programs in between emphasizing environmental concerns like the slow food movement and tree planting.

The photo here shows an installation of five Bottle Dreams pieces at the Bolinas Museum in 2007. A similar installation will happen at HCP, but the five bottles there will have no trace of mankind – no buoys, no ships, etc – so as to emphasize the tension between pristine nature and man’s desire to control and preserve it. If you are in the Houston area, I hope you will get a chance to see the show.

Flight

2009-03-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

Recently I received a wonderful box in the mail from Healing Environments full of postcards featuring a detail of my collage, Flight (pictured here). This card was part of a postcard gift packet distributed to their audience. In addition, work from my series Mapping the Body is going to be in their next publication. I am truly honored to have my work included. Healing Environments is an extraordinary organization whose tag line is “together we will comfort the suffering,” and you could learn more about them by clicking here to read an interview with co-directors Traci and Kate on artheals.org. They create both healing spaces with interior design and elegant books and publications, which they give away free of charge to their audience as tools for healing and inspiration. It is such a beautiful model of generosity. In response, I want to offer something back as well. I invite you to leave a comment here on this blog post before March 26. Then I will randomly select three people to receive a set of 5 of these postcards.

PS - I have gotten some feedback that people are unsure how to leave a comment. Be sure you are reading the post on my blog page and then click on the text below (1st line, right side) that says Comments. Then you can fill out the form and submit your comment online. Thanks!

Overgrown

2009-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

I am so grateful for this view from my studio. This time of year, it might not look like much – overgrown, dormant, chaotic. There are weeds and gopher mounds and plants that have gone wild. Yet amidst this disorder are fruit trees about to blossom, butterfly bushes that will burst into flower in a few months, dahlia bulbs hidden in the soil that will send up bright spots of red and yellow, strawberries waiting for summer to bear fruit, and artichokes thick with leaves promising edible flowers. This view sustains me – it mirrors my own creative life – overgrown, chipped away at by details, projects gone dormant. But spring is coming and there are roots, seeds, and bulbs – ideas - just waiting for a little care and the right timing to flower. There is a season for everything.

Art in a Stormy World

2009-02-15T11:43:00.000-08:00

It's a stormy Sunday here in the Bay Area. I count my blessings with every rain drop that is falling - placating fears of drought. A nice reminder that when dark clouds gather, it is not all gloom and doom. Each rain burst yields the vital resource of water - cleansing and nourishing the world around me.

Today's New York Times offered an unexpected reminder of the upside of a stormy economy for the artworld. Holland Cotter in his article, "The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!," offers the optimistic view that in these down economic times, the commercial art world may suffer, yet the art itself may flourish. He looks backward at the innovation that came from artists in earlier financially challenged times, and also looks forward, offering prescient questions about what art making and art education could become. His article left me with a feeling of deep curiousity about the future of art in America, and many good questions about what role I as an artist can play in today's changing world. Below is an excerpt - you could read the whole article on the New York Times web site.

"At the same time, if the example of past crises holds true, artists can also take over the factory, make the art industry their own. Collectively and individually they can customize the machinery, alter the modes of distribution, adjust the rate of production to allow for organic growth, for shifts in purpose and direction. They can daydream and concentrate. They can make nothing for a while, or make something and make it wrong, and fail in peace, and start again.

Art schools can change too. The present goal of studio programs (and of ever more specialized art history programs) seems to be to narrow talent to a sharp point that can push its way aggressively into the competitive arena. But with markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education? Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology? Why not build into your graduate program a work-study semester that takes students out of the art world entirely and places them in hospitals, schools and prisons, sometimes in-extremis environments, i.e. real life? My guess is that if you did, American art would look very different than it does today...."

Bay Area Portfolio Reviews

2009-02-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

Two important parts of the creative process are feedback and community. Portfolio reviews can be a great way to get both. I blogged a while back about my experience at Photo Lucida and why I find such reviews so helpful. Here in the Bay Area two of my favorite arts organizations are hosting portfolio reviews, each with its own distinct flavor.

The first is PhotoAlliance's Our World: National Juried Portfolio Review for Photographers in San Francisco March 13-15. This three-day event will bring together top photography editors, publishers, curators, gallerists, and educators from around the U.S. to meet with engaged photographers to review their portfolios and encourage their careers. This event is juried, which means photographers who want to be part of this event must submit an application by February 13 (this Friday). Each photographer accepted will have 10 twenty minute one-on-one consultations with a photography professional who can help you get your work out in the world and also give you feedback and encouragement in the creative process. For more information, visit www.photoalliance.org.

The second event is at JFK University's Arts and Consciousness Department in Berkeley, CA. They will be having an Open House on the afternoon of Saturday, March 7. This event begins with two hours of free portfolio reviews with arts faculty at JFK. The emphasis in these reviews is to learn about the arts program at JFK and to see if your work and this program are a fit. In addition, you receive the undivided attention of some of the talented artists who teach there and who can offer you insight about your work, the creative process, and your next step in your artistic journey. JFK's program has a unique emphasis on art as an vehicle for transformation, healing and social change - an approach that more than ever is needed during these troubled times. The Open House also includes presentations about the school, an alumni panel, and gallery talk by faculty, and concludes with a reception. For more information, please email art@jfku.edu, call 510-649-0499, or click here (see the right hand column).

Creative Generosity

2009-01-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

I just posted a new issue of AHN NEWS on the Arts and Healing Network. I am particularly inspired by the topic this time – CREATIVE GENEROSITY. These times we find ourselves in our full of change and challenge, especially economically. It’s easy to give way to fear and feelings of scarcity. One of the best antidotes I know is generosity. The act of giving takes me outside myself - beyond the place of preserving and tightening around what I have – to opening up and connecting with others and being of service. I really do believe it is this kind of generosity of spirit that will make all the difference right now as we go through so much intense transformation in our country.

I was really delighted to feature a Britt Bravo's interview with Cami Walker, founder of the 29-Day Giving Challenge. Last year, Cami gave away 29 gifts in 29 days. She found this experience so healing and transformative, that she invited everyone to join her in this process and created an online community around the practice of giving. Today, the 29-Day Giving Challenge is a global giving movement with an active online community where people have shared over 3500 stories of giving along with artwork and videos. As Cami says. “What I notice is that the people who are taking part in this, what is common amongst us all, is that we all count our blessings. We practice gratitude. We feel like our lives are full no matter what we have.”

Also in this issue of AHN News is a write-up on the Federation of Students and Nominally or Unemployed Artists - a group of 10 artists who took giving into their own hands by raising $100 each, pooling their money ($1000 total), and giving it away as instant art grants of $10-$60 in a public park. All an applicant had to do was tell the story of his/her creative need and then he/she received a grant on the spot, along with an official handshake (see photo here). I love how artists took it into their own hands to support and give back to other artists in a fun, creative way - what a nice model of collaboration and spontaneity.

I hope you will get a chance to read this issue of AHN NEWS by clicking here. May it fill you with a sense of abundance and possibility.

(photo above from www.generosityfoundation.org)

Photography Gathering

2009-01-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

Last night, I left cozy Muir Beach to head toward downtown San Francisco for a gathering of photographers at Gallery 291. One of the hardest parts about living in Muir Beach for me is leaving. It is such a beautiful, soothing place to be, and it takes a fifteen minute drive on a windy road to get over Mount Tam to Mill Valley and then onto the city. Most often, once I overcome the inertia, I am truly glad I ventured out. Last night was no exception.

This group gathered for many years at the studio of RJ Muna and has recently shifted to Gallery 291 – a very elegant space on Union Square. I was last there a year ago for a wonderful exhibit of Beth Moon’s work (pictured here) – at the time my belly was like a big moon, swelling with my growing daughter. Now, she sleeps outside me, in her own crib and for many hours in a row at night – which makes it so much easier to break away from home-tending and reengage my creative life.

I have been thinking lately, how the path back to my creative life after giving birth may not be as simple as the flagstone path connecting my home to my studio. Instead, it may look more like driving to San Francisco on a winter’s night to gather with other artists who remind me about why we make work, and how much we all appreciate a fine print, a well-executed image, and the power of beauty. I left the evening full of excitement about the craft of photography – the making of art objects.

(photo above from www.gallery291.net)

Los Angeles Art Fairs

2009-01-15T09:27:00.001-08:00

A quick post to share this photograph from last weekend's Photo LA art fair. Work from my series Mapping the Body was on display at the booth for Modern Book gallery. Artist Joanne Koltnow was kind enough to take this photograph for me so that I could get a glimpse of the event from afar. The work on the wall next to mine is hand colored photographs by Brigitte Carnochan, and the matted work on the table is Joanne's.

If you are in the Los Angeles area and missed this fair, you have another chance to see my work at Modern Book's booth at FADA: LA Art Show at the Los Angeles Convention Center from January 21-25. These fairs are a great opportunity to see tons of great art all in one concentrated space - a real treat for art lovers' eyes.

Holiday Open Studio

2008-12-05T12:49:00.001-08:00

Today I finished all of the invitations to my annual Holiday Open Studio. This is one of those tasks that always takes so much more time than I think it will. This mailing doubles as my holiday greeting, and I really like to personalize the cards with a handwritten note wishing everyone a fabulous holiday season. My list has grown over many years, and it is fun for me to see the names of people from all parts of my life and honor my connection with them by writing a little note with my thin red sharpee pen. With close to 1000 people on my list, that takes some time. This year I finally heeded the advice of a good friend who has urged me to hire some help in the studio, and so the fabulous Tristy Taylor (who works with me at artheals.org) came and helped me label and stamp. Working with her made the task so much more fun and efficient - such an affirmation of the importance of asking for the help you need and working in collaboration.

If you are in the area, please stop by for a glass wine and a taste of chocolate and see the latest work in my San Francisco studio.

Holiday Open Studio
Reception: Thursday, December 11 from 5-8pm
Studio Hours: Friday-Sunday, December 12-14 from noon-5pm
3069 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94115, 415-939-5842

(The image on the postcard in the photo above is Evocation #016.)

More Minis

2008-11-13T12:36:00.001-08:00

It is that time of year again - time for the Bolinas Museum Miniatures Exhibition. I spent the day framing some diminuitive prints made exclusively this size for this show - Sanctuary #8, Sanctuary #6, and Sanctuary #4 (pictured in this order here). It felt so good to be working with my tools in hand - rulers, cutting knife, framing tape, and more. As someone who has always loved small things, I really enjoy this exhibition. All work must be 6 x 6 x 6 inches or smaller, and 50% of all sales go to the support the Museum. The show opens next week with a reception on Saturday, November 22 from 3-5pm at 48 Wharf Road in Bolinas, CA, and it will be up through December.

While cutting and framing today, I kept myself inspired by listening to the Creative Mom Podcast. I just discovered it this week by doing a search in iTunes for "artist mom" - seeking resources on how to balance art and motherhood. You don't need to be a mom to appreciate Amy's insights about the creative process. Today I listened to the 9/14/08 episode called "Slippage" - which was a great reminder to be gentle with oneself and give oneself a break. Nice words for me to hug close as I worked today.

Lost

2008-11-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

I have been feeling rather lost lately – my mind scattered by the unpredictable rhythms of new motherhood and the attempt to pursue (perhaps too much of) what I did before I had a baby. Today I found myself a quiet moment under our apple tree, on a blanket with my daughter who takes endless delight in staring at light filtering through tree branches. A poem I memorized years ago floated back into my mind and gave me comfort.

LOST
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

-David Wagoner
(published in David Whyte’s The House of Belonging)

Five Things that Inspired Me Today

2008-10-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot about what inspires me lately and making sure I fill each day with a hit of inspiration. This word is also on my mind because I am going to be on a panel on this very topic on the evening of November 14 for the SPE West Conference in San Francisco. Today, I share a short list of things that have inspired me in the last 24 hours.

My five month old daughter waking me by singing little coos in the morning. She makes her own form of music at this age that is spontaneous and uninhibited.
The linear beauty of the fields at Green Gulch during my morning walk with Trinity. The alternating shades of green vegetables and bright flowers growing side by side in rows looks like someone painted the field with plants.
Andrea’s interview with SARK on her Superhero Journal blog. I just love it that SARK responded with images and colorful handwriting, rather than simple black and white text. Her answer about how to move through creative blocks was so playful, it lightened my heart.
Listening to Britt Bravo ’s podcast with Cami Walker of the 29 Day Giving Project. This made me feel hopeful in a way that I have not felt recently because of the current financial craziness. She reminded me of the power of gratitude and generosity to heal and transform our world.
And Keri Smith’s sweet story of generosity. Within 24 hours, she raised enough money from her blog readers around the world to finance the purchase of 120 copies of her book, Wreck This Journal, for students who couldn't afford it. Then she held a drawing and gave out six free books to those who donated money - letting her adorable son pick the prizes.

Image Info: This is a detail of a photo by Alec Soth that is on the promotionsal materials for the SPE West Conference. Alec will be the conference's keynote speaker on Saturday, November 15. For more info on the conference, please click here.

Preparing for Open Studios

2008-10-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

I had a helper in the studio yesterday - Anna kept me company as I hung and labeled artwork, cooing her enthusiasm. My next Open Studio is just a week away - see details below. This one is part of the city-wide event sponsored by Artspan. I love the idea that just as I was at work in my studio yesterday, so are countless artists throughout San Francisco - all of us polishing our work spaces for this big event. It would be wonderful to have you stop by and say hello if you are in the area.

OPEN STUDIO
Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12
11am-6pm (or by appointment)
3069 Washington Street (at Baker), 415-939-5842

Gardening at the Dragon's Gate

2008-09-23T10:09:00.001-07:00

“I am a mad gardener. I mutter and rant, and at night, I shake dry seeds out of my unruly mane of hair. The garden is in my bones, in my gut, and in my hands that pearl sweat at the first hint from the overturned soil of March that it is time to sow Cherokee beans again in the open ground. And although I am a civil person, I am at my best when left completely alone at nightfall to spread that last wheelbarrow of aged horse manure around the base of the budded-out black currant plants from England.” -Wendy Johnson

I have the great good fortune to call this darling and wise woman my neighbor and friend. Wendy just recently published a new book, both poetic and practical - Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World. A Buddhist meditation teacher and organic gardening mentor, Wendy weaves together stories and advice about cultivating the earth with spiritual insights gleaned from her many years at Green Gulch Zen Center. The writing is as rich as good, well-composted soil. I have been savoring it, reading pages before bedtime to inspire garden dreams.

Last month, I invited Wendy over to my studio to be interviewed for the latest Arts and Healing Podcast. We spoke about the healing power of gardening, the benefits of community gardening, creating memorial gardens, tips on gardening with children, environmentalism, and more. I invite you listen to this podcast either by downloading the podcast via iTunes, or clicking here to listen to the podcast directly on your computer (use the audio player on the right hand side).

The Arts & Healing Podcast is part of the Arts and Healing Network and is produced by my good friend and blogger/podcaster Britt Bravo - you might also enjoy her blog, Have Fun Do Good.

Gifts of Art and Advice from Kay Bradner

2008-09-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

Kay Bradner came to visit when my daughter Anna was five weeks old. She brought with her a copper plate and etching tools in order to make a portrait of Anna as a gift for us. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness. The true gift she gave me that evening was the way she demonstrated living in the world as an artist. At the time, I was (and still continue) to be very sleep-deprived and all of my creative resources had been channeled into parenting. So Kay drawing Anna was an especially sweet gift – both honoring my daughter at five weeks old and reminding me of my own creativity.

Kay is a wonderful painter and printmaker who has raised an equally creative daughter. That night I asked Kay for advice about being both an artist and a mother. Kay shared how over twenty years ago when Claire was born, Kay was a single parent running a printmaking studio out of her home. Each day there were about eight people who arrived to work with her there. She would just slip Claire as a newborn into the front part of her apron and carry on her business. She even taught a workshop with Claire sitting in a bouncy chair. She says she did all this out of necessity – there was no option to stop working. As an artist mom, she gave me this advice…

Find creative projects that can be done in very small intervals of time. Long, sustained periods of concentration are impossible to come by in the beginning – but anything that can be done in small snippets of time can be really rewarding.
More than ever it is important to make art that fills you back up, so that you are replenished by your art endeavors and can bring that energy into parenting. Have fun.
It’s really ok to step away from an art career for a long stretch time. It will always be there to return to. But your child will never be such a youngster ever again. Give yourself permission to take as long as you need to get back to your artwork.

Stretching into Uncharted Territory

2008-09-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

I have been deep in the initiation of new parenthood - a whole new terrain. Eden Steinberg describes this state so well - I share with you here her quote from the book Finding Your Inner Mama.

“A few weeks after I gave birth to my first child, in the thick of my exhaution, worrying whether I was doing everything right, whether or not my baby would live through the night, I realized something. I realized that if I was going to survive this thing. I was going to have to grow and change. First of all, I was going to have to let go of a lot of things I felt entitled to: uninterrupted sleep, things going as planned, a feeling of being in command, the master of my circumstances. I also saw that I was ultimately going to have to let go of my very self concept, my idea of motherhood, and my expectations of my child. All of it had to go.

The idea of shedding these burdens was exciting. The thought itself was a relief. And it suddenly dawned on me that my whole concept of motherhood had been wrong. I thought that as a mother I would carefully mold and shape my children. If I did my job right, they would turn out to be well–adjusted, loving, thoughtful and interesting people. As it turns out, motherhood is molding and shaping me. At the end of all this, I am the one who could end up well-adjusted, loving, thoughtful and interesting.”

(Image: Evocation #008, from the series Evocations, ©2007)

Blink

2008-07-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Poet and painter Kirsten Rian has a wonderful practice of emailing a poem to her friends every Monday. This is one she recently sent me - it took my breath away.

Blink
by Morton Marcus

You’ve got to love life so much that you don’t want to
miss a moment of it, and pay such close attention to
whatever you’re doing that each time you blink you can
hear your eyelashes applauding what you’ve just seen.

In each eye there are more than 80 eyelashes, forty
above and forty below, like forty pairs of arms working,
80 pairs in both eyes, a whole audience clapping so loud
you can hardly bear to listen.

160 hands batter each other every time you blink.
“Bravo!” they call. “Encore! Encore!”

Paralyzed in a hospital bed, or watching the cold rain
from under a bridge—remember this.

(Image: Vision II, ©1999 from the series Mapping the Body)

Art Santa Fe

2008-07-09T16:40:00.001-07:00

A quick post to share the news that work from Mapping the Body will be on display at Art Santa Fe this weekend at the booth for Modern Book gallery. One of the nice things about working with Modern Book is that they take my work to several art fairs every year. In January, they traveled to Photo Los Angeles; in June, they were in New York City for the Affordable Art Fair (their NY booth is pictured here); and now this July they are in New Mexico for Art Santa Fe. For me, as an artist, fairs are a great way to get more national exposure. For art lovers, it is like visiting a warehouse-sized candy store. Galleries from around the world sign up for booth space and display a selection of their represented artists, so there is lots of great art on view all in one venue. Art Santa Fe will take place at El Museo Cultural at 1615 Paseo de Peralta. For more information, please click here.

Lee Miller

2008-07-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

I took a family excursion to SFMOMA on Friday evening with my father, daughter, and husband to attend a Foto Forum walk-through of the new Lee Miller show. It was such a treat to see so many vintage prints by her. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Lee Miller and relied heavily on books for my view of her photographic oeuvre. Now at SFMOMA I could view the wonderful subtleties in her prints. I drank them in, filling my creative well.

The walk-through was led by curator Marc Haworth Booth and Lee Miller’s son, Antony Penrose. They each animated the images on the wall with background stories and information. For example, the photograph below is a wonderful surrealist image of the magic electricity found in the everyday occurrence of opening a door. Marc Haworth Booth explained that this was a door to an exclusive shop and that the explosive illusion came from light hitting the marks left by the diamond rings of wealthy women scratching against the glass as they turned the handle. I have always viewed this image as articulating the power of the hand to ignite the creative spark that generates new art.

It is hard to consider Lee Miller’s work without connecting it to stories from her multi-faceted life. Born in Poughkeepsie in 1907, she modeled for Vogue magazine, was Man Ray’s mate/muse/assistant, ran a portrait studio in New York City, married an Egyptian and lived in Egypt for several years, then became one of the first female war correspondents during WWII, and after the war married Roland Penrose and settled down in the countryside raising her son and entertaining artistic friends like Picasso and Max Ernst. The rich variety of her life caused her son, when writing Lee’s first biography, to call it the Lives of Lee Miller. I have recently been enjoying Lee Miller: A Life and the catalogue for the exhibition.

It was a treat to see this show with my father, Charles Hobson. When he created his book, Parisian Encounters, about eight famous couples who met in Paris, he included Lee Miller and Man Ray, recounting the story of their first meeting. Lee Miller was traveling in Europe and decided to stay in Paris and study with “the best photographer in the city,” which at the time was Man Ray. So she went to his studio and rang the buzzer, but the concierge informed her he had already left for his summer holiday. Crestfallen, she went around the corner to a café, and finding him seated there, she marched right up to him and introduced herself, saying “Hi, I am Lee Miller, your new assistant.” He countered, “I don’t take assistants, and anyway I am leaving now for my vacation.” She said, “Fine, I am coming with you.” And she did and so began a rich collaboration.

It was stories like these that inspired me, as a student at Vassar, writing my thesis on Lee Miller in Poughkeepsie (the city where she was born), to really go after what I wanted in life. If, at a time when women most often defined themselves as mothers and wives, Lee could burst through limitations and live such a full, animated life, then so perhaps, could I. She helped me dream bigger and commit myself to the path of photography. When I began my series Mapping the Body, it was her and Man Ray’s vision of the cropped female figure that informed the way I photographed my own body – mining inspiration from their vision to create my own. In the end, I think there are people who touch you through time, despite death and never having met. Lee Miller is one of those intangible mentors for me. It’s why seeing her show on Friday filled me with that magic electricity of exploding hands.

Anna Isabel

2008-06-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have been swimming in the sea of new motherhood and am finally surfacing just enough to write this post and share the news that my daughter, Anna Isabel, was born on May 11 (Mother’s Day). Time has had a whole new rhythm since she has arrived – it has become so fluid it pours through my fingers most days. I look at the date of my last blog post and am stunned that it has taken two months to write again here. Those days have been filled with nursing, rocking, walking, sleepless nights, and napping days as well as a whole new understanding of my body as the source for another being’s life. I know later, when I can find sustained time in the studio, this new awareness will fertilize new artwork. For now, I surrender to this experience one moment at a time.

Modern Book Exhibition

2008-04-27T09:12:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post to share a few photographs from my exhibition at Modern Book Gallery in Palo Alto, CA. This two-woman show includes new works from my three series - Evocations, Sanctuary, and Bottle Dreams - as well as some very interesting 3-D pieces by Claudia Kunin from her series, Myth. A frame-junkee myself, I was entranced by Claudia's intricate frames and enjoyed the interactive feature of putting the 3-D glasses to my eyes that made each mythogical scene seem to pop off the wall. Mark, Bryan, and Niniane at Modern Book did the installation, and it's always fun to see my work in a new context. I particularly enjoy the way they clustered different pedestals together to showcase the Bottle Dreams work - see the first picture here. This show is up until June 3, and Modern Book keeps nice long hours - open daily from 11am into the evening at 494 University Street in Palo Alto, CA. If you are in the area, I hope you will get to see the show.

Photos below show my work, the second to last image shows some of Claudia Kunin's work, and the last photo shows the artists with the Modern Book crew - from left to right: me, Mark, Niniane, Danny, Bryan, and Claudia.

Incubation

2008-04-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

Lately, my creative energy has been channeled into a whole new kind of endeavor. I am almost eight months pregnant with my first child, due on May 14. It is quite a miracle to feel this little being kicking around inside me. One unexpected side effect of this pregnancy has been that the more my belly swells, the less verbal I feel. Rather than initiate anything new, I have been filled with the burning desire for closure and completion of anything in progress. I imagine on the other side of birth, in the midst of parenting, new ideas for art will come to me. For now, I sort and organize, getting my nest ready to welcome this new life.

The image here, Evocation #017, was created just a month before I became pregnant and I look back on it now and see it as a fertility piece. The belly nests on soft feathers, the flower is drying up and going to seed, and the bottle is a vessel containing and protecting this process while embraced by the natural world around it. It truly amazes me how the intuitive process of art can be so previsionary.

Center for Photographic Art

2008-04-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

I just got word that my exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) has been extended an entire month! It will now close on May 23.

Dennis High and everyone at the CPA did a beautiful job with the installation. I love the dark wall color with the spotlighting - it really lets the work glow against darkness. One of the unique things about this exhibit is the inclusion of vitrines filled with items from my studio. It was a last minute request from Dennis, and at first I was concerned it might distract from the art, but once I got down there and arranged the bits of collage material into the glass cases, I really could see what a nice dimension they add to the show. This is one of the most comprehensive exhibits of my collage work with 59 artworks on display. It is so satisfying to see so many pieces, spanning 10 years of creative work, all up together in one space - they begin to hum and talk to each other in new ways.

Renewal

2008-03-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

“On the new edge of springtime when I stand on the front porch shading my eyes from the weak morning light, sniffing out a tinge of green on the hill and the scent of yawning earthworms, oh, boy, then! I roll like a bear out of hibernation. The maple buds glow pink, the forsynthia breaks into its bright yellow aria. These are the days when we can’t keep ourselves indoors around here, any more than we believe what our eyes keep telling us about the surrounding land, i.e. that it is still a giant mud puddle, now lacking its protective covering of ice. So it comes to pass that one pair of boots after another run outdoors and come back mud-caked – more shoes than we even knew we had in the house, proliferating like wild portabellos in a composty heap by the front door. So what? Noah’s kids would have felt like this when the flood almost dried up: muddy boots be hanged. Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful, I am nuts.” -Barbara Kinsolver, from Animal Vegetable, Miracle

Spring officially arrived this week and I feel acutely its call to be outside. Yesterday, it was a challenge to stay indoors and finish my postcard mailing for the Modern Book exhibition, opening April 4 in Palo Alto. Afterwards, I gave myself two hours in the garden, excavating the strawberry and herb bed, discovering more surprise survivors of winter’s frost and dormancy – oregano and rosemary have tripled in size, the artichokes are arriving, and even the celery is ready for eating. So much bounty in the earth - it fills me with great excitement and creative energy.

On the Road

2008-03-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

My husband and I are heading south today to Carmel, CA. My exhibition of Mapping the Body and Milagros at the Center for Photographic Art opens there tomorrow evening, Friday, March 14 with a gallery talk at 5pm followed by a reception from 6-8pm.

On the way down, we will stop in Palo Alto at Modern Book Gallery to drop off over 30 pieces for my exhibit opening there on April 4. This show includes Evocations, some Bottle Dreams, and also work from Sanctuary including new prints like this one here of Sanctuary #5 which I just picked up from the framer yesterday.

It is rich, full time for exhibiting for me right now. It is exciting to think that work from five of my major series will be up and on display all at once. If you are in the area, I hope you will get a chance to see these exhibits. If not, you can always see the work online at www.marydanielhobson.com.

Benign Neglect

2008-03-07T08:18:00.000-08:00

For the past several months, I have let my vegetable garden go wild. The result has been a jungle of weeds and plants sending up tall shoots, going to seed. The other day, I traversed wet grass to the far corner of our yard to pay the vegetable garden a visit and was shocked to discover that even in the midst of this growing chaos, there was still bounty to be collected – a bouquet of purple broccoli, a few stray, slow-growing beets, and even a head of lettuce that somehow miraculously avoided the frost. It was heartening to see that things find a way to keep growing despite neglect or absence. If this can happen in the garden, I tell myself, it can also happen in the studio. And that makes my creative heart more at ease. Life these days has pulled me in many directions away from the studio – both the physical space of making art, and even the mental space of dreaming new work. I like to think that when I do return to the studio, some creative seeds planted in the past will have germinated and perhaps even grown into fully formed ideas – surprising and delighting me with their beauty and possibility.

A Fresh Stack of Invitations

2008-02-23T08:50:00.000-08:00

Sitting here with morning coffee and a fresh stack of invitations to my upcoming exhibit at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA. My husband (good guy that he is) delivered 59 pieces from Mapping the Body and Milagros to them yesterday and picked up 200 invites for me. Labeling and stamping them will keep my hands busy while watching tomorrow night’s Academy Awards.

One of the nice things about this exhibit is that because it is at a non-profit (rather than a commercial) gallery, I am able to include some artist proofs from editions that have sold out and a few pieces borrowed from collectors. So pieces like Release, Crescendo, Territory, Union, and Nocturne will be able to be in the public eye again.

I will be driving down for the show, which opens on Friday, March 14. At 5pm that night, I will give a gallery walk-through, followed by a reception from 6-8pm. If you are in the area, it would be great to see you there.

"The Power of Whimsy"

2008-02-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

I almost missed this. Fortunately my mom mentioned it to me, and how it had inspired her and my father. And so I rifled through the large stack of last Sunday’s NY Times to find an article on Sandra Boynton called “The Power of Whimsy” gracing the front page of the business section. Boynton (picture here) has spent the last 30+ years creating greeting cards, children’s books, music cd’s, and more that all share her fresh and quirky vision. As a 12-13 year old, I loved her cards with messages like “Things are getting worse – please send chocolate” or a birthday card with animals proclaiming “Hippo Birdy Two Ewes.” This article offers a nice overview of the life and work of a woman who had made me chuckle as a kid.

Above all, it is really refreshing to see an artist on the cover of the business section and to find her speaking about focusing on the creative process first, and money second. As she says, “To me, the commodity that we consistently overvalue is money and what we undervalue is our precious and irreplaceable time.” Or as the article’s author, Phyllis Korki, explains, “As an entrepreneur, Ms. Boynton maintains a firm grasp on market realities and her finances, but she has refused to make money her main objective. Instead she has focused on the creative process, her artistic autonomy, her relationships and how she uses her time.” The article reveals her to be a woman with a keen sense of business – even as young as her early twenties, Boynton was savy enough to ask for royalties from the company who first picked up her illustrations for their greeting cards, and good thing too as these cards had an unprecedented level of success. Simultaneously she is also a woman who won’t agree to overmerchandizing her characters, and keeps her business intimate, manageable, and ultimately more enjoyable for her. Quality of life really guides her decisions, not greed. What a great message to find on page one of the business section of a mainstream paper like the NY Times. It gives me hope that artists can be part of shapeshifting the values of our culture toward something more holistic – a world in which money is just one measure of success along with time, connection, and even whimsy.

Spotting Sanctuary

2008-02-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

I spent several days this past week absorbed in the computer, prepping files for printing new images in the Sanctuary series (like this one here). There was something so absorbing and meditative about the process of spotting out dust and light reflections. And there was also the overwhelm of the infinite choices one has to make working in Photoshop - the marvels of technology open the door to so many, many options. In the end, it is the accumulation of all these myriad choices that create the artwork - which image to bottle, which bottle piece to photograph, which digital file to print, which light flecks to leave, which to spot, which degree of color shift to make.... In the end, it is really about releasing perfectionism and trusting instinct - until that magic moment when the piece coalesces and becomes Sanctuary for me.

JFKU Faculty Exhibit and Open House

2008-02-07T10:55:00.001-08:00

Over the past two years, I have been teaching photography courses at JFK University in Berkeley, CA. This Saturday, February 9, JFKU is having an Open House and a reception for the faculty art exhibit. Here you can see my contribution to the show - works from Sanctuary and Evocations - as well as a book in the foreground by the wonderful mixed media artist Lisa Kokin. This group exhibit will be up until February 16. For more info, please click here.

On Saturday afternoon, there will be an Open House that gives an overview of the arts program at JFKU. As part of this event, I will be reviewing portfolios and giving a short artist talk. For more details or to sign up for this event, please click here or call 510-649-0499.

Shifting Rhythms

2008-02-05T19:08:00.001-08:00

One of the benefits of the creative life is being able to shift my working rhythm in response to new opportunities and internal needs. The new year has already offered me the experience of changing pace several times. January started out fast and furious with teaching a new class at JFK University and planning for upcoming exhibitions. Then mid month, I shifted into vacation mode, traveling to Florida with my husband to visit his parents. There I shed the detail-minded thinking of my professional life in lieu of an enhanced focus on the present moment – fishing in the mangroves, piecing together a butterfly puzzle, reading one novel and then another, and napping most afternoons. I did a little shooting while there, taking photographs like this one while wading in shallow water, fishing for red fish. Maybe the memory of that cloud-covered morning will make its way into a Bottle Dreams piece someday.

Upon returning home, life looks so fresh and new. I have used the time change of three hours as an impetus to get up earlier, rising by 7am to greet the day, thereby gaining another hour or so of work time in the morning, which has always been my most effective creative time. Shifting something as simple as the time I rise creates a new spark of energy. Eventually, I expect this new rhythm to give way to another sense of timing and pace (the creative spirit loves variety), but for now I am enjoying the crispness of early morning and being awake to see the sun peak over the hills of Muir Beach.

My Studio in Print

2008-01-15T14:15:00.000-08:00

Waiting for me on the kitchen table when I got home yesterday was a nice fat package from Western Art and Architecture filled with four copies of their latest issue which includes an article on my studio in Muir Beach. Writer Leissa Jackmauh focused on two Bay Area artists' studios for this piece. I was delighted to have my studio sitting page by page with that of Lisa Neimeth, a San Francisco ceramicist who makes wonderful sculptures and tableware. It was really a thrill to see my workspace featured here in full color. If you would like to get a copy of the pdf file of this article, please contact me - I would be happy to share it with you.

Navigating the Imagination

2008-01-13T10:46:00.001-08:00

“The notion of a curious, wistful man walking the city and turning up treasure in debris, seeing the transcendent in the forgotten, the discarded, the mundane – such a notion is intrinsically hopeful.” – Leah Hager Cohen

This morning while flipping throught the Sunday NY Times, the Book Review section fell open to page eleven revealing an illustration of Joseph Cornell’s “Parrot for Juan Gris” (pictured here) and a review by Leah Hager Cohen of the new Cornell catalogue, Navigating the Imagination by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. I was blessed to have received this book as a Christmas gift from my parents – my father having been mesmerized by the exhibit as much as I was. For those of you who read my earlier blog post on Cornell, I did indeed make it back again to see this show two more times before it closed last week, and I was richly rewarded for it.

One thing I was struck by was Cornell’s use of containers within containers, such as a box that contains little drawers that one must open to discover the treasures inside. Unfortunately the museum does not let you actually touch the pieces, but I could imagine the delighted curiosity that would accompany opening each of the drawers in a piece like Untitled (Aviary with Drawers) from 1949. I myself as an artist have been consistently fascinated by the concept of containment – often using containers as the starting point for a new piece – whether that starting point be a new bottle or an elegant frame. The idea of doubling the concept of containment by adding containers within containers sparks new creative ideas for me.

Another thing that impressed me was how richly Cornell fed his creative spirit. An incredibly well read artist (the catalogue contains a selected bibliography of 150 titles in his library), he often drew direct inspiration from figures like Emily Dickenson. He also created “folders, slipcases and small valises with loose arrangements of ‘imaginative pictorial research.’” For example, in his portfolio, “Portrait of Ondine,” Cornell spent 20 years gathering ephemera such as illustrations, photos, newspaper articles and more all in homage to the nineteenth century ballerina Fanny Cerrito in her role as Ondine. As Hartigan says, “the combination reveals how far Cornell ranged in creating a new poetic context for his subject.” I love the idea of researching an area of fascination over a long period and allowing the research to be poetic, rather than linear and multimedia, rather than purely verbal.

As the book reviewer describes with this catalogue on Joseph Cornell, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan “doesn’t navigate his imagination so much as map the explicit tributaries that fed it.” And in doing so she has created a new tributary that is feeding the river of my own imagination.

A Fresh Start

2008-01-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

“In fact, the ability to start out upon your own impulses is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again – never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment…Getting started again – in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm” – Seamus Heaney

The new year offers the gift of freshness. Now that December’s social festivities are complete, I turn inward and cultivate my inner world. Today this has looked like cleaning, sorting, organizing, integrating…laying a solid foundation for the year to come. Soon the studio will feel like a clean slate, ready for 2008 to fill it with new ideas and impulses.

Image above is #008 from the Evocations series.

The Untrimmable Light of the World

2007-12-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

Every Christmas eve, after dinner, my family gathers around the fire and each person reads aloud something that has inspired them this year. I share here one of my candidates for tonight’s reading – a poem by Mary Oliver from one of my favorite volumes - a 2007 collection edited by Roger Housden called Dancing with Joy. I wish you a holiday full of "the untrimmable light of the world, and the ocean’s shine."

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light
It is what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy
and acclamation
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Gift Giving and Guerilla Art

2007-12-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is gift giving – thinking about each person, brainstorming gift ideas for them, making or acquiring the gift, and then wrapping it in colorful paper and ribbons. There is creative thinking and some handiwork involved that is very satisfying to the artist in me. In fact, during the holiday season, I usually derive more pleasure and excitement from the act of giving than the act of receiving.

Lately, I have been thinking more about the relationship between art making and gift giving. One person said to me recently “Art is a gift to society that the artist pays for.” This was a rather world weary response addressing the fact that artists are usually not well compensated financially for their hard work and dedication, and yet the art gets made anyway. My more optimistic attitude is that the artist is compensated in ways other than financial – namely the satisfaction of having expressed something from deep within that in turn can connect and communicate with others, sharing beauty, insight, and new perspectives.

One of the more provocative ways art can be a gift is anonymously. I have been so intrigued by the work of Keri Smith and her recent book, The Guerilla Art Kit. She defines guerilla art as “any anonymous work installed, performed, or attached in public spaces, with the distinct purpose of affecting the world in a creative or thought-provoking way." Her book includes great ideas and tools for guerilla art projects – some as simple as arranging a pattern of leaves in a chain link fence or chalking a favorite quote on the sidewalk. I love the idea of art like this that is ephemeral, generous, and perspective changing. I was delighted to interview Keri for the Arts and Healing Network’s current isuse of AHN News. As Keri explains in this interview…

“Coming across something that is unexpected helps to pull us out of our habitual ways of thinking and reacting to the world. This goes for the creation side of things too - we must tune in to the environment in order to allow it to speak to us and to notice the little things. This, in my opinion, is the greater purpose of art - to pull us out of our unconscious behavior and make us aware of something we might have missed. It asks us to pay attention, and, as I mention in the book, guerilla art says, 'the human spirit is alive here.'"

Keri also writes a wonderful blog, called The Wish Jar, which I often read with my morning coffee before heading to the studio. Her writing reminds me to slow down mentally, think creatively, experience and appreciate the details of nature, and enjoy the exploratory process of creativity. What better gift can art give.

Remnants in Woodstock

2007-12-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

Judi and Bernard at the Galerie BMG recently sent me these nice photos of my show, Remnants, which will be up at their gallery until the end of December. It was a treat to get these pictures because unfortunately I am not able to travel to Woodstock to see the show. Thanks to the wonders of digital photography and the internet, I can virtually visit this show even though it is 3000 miles away, and now you can too. To learn more about the exhibition, please click here.

Holiday Open Studio

2007-11-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

It is that time of year - the holidays are upon us. I am celebrating by having a festive Open Studio over two weekends in San Francisco. Tomorrow I will put the finishing touches on everything and open the doors on Saturday at 1pm. I invite you to stop by and see my latest work.

Holiday Open Studio
Two Weekends: December 1-2 and December 15-16, 1-6pm each day
Special Reception: Friday, December 14, 5-8pm
3069 Washington Street at Baker, San Francisco

A Wide-Angle View

2007-11-25T09:52:00.000-08:00

I have spent the past week taking photographs of my Muir Beach studio to accompany an article about my art and studio space for a new magazine, Western Art & Architecture. It has been a learning experience. It has shown me how I have cultivated an eye for detail, and this assignment really challenged me because it called for a wide-angle view. In fact, I don’t even own a wide-angle lens and had to rent one from Adolph Gasser. Seeing my creative space with this broad vision was rather exciting, and made me more aware of how the architecture of the space with its high ceiling offers a sense of expansiveness that I often take for granted. Above the clutter of my collage making materials there is clear space - clean, white upperwalls and empty air. I like to think that this is where my ideas swirl around and germinate before landing.

The article by Leissa Jackmauh will be published in the Winter 2008 issue. Click here to learn more about Western Art & Architecture.

A Glimpse of Cornell

2007-11-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

The other day, I caught a riveting glimpse of Joseph Cornell. I was running errands South of Market in San Francisco and found myself with a pocket of time thirty minutes long. As I drove down Third Street, I said to myself, “If I can find a spot on the street, I am going to SFMOMA to see the Joseph Cornell exhibit.” And sure enough, as luck would have it, there was one empty spot on the same block as the museum. I pulled in, and dug for quarters in my purse, only to get to the meter and realize in less than 15 minutes this parking spot would become a tow-away zone (3-7pm everyday). So I had to act fast and decided to glean what I could from an even shorter visit than I had planned. Once inside, the elevator deposited me on the 3rd floor. The shadowy galleries (lit low to protect the work) revealed a space of dreams. There is such whimsy and reverie in Cornell’s boxes and assemblages. It was painful to rush past them – like skimming a really well-written book. I will have to come back soon to re-read this exhibition before it closes on January 6. But at least those 15 minutes introduced a bit poetry into the midst of prosaic day.

The image above is the cover of the exhibition catalogue, which I have added to my Christmas wish list. Click here to learn more about it, or click here to see a google image search yielding an array of Cornell artworks.

Making Mail

2007-11-15T16:32:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last several days making mail – addressing, stamping, and notewriting on over 1000 combined invites for two upcoming art events. The first is for a solo show in Woodstock, NY at the Gallery BMG that opens the day after Thanksgiving (click here to view that exhibition online). The second is my biggest correspondence endeavor of the year – invitations to my Holiday Open Studio held in San Francisco over two weekends – December 1-2 and December 15-16 with a reception on Friday, December 14 from 5-8pm. If you would like to get a snail mail invite, please send me your address.

I have a tendency to underestimate how much labor it takes to do mailings like these. Friends have repeatedly advised me to hire help for this task, and yet there is something meditative and personalizing for me about doing this myself. I touch each name and think of that person, and often add a little note in red ink for them. It’s way of acknowledging the community of people that have collected around my art. I am deeply grateful for their presence in my life. I would still make art without this concrete sense of audience, but it is definitely affirming to know personally all these people who value creative endeavors such as my own.

Swimming to Turrell

2007-11-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

A week ago Sunday, I was my father’s guest at a party at the Napa home of art collectors Nora and Norman Stone. They were celebrating the completion of James Turrell’s Stone Sky – an installation of two of his signature sky ceilings, one of which hovers in the middle of their infinity pool, encased inside the cube (pictured here on the left) that can only be reached by swimming under water. The Stones graciously provided paper bathing suits for their guests, yet only a few ventured into the warm water and dove under the edges of this box into the magically lit space inside. A perfect square opening in the ceiling revealed the sky, but unlike any sky I had ever seen. Somehow Turrell combines special lighting and optics to create an ever-changing colorfield. The occasional bird or insects flying above reminded one that it was the real sky up there, and yet the range of color was unusually magnificent – pale greens, purples, deep indigo, and even orange. The light had a strange, almost spiritual eminence. The process of getting wet, crossing the length of the pool, and diving under into the unknown enhanced the sense of pilgrimage or transformation of one’s reality. As an artist who is an object-maker, I have deep respect for this artist who is an experience-maker. The memory of it will linger with me for a long time.

Gifts of Sanctuary

2007-11-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

I spent the morning prepping my pieces for the Bolinas Museum Miniatures Exhibition, an annual fundraiser benefiting the Museum. All work in the show must be 6 x 6 x 6 inches or smaller, so I printed some maquette versions of three pieces from the Sanctuary series (pictured here) and fit them into 5 x 3.5 inch frames. I am always charmed by small scale things, so this show is really fun for me to participate in. The Mini Show opens with a reception on Saturday, November 17 from 3-5pm. To learn more, visit www.bolinasmuseum.org.

I have also donated regular sized prints from the Sanctuary series – 16.5 x 11 inches – to two photography non-profits for their annual auctions. Sanctuary #2 will be auctioned off tomorrow night, November 3, in Carmel to benefit the Center for Photographic Art. You could see the nice range of work donated by artists for this cause by clicking here. I also have donated Sanctuary #1 to SF Camerawork for their annual photography auction which will be held in San Francisco on December 1. Learn more by visiting their web site at www.sfcamerawork.org.

The secret about these art auctions is that most work sells much below its regular retail value, so it can be a great place to begin collecting art or add a treasure to your already existing collection. Usually 100% of the sale goes directly to support the nonprofit. As an artist, I can only afford to make a certain number of donations each year. It depletes my inventory, and under current tax law, artists cannot deduct the retail value of their work when they donate - only the material costs. The organizations that I do donate to are ones that I truly value and am honored to support in this way. I invite you to support them too by bidding on or buying a piece at one of these events.

Jeff Wall and Happy Accidents

2007-10-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night, I went to see a sold-out artist’s talk by Jeff Wall at SFMOMA, where a retrospective of his work has just opened. His is work that has never grabbed me visually on its own, but when words are added to his images they come to life in a new way. He is very much a conceptual artist, well-versed in art history, theory, and criticism, and his work is deeply informed by this. One of the very interesting things he has done is to make pictures that are more connected to the traditions of painting and even cinema than to the history of photography.

Wall describes his process as “disciplined improvisation” and “near documentation.” For example, in A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) from 1993 (which you can see on the SFMOMA web site), he composited 75 photographs, combining them digitally to re-create his own version of a well-known painting. He scouted out the proper landscape, hired actors to perform for his camera and spent long stretches of time photographing each element in the scene. Wall does all this labor-intensive work to create just one final image. But for him, it is because of all this effort, that the one image he does make has (what he hopes is) staying power on par with great 19th C paintings.

I enjoyed his conversation about accident, which plays a crucial role in his work. As he said, “Every starting point is an accident…I’m always surprised...Accidents stacked on top of each other are necessary for something to happen.” In A Sudden Gust of Wind, it was the accidental smile of the twirling figure in the center that changed the whole sense of the photograph. Wall took 300 shots of the twirling man alone. It was after having spun many times, that the twirler’s smile emerged probably in light of the absurdity of repeating this action again and again. Yet for Wall it was the crucial element for unlocking the mood of the whole piece. Prior to his talk, I had always viewed Wall’s work as tightly controlled, but now I am intrigued by his sense of serendipity. As an artist, what I take away from his lecture is a reminder that you just have to collect your tools and props and get started and let the accidents happen that lead you to the best possible picture.

To learn more about Wall, you could read a nice piece from the February 25th NY Times Magazine by Arthur Lubow. His exhibit at SFMOMA is up until January 27, 2008.

The Rhythm of Open Studios

2007-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

I had a really lovely Open Studio last weekend – lots of people, nice conversations, and some good sales too. One thing I have learned after doing these kinds of events for almost ten years is that each weekend I open my doors to the studio is a unique experience with its own distinct rhythm. Some have a steady trickle of people all day long, other weekends they come all at once and then leave me with long lulls. This one had a very nice, gentle rhythm – some overlapping visitors and also some nice breaks. In between visitors, I got to catch up on my photography reading. I subscribe to many photo/art publications including Photograph, Photo-Eye Booklist, Art on Paper, Camera Arts as well as newsletters from photography non-profits. Here a few of my favorite quotes from the weekend’s reading…

“One might compare the art of photograpy to the act of pointing…” -John Szarkowski, from his NY Times Obituary

“Art is an additive process and the thing about photography is we go out and we’re at the mercy of what we find. That’s the real discovery. The important thing is quality of attention span and to use it for acceptance rather than for negation.” -Frederick Sommer quoted by Emmet Gowin

“I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can’t know exactly what it is we are doing…It’s cool to be wrong. It’s so essential, so necessary. It’s so appropriate to be confused, to be muddled, to be unsure. We preach clarity. Get your ideas organized. Get your thinking straight….But it is the aliveness of the unguarded intuition and the persistence of our own feelings that guide us to our discoveries.” -Emmet Gowin interviewed by John Paul Caponigro

Open Studio This Weekend!

2007-10-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

The past few days have been full of preparations for my Open Studio in San Francisco. Although I do most of my creative work in Muir Beach, I am fortunate to have use of a space in San Francisco where I have a black and white darkroom, and can store and display my completed work. A couple of times a year, I open the doors there and invite the public in. This particular Open Studio is part of the city-wide Open Studios sponsored by Artspan - each weekend in October highlights a different area of the city. You can learn more and download maps at www.artpan.org.

My studio will be open Saturday and Sunday, October 13 & 14 from 11am-6pm each day at 3069 Washington Street at Baker. It would be wonderful to have you stop by and see my newest work in person.

A Day of Art

2007-10-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

I spent this past Sunday several hours south of home, looking at art accompanied by my husband. We started in Carmel with the Center for Photographic Art, which has a lovely show of one of my favorite photographers, Masao Yamamoto. His photographs are elegant and intimate treasures. The largest image was only about 8 x 6” and many were much smaller than that. He flew in from Japan with close to 1000 photos and selected 70 to install. Frameless, they are arranged in a poetic musicality on the wall (as seen in this photo here). I first learned of his work from the wonderful publications by Nazraeli Press, and being in this exhibit was like standing inside of one of those books. It is a show whose meaning and mood builds over time the longer you spend with it. Above all, I took from this show an affirmation that work can be quite small and hold a gallery space quite powerfully.

After visiting PhotoWorks and the Weston Gallery, we left Carmel and headed to Palo Alto for the Maggie Taylor exhibit at Modern Book Gallery. Maggie collages various elements in Photoshop creating surreal dreamlike scenes. It was a treat to see so much of her work in one place – altogether her prints begin to tell a fairytale narrative tinged with mystery and some darkness. Modern Book has just produced a great monograph of her work – Solutions Beginning with A – which I bought as soon as it was released.

Not only did these two exhibits inspire me – encouraging me to muse about scale and poetry and storytelling in art - but they were also in spaces were I am scheduled to have shows in 2008. So I also viewed these shows with an eye for how the art was arranged and how my work might fill that same space. It was quite awesome to know that my art will hang on the same walls as the work of these two remarkable artists. I can’t imagine better company.

Feeding Myself Good Books

2007-10-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up feeling blue today and so I spent the morning feeding myself good books. I started with SARK’s A Creative Companion – a loan from my friend Britt – who just interviewed SARK for the new artheals.org podcast. I took comfort in SARK’s whimsy, her affirmation of her readers’ creative potential, and the invitation to dream. It’s a playful, and at times very light hearted book, possessing some keen insights, such as “Creativity adores solitude. Provide quiet creative time for yourself. It can first fit into the cracks of your life, and as you nurture it, it will expand into a glorious interior garden.”

Then I turned to two new books from the Fraenkel Gallery – The Book of Shadows and Eye of the Beholder: Photographs from the Collection of Richard Avedon (pictured above). Both books are wonderful objects. The Book of Shadows is covered in a soft dark blue velvet that felt so good under my fingertips – perfect for comfort reading. It is a book comprised of anonymous snapshots in which shadows play the significant role of indicating the presence of the photographer. It reminded me that photography is at its essence about light and shadow, and that you can’t have one without the other. The Richard Avedon book (pictured above) is a delightful boxed set of five separate folios – each dedicated to a different aspect of his personal photography collection – Diane Arbus, Peter Hujar, Irving Penn, the Countess of Castiglione (fascinating 19th C woman), and the final one called Etcetera. I enjoyed pondering how these photographs may have effected Avedon’ photographic vision. I can only guess that they expanded and inspired him as they did me this morning.

New Work Online

2007-09-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

Here is one of my new images from the Evocations series. You can now see all the new prints online by clicking here and here (once there click on the thumbnails to enlarge them).

Also, the Emerson Blog did a nice interview with me this week about my art. You can check it out by clicking here. Enjoy.

New Prints

2007-09-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

After a couple visits with Kris at Electric Works (formerly Trillium), my new prints for Evocations are in production. Soon I will have nine new images to add to the series. Here you can see the proofs emerging upside down, rolling off the printer. Very exciting for me!

I did a lot of shooting for this series over the summer. It is always a challenge to edit the images down. To do so, I make small proof prints in my studio and shuffle them around for a while. Then I begin to selectively share them with people whose opinions I trust. I usually start with my husband, and sometimes my parents – asking them, “Which are your favorites and why?” I also have three trusted photography friends who I consulted this time – artists Candace and Jules, and curator Nora. Candace helped me see more clearly how space works in the series. Jules helped me focus on how the details interact with each other. Nora helped me see the series as a whole and edit out work that was too similar or too different. After integrating all the feedback, I made my final selection – adding nine new images to grow this series to twenty.

I have begun to think of Evocations as my summer series. I shot the first batch of prints in the summer of 2006 (and then printed them in 2007). This past year, found me shooting in July and August again because that is when the foglight I love is so prevalent. Maybe every summer for the next few years, I will pull out my maps and objects and play again in the fog, creating new images to keep the series growing slow and steady over time.

Permission from Sugimoto

2007-09-17T10:41:00.001-07:00

I recently went back for a second look at the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition at the De Young Museum. One of the things that really struck me this time was the wide range of dates within some of his series. For example, in his dioramas (one is pictured here), Sugimoto shot some as early as 1975 and then some as late as 1999 (more than 20 years later) – the exhibit features some from 1980 and some from 1994. As an artist, I often feel a certain pressure to create a series, complete it, and move on. But I love the idea that there are series you work on, put aside for awhile, grow something new, and then come back to it and flesh it out further. There is a certain freedom and permission in that way of working that really honors the organic nature of the creative process.

There is a lot of great information online these days about Sugimoto. One of my favorites, is an audio interview with Sugimoto by Tania Ketenjian of Radio Tania. I liked Tania's intro in which she describes how for Sugimoto “photographs are like a time machine…a way to document and recreate memory.”

Catching up on the New York Times

2007-09-12T09:59:00.001-07:00

Every Sunday, it arrives – a fat issue of the New York Times, the only newspaper we get all week. Its arrival prompts the creation of a nice breakfast enjoyed slowly while reading the news. However, rarely do I finish the paper in one sitting. And so this morning, I spent some time catching up on the Times from Sunday, September 2, which had these three points of intrigue.

The Arts section included an article with several photos of the Starn Twins studio - a treat for me as I have always loved their layered, tactile, ephemeral work. A former ice-cream-truck garage, their studio is an impressive 10,000 square feet, where the Starns and as many as 15 full-time employees work on photographic projects focusing on their fascination with the passage of time and with perception and illusion in nature. You can view a slide show of these images on the NY Times web site.

On the facing page was an article on Olafur Eliasson, whose exhibition, "Take Your Time," opened at SFMOMA earlier this month. The featured photo depicts him as an action photographer – leaning far over the gaping hole of a glacier to record the changing topography of Iceland. He too, like the Starns, has a crew that work for him – 30 employees including mathematicians, designers, architects, artisans, and office assistants. I was struck by what a different kind of creative process that must be to make art with so many other people involved. This quote by Eliasson makes clear the appeal for him in working collaboratively. “For some reason, our history has produced the misconception that experiencing individuality has to do with being alone. But being together is greater than being alone, because we can do more. We are more responsible.”

Finally, the Op-Ed section had a short, but great piece on listmaking – featuring a montage of post-it notes (pictured above) of people’s goals for the summer – everything from “Be Nice to George” to “Find the Yellow Rainboots” to “Reconcile with Tolstoy” to “Kick my Habit.” Altogether it represented a nice range of human aspirations. If I could add one to the list it would be “Make more time for the Sunday NY Times.”

Studio Visitors

2007-09-11T20:34:00.001-07:00

Usually, it is just me and my dog at my Muir Beach studio, but yesterday brought two visitors. The first was Coleen, a wonderful book binder who lives in Muir Beach. We have been talking for ages about connecting to see each other’s work spaces, and yesterday we finally did it. We started with mine. It is always interesting to see what draws people’s attention first – for her, it was the shelf of Bottle Dreams pieces (pictured here).

After a full tour, we headed toward the ocean to her home and newly built studio space. I wish I had brought my camera as she has some wonderful old binding presses and the view from her studio is amazing – a full clear shot of the ocean. Coleen’s focus is creating unique housings for special texts she finds. One had just arrived in the mail – an artist friend had sent Coleen a text block featuring quotes she had found underlined or highlighted in used self-help books, now re-arranged and letterpress printed. For Coleen, the text block really inspires her process – she creates in response to this subject matter, bringing together great materials, leather collaging techniques, and even creating a cover with secret pop-up flap. Driving home from her studio, I thought to myself how she and I creatively are the inverse of each other. She initiates projects from the inside out – the text pages of the book lead her to the creation of a wonderful cover. Whereas I move so often from the outside in – finding a great bottle or an old frame and then working to find the right content with which to fill it.

Later in the afternoon, visitor number two arrived – Rachel Bagby. We gathered to record a future podcast for artheals.org about her amazing work with choirs, music, and healing. In preparation for our meeting, I have been reading Rachel’s book, Divine Daughters: Liberating the Power and Passion of Women's Voices, and have really loved the rhythmic quality of the writing and the circular, organic nature of the storytelling. Her tale of empowering her own voice and the voices of others (especially women) resonated strongly with me. In our conversation, she both spoke and sang news of her latest vision to unite choirs across the country to create positive change. She left me humming – re-awakening my own desire to sing.

At the end of the day, I felt filled up and reminded that it is important to take breaks and meet face to face with other creative people. I do treasure my solitary studio time, and yet it feels so good to stretch and be expanded by the visions of others.

I've Been Memed!

2007-08-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

Britt Bravo has memed me from her blog Have Fun Do Good. I am new to memes – from what I can tell a meme is kind of like a game of tag and once you get hit, you follow the rules and keep spreading the game. So here it goes…

First the Rules:

Post these rules before you give your facts
List 8 random facts about yourself
At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they've been tagged

Then the Facts:

My nickname, and what most people call me, is Danny.
One of my favorite afternoon snacks is a cup of ginger tea and a piece of dark chocolate.
In college, I thought I might major in photography, but got to Vassar and learned that there were no photography classes to take. Oops. Then I wanted to major in English, but English classes were so popular and I got a terrible draw number, so I wound up instead filling the last seat of Art History 101. It was such an interesting class (each section was taught by the professor who specialized in that area) that I became an art history major. From there, I began researching the history of photography, and it is that study that has really deepened my vision as an artist.
After getting married on September 22, 2001, my husband and I took six months off to travel. Most of that time was spent exploring Mexico in an old Ford Aerostar van replete with a two-person kayak and fishing and camping gear. Our favorite spot was a sleepy fishing village called Xcalak (pictured here), just north of the border with Belize.
I have one brother, four years younger and a whole foot taller than me. His arm appears in my collage, "Paz en el Mundo.
My first "real" camera (aka 35 mm) was a Nikon FE gifted to me by my parents when I finished 8th grade. I still have it.
Growing up, I always wanted a dog. Initially my parents gave me a parakeet, which I named Lassie, who became the subject of some of my earliest photographs. Eventually, we got a cocker spaniel.
The only sport I follow is baseball. A San Francisco Giants fan, I was there when Bonds hit 756!

I’m tagging the following blogs…

Harvest Time

2007-08-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend, I harvested quite a bounty. The garden is exploding these days with zucchini, cucumbers, broccoli, chard, green beans, and even pumpkins. Pictured here are the first of our pumpkins – yes, they are small ornamental ones and the big ones have a ways to grow – but nevertheless these pumpkins said to me, "Fall is almost here." Realizing that, I was filled with a rush of sadness. This summer has been so sweet with much time in the studio, in the garden, and in my yellow chair with books in hand. As I pulled weeds from a bed planted with lettuce, I pondered how to keep the energy of summer with me as I move into the fall. The answer I got was that this is the wrong question. Each season is its own distinct time. To try and hold onto what has been only will get in the way of the graceful unfolding of what is emerging. The fall will have its own rhythm and pace, and the more I can accept that and step into it fully, the easier the seasonal transition will be for me.

One thing I do look forward to this Fall is the satisfaction of getting my work out in new venues. I have shows in Portland, Brooklyn, Washington DC, and Woodstock, NY among others. I will also be doing two Open Studios – the first October 13-14 and the second in December. A full list of all these events can be found on my web site. It is good to feel that the fruits of my summer labor will be harvested well.

Art Deliveries

2007-08-24T19:09:00.001-07:00

I left the drippy fog of Muir Beach this morning to drive to sunny San Rafael to drop off art at two venues. My first stop was the Donna Seager Gallery to swap out inventory. Donna has been displaying some of my Bottle Dreams pieces with her rich selection of artists books. Today, I brought her three of my new, single bottles, each layered with photos, texts, and maps sealed in mineral oil. I was delighted to hear from Ama, her gallery assistant, that the September show, called “Women’s Work,” will feature one of my favorite local artists, Lisa Kokin, as well as two other mixed media artists, Laura Kimpton and Nancy Youdelman. And in her artist book gallery will be a show curated by Macy Chadwick called “Narrative Thread,” that will include one of my father’s books, “red thread, two women." It's nice to look forward to this.

Then I traveled a few blocks up the hill to the Falkirk Cultural Center to drop off a Sanctuary piece for a group show called “Photographic Narratives.” Curated by Beth Goldberg, this show features several other artists I know, including Beth Moon, Michael Rauner, Judith and Richard Lang, and Susan Hyde, as well as plenty of artists new to me. This show is a nice long one – after its opening reception on September 7, it will stay up until the end of December. The Falkirk is a wonderfully unusual venue. As you can see from the photo I took today, it is an historic building with great architectural detail – inside the wood paneled walls and stained glass make you feel like you have stepped back in time into a 19th Century parlor.

In the parking lot, while leaving I ran into artist Mary Wagstaff, who complimented me on my blog, which is always so nice, because I often write here unsure that anyone is listening. It’s heartening to hear that people are tuning in regularly. Thanks to all of you who make up my audience - whether by seeing my shows or reading my blog - it's nice to know I am connecting.

Editioning Evocations

2007-08-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday signing my editioned prints from Evocations. They were printed in sets of 10 in February, but slid to the back burner, and only now, in the open space of summer, have I found time to tend to each print - signing it, naming it, giving it a number, and then sleeving it in crystal clear envelopes. It is satisfying work, clearing the way for the new to emerge in this series.

Living Inside Books

2007-08-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner, wind themselves around your limbs like spidersilk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you, they work their magic…” -Margaret Lea in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This summer has given me the time to dive into words again. I feel like the child I once was who spent hours living inside novels. The first of several books on my path this summer was The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I listened to this story unfold on my iPod. It was so well read that the world around me disappeared and I was wrapped in the twin stories of book-lover Margaret who is recording the life of writer Vida Winter. There are such wonderful passages about the joys of reading. In one stretch, Setterfield describes Margaret’s mundane tasks leading up to 8pm when “the world came to an end - it was reading time…. Against the blue candlewick bedspread, the white pages of my open book illuminated by a circle of lamplight were the gateway to another world.”

One of the other worlds I traveled to this summer was an island off the coast of Maine. A friend lent me her copy of Joe Coomer’s Pocketful of Names about an artist who lives and works in solitude on an island until one day a dog washes up on her beach, then a teenage boy looking for a place to a hide, and soon others…Her solitary life gives way to one of connectedness. There are some great passages about the creative life.

I also succumbed to the Harry Potter craze, and re-read book 6, before reading the new book 7. Although these books are not perfect, they cast a perfect spell. They rendered me half alive to my own life while I was engaged in their plot. It was pure escapist pleasure.

Diane Setterfield warns, “Reading can be dangerous.” For me, the danger is that the worlds in books begin to shine more bright than the world around me. It is as if I must shake cobwebs out of my brain to get back to work (of which is there is plenty). I have to tell myself that later in the day – after I have organized my inventory, shot new images for Evocations, responded to my email, etc. – then I can find my way back to the yellow armchair in the sunroom and open a fresh new book and see where it takes me.

"Ode to Stillness"

2007-08-04T09:17:00.001-07:00

“Is it possible to make a living by simply watching light? Monet did. Vermeer did. I believe Vincent did too. They painted light in order to witness the dance between revelation and concealment, exposure and darkness. Perhaps this is what I desire most, to sit and watch the shifting shadows cross the cliff face of sandstone, or simply walk parallel with a path of liquid light called the Colorado River. In the canyon country of southern Utah, these acts of attention are not merely the pastimes of artists, but daily work, work that matters to the soul of the community. This living would include becoming a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind, where each dialect is not only heard but understood.”
-Terry Tempest Williams from Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

Summer has opened up space and time for me. In that new openness, I find myself not wanting to add more doing, but more being - time to watch the fog paint changing colors on the hills out our front windows, and time to sit and re-read some of my favorites, like essays by Terry Tempest Williams.

Creative Chaos

2007-07-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." -Friedrich Nietzsche

The studio is a mess these days. I have excavated my drawers, piles, and files, discovering maps, photographs, and other symbolic objects buried in my studio. Now they flood my main worktable, inspiring me to try new directions with my Evocations series. It is a healthy chaos they have created. The kind, that I hope and pray, will lead to the creation of a “dancing star” or at least some strong new images.

Playing with Fog

2007-07-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am almost reluctant to speak this aloud in case it might jinx me – but, after overcoming some resistance, I have been shooting new photos for my Evocations series. Every foggy morning for the last week, I have been on my studio deck – my table filled with a variety of props and backgrounds – working intuitively, quickly, before the sun bursts through. I prefer the even, filtered lighting of fog to the shadows caused by bright sun. Fortunately for me, Muir Beach is one of the foggiest places in the Bay Area and summer is fog season. It feels a lot like fishing – putting in my time, taking photographs, and later I will edit and see what I caught. But for now, I am having much fun playing in the fog with bottles, maps, and other ephemera.

Space to Grow

2007-07-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

My studio overlooks my vegetable garden – a view fertile with metaphors for the creative process. Weeding, watering, fertilizing, planting, sprouting, growing, harvesting…are all apt expressions of artmaking.

Last night found me planting. I love beets, and so I bought two six packs of starts when one probably would have been plenty. To my delight, each cell of the six-pack had 3-4 separate seedlings, so I planted approximately 40 new plants last night! The challenge was finding enough space for them. After filling the rows I had pre-designated for them, I had to squeeze them into beds with slower growing plants. This was a reminder to me that everything in life needs space – yes, sometimes you can find a extra spot for a great thing, but in the end, all projects/dreams/visions manifest best when given adequate space to grow.

This week, I have planted my art in the center of a big open week. I call this an “art retreat,” and take several throughout the year. I map out days in my calendar and place secure fencing around them – no work for artheals.org, no teaching, no errands – in fact, no leaving Muir Beach. I stock up on groceries, and spend the week fertilizing my artistic roots. I work in the studio, tending existing projects and seeding some new ones. I also garden, hike the hills with my dog, journal, daydream, and read…filling myself back up.

I have also been cultivating my blog. Today I added some new links to my blogroll and have also finally figured out how to set up an RSS feed - which means, if you like, you can now sign up to receive my blog posts via email. See the right hand column here for details.

Creating Sanctuary

2007-07-13T18:15:00.001-07:00

I am frequently asked "How did you make that?" - especially when it comes to my series, Sanctuary. Many speculate that I did the whole process in Photoshop. But no, my PS skills are not nearly sophisticated enough for that, and frankly, I love the tactility of composing art with my hands. So I start by photographing a spot in nature that is a "sanctuary" or refuge for me – most often a place within five miles of my home. Then I print the photo and bottle it in mineral oil layering it with old maps and handwritten texts - essentially building a sculpture. It is this piece that I then place on black velvet and re-photograph with my digital SLR, a Canon 30D (as pictured here). Then after some minor adjustments in PS, I have them printed with the help of Kris at Electric Works in San Francisco. It is a bit labor intensive, but a multi-layered process seems to come with the territory of creating multi-layered art.

Behind the Scenes: Hiroshi Sugimoto at the DeYoung

2007-07-09T23:31:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had the supreme pleasure and surprise of being invited to the press preview for the Hiroshi Sugimoto retrospective at the De Young Museum. I say pleasure because I have always loved Sugimoto’s photographs for their masterful beauty and powerful concepts. And I say surprise, because I was quite shocked (thrillingly so) to get an email invitation from a media relations officer at the Fine Arts Museum to attend the press preview with the artist, because she had read my blog entry below about the Legion of Honor. When I started my blog months ago, I never realized the potential for such benefits from it – it made my week.

So last Friday found me in a museum conference room with four kinds of coffee, cucumber sandwiches, press packets, 40 or so members of the press, a museum director, one of the exhibit’s curators, and the artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto himself. After introductory remarks, we all headed to the galleries – which Sugimoto described as his “spookiest” venue of this traveling exhibition yet. Sugimoto designed the installation, and it is quite remarkable. The lighting is such that the large photographs (many of them close to 4 x 6 feet) seem to glow as if illumined from within while the dark walls evaporate into shadow. It is as if you are standing inside a giant camera – each photograph becomes an aperture through which his ideas are imprinted onto the viewer.

As curator, Kerry Brougher, said so aptly, “Sugimoto is a photographer of ideas.” In particular, I learn from him how photography can expand and collapse our sense of time. For example, in this shot below of a drive-in theatre, the shutter was left open for the full duration of the movie, recording every second, and yet in the end, the compilation of all those moments is simply bright light. It seems fitting then that when I snapped the photo above, holding my camera high above the other heads around me, Sugimoto was illuminated by the flash of someone else’s camera - he is rendered a white, bright blur himself – burning with ideas.

Thinking about Art

2007-06-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Legion of Honor in San Francisco always makes me feel like I have been transported to Europe. My father and I traveled there together this week to see “Rembrandt to Thiebaud: A Decade of Collecting Works on Paper.” It was a treat to wander the marble halls with my father because his knowledge of printmaking combined with mine of photography allowed each of us a more complete understanding and insight into the works on display. In the first room, I fell in love with an intimate etching by Rembrandt of a puppy (I am always a sucker for dogs), and my father gave me a crash course in print media, such as the distinction between a mezzotint and an aquatint. In the next room, I was struck by the illusionistic beauty of a drawing by Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype – it was certainly not a lack of drawing skill that inspired him to become one of the inventors of photography. If I could take one thing home with me, it would be the Tina Modotti photograph of an interior mural in Mexico – the way she photographed it turns it into a sweeping dreamlike experience.

Walking back to the car, I snapped this photograph of Rodin’s The Thinker. The next day, while listening to Anna Halprin on the artheals.org podcast I was touched to hear her say that it was a visit to the Musée Rodin sculpture gardens in Paris that provided an antidote for the deep horror she had experienced just prior in visiting a concentration camp – that it was art and beauty that truly have the power to heal the soul. I had a moment of inter-rushing connections – Rodin’s sculpture in San Francisco that I just saw and the ones that populate the Musée Rodin that inspired Anna who then inspired me…and it made me all the more grateful that I took the time this week to let art speak to me.

Practice: Art + Text

2007-06-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, I received a delightful package in the mail. A simple brown cardboard box yielded these treats – loose leaf tea, a tea strainer, and five copies of the journal, Practice: Art + Text, which includes reproductions of my series, Bottle Dreams. As a participant in the journal, I receive these gifts plus a small stipend. I have enjoyed sitting down with my hot tea feasting on the literature and images published here.

In particular, I love the interview with Alec Finley and his discussion of “letterboxing.” Alec has planted wooden boxes in the landscape, each containing a “circle poem.” Directions are made available to those who would like to find them and they become a hiking destination. Each box has a “keeper” – a local friend who plants the box and caretakes it. Alec is currently half way to his goal of creating 100 of these around the world. I love this idea of planting art in the earth to be discovered as a hidden treasure.

I am also honored to be in such good visual company in this journal. Paddy Sutton’s absorbing photographs of the ocean are made more haunting by his statement in which he reveals that each of these locations marks the death of a ship and its crew during World War II. Colette Calascione’s paintings (one is featured on the cover of Practice) are wonderful surreal explorations that blend human figures with the animal, and composite references to art history and natural sciences. Aaron Cruse’s pinhole photographs are marvelous in the way they inscribe a circular photograph in the center of a black field that leaves the impression of looking through a peephole or tunnel at the outside world.

You can enjoy these images and texts yourself by ordering a copy of Practice at www.practicejournal.com.