Spring Open Studio & Garden Event

Today I am working away in the studio getting ready for my next Open Studio happening Saturday & Sunday, April 28 & 29, 10am-4pm each day. I always look forward to these events for a few reasons...

1) I get the opportunity to share my art and process in person, face to face. Having events like this in my studio makes it easy to show my working methods, techniques, and sources of inspiration. I love the feedback, good conversation, and sense of being connected to others who appreciate creative work.

2) I get to collaborate with my wonderful neighbors, Wendy Johnson and Peter Rudnick who host an Open Garden and Plant Sale at the same time. Wendy and Peter used to run the gardens at Green Gulch and are masters at farming and cultivating the soil. Hosting this event with them enhances the feeling of neighborhood & community.

3) It's a family friendly art event. As an artist and a mother, I love that this event integrates those two roles. My young daughters are here with me, kids come and play outside, and there are art supplies for them to explore. Last time, children painted pots at my studio and then took them over to Peter and Wendy's for soil and seed. I think we will be doing that again this time.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, it would be lovely to have you come by for tea and treats, fine art, and springtime plants. See details below.

Muir Beach Open Studio & Spring Plant Sale
Saturday & Sunday, April 28 & 29, 10am-4pm
1795 & 1815 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach, CA
Click here for directions

Springtime Open Studio & Garden Event

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

Harvest Celebration

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.

Open Studio & Garden Sale on April 17

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.

The Art of Sitting Still

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.”

Creating in Chaos

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.

Overgrown

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.

Gardening at the Dragon's Gate

“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.

Renewal

“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.

Benign Neglect

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.

Harvest Time

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.

Space to Grow

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.