2020 So Far — México

San Miguel de Allende is known as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. We had spent a couple hours there about 20 years ago and had always wanted to go back and see more. While we have loved our recent trips to Morocco and to Italy we were finding it hard to think about another long and exhausting flight, so Mexico sounded perfect. We liked the idea of choosing one place and exploring it and surrounding areas. We booked an Air BnB in the center of the old part of of San Miguel and it was the perfect location. 

Our little rooftop apartment and patio was comfortable, convenient and afforded a splendid view in the evening.  We were just a few blocks from the Jardin, San Miguel’s main square, facing the the church, the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel. 

This was the perfect place for a cup of cafe con leche in the morning and to watch people visiting in El Jardin or attending mass at the church. During our stay we saw several wedding parties leaving the church and one morning there were dozens of families gathered out front with their beautifully dressed babies, preparing for a mass baptism inside. 

Each day we looked for something interesting to see or do. One day we took a taxi to the outskirts of town for a tour of The Chapel of Jimmy Ray. I had seen the website and we made an appointment for a tour, thinking it might be fun. It is the home and studio of Anado McLachlan and his partner Richard. Anado welcomed us and showed us around the grounds and home, telling stories all along the way. His little world is filled with color and whimsy and beauty and meaning. He is warm and generous of spirit and humorous and articulate. By far more than I expected. I could say much more, but the pictures tell the story. If you go to San Miguel de Allende, DO go visit the Chapel of Jimmy Ray. You will be richly rewarded.

Anado leads the way

The most beautiful outhouse in México 

There are two galleries where he shows his work, as well as the work of several other artists

Inside the house. 

Enough color and inspiration to keep me going for a very long time, but there was more to come...

2020 so far...

My last blog entry was on New Year’s Day, looking forward to 2020 with “And” as my word for the year. Little did I know what all that “and” would encompass. Now it’s April and we know that 2020 already is one for the history books. 

January and February are always quiet months, this one not so different. In the dark days of winter we settled in, but found what simple pleasures we could, in the form of good meals, visits to the art museum and the science museum and a memorable evening spent taking in the Portland Winter Light Festival in downtown Portland. (Above)

In my studio, I was learning about making things from copper. 

I delved into acid etching my own designs into copper and fashioned our annual valentine from one of those designs.

I prepared a stitching project that would start February 1. For 100 days I would hand stitch a tiny composition in one of the sections of a 100 section design I had applied to a piece of natural linen. Each day’s work would be posted on a Facebook page for the SAQA 100 day challenge. 

At the front of my mind, in February, was our upcoming trip to Mexico. I think I was packed, and ready at least a week ahead of our February 27 departure date. My plan was to take my stitching project along. By now it was beginning to look like a real thing, with 25 spaces filled. 

I am trying to remember if, when we left for Mexico, I really knew anything about the Corona virus. I’m sure, if I did, it was something happening far away—China. Not on my radar...  

And...

Happy New Year!

Once again, instead of making New Year’s resolutions, I have chosen a word for the coming year. This started at least 10 years ago, when it was suggested on an online art group I belong to. Some of my chosen words have been quickly forgotten. Some have continued to resonate with me. Some were hard to choose. Some came easily.  Last year’s word, unbound, never quite said what I was feeling, but it did express a hope for a kind of freedom I was hoping for to stretch myself a little. I took classes, I traveled, I lucked into some wonderful opportunities and learned some freeing and encouraging lessons. 

A year ago I was wondering what restrictions advancing age would place put on my desire to keep working as I have been. Perhaps, I thought, I would want to scale back, downsize my art practice, accept a decreased energy level as inevitable, but when I took my first class of the year I found it was so inspiring and energizing that I was ramping up, not scaling back. I was asked to present my work at the International Quilt Festival as a “Rising Star”—crazy! I was asked to join a gallery. I took another class. I bought new equipment. I sold more work than any other year of my life. I learned that life changes with age, but there is still always more. Different, unexpected, but more. So my word for 2020 is “and”.  

   ~Things will be what they have been, and...  

  ~ I will do things I’ve done before, go back to favorite places, and... 

  ~ I will be older, and...  

  ~ I will still be what I am—a woman, a partner, a mother, a grandmother, a friend and... 

 “And” is the promise of more. 

My words from previous years hang on my studio wall, now joined by AND, personified as &.

 

AND so it goes...

Old dog, new trick

 This last year has been a creative one for me.I took two great classes this year, both of which pushed me in a new direction. The first, with Betty Busby, led to the purchase of a Silhouette cutting machine, which is my favorite new toy and has been in pretty continuous use since June. The class I took in September, with Mary Hettsmansperger, introduced me to the great fun of working with copper, and after that introduction I bought myself a torch and tools and supplies and have been noodling around with them. I made copper earrings for my STASH friends, using what I’ve figured out. 

In addition to what I learned in the class, I peruse the internet,especially YouTube, which is just a trove of information and tips and tricks. Several days ago I was looking at copper jewelry videos and came upon something ASTOUNDING!—well, to me at least. People are out there making etched copper jewelry, using etching masks that they cut on their Silhouette cutting machines. Worlds collide! My two, current, most favorite things working together. I had to try this. The stuff I was seeing online was wonderful. But I knew nothing about etching copper, so onto YouTube I went and learned all about it and I got scared. It involves acid. Bad acid. I am not acquainted with acid, except for horrible stories about people being disfigured by having acid thrown on them, or gruesome stories about body parts dissolved in acid. And I never studied chemistry where I might have learned something about it. Somehow I managed to get through both high school and college without a chemistry class. So yesterday I screwed up my courage and went shopping for acid and chemical gloves from the hardware store and Pyrex containers from the thrift store and hydrogen peroxide from the drugstore and today I was ready to etch. 

I had cut a small snowflake, from adhesive backed vinyl, with my cutter and stuck it to a piece of copper sheet that I had prepared. I covered the back and edges with packing tape and made a tab of packing tape that I could use to lift my copper piece into and out of the acid bath. The snowflake sticker and tape would protect the copper where they were placed. The uncovered areas would be etched by the acid. A bucket of water and baking soda were standing by to neutralize the acid when it was done. Since I was going to need good ventilation, and it was raining outside, I worked in the greenhouse, with window and both doors open and fan on. 

I prepared the mixture of hydrogen peroxide and Muriatic acid in my glass bowl, then carefully lowered the copper piece into the acid mixture. 

Soon I could see bubbles forming on the surface and the acid mixture began to turn green. After about 25 minutes I pulled it out and dunked it into the soda and water to neutralize and stop the action. 

I dried it off, cleaned up all the etching stuff, and went to the studio where I painted it with ammonia and salt to give the etched area a little patina. When that dried I removed the tape and the snowflake vinyl, which did not come off easily. I used a pin to pick it off a chunk at a time. It is interesting. I expected the etched area to be a little rough, but it’s smooth and lower than the unetched places. 

Then I polished it with fine steel wool and I’m pretty pleased!

I’m looking forward to more! I’m excited and not so scared of acid anymore. I am an old dog, but I can still learn something new. And my little copper snowflake? I think I’ll put a pin back on it and pin it to my coat. 

Rising Star—Me?

Forty-some years ago, while my children slept, late at night, I would spread my fabrics and sketchbooks out on my dining room table and work on the designs in my head, for ways to combine art and design and fabrics. I wasn’t quite sure where I was headed, but I had seen things others were doing that inspired me and though I had studied drawing and painting and printmaking, I knew that fabric was my medium. Little did I suspect how long I would follow that path or where it would lead. Then it was just my late night guilty indulgence that fitted in between children and family and daytime job and kept me feeling that my education had not been in vain and my creative side was still alive somewhere inside me.  

Early last spring I got a call from Becky Navarro, the head of special exhibits at the International Quilt Festival, inviting me to share a special exhibit with Maria Shell, a well-know quilt artist from Alaska and my fellow member of the Cloth in Common, International Art Quilt Group. We had been selected as “Rising Stars.” I was amazed and confused and very honored. Rising Star—me? It made me laugh! It has been a very long, slow rise if that is the case. And never have I thought of myself as a Star. Maybe a lifelong learner, maybe lucky, maybe persistent. I’m quiet and spend my days pretty much alone in my studio in the woods, and I’m 73 years old for goodness sake (!) but if they want to call me a rising star, I think I’ll take it.

So I arrived in Houston late on October 30th, shared a ride to my hotel with two quilters from Connecticut and checked into my hotel room, with a view of the stadium out my window, where the last game of the World Series was playing out down below. I texted this photo to my son, who I knew was watching the game on TV back in Oregon. 

It all seemed a little surreal. 

I headed to the convention center the next morning where I was taken to our exhibit. My quilts had been shipped months before and were beautifully hung, with Maria’s in our exhibit. Here’s the view of the exhibits, from above. Our exhibit is somewhere out there in the middle. 

It was beautiful! Twenty three of my quilts. 

For the next three days I wandered through the vast center, viewing all the exhibits and periodically returning to our exhibit to visit with people who stopped to look and to give several scheduled gallery talks. Though the QuiltFestival is primarily a show, rather than a sale, quilts can be listed for sale. To my very great and pleasant surprise, 9 of my quilts were sold. I had the pleasure of meeting some of the new owners. 

This is the lady who purchased “The Moon is a Mirror”

And this man, who lives in Utah told me he he knew exactly where this scenery is 

and he purchased “Utah Train” as a gift for his wife. 

The annual International Quilt Festival is held every year in Houston, is the largest exhibit of quilts, both traditional and art quilts, in the world, and draws thousands of visitors from around the world each year. Part of the thrill for me was seeing old friends, meeting online friends going back twenty years, sometimes for the first time face to face, and meeting quilters and artists whose work I have long admired. Every time I entered or left the convention hall I stopped to admire the exquisite display of blue and white quilts hung in honor of the 45th, sapphire anniversary of International Quilt Festival. It was breathtaking and a tribute to the history of what began as “women’s work” of creating beauty in the useful objects of home and now encompasses both that sturdy tradition as well as its evolution into the realm of fine art. 

As I made my way around the exhibited work I marveled at the creativity, beauty, humor, heartfelt messages and all the glorious color. Making my way around the work presented by our professional organization, SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) I was enjoying, especially, the retrospective exhibit called “Layered and Stitched” when I came upon a quilt by my first art quilt hero, Jean Ray Laury, “Listen to Your Mother.”  It was her work, 40 years ago, that showed me what was possible for me. She is gone, but it warmed my heart, and almost made me cry, to see her cheerful, witty work lives on and still delights viewers at the biggest quilt show in the world.  I was proud to know my work was hanging alongside hers. 

The whole thing is now a very sweet memory—something I will be forever grateful for.  The people that put on this amazing show are the best of the best. Every detail is perfect and they are all the nicest, most efficient, most really, really good at their jobs people you will ever encounter. They did it. They made me feel like a Star. 

Thank you. 

Returning to Italy

Yes, I did begin to blog about our trip to Italy in April and then months just got away from me, as they seem to do more and more, but I have returned and I’m remembering our first trip to Italy in 1972 and our return to Italy this year, 47 years later. 

In 1972 Ray and I had been married for less than two years and had little money but a burning desire to see Europe. Ray was teaching and I had accepted a teaching job for that fall, so that summer we were unencumbered, had saved as much as possible of our meager paychecks and we had a plan. We ordered a new Volkswagon Beetle, bright yellow, that we picked up at the factory in Germany and bought camping gear in Berlin. It was a grand summer, and by the time we got to Italy we were pretty skilled travelers. We were thrilled by Rome and Venice and  Pisa and Florence, so when we got to Milan  it seemed a bit drab by comparison. And it was raining. I clearly remember the grandeur of the cathedral in Milan and the fact that it was black. 

But it is not black. And probably never was. 

When we saw it again in April I couldn’t believe my memory could have been so faulty. I took to the internet and learned it was cleaned between our visits.  Old photos showed it dark and dirty, but not the black I remembered. Maybe it was the rain? Maybe it was my brain. Nevertheless, a magnificent piece of art and architecture. 

We were not camping this time, but staying in a modest, but quiet and comfortable Air BnB in a nice neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. 

Just down the street was a charming coffee bar near the train station and our short train ride into the center of Milan. 

Despite its ancient, grand architecture, Milan is a very modern city, the centers of business and innovative design. We were, coincidentally there during “Design Week” and got to enjoy some exciting special exhibits as we walked around the city. 

Store windows were filled with beautiful displays. 






This big public sculpture of a threaded needle (sorry, I cut off the top) pays honor to Milan’s fashion industry. 


I remembered the beautiful covered shopping gallery across from the cathedral from 47 years ago. It was filled with small shops. I bought a book in English on our first trip—“The Exorcist”—then scared myself silly reading it at night in our tent! There are no sweet little bookshops there now, only Designer showrooms. 

We spent our last day in Milan wandering through the Monumental Cemetary. We missed that back in ‘72 and were glad we found it this time. Incredibly moving and beautiful. And, like our long ago time in Milan, it was raining. 

Last month we went to Italy...

We take a “big” trip almost every year. For several years now we’ve gone with organized tours, which have been wonderful, but this year we decided to revert to our old way of traveling on our own. Our first trip together was a summer in Europe in 1972, when we bought a Volkswagen Beetle in Germany and drove it around Europe.  It was a great trip, despite our being young and naive and making some mistakes. We had our copy of “Europe on $5 a Day,” our car, a tent and a sleeping bag. We survived, had a wonderful time and came home with our appetites whetted for seeing more of the world.

One of our favorite places in 1972 was Italy, so 47 years later, it seemed like it was time to return.  We would revisit a couple of favorite cities and explore some new ones.

From recent trips we’ve learned that flying from Oregon to Europe in one continuous go is brutal, especially for old people, so it seemed prudent to break it up. Maybe a day in New York, coming and going would help. (It did!). When I learned, months ago, that the Brooklyn Museum would be hosting the exhibit of Frida Kahlo’s work, historic photos, clothing and other artifacts at the same time we were to be there it seemed like it was all meant to be. I am such a fan! So we booked a hotel in Brooklyn near the museum and arrived on a crisp spring day.

Brooklyn was lovely. We walked around, enjoying the charming neighborhoods, then found the museum, where we waited for our ticket time in the vast lobby.

The Frida exhibit was wonderful! Photography was not allowed inside the exhibit until until the very end where you could take a photo with Frida, so I will just direct you to the Brooklyn Museum page about the exhibit, which gives a good overview here. 

We left the museum, found a late lunch, retrieved our luggage from our hotel then headed to the airport for our overnight flight to Milan. 

Goodbye Brooklyn! Goodbye Frida! Our visit was short, but oh, so sweet...