I am in New Mexico on retreat.  Working on some new art ideas and enjoying the community of fellow artists. The area is so very inspiring for color palette choices and imagery. The history of this area captivates my imagination and fills my mind with pictures.

We are about 20 minutes south of Taos and right along the Rio Grande River. Its great to finally have some experimenting and exploring creative time with no pressure to do it “right”  I’ll share with you some of the fruits of my cretaive labor soon-ish.

For right now I’ll leave you with another southwest picture!

.

I’m off tomorrow to New Mexico and I hope what will be the start of new work that I have been dreaming and brainstorming about since the summer. I’ll be posting from there and will share with you what’s happening!

I’ve got my new large journal with me to record my ideas, thoughts, sketches, goals, successes and failures.

I’ve done a few pages in preparation for the trip. It’s been a good way for me to spark my creativity which has been dormant for awhile. As I work on the page, I get excited about making my ideas and sketches concrete.

A big Thank you to all who attended the Creative Sparks Master Class with Alison Lee and myself last night.  The time just flew by and I had a most wonderful time with all of you!

For those that couldn’t make it, there will be information at www.craftcast.com on how to get a copy of the class. I think you will enjoy the “sparkers” and they can become a part of your creative/studio life. Here’s pic of my Chaos Cards– one of the ways to help your mistakes become fuel for your projects.

I “sparked” my own self finally a week ago or so and cracked open my new big white blank scary journal– and it is a LARGE one- 10″ x 12″- and christened it with pages of thoughts and sketches of new work I will start next month. I seem to have a fear of working large so decided to begin with a large journal, instead of my usual purse-sized journal. I’ll share some pics next post.

I’m excited to be part of the CraftCast Master Workshop series created and hosted by Alison Lee. 

On October 20th I’ll be giving a class on Creative Sparks and I can guarantee we’ll have alot of fun along with good converstaion and ideas and techniques that you can use in your art life.

Please join us! Here’s the link to read more: www.craftcast.com/masterclass.html

I’ll have alot of ideas to share with you on some “tricks” to getting yourself in that studio when you either don’t feel like it OR you have the desire but not the focus (my problem at the moment). Alison has a geat post on her site www.craftcast.com with other topics we’ll be focusing on.

For me- this week is about cracking open and facing the scary white page of a LARGE new sketchbook I bought to document a new creative journey I am about to embark on. This new work is the result of alot of thinking, thinking, thinking I did this summer about what I want to be making.  I hope to share the journey with you over the coming year!

There is a wonderful new book in the 500 series: 500 Handmade Books : Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form.

The pictures of books made from every conceivable material are truly inspiring. I haven’t yet had time to sit and savor every page slowly but I see that several book artists using polymer clay (including myself) have work pictured- check it out- its filled with great ideas!