OJAI STUDIO TOUR OCTOBER 8 – 10

I’ve spent most of the summer building this complicated, two-sided “altar.”

I call it: “Strawberry Fields Forever (and Avocados and Citrus Too).”

The Tour is again FREE this year. Sign up at ojaistudioartists.org to get the map and latest info!  Love to see you again!

And if you are driving to the desert the “Matters of Gravity” Exhibit at the Maloof Foundation continues through April 2023. The garden exhibit is open to the public Fridays and Saturdays, 10 – 4pm. 

The Wonders of Arizona - Part 1

Tanya Kovaleski and I have just opened our "Matters of Gravity" exhibit at the Maloof Foundation in Rancho Cucamonga. As a reward to ourselves after installing a majority of the work, we buzzed east for a quick one-day trip to Quartzite. The Gem Show is in January (which I missed because of COVID). But we found a lot of unusual stones at T-Rocks (where Frances McDormand briefly works in "Nomadland"). They have acres of stone - often wonders I have never seen before that send me off in a whole new direction.

The problem with shopping in late April is that it is VERY VERY HOT. So T-Rocks provide these ridiculously tiny umbrellas to protect a small part of one's cranium from heatstroke!

Goddess Eyes

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These days I spend too much time ranting at the TV, fretting about the upcoming election and what is to come on November 3rd and its aftermath.  But I have found one small refuge (well okay, there IS my darling , barky Lucy who sleeps on my Goddess Eyes and her brother Toshi) from all the uncertainty and anxiety: making these little altars and saying prayers to the spirits who have come before us and seen pandemics, war, chaotic government, people so angry and alienated that they can no longer gently listen and reason with each other anymore.   

I take solace in the simple choosing of stones, pairing lovely little rocks with others, building my little islands of peace and tranquility. I hope others feel the same calm from these altars that I do. They were created with a lot of love and a desire that we can see better days, see the best in each other instead of the worst, and live up to the lofty ambitions of our Bill of Rights and Constitution.  And recall that a democracy is an ever so fragile and delicate thing that can be lost and gone in a millisecond.

MENDING THE DIVIDE AT MUSEUM OF VENTURA COUNTY

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Not my usual work…

I spent a long time mulling over this theme. So many things need mending in our world these days.

On a recent trip to West LA, I noticed new little tent cities just off Santa Monica Blvd. and other sidewalks around town.  People walk by chatting on their cell phones, already adjusted to a “New Normal.” The community of RVs at the end of the 33 is burgeoning – at first people who lost homes from the devastation of the Thomas Fire, now people losing everything from the devastation of COVID.

“Invisible” is wearing a lot of my favorite clothes – my most comfy worn-in work boots and super soft flannel shirt with a few holes in it.  She looks a lot like me. I know I’m really fortunate I’m not in her position.  I don’t have answers. Wish I did. But I do know we first have to SEE these people and REMEMBER them…

ANTIDOTE FOR JANUARY BLUES

Road Trip

January is my least favorite month because a) Daylights Savings Time screws up my internal clock, b) short, cold and rainy days (good for the drought, bad for sculptors ☹).  But there is one really good thing about January: the Arizona Gem Shows!!!!  

First of all, AZ does not do Daylight Screw Up Your Life Time – which is wonderful!  

If you love rocks, beads, rare gems and all sorts of oddball junk, Quartzite is an easy 7-hour drive just across the Colorado River. There are “shows” all over town throughout January. I call it “Road Warrior for Seniors” – since you often are dodging elderly desert denizens zigzagging through traffic on three-wheeled motorbikes, thinning wisps of grey hair flying (no helmets, natch – Arizona law..). 

“Pow-Wow” is the big weekend (checkout Quartzite Gemshows for details), but I prefer to go after “Pow-Wow” when vendors are packing up to head home or onto the Tucson Gem Show which is the first two weekends in February. People are eager to make deals – wanting to offload weight for the trip home. If you don’t have an RV or camp, you need to book a room in Blythe (20 miles west of Quartzite). 

BTW, so far as I know there is NO REAL POW-WOW during Pow-Wow. The first year I went, I had my windows down, listening for drumming or singing. I was directed to a huge parking lot filled with vendors. There were a few Native American vendors, but don’t expect a Pow Wow or any yummy frybread. 

Quartzite is funky and fun. I can pop over for an overnight trip and not feel too guilty buying more stone when I have rather a lot sitting in my yard... Oh, I also get to eat at my favorite Mexican Restaurant  where the Moran family celebrated pretty much every birthday, death, whatever when I was growing up out there: La Paloma on Foothill Blvd. Fruit Exit off the 210. Yummy. 

I digress….

The Tucson Gem Show, on the other hand, is one of the premiere gem shows in the world. For gaping, gawking, and even gawping, Tucson takes the cake.  Since 2017, it doesn’t have the international vendors (or buyers) it once had, because so many of the vendors are from countries the Trump administration has banned or threatened and the vendors aren’t able or willing to risk coming. These countries have some fabulous stone and are certainly missed  – but I am hopeful in 2021 we might see those vendors back again…😉  Another reason to VOTE…..

Also, for those who loathe day light savings time as much as I do, Arizona is on the “correct time” and it is a joy to be shopping for stone in the Quartzite desert as the sun goes down after 6pm!

Happy 2020 to You!

Styrofoam Whale Coated with Concrete

I’m really excited about this year. Tanya Kovaleski and I are installing a yearlong exhibition of sculptures at the Maloof Foundation in Rancho Cucamonga this coming April.  Both of us are madly at work.  I’ll be showing many stone pieces, but I am also working with some new materials. If you came by on the fall Ojai Studio Artists Tour, you saw the beginnings of my “Ocean Altar.”  The whale – carved in styrofoam and coated with concrete – is almost there. For the “ocean,” I’m crushing plastic water bottles – which are proving to be rather challenging to work with…😉

Hope to see you at the tour!

Last Generation

The Ojai Studio Tour is next weekend. I hope you come for a visit. My piece for the “Origins” exhibit at the Ojai Valley Museum (OSA’s new Tour home), was a big departure for me.  Glass artist Steven Edwards and his lovely wife Pat helped do a face casting of me.  This “Origins” piece became very poignant for me, as my two sisters and I have no kids. We’re the last of our line. And this year has been full of  multiple health issues for my closest family members (now all doing well, thank goodness!), but as I worked on this piece, it made me think a lot about our  family. 

When it came to making “hair” for the piece, I began trawling through old photographs and letters. The “hair” is pleated letters from friends from UK and  Europe – Mrs. Sim, my dear flatmate and landlady when I lived in Haymarket Terrace in Edinburgh, and my dear friends, the Gobbos, from Padova.  It became a poignant look back – and looking forward – with my glass cast open hand holding three orchids – my two sisters and me being blown onward – to what? To where?  Whatever lies ahead….A mystery… 


More Styrofoam!

No, dear rock lovers, I have not abandoned stone!  My garden is littered with wonderful stones awaiting…something.  Or not. So many of them are just lovely just the way they are… 

But back to The Evil Styrofoam, so nasty to work with, but oh, so rewarding….

Sculptor Tanya Kovaleski and I are doing a yearlong installation at the Maloof Foundation in Rancho Cucamonga beginning in spring 2020.  I’ve always been attracted to Altars – possibly because stone is so grand and so much of our landscape seems like Natural Altars to me… I’ve decided to create 10 – 12 Altars for the Maloof Exhibit.  I already have my Altar to the Fire Gods (in remembrance/awe of the Thomas Fire). There are so many other tumultuous and disturbing themes and forces roiling in our world that I’d like to address…. The state of the oceans is so distressing – the trash, the fishing nets, the destruction of species…

Did you know we are losing 250 Species a DAY? 

Good Book: “The Myth of Human Supremacy” by Derrick Jensen

I digress. Actually, I didn’t.  I’ve had this idea about whales swimming in crushed plastic detritus and I hope to have the beginnings of this piece underway in time for the Tour (yeah yeah, a week away... Nothing like a deadline to get work done 😉

So here is the beginnings of my first whale - hard to carve movement with the Evil Styrofoam.  Not like clay or wax where you can shape and manipulate. Lose a nose. Put another nose back on.  Don’t like the way those boobs are drooping? Easy fix… Now I truly do digress….

My whale is coming. Such graceful, majestic creatures.   I find I carve and then have to pin nasty chunks of Styrofoam back in (doesn’t matter what it looks like underneath). I’m no Steve Jobs – I heard even the inside of his computers had to be perfect, pristine.  My whale is full of shishkabob sticks, Great Stuff (the goop, not actual GREAT STUFF… and of course a lot of Styrofoam…. ‘

I’ll keep you posted on this one….