This time I’m not really late because I have given up following a schedule these days. Especially since I’ve only been back on Cape for ten days, three of which were gobbled up by a wicked case of jet lag, although the trip back was tedious but smooth. I’ve only now stopped thinking Paul is on the sofa with me when I wake up after falling asleep in front of the TV. Anyway, the malaise of not being in Newcastle with him has finally worn off. Before I left, I finished Mersey, above, the Work In Progress piece previewed in my last post. It and the Whip-Poor-Will from the post before the last one are still in Newcastle as I build a body of work and develop an artist presence in the UK. Paul took the photo below with the two paintings to use for that purpose. Sorry about the resting bitch face, but being an artist is a serious business.

Also, two days before my leaving, we went to the Fatfield/Coxgreen part of Sunderland where Paul used to play along the River Wear, pronounced Weir, when he was a kid. One side of the river is more wooded than the other, but as you can see from these two photos above and below, both sides are beautiful. The Romans were in the area at one point and I saw some of their obscure brickwork on our walk. Newcastle has remnants of the fortress walls that surrounded its medieval town, and remains of Hadrian’s Wall are scattered around the region although most of it is west along the 84-mile coast to coast trail you can hike if you are so inclined. Newcastle definately ain’t London but it has a fascinating history that has nothing to do with football or Geordie accents. Yes, some of them talk funny but it’s charming and I miss it.

Meanwhile, I have news about the project I‘ve been hinting at recently. In a nutshell, a production company making a video series called The Story of Art in America was in Provincetown this week to shoot an episode for their sixth season. They included our library where we locals read Moby Dick, from cover to cover, every April. They also featured four artists. One whose resume would make your socks roll up and down, another who’s a well-known performance artist, the third is a muralist who was just voted Best Provincetown Artist by our art museum, and, well, me - because of my Guardians installation at the Tourism Building. They squeezed into my studio with their equipment for an hour-long interview and then we went to the installation for some more footage there as well. I’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea and even scheduled my return from Newcastle to accommodate the filming, but you know, little ole me and three of Provincetown’s most important artists - Yikes. Best start using my resting bitch face portrait, Baby’s about to get famous. Maybe.

Yes, yes - late again. I am officially giving up on keeping a set schedule for Substack for the time being. I’ll be back in the States next week, so, maybe then. In the meantime, there’s lots to report. At top of this post is the finished Whip-poor-will I mentioned in my last post, proof that the painting continues. Mostly what we’ve been doing is the important task of building our nest together and running around. Yesterday, an off-hand remark of mine about the rickety old table in the back garden led to a full-on repair job involving two of Paul’s toolboxes, the sawing of wood and a can of undercoat. I did the dog’s body fetching and finding the perfect screws and such while he did the heavy lifting. 

This was after we spent several hours discussing and resolving an unexpected warp on one side of stretcher that only became obvious once I painted the dark background color on the Work In Progress above. The piece is an experiment to see how I adapt to a larger sized canvas and is coming along nicely. At 90x90cm (which is just short of 36x36”) it is the largest piece in the Bird series to date. There are several ways to deal with a warped canvas, all are potentially dangerous to a painting in progress, but in the end we went with my suggestion of replacing the warped stretcher bar with a spare one in Paul’s studio. After some delicate surgery, the painting survived intact and is ready for me to hopefully finish before I leave on Thursday.

That and the garden table took up half of the day, the rest was spent in the Ouseburn area of Newcastle where I shopped a bit and had a delicious lunch, or what they call dinner here in the North East and is generally their main meal of the day instead of what we Yanks call dinner and they call tea. That’s a shot of the canal in Ouseburn above and you can tell it’s been a dry summer, although the tide was out when I took the picture. Below is a shot of the Seaburn/Roker beach where we were last weekend to visit an artist/friend and where I got a bit of a surprise sunburn.

But the big news this week was our whirlwind trip to Liverpool, which was way too short but great fun. Our hotel was an easy walk from the Lime Street Station and minutes away from what is known as Cavern Central, a back lane anchored by the Beatles Museum surrounded by pubs and shops that are all Beatles all of the time. I thoroughly recommend a visit to both the city and the whole Beatles-arama thing, especially the museum which is kitschy and hokey but quite moving and informative too. There were plenty of people wandering through the displays and not all of them were old fogey tourists. I saw a Megadeth t-shirt, lots of tattoos and neon colored hairdos. I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more about Ringo, but much of the memorabilia was provided by Pete Best who is still alive and the drummer Ringo replaced.

We also visited the Walker Museum, which has a nice collection of classical art including some exquisite Medieval icons, plus interesting contemporary work and a separate show devoted to the topic of Gender. We trekked over in the rain to the waterfront and Mann Island, all newly renovated or in the process, to see some great photography at the Open Eye Gallery, and Tate Liverpool in its temporary location at the RIBA space in the same building. Liverpool has an arty friendly vibe which I attribute to the Beatles and what they brought to a city well into its decline and how much of that energy still survives today. Can you imagine life without the Beatles? Consider the scope of their influence and what has followed. Not just on the music industry or fashion, but your own life as well. Give it some thought - and with that, let’s get on with the day.

A little late as usual - it’s hard to keep a schedule when one is far from one’s home routine. However, I’ve done the three untitled collages in this post and have a painting on canvas of a whip-poor-will in progress on the easel I bought to use here. I’m back in my morning sun space by the glass doors off the back garden in the kitchen. I like it there and I’m out of Paul’s way in the studio. We’ve continued to run around Newcastle and it’s hard to remember what we did and when, but we did venture out to the IKEA in Gateshead thinking we were going to buy an ottoman but ended up with a full length mirror for my room because the ottoman we wanted was not out on display and we didn’t fancy buying something sight unseen.

Fancy - listen to me, two weeks away from the Cape and I’m losing my lingo along with my regular diet. Yesterday, I had my first piece of blood, or black, pudding at Ernest’s in Ousburn, the Newcastle neighborhood that reminds me of Manhattan’s Soho in the 80’s. I didn’t hate the pudding and would eat it again if it came on a plate of other things. I’m a fan of steak pies, and fish and chips, as well as bangers and mash since they do make delicious sausages in the UK. And, by the way, leopard print is everywhere in Newcastle including my closet, although I still tend to wear my standard black uniform and black slip-on sneakers. Mostly this trip has been about being domestic with Paul and building a home together. We both love flea markets and charity shops, and are not too proud to scavenge the back lanes for treasure like the dresser we found to store his massive DVD collection. Now, if only we could find a nice ottoman.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the art we’ve seen this week. There was a large installation by Fred Williams in the MFA post-graduate exhibition at Newcastle University which I found interesting - that’s a shot of Paul walking through it below. And Wednesday we went to a presentation of photos and a discussion afterwards with members of the SIDE gallery. You may recall how thrilled I was when they selected a photograph of mine for an online show a few months ago, and I felt so comfortable at this presentation that I plan to attend more when I’m here. But for now I’m going to bake some gingerbread for Paul and finish the whip-poor-will this weekend. Time is, as always, a’wasting - so on with the day.

I’ve been in the UK for a week now. Since I didn’t have a ride to the Boston airport shuttle this time, the trip involved three buses to Logan and way too much sitting around waiting, but the only drama was a man on the second bus cut himself and bled all over his seat causing the driver to deviate from his route to drop him at a hospital. This made some of the passengers, including myself, late for the third bus. However, the third driver knew we were coming and would be stranded otherwise so thankfully waited for us. Other than that, it was twenty hours from my door to Paul’s, and I got to watch Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride” starring Jesse Buckley and Christian Bale who were both amazing and worked really well together. So far, this visit’s been non-stop, and I’m only now catching up on my NY Times puzzles and had just enough time to create the Loon collage above, but we cut up cardboard yesterday and I have plenty of tissue paper and xeroxes of bird images to make more.

In the meantime, we saw the Trish Murtha exhibition at The Baltic. As you can see from my snapshot above, the photography was brilliant but the curation was, to my eyes, unfortunate. We also spent an afternoon pruning and weeding the jungle that is Paul’s back garden and have done a lot of shopping. Mostly groceries, but there was a bus ride out of town to a DIY store for materials Paul uses in his art practice that we couldn’t find in Newcastle. I also bought a vegan leather motorcycle jacket while looking for something more suitable for rain. The raincoat, I found yesterday. It’s transparent, plastic and leopard print but looks very “Vivienne Westwood Cool” and will definitely keep me dry. There was a dinner party at Shehla’s for Ian’s birthday on Saturday and that was good fun and relaxed. Yesterday we were meant to rest because Monday we took the Metro to South Shields and then the ferry across the Tyne to North Shields where we had lunch before walking through Tynemouth, below, and up the coastal beach to Cullercoats and were exhausted. But yesterday was spent doing admin and errands instead. So tomorrow, perhaps, as today we’re shopping for an easel and watching the solar eclipse if the weather cooperates. No rest for the weary apparently - on with the day

It’s been a busy week and there is lots I could report, but what I most want to discuss is the collage workshop I ran on Thursday. As I mentioned last week, I wasn’t sure if it was going to take place until two sets of brothers signed up together making it a Go. As it happened, those same four boys didn’t show and I was left with another teenage boy and a nine year old girl, both of whom blew my mind. Since I had set up supplies for six, the gallery owner and I made collages too. Along with the colored tissue paper, glue sticks and crayons I’d provided, I also had a stack of old New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines as well as a folder of xeroxes of bird photos. After I showed the kids the samples I had prepared as examples and explained my process, they both launched into their projects. I watched the boy obliterate the xeroxes he’d selected by covering them with slices of magazine and wadded up tissue that extended off the cardboard he adhered his work to. He went through a few glue sticks and wound up with something both feral and very sophisticated.The nine year old girl got the brief right away and impressed me with her calm focus as she cut up birds to create a fantastic, fantasy creature - I could not believe it was her first collage. Then, in a moment of genius, she folded and unfolded several sheets of tissue to give her bird an enormous crest that also extended off the cardboard by at least a foot. The work was inspired and inspiring, so much so I did the untitled pelican at the top of this post during the workshop, and then did the vulture below at home two days later.

Before I properly start this post, I realized that last week I posted the first paragraph twice without the second one, but that has now been fixed. My apologies. Anyway, another early morning sitting by the open window in my comfy chair. Back when it occurred to me to move the bed out of this room and turn it into a studio, I never thought about sitting by the window in this very chair to write in my journal and drink my first cup of coffee in the morning. I slept in here and changed my clothes but that was it because it never felt right as a bedroom. I only hung out in here after the room switch, although sometimes it was too messy to do it. That changed with the series of professional studio visits I had earlier this year. The room got progressively tidier, more organized, and once the antique dresser finally made its way out and into the other room by the bed, it became more spacious and actually inviting to sit in. It still gets messy but everything has a place to go once I’m done with it. At the moment, there’s framing going on but nothing else to distract me.

In the meantime, I have news. Peaches, the orange bird with the fuchsia background from last week’s post, has sold. And this project I keep referring to but am still unable to discuss yet, and which by the way has a great deal to do with the tidying up of the studio, took another step forward towards fruition. It’s big, and I promise it will be worth the wait once it happens but the spooky old woo-woo Irish in me doesn’t want to jinx it. And as you can see, there are two new paintings, Cadet at top and Patience above, both on canvas and smaller than other recent pieces that will be at the Ali Gray Gallery for the Birds of a Feather show which opens this Friday. I’m not sure if the collage workshop will take placeyet, but I have a long to-do list for the show and of course, the big UK trip next week. Next week! Yikes! Best get cracking, Maureen - on with the day.

Greetings from my tidy and reorganized studio, where I now spend my cool mornings sitting in a shabby, uber-comfy, overstuffed vintage swivel chair by an open window, unless of course it’s closed because of the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that have been plaguing us lately. I had already put up sheer linen curtains during the first heatwave this summer to keep the afternoon sun from making the studio unbearable. Curtains also made the room, along with plants and an old Turkish rug protecting the landlord’s carpet, quite homey. Then my printer died a couple weeks ago leaving space on the desk for collages instead of doing them on my tilted drafting tabletop. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m preparing to run a workshop at the gallery and part of that has involved my creating collages to use as examples. The workshop may not happen now, but I’m okay with that because it has motivated me to do the two beauties above and below. I’m especially happy with the hawk, which was meant to be simple enough for kids to follow but took on a complexity that, dare I say it, is quite sophisticated.

Also in the works this week was Peaches, below, an 18x18” continuation of the Fauvist theme I wrote about last week. Fuchsia and orange, seriously? It works for me, and women in particular really like her, although I’m not sure about the men. All I know is I’m excited about exploring this sort of palette again since the early birds in the series had some very odd color combinations and I’m not attempting to imitate nature. I was getting rigid with that until working in black and white with the Charcoal series freed up my approach - as did the switch to canvas which lends itself to a softer texture that comes across cleaner, and, here’s that word again, sophisticated. Some use the term Post-Modern about my new pieces but I don’t think of my work that way. I’m more of an intuitive, instinctive painter. So bring on the fuchsia/orange and maybe chartreuse palette - on with the day.

Late again, I’m busy preparing for my UK trip, which is just three weeks away. Paul suggested we do a quick visit to Liverpool while I’m there, and since I’m the one with the Expedia hotel discount credits, I got to decide where we’ll stay. I honed in on the waterfront close to the Tate and found one in the Beatles’ old stomping grounds. Paul is in charge of the train tickets and keeping me entertained. No small task, and it’s a good thing two more bird paintings have sold this week at the Ali Gray Gallery so I’ll have a bit of mad money to spend while I’m away. Speaking of art sales, I’m happy to report that of the twelve paintings I had in last summer’s show where only my giclees sold, I have just one piece left. That odd delay also happened with my first show at The Commons, I only have one of those sixteen birds left now too. Lesson learned, it’s about the time and place, not the work, so there’s hope for the charcoals yet.

Another lesson learned is no work is safe from being repainted until it leaves the studio. Case in point, Peony, who I declared finished last week without feeling the love, then I redid the beak in a pale grey and VOILA, she was done and back in the gallery. I also revised the Crow, below, and retitled it Corvette. It’s now a companion to Savannah, at the top of this post - that’s its midway progression above as it slid into Fauvism, an art movement, which included Matisse, that got its name in 1905 because of the artists’ use of shocking colors. According to Google “Fauvist painters radically detached color from its descriptive function in nature. For example, instead of painting shadows with black or dark brown, a Fauvist might use vibrant purples or deep oranges to create a sense of emotion, rhythm, and visual harmony. Their work prioritized subjective, emotional expression over objective reality.” I totally relate. I’m ready to go all Wild Beast on a new canvas but first I need to do another collage for the workshop I’m running at the gallery before I leave for Newcastle. Only three more weeks to go, Maureen - best get on with the day.

I’ve finally finished, I hope, reworking Peony, the pink cockatoo at the bottom of this post, and have started a 12x12” canvas of a vulture. Peony drove me crazy as I realized, once again, how done I am with wood panels for the time being. Or perhaps, it was the process of reworking a piece altogether. There have been some that were quite successful but in general, a rework takes longer than starting something new, and whatever bothered me in the original version still bothers me in spite of any major changes I make in color or composition. Anyway, I think the cockatoo is done and I can get on with the new vulture.

I love the challenge of a vulture. Getting beyond what they represent and how they look to make them beautiful intrigues me. Some of my strongest pieces have been vultures, even if they don’t necessarily end up looking very vulture-like. Anatomical accuracy is not the point, I’m going for a bird’s integrity and godliness. Which Harlow, the horned owl at the top of this post, has in spades. People love owls and they are fun to paint. I have done a couple dozen of them so far and will continue to create them. One reason is that they look good at every stage. Above is Harlow’s first stage, and below he is halfway through. I could have stopped at either point and it would have worked, but for me, they were both still works in progress while I waited for the owl to come alive.

Enough about that - I have news. I bought tickets for a trip to see Paul in the UK the other day. I’ll be there for the month of August, which for those who live in Provincetown year round, is the best time to get out of here. July sort of sucks too, but by August the locals are moments away from slapping or screaming at any random half naked, oiled up tipsy creature who is expecting, demanding, to be entertained or indulged because, as they will loudly declare, they are on vacation. But somehow August suddenly opened up on my calendar and I get to miss it this year. Yay! In the meantime I have paintings to do for the upcoming show and a workshop to prepare for before I go, so on with the day.

A little late this week, I’ve been reworking a wood panel piece that has taken way too much of my time the last few days. I decided to change the background color. In fact, I changed it a few times, which left the bird all shingatz. That is, I believe, NY Italian for a hot mess. I finally set it aside and started a new 18x18” canvas of an Owl that will be a companion for Cereza, the gorgeous creature above, which I love. Perhaps the problem with the one I was reworking is the surface of a wood panel doesn’t suit how I apply paint now. I started working on wood in the mid-90s when I was painting with egg tempura, which requires a rigid foundation. I often washed acrylic in between layers of the egg tempura as well. Desperado, below, is one of my Archetypal Angels from that period. It was a series to honor my many friends who had died of AIDS, and when 9/11 happened, there were Angels to honor people I knew who’d died then too. I stopped painting the Angels soon after I moved to Cape Cod. Actually, I stopped painting altogether for a few years to do some writing instead. Then Trump got elected the first time and I had to pick up the brush again - hence the Birds.

Also, good news this week. The check for the three paintings that recently sold to my follower on Instagram arrived and I now can afford to buy that elusive UK round trip ticket and I plan to go see Paul in August. In addition, another piece has sold as well so I’ll have a bit of money to spend while I’m there. Next sale, I’m getting new glasses to replace the ones I got after the cataract surgeries that have never been quite right. In the meantime I intend to paint through July so the gallery has new work for the show in August and prepare a few more collages for the workshop I’ll be doing at the gallery then too. Oh, and yesterday, I received the release form contract for a project I’m not ready to discuss yet but when I am, I promise it will be exciting. And finally, I attended a lovely opening ceremony for Province Post, a new housing complex where they have Ruckus and Electra in their permanent collection - here they are in their new home. OK, on with the day - time’s a wastin’.

There are two new birds this week, Pettirosso, the Robin above and Corvus, the Crow below, but I want to write about how I’ve I have slipped into what feels like a natural routine, especially now the sun rises earlier. I usually wake up around 5:30 and hop out of the bed a few minutes later to go straight into the studio. No coffee, no music, no time to think. Just me and whatever piece I’m working on. Perhaps I should explain - a few years ago, after having a workstation in my living room that was easy to keep organized and tidy when the wood panel paintings were quite small, the art space became messy and unmanageable with too many storage boxes and Ikea trolleys taking up valuable real estate in my living space. So I invited two friends over for lunch and we moved my bed out of the bedroom and turned the bedroom into a studio. Once the move was made, it was a relief not to be confronted by the mess when I came through my front door. The bed has moved within the living space a few times more until I settled on the current arrangement, but basically I have a studio apartment with an art studio attached. But I digress, let’s get back to my first thing in the morning routine. After an hour or so in the studio, I finally make coffee. I have a set routine after that as well which includes making my bed and writing in my journal and doing most of the puzzles from the New York Times website. Sometimes I go back into the studio, but generally I bring the piece out into the living room so I can contemplate my next move, or do the thinking I’d jump out of bed to avoid. Eventually I make breakfast, or by that time, brunch and get ready for my daily online hour or two with Paul. It’s only after we sign off for the day that my routine opens up for other things. Sometimes I paint a bit more, sometimes it’s laundry and domestic chores, or writing a Substack or a walk to the beach. Yesterday it was a walk into town for the Sunday crossword puzzles at the library and a visit to the hardware store for the doodads I need for framing. The day before, I got a haircut and today I met Kevin Sessums, who’s in town for a few weeks, for coffee at Joe’s. In the meantime, I have good news. In addition to the two pieces that sold earlier this month, someone who has followed me on Instagram for a couple of years was here on vacation. To make a long story short, I met him at the gallery and he bought three of my paintings. So Yay, I may be able to afford that elusive ticket to the UK this summer after all. Ok, on with the day.

Spent, or feral, are words for how I felt this week. Nothing serious, but I did require a couple days of Advil and horizontal time on the sofa in front of the TV. I managed, however, to paint Domaius, the genus name for Emus, above. He went the way of all the Emus I’ve painted, meaning he started out scary because Emus can be scary, then he got goofy because Emus are definitely goofy, then he went all Dr. Suess before being scary again. It was at that point I began to hate it, which I’ve learned is a sure sign that a piece is almost done. All Domaius needed was softened eyes and a slightly sly upturn of the lips to be finished.

Cookie, above, was the first of my Emus. It was also the first piece that sold at my first gallery show of the Birds. I’d sold a dozen or so on my own to people I knew but strangers bought Cookie and she already had a red dot when I arrived for the opening of the show. Stormy, below, came next and was named for Ms. Daniels who was all over the news at the time. She was long gone by the time I started selling at craft fairs and was the face on the only line of tee shirts I made. I believe I’ve mentioned the little boy who burst into happy tears when his dad bought him one of the Stormy giclees, which I framed for them then and there.

I won’t show you all of the Emus but I would be remiss if I didn’t include Fracas, the collage I made on a gold background with a print of Vago, my favorite of the Emus, along with the War of the Angels mayhem. Those three older Emus are good examples of the goofy, sly and scary phases Domaius went through before I framed him when he was barely dry so he and last week’s Cardinalis could head over to the Ali Gray Gallery to replace pieces that had sold. Best get cracking on more new work, I thought those two were for the August show.

After almost a year of focusing on the contrast and balance of black and white, I felt compelled to return to color. Only now I’m working with the scale of the charcoals. It’s hard to tell from a photograph, but Cardinalis, above, is 18x18” and marks a return to canvas, which I haven’t painted on in decades. Luckily I had save all my large, soft brushes from way back then when I was doing complex oils that were often quite big. I still have slides of that work but not the technology to digitize them now, although I do have this shot Bold As Love, below, from that period. What it has in common with more current work is my use of gold paint as a base or background. It was inspired by a display of dinosaur eggs at The Natural History Museum I saw at the time. Wait. Dinosaur eggs, right, so birds may have been a passion of mine back then as well.

Also this week, I did another study for the kids workshop I’m doing later this summer that I mentioned last week. I have a few more ideas I’m excited about and I’m happy with how this Bluejay turned out. It’s rice paper, colored tissue paper and charcoal on cardboard, and perhaps too messy for a pristine gallery so I may need to streamline the process since my other ideas are even messier. In the meantime, I started a new painting this morning with a metallic gold background on a 12x12” wood panel of an Emu, which is clearly a dinosaur and could be thought of as a full circle moment.

The opening at the Ali Gray Gallery went well enough for the show to be extended an extra week, and I have some good news I can’t talk about yet, but Facebook keeps reminding me of my trips to Newcastle in May of both 2024 and 2025. The pictures from those trips make me a little sad since I was supposed to be moving there this week. At least that was the plan until current political and financial circumstances got in the way. I’m not starving and my bills are paid, but airplane tickets right now are out of the question. I do see Paul online everyday, and making art helps. It has always helped. Some of my best work was done under duress - those dinosaur eggs? I was miserable back then and they came out great. OK, on with the day.

I didn’t think I was going to have a new piece to show you this week, but I rolled out of bed at dawn this morning and did this Dove study. I have a couple projects coming up and the first one is a workshop I’ll be doing at the Ali Gray Gallery at the end of July. It’s geared for tweens and teenagers, so I thought tissue paper, collage and paint markers on sheets of cardboard keep it from getting too precious. Given that, I intend to create several examples of what one can do with one or all of those supplies. The Dove started with charcoal and gesso, followed by a black ink brush pen. I loved it so much, I jazzed up the cardboard with a metallic gold colored pencil background. I can’t wait to play with tissue paper and cut up magazine pages, I envision feathers galore. Maybe that will be next.

In the meantime, Facebook reminded me that it’s been 15 years since I washed ashore in Provincetown and spent that first summer living in this cabin. There’s a certain bird that starts to sing at 3am in the spring and summer and stops before the sun comes up. I believe that bird is a Robin, which so far, I haven’t painted yet. They have a rather syrupy chirrupy song of several notes, a brief pause and those same notes again, ad nauseam. I know, since not only did they wake me up every night in the cabin, but they’re doing it now as well even when the windows aren’t open. I prefer the complex, lyrical call of cardinals, or the chatter of a hoard of sparrows hidden in a hedge until something spooks them and they scatter en masse to the safety of a nearby tree.

And yesterday, I followed this magnificent blue-faced turkey on a main road in town. I’m not sure why he was alone, they’re usually in a mob scene gaggle, and he was so handsome. Ok, on with the day - until next week then.

Definitely late this week, sorry. The Commons show went very well - the opening was packed, as you can see from the photo above, and I held my own talking to strangers about my art. The show’s down now but while it was up, I began work on a complex grant proposal with eight essay sections that are similar but with slight variations. It’s project-oriented and yesterday I worked out the detailed budget for it so I’m almost done. This also stems from The Commons show as well, but let me backtrack a bit. The morning after the opening, I got a call that the Snow Owl had sold and they had cash for me to pick up. I assumed it had sold to one of the women I spoke to about it the night before, but it turned out it went to a woman who saw is image in the local press and drove forty miles to be there when The Commons opened to buy it. Her ATM only gave her enough cash for a deposit, so she drove the forty miles home empty handed but happy with her purchase. She then drove the same forty miles back and forth a few days later with the balance, but this time she left with the Snow Owl and I filled its space on the wall with the Harpy that had been on the Youtube show that I’d kept aside in case this happened. Very cool, very smooth, but while I was there that first morning collecting my cash, a man walked in hoping to find me. He was from the Provincetown Conservation Trust and had seen the windows project and wanted to talk to me about an event he was planning for next spring. I had already been thinking about the project I’m now doing the grant proposal for, and speaking to him pulled my ideas together. Also very cool, and this time serendipitous.

But wait, there’s more. Besides finishing Gatsby, the Starling above, while the show was in progress, and the SIDE Gallery online show that I have a photograph in going live, one of the women I spoke to at the opening was a curator and she contacted me a few days later about a show she was putting together. After some discussion, we settled on two large pieces that weren’t in The Commons show or part of what is going to the Ali Gray Gallery next week, and she came by yesterday with a contract and took the two pieces with her. They had been on my studio wall since my last Commons show in 2024. Luckily, I had the charcoals safely at home by then so my studio wall is not lonely. And if that’s not enough, I also went on a job interview last Thursday that reminded me of my internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Battery Park. I’ve written about it before at least a year ago, it was post-9/11 and part of a program I was in at Pace University, and I was very happy there. I spent most of my time greeting visitors at my reception desk, and on slow days, I read books about Native American art that I borrowed from their research library. I also was a hostess at their film festival, where I met all the Dances With Wolves Indian actors, and attended workshops for kids because they were stringing beads and making masks and corn husk dolls. It was profoundly inspiring and led to me making my own masks, like Feather below, and the papier-mâché sculptures that are some of my best NYC work. So yes, I’ve been busy, I still am, and time’s a wastin’ - on with the day.