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.