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.