Baby is 13

My son is 13 tomorrow. This image was taken a few years ago and is chosen because of the disguise that expresses the amazing creativity that is this young man. It is fun to discover new things by the lake and this trip certainly was one of those finding gold kind of days.

Tomorrow is a celebration of the gold in my life.

Coffee Roasting

Recently, we decided to try roasting our coffee. We purchased Sumatran green coffee beans from Just Us! with the intent to try roasting our own. Others in our family have been roasting coffee in a popcorn maker and haven't looked back. It is cheaper and the coffee tastes better. We thought we would give it a try. I awoke on Saturday morning and realized that today was the day as I looked in the coffee grinder and saw that our pre roasted beans had run out.

One piece of familial advice was to roast outside as the smell can hang in the air for quite some time. I did it in our back porch with the fresh winter morning air blowing in the open door. I felt like I was camping.

I did the first batch with the plastic popcorn maker lid on it and found it took a long time. The cold air was making it difficult for the beans to heat to the desired temperature to make things happen. For the second batch, I got rid of the plastic lid and fashioned a foil plate on top of the maker leaving a space for heat to escape. This sped things up immensely. You know things are working as the chaff from the beans start to blow off and they begin to turn a golden yellow colour. Stirring the beans occasionally with a chopstick helps to release the chaff. Soon they start to crack and not too long after that they crack again and little dark coloured specs pop out of the hopper. After doing some reading on coffeeresearch.org, I found out that the roasting limit is halfway into the second crack. I haven't tried roasting past the second crack so I am not sure of the halfway mark. Perhaps some more familial advice is in order. I decided that once beans were glistening with oil it was a good time to stop. The next experiment will be to roast and mix beans from other countries.

Epic Shift Visual Art

I spent this past weekend with creative youth from Huron County at the Epic Shift Youth Festival in Blyth. My role in the event was as Visual Artist Mentor. I had the pleasure of travelling to the high schools in Huron County gathering the current art work of students via their supportive art teachers. The result of our collective efforts made for a very vibrant and highly skilled collection of work. The viewers were impressed with the visual expression of these young people who ranged in age from about 14-24.

I purchased two of my favourites that happened to be for sale.

The energy and simplicity of this image comes to our home just in time for Valentine's Day. It is called Freedom of Feeling by Danielle Kehoe.

This painting is by emerging artist, Monica Eckert. It is called Shed Party or at least that is what was decided in the moment. There is something comforting about the gathering of people outside on a farm....a rural communion of sorts. I enjoy the simplicity and love in Monica's images of both the subject matter and the colour and paint.

New Eyes

I often remind myself, especially when walking in nature and looking at the great Lake Huron that is just down the street from me, to really look and see what is there. Lately I have been noticing the lake and its colour changes even as I stand there for 5-10 minutes to look. There are amazing and different colours out there. I am reminded of the children's book I am an artist.

Another place for me to really look and see and appreciate is in my own artwork. I have just scanned an encaustic piece that I haven't been valuing incredibly. It is fun to look at it in detailed segments to appreciate what is really there.


This piece is about 8"X10 inches and is created in encaustic. I haven't thought of it as one that I would share and sell because it is wax on canvas which is too flexible to support the wax properly. It could crack.

Regardless, it is fun to look a the imagery that has been developed.

I have long been intrigued by this image (left). It has a number of associations--the bull, devil, uterus... I choose not to go to a dualistic place of good or evil but honour its energy and my own impulse to represent it in my work.






Towers or torches or spears often emerge as talismans or places of power.
They come from dreams of Persian architecture and flying on magic carpets.





I love to draw and find ways to do it in the medium of paint. Scratching into the wax, rubbing with oil stick and wiping off the excess allows for a more gestural mode of representation. I will call this section (left) Scarab.






It is important for me to remember the beauty of the medium and to simply play without concern for imagery. It is good practice to look and see the gems that seem to effortlessly emerge from the wax.

Celtic Festival Artwork 2010

This year's Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Celtic Roots Festival artwork has emerged from the Celtic creative soup. It is a rooster! It was fun to draw because of the energy of the tail and the comb around the head. As usual I work on representing the four elements as animals. This year the plant world also plays a role. He is standing on the sun--calling us to wake up and celebrate.

My Hands

I find it amusing that on the day that I commit to creativity everyday I burn my right hand. Thankfully not in a debilitating way but one of those 3 hour this hurts! kind of things. A reminder of the importance of my hands. A reminder to slow down. I am not good at going fast.

Creative Action

My blog has been dormant for a while. Life as a supply teacher at local high schools has been a focus of my time and energy lately. Exams are coming up and there is less need for my role in that community of learning. So yes, I have a reprieve. Time to gather my creative wits within the luxury of more time.

I confess my studio is in a state of neglect, the result of dashing in and out leaving boxes of things and not sorting them and putting them away. A mouse has taken up residence finding solace in the stillness of little human activity. I found a chewed bar of soap in the sink yesterday--yum!

With the help of my very generous mom we are sorting through things and reducing my collections of things to make room for new creative energy. One great prize of my neglect was finding a bucket of rotting plant fibre intended to be left so that the fibres would break down to and become more manageable in my blender. After a couple of years we opened the bucket and it seems blender ready! No smell either--bonus!

I know there is always time to create you just need to show up says creativity guru Julia Cameron. Book creative time just like you do a dentist's appointment, says Jodi Ohl in a recent Cloth, Paper, Scissors article. A creative appointment with yourself is a lot more fun. OK. In the back of my mind I am reminded of my physical and mental fatigue after a day in the classroom but what could be better than some creative play to sooth my creative spirits? Is this where I make a 365 day commitment to creative activity every day for at least one hour? WOW that might be fun.

OK--oh my Goddess here we go.