Belfast Poetry Festival

The Belfast Poetry Festival was a blast! I remain humbled and flattered that I was an invited artist, paired with Jonathan Skinner from Bates College. We had a great time collaborating and only wish we had started earlier so as to delve even deeper into each other's work. But October 1 came quickly and now the exhibit will come down in just two weeks so those of you who haven't had a chance to get to the Belfast Library to see the show, better get on it! Some of Jonathan's poetry is exhbited alongside my work, as the pairings are in the other venues. Thanks to everyone who participated and performed. What an impressive turnout!

More pictures of Acadia

More pictures of hiking Pemetic Mountain in Acadia.

Hiking Pemetic Mt Acadia

Bart and I finally got to Acadai this past weekend. We hiked the only trail we had not yet hiked, and though challenging at first, this part was short lived and I found it to be one of my favorite trails in Acadia. Check out the photos.

Detail of Scroll

The scrolls are 27 inches wide and have 10 feet of printed surface area. They are block printed in black oil based ink on mulberry paper. While they look quite fragile the paper is tough. They are displayed unrolled off a shelf so that they hang a little bit away from the wall and move with air circulation.

The Messengers show at The Belfast Framer

Thanks to Vicki McDaniels, my show, called The Messengers, opens tonight at The Belfast Framer with a reception from 5-7 p.m. The installation presented a challenge this time as the scrolls are meant to merge with each other and create a continuous image that I am comparing to a kind of stream of consciousness. I had to do some of the printing on site, once I could see how the whole thing was coming together. Another thing that caught me off guard: When installed last year at Downtown Gallery the scrolls hung as individual pieces, and the breeze was not as extreme through that space as it is for whatever reason through the Belfast venue. This time the scrolls are lifting and blowing more than I anticipated; I like it that they move but not this much! I will be adding more weights to the bottoms tonight just before the opening...The exhibit will be up until June 27, with daily hours from 10-5 and Saturdays from 10-2.

Not so good at this

As they say, time flies...I'm not very good at keeping up with this. Ted, yes, I'm cyberized and you're good to join the ranks here...Between that last posting and this one I have 1. been on a five day canoeing trip on the St. John River where I discovered I could still enjoy camping and survive Class III rapids (with Bart in the stern of course, barking instructions), 2. plugging along trying to get clients' gardens installed in a timely manner, 3. trying to get my own kitchen garden planted between 80 degree days and frosts and 4. hung a one person show of my insect scrolls which will be up at the Belfast Framer through the month of June (see my page on the Downtown Gallery website at www.downtownartgallery.com until I have a chance to post an image here).

An introduction, even to those who know me

I have been meeting with clients, both current and potential, these early days of spring and I want people to know something about my background and gardening experienc. I am not a casual gardener...I am a passionate, well informed gardener, with an artistic eye, a Master Gardener from way back, having taken the course back in 1991 when we lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That wasn't enough though, and I went on to enroll at Michigan State where I could learn more, a lot more, about landscape design and maintenace and go on to graduate at the top of my class. It was a challenge--all that science! I was an artist, I had avoided science all my life. And I turned 40 as that program ended. It made me nervous learning about soil science and plant pathology--even the course titles were intimidating. But I loved the plant identification classes, and I loved learning the Latin names of plants, a new language. And that is what keeps me going in this business, the plants and the designing of gardens.