I am in New Mexico on retreat.  Working on some new art ideas and enjoying the community of fellow artists. The area is so very inspiring for color palette choices and imagery. The history of this area captivates my imagination and fills my mind with pictures.

We are about 20 minutes south of Taos and right along the Rio Grande River. Its great to finally have some experimenting and exploring creative time with no pressure to do it “right”  I’ll share with you some of the fruits of my cretaive labor soon-ish.

For right now I’ll leave you with another southwest picture!

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I’ve got my new large journal with me to record my ideas, thoughts, sketches, goals, successes and failures.

I’ve done a few pages in preparation for the trip. It’s been a good way for me to spark my creativity which has been dormant for awhile. As I work on the page, I get excited about making my ideas and sketches concrete.

For those that couldn’t make it, there will be information at www.craftcast.com on how to get a copy of the class. I think you will enjoy the “sparkers” and they can become a part of your creative/studio life. Here’s pic of my Chaos Cards- one of the ways to help your mistakes become fuel for your projects.

I “sparked” my own self finally a week ago or so and cracked open my new big white blank scary journal- and it is a LARGE one- 10″ x 12″- and christened it with pages of thoughts and sketches of new work I will start next month. I seem to have a fear of working large so decided to begin with a large journal, instead of my usual purse-sized journal. I’ll share some pics next post.

On October 20th I’ll be giving a class on Creative Sparks and I can guarantee we’ll have alot of fun along with good converstaion and ideas and techniques that you can use in your art life.

Please join us! Here’s the link to read more: www.craftcast.com/masterclass.html

I’ll have alot of ideas to share with you on some “tricks” to getting yourself in that studio when you either don’t feel like it OR you have the desire but not the focus (my problem at the moment). Alison has a geat post on her site www.craftcast.com with other topics we’ll be focusing on.

For me- this week is about cracking open and facing the scary white page of a LARGE new sketchbook I bought to document a new creative journey I am about to embark on. This new work is the result of alot of thinking, thinking, thinking I did this summer about what I want to be making.  I hope to share the journey with you over the coming year!

The pictures of books made from every conceivable material are truly inspiring. I haven’t yet had time to sit and savor every page slowly but I see that several book artists using polymer clay (including myself) have work pictured- check it out- its filled with great ideas!

I had many weeks there without a studio to work in- while we were camping etc.- but I did do a daily sketch of something that I saw that struck me design or art-wise and it was a good discipline. This small sketchbook has provided me with not only a great remembrance of what I saw and did, but a possible resource for new work. I’ll keep you posted on that.  Anxious to get back to making things as soon as I crawl out from under the pile of mail etc.

At many of the music and street festivals there are fabulously costumed mimes who change their pose as you drop a few coins in their box.  I find them fascinating and fun to photograph. I captured these two mimes in Avignon.

And one special photograph (I’ll upload at some point) I caught the mime putting on his makeup at a cafe while having coffee and a cigarette.

Home soon, and I am really looking forward to some time in the studio, hopefully following through on inspiration from the la Belle France!

Outside there is large garden art which is a delight to roam through.  La Cascade has a large stone pineapple on the gate leading down to the river.  I love to photograph the many statues to use as transfers or inspiration for figures.

I’ll be posting updated info about the 2009 workshops in France in about 2 weeks and hope you will consider joining me!

Beautiful timbered houses with windowboxes spilling over with geraniums, great peeling-paint and colorful doors (I love deteriorating surfaces) and something I especially love- the painted walls and garage doors that some villages seem to specialize in.

In Aix en Provence there are wonderful fountains around every corner.  Its been very very very hot so in addition to providing great photo ops I have been experiencing the joy of cool water on the back of my neck!