Inbox/Outbox - Part One

The post office has been very good to me during the run of The Pulse. I received several unexpected packages.

First to arrive was a small deco that I had originally made as part of a Yahoo group back in July 2007. I am no longer a member of the group and had not still expected that it would come back to me. It was a nice surprise to find it in my mailbox. The theme was Foreign Text and below are some detail shots of the pages. Thanks to Jessica, Jan, Raquel, Kathleen, and Pat for doing such a great job on their pages.








Next to arrive was a RAK (Random Act of Kindness) sent by Julie from The Land of Lost Luggage. This mail art arrived in my mailbox totally unexpectedly.



Julie sent me these two beautiful pieces to thank me for effort that went into The Pulse. Thanks Julie! Your thoughtfulness is appreciated so very much.




I continue to be focused on a number of ongoing collaborations and am playing "catch-up" now that I have more time. I am working on a Nature Journal with Sarah Whitmire and this has evolved into one of my favorite projects yet. Here are just a few glimpses of pages I have worked on. I will post the completed journals when we are through.

Observations

In January I "finished" a painting called Observations. At the time, I was drawn to the simplicity of the piece and the bits of hidden text showing through. I think I was experiencing a phase, where I was exploring the beauty of backgrounds. And in this case, I was focusing on the idea of observing the layers that are inherent in life. The fact that what we see on the surface does not tell the whole story. Even then, however, I was not happy with this piece. I knew that it was incomplete and that I would come back to it at some point in the future. Well, the future is now. This past month I looked at the painting with fresh eyes and have added more layers and a central foreground figure...the tree. At this point, I still see this as a work in progress that I will continue to develop. And I think this makes sense, since what we observe changes as we change over time. I will post the results sometime soon. Here is the before...



And here is the after, with detail shots...





I have also continued to work on a number of collaborative projects, including one with Roxanne at River Garden Studio. Here are some glimpses at my most recent page. You can click on the details to see even more details.




And...here is a peek at a piece I will be finishing any minute now. Expect a posting of the complete piece later this week.