Preparations

The garden room has been reorganized to serve as an atelier.

This week has been devoted to preparing for the upcoming workshop with my very talented artist friend Gail Rieke. She gave 5 workshops in out atelier at the Maison Conti, but this is the first time she will be coming to Moulins. In Montmirail I had a huge studio, with a large table and an extra print room that easily accommodated a crowd. My atelier here is too small, so the garden room will be turned into our workshop. It’s an untested concept! Although the family has used this space at Christmas to do joint projects, and it has worked well. The table is quite long, though not too wide. I’m hopeful it can be just as comfortable as the space in Montmirail. Here there is much more of the out of doors to welcome activity as well.

One of Gail's workshops in the Maison Conti atelier.

At Maison Conti we also had space for many (if not always all) the participants to sleep. This time only Gail, her husband Zack and our dear friend and supporter Nelly will be staying with us. They will be in Daniel and James’ house, which has been very nicely arranged. The others will stay in a house together in Noyers, which also sounds like fun.

Before going back to the Bay Area in early August, James and Daniel completed their kitchen, which looks so inviting.

While I have been purchasing art supplies, reserving tickets to the various places we’ll be visiting, making menus and organizing the inside of the house, Rick is taking on the garden, which needs serious civilizing.

Outside their front door, James and Daniel created a very pretty new border.

Parts of the garden had run a little wild, but in the mornings while it’s still cool enough to work, Rick has been pruning, weeding, trimming.

Rick gets the wild climbing rose outside the living room (and above our underground storage room) under control.

The weather here went from incessant rain to relentless heat. J'exagère, but it does seem as if extremes are more the norm these days. By the time the workshop arrives in a couple of weeks, however, the warm summer weather will have ended. At this point we could easily wish for a little more rain to green up the lawns. We have had to do some hand watering, which is unusual for us.

I love the little Chinese lanterns which grow like weeds above the fish pond. 

This week we found a dead dragonfly on the steps leading down to the garden room from our kitchen. He was perfect. I photographed him and then mounted him in a shadow box to preserve.

The dragon fly joins the shelf with my other natural history collections.

In anticipation of the book I’ll be making in Gail’s workshop, I worked with the photograph in Photoshop to create an image for one of my pages.

I like to create unpredictable images using Photoshop overlays. You can take two (or more) photos and combine them in unexpected ways.

Taking advantage of the sunny days, I also did several cyanotypes which I can incorporate into my book project as well. This piece is rather large and can be either a cover or end papers.

Cyanotype photograph made from flowers from our garden. The image is exposed in the sun in a glass frame then developed in water,

I have definitely been most interested in creating images inspired by our natural habitat lately in my art practice. I have also been working on my on line shop to list some of my new items. It takes a certain amount of time and effort to market myself. It’s a somewhat long and haphazard project, as there is so much content already floating around out there. It is hard to get attention. But slowly and surely, it begins to come together. My lovely sister Liz talked me into joining Facebook, finally, as a way to advertise my shop. I have resisted over all these years. But I have actually met some interesting people doing some fascinating work in some of the groups I have joined. Feel free to come visit! I don’t post anything personal.

More Photoshop play with photographs of birds from the garden and gelli prints combined together.

I also started a YouTube channel and posted my fist video. It’s a flip through of the altered book I made earlier in the summer using the papers I sell in my shop.