Cheers!

"Every year you make a resolution to change yourself. This year, make a resolution to be yourself."

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I think that is about as good advice as any. I am sure by now you have received a million messages about making resolutions-or not. I don't make resolutions as I am an incessant list maker so therefore have too much to do already.

I have been focusing on ceramics and my Etsy shop as it is pretty hard to eco print in this part of the world as all the plants are asleep. Ceramics does have a meditative quality about it; I listen to books while rolling the clay out and cutting out the buttons or pendants. I did do some experiments with the mucky leaves in the flowerbeds, with mixed results, as expected. The thing is that by now most or all of the chemicals that produce color in the leaves are soaked out and washed away (leaves that have been saved and pressed are a different matter-more on that later), but here are some samples of what I did get:

The top picture is a maple leaf that must have travelled from across the street, over my house and into the backyard; the bottom is black walnut. The orange/rusty marks are onionskins. This was done on silk noil, a fabric with quite a bit of texture, so the prints aren't as crisp as they would be on something like crepe de chine.

We had a good Christmas, I got a wonderful book called "Blue: In Search of Nature's Rarest Color" by Kai Kupferschmidt. It goes through the history of the study of color and then has sections about plants, birds, animals, and sea critters. Oscar, as you can see, got a catnip pillow from a dear friend of mine in Portland Oregon. And for some deranged reason seems to be a fan  of the book as well, he has already managed to put teeth marks in it (see bottom right hand corner of the book). I practically have to lock myself in the bathroom in order to read it, otherwise he is trying to take it away from me!

So, January will be spent hacking away at the never ending to-do lists. Updating email lists, rewriting a syllabus or two, deciding on an art fair schedule, taxes, etc. We haven't gotten much snow this winter, which is a shame. Aside from needing the moisture, when chained to a desk staring out the window, snow is much nicer to look at than the gray foggy winter we are having.

Happy New Year!