"For the past few years I have been working on projects averaging 1 ½-2 years to complete. These allow me to apply specific details of changing weather patterns to my art. I am fascinated by extreme weather variations that have become the new normal and how these changes can be expressed using color and shape while exposing odd temperature leaps. These are created as patterns intended to visualize and reveal concerns about the human experience in relation to climate change.​"

"For 'Weatherscape' I created a 101 color pallet and assigned each color a corresponding temperature. A day is represented by a hexagon carved into 24 sections for each hour and each hour is painted the corresponding temperature. A central hexagonal section is painted with the mean temperature of the day. Each day of every month is woven together like a quilt and suspended about 1/2” from the wall.
Monthly units fit into one another like a behive. Months are identified with plates divided into 3 sections: Colors on left are the months' low; right the months' high; center the months' mean temperature. Running along the bottom edge is the entire color pallet (think map legend), numbered with coordinating temperatures.
'Weatherscape' will be completed by late summer 2017. Photos show about 70% of the project."
​
Check her website here!

Marilyn Keating creates remarkable stop motion videos using cut paper, created on an iPad. She also does stop-motion residencies with school children. The videos, one each of Marilyn's and one created by the children, may been seen on my personal and business Facebook pages. 

There is always a work in progress in Marilyn Keating's Cantina at the South Jersey Museum of Curiosities. 

Geopia, the beautiful home and gardens of Pia Sillem and George Connell, is my home away from home in Earl's Cove, BC.

Fourteen artists from Brattleboro-West Arts created a flag that gives a positive voice to the artists in our group. It is "​an assembled 'tapestry' of our collective voices to make statements supporting our values and beliefs... The tone of this piece is positive—what we stand FOR instead of what we stand against—to help engage all members of the public, to connect with each other and foster discussion and creative collaboration concerning issues we care deeply about." 
​There is a great article in the local paper, the Brattleboro Reformer, about his project. Click here to read it!

Today we marched in the annual Strolling of the Heifers parade, a special Brattleboro event. 

On February 9, I had bilateral anterior hip replacements: two bright new shiny hips as I think about entering my 70’s.
 
I spent almost a week in the hospital, first in acute care, and then in re-hab, before coming home to begin the long healing process. My time in the hospital reminded me of how recovering from surgery is a mindfulness practice, in a way that is similar to a train trip.
 
Traveling on a train (which I do frequently, to visit my kids) is like suspending your life, your responsibilities for a day. Yes, I can still do computer work, but internet access is spotty, and so I don’t really try to be connected. I have text conversations with very few people, so it does not require my attention. My cell phone hardly rings, and when it does, I rarely answer it.
 
All of this puts me in a kind of ‘bubble’ when I am on the train. There are no expectations, no responsibilities. The day is mine. I can choose to read, to eat, to gaze out the window. I usually do all of those things. The choices are totally mine. It is enforced slow-living; I relish the time.
 
During the first night in the hospital, post-surgery, I found a semi-comfortable, drug-induced position, and never moved. I was wakened frequently, to take more drugs, to have my vital signs tested. The breathing and thinking I was doing during that time, and during the other times of restfulness, reminded me of my train trips. It was a freedom. There were no expectations; I didn’t need to pay attention to e-mails or politics. I was again in my own little ‘bubble.’
 
It was, and still is, a time of paying attention to multiple small details. How to walk, for example: keep your foot straight, lift it up, bring it forward, press down the heel, then the toe. Repeat with the other foot. Repeat. Repeat.
 
Is this drug-induced rambling? Perhaps. I hope that I am more able, in the future, to still be appreciative of every skill, to take nothing for granted.