nexti'm working on my next show, coming up in august, at gallery fraga. this is a peek at my work zone.

new scarfit's still in progress but i couldn't wait to see the pattern taking shape so i blocked the work so far, probably not a good idea until it is finished. now i know how to make an imitation missoni top using the same stitch pattern.... ....using koigu yarn.

maceratedlately i've been fascinated by the form of flowers as they are ravaged by the elements. my early mentor, angela danadjieva, used to buy a single stem of orchids and left them on her desk for months, watching and relishing the sublime forms as they withered and decayed. in college we studied "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", by edmund burke, and i was rapped by the notion of beauty in decay. this has permeated my perception of idealized landscapes, and i guess in a way buttresses my devotion to providing habitat for wild species. when i see developers wipe a site clean of all it's indigenous materials i feel a blow to the stomach. degredation of habitat not only happens in china or south america but right here in a place where nature commands attention by it's enormous scale. when a builder, just for the heck of it, stripped the understory from the forest behind our house did he know that all the critters that used that place for forage and shelter would be displaced or killed? it was nesting season. the pheasants are ground nesters. was a generation wiped out? with a verdant garden the pheasants are here far more than they used to be when the forest was replete with hiding places. i just wish more would not see native habitat as an object to subdue, but as a nursery for a myriad of interconnected indigenous species.

is it fabric?no it's just a hosta leaf that was corrupted in photoshop. photoshop is so cool how it can change the perception of an object by adjusting its color. we are so conditioned to only think of leaves in terms of green or fall colors. but what if a leaf were cobalt blue? would we perceive it relative to the status of a flower? instead of just a leaf?

pistilokay, so i'm going to weigh in on all the da vinci code rhetoric and give a plug to the divine feminine. in the middle of a flower is the pistil. it is the female reproductive structure of a flower. all the other parts are arranged around this central figure. she is the axis around which all of nature rotates.oil on canvas, detail from 9 x 12" painting, from an exhibit of botanical paintings.

transformedinspired by the book "the art of chopping up a sweater" i bought a used men's golf sweater, felted it, removed the ribbing on the cuffs and bottom of the sweater, then added the decorative knitted trim and some flowery brass buttons from my grandmother's button box.

these leaves look as if i used my pinking shears on them. it's in the saxifraga genus. i'll have to try to find the tag for it to find the species name.

resplendentit amazes me how fast everything grows this time of the year. many plants in the garden are reaching full blown glorious mature size and grandeur. collecting tiny plants from arboretum and botanical garden plant sales over the years and then watching them expand every year to this, the year when they finally look fabulous is pure joy. it was especially so last night, just after dusk, when it was still warm and the white of the abundant viburnum flowers glowed in the diminishing light.knitter's view, oil on canvas, 4" x 4"

this is an experiment in animation....

faggottingprobably twelve years ago i bought this eyelet fabric and faggotting with the intention of making some dainty p.j.s for my daughter. after lying in wait in the stash closet their time had come to manufacture into something else for my daughter. she had seen an eyelet skirt at a local shop that she loved and which cost around $150. knowing full well that i could easily make the same thing for nothing i went home, pulled out a pattern (also stashed away for years) that was the exact replica of the skirt in the store (three tiers of gathered fabric with an elastic waist), pulled out the fabric and at last it would all come together into something new. what i didn't expect was how delightful the marriage of the eyelet and the faggotting would be.
it makes me crazy that real quality fabric stores are disappearing all the time. just this year one of the best quilting stores in seattle closed. a couple of years ago a local store with gorgeous fabrics closed. no one seems to enjoy sewing anymore to support this sector of the marketplace. i know fabric has become expensive and labor is cheap so why sew? because like with anything hand made there is a great sense of accomplishment when you make an object, especially when it is useful. having something one of a kind, instead of one of thousands, is also a lure of making things by hand. yes it take time and skill but the results are ultimately far more gratifying than plucking something off a store shelf where someone somewhere was paid next to nothing to make it for you.
if you know how to sew and a young person you know doesn't please teach them how to sew (i'm a 4-H needle arts leader...teaching the next generation to appreciate needle arts is very important to me)! you can make just about anything...it's not limited to clothing. i just made a dry bag for the dinghy last weekend etc. etc.

bill jensen, one of my critics at the vermont studio center, told me that if you don't like a painting come back to it later and work on it again. well, this painting has been sitting around for three years and i recently decided to crank up the colors on it. i like it much better than before. i think working with digital media lately has changed my sense of color use for my oil paintings. i am stepping into bolder contrast, higher key colors and enjoying the results.
permeation, oil on panel, 20" x 30"

flower girlfor the past few days our cat has come inside with brunnera flowers on either her back or on top of her head. i think it is so cute.... joy is found in the minutia of life.

it's that celebration time of the year...
happy anniversary + happy birthday
ah buttercream! it is just so much fun to play with.

Happy May Day!i dug up a few bulbs of erythronium (fawn lily) from the wilds surrounding my in-laws old house, in the foothills of the oregon cascades, years ago. now they are flourishing in our garden, happily seeding about the understory, after being moved from our old garden. what a pure and delicate wildflower!

prunus padusi LOVE LOVE LOVE this tree (european bird cherry) which was blooming right outside our favorite restaurant in portland, oregon, when we celebrated an anniversary dinner years ago. a rare tree, not easily found in nurseries, i took a cutting and it survived the long drive home and sent out roots. it was continually mangled by maurauding deer until we put up a fence! but a persistent tree it is and flourishes as a huge blooming wonder right now. i love how is says, "happy anniversary" every year with its ever increasing grand display.ahhhhh spring!

progress on my hankie quilt

from a larger oil painting about wildflowers of northern california

will the real kwanzan please stand up?clap...clap....clap.....clapyes, the one on the right is the real kwanzan.

another quilting project:transmigration oil to fiber: a viennese sucessionist painting into applique + patchwork

T e M b L o R
as a native of san francisco i grew up with a memory, a memory not of my own, but a collective potent memory of a city. a city destroyed one day.

that day was one hundred years ago today, when the city burned after the unfathomable temblor ravaged water mains everywhere and the infernos spread with ease. there was always the threat while growing up that it would happen again. in an abbreviated form it did, one month after i left my beloved city with my new born baby and husband. i felt so bewildered to learn of the misfortune of my friends who lived and died during the quake. i wondered how our former apartment building fared with its tenuous structure. i had visited a college classmate the week before we left san francisco and then heard that she had died in the collapse of the oakland viaduct on that violent day in 1989. all the years of warning that the big one was coming and i had left just before it destroyed my friend's marina district apartment. my mom called the night of the earthquake to say that she could see the city burning from her home across the bay. burning. my beloved city burning again. how could i be a native san franciscan, experiencing dozens of quakes growing up and not be there? was i lucky to have just left? in a tiny apartment, hundreds of miles away, stacked to the ceiling with our life's contents in boxes, we were helpless but to watch in horror of the devistation on t.v.

all rebuilt or torn down now. and a more beautiful city benefits from the removal of the damaged embarcadero freeway. there have been many earthquakes in the northwest since i moved here, one good shaker occurred within a week of moving away from the white city. but i think i have a more pronounced sense of respect for the power of the earth than the typical northwesterner. i had never seen street trees jolt back and forth like they did here in the quake of 2001. the sound of that quake was enormous. when the quake just kept shaking (in the most persistent quake i've ever experienced) and the wine bottles in the shop next door were crashing to the ground i decided it was time to run out to the street and away from huge glass windows. an elderly woman was sobbing in the crowd gathered on the street. i tried to console her as we continued to feel the earth move under our feet. on the street i was not frightened but exhilarated to witness the earth's power.

we moved away from san francisco to start a new life. we wanted to stay. we adored the white city, where my son was born in the same hospital as i. walking to the legion of honor museum on weekends. buying focaccia from a bakery that made one thing, focaccia. going to molinari's deli for fresh pasta, cheese and wine. browsing and always spending too much at stout's architectural books. meeting friends for coffee at cafe roma and longing for the majolica next door at biordi. real bagels on geary street. tratoria contadina are you still there? loved your delectable pasta. satin moon fabrics, oh, the quality! walking to baker beach, just west of the golden gate. and my beloved toscana sourdough bread with the best crust in the world. strybing arboretum for the rarest of the rare plant sales, extraordinary lectures and picnics with friends. then across the bridge we would go to watercolor in the golden gate national recreation area in tennessee valley.

when i was in middle school i asked a family friend who had lived through the 1906 quake what it was like. as my memory of that conversation fades (why didn't i record it?!) all i recall was that she had to cook outside (as ordered by city officials to prevent further fires) and later spent weeks in a tent city, south of the city, a far cry from her indulgent lifestyle, before she rebuilt her life in a custom designed mansion in pacific heights by the illustrious bernard maybeck. she said that enrico caruso, who had performed at the opera house the night before the quake, vowed never to return to san francisco after he survived the quake.

i am a product of san francisco. and quakes factor into my everyday life. a customary suggestion, among many, by emergency agencies when i was growing up was to always have slippers next to your bed before you go to sleep at night. they are there, every night to this day.

happy anniversary san francisco. you survived the big one of 1906 and you will survive the next one.

(background painting above stir, oil on canvas, 24 x 30")

my latest quilt in progress it features a collection of japanese hankies that were given, one a year, to my mom from an exchange student that lived with our family thirty years ago. the hankies are too lovely to be stored away in a drawer. i'll continue to post the quilt's progress.