Ispirato

When I was a kid in Indiana in the 1960’s I loved to take my little dolls outside to play. Does anyone remember Liddle Kiddles? Or Dawn - from the late 60’s? I made fairy wings for Dawn and built a home for her under a bush that I could crawl under and hide. I didn’t want the neighborhood boys seeing me play with dolls. I still liked riding my bike and shooting hoops with them. But I also loved imaginative play with dolls.

I found these toadstools growing in Beechworth, Victoria Australia last month when I was attending the Feltmakers Convergence. I don’t think I’d ever seen this variety in “real life” though this is the sort of toadstool pictured in all the colorful illustrations of fairies and elves, isn’t it? The red caps with white polka dots are classic fairy toadstools. The Liddle Kiddles and my Dawn-fairy doll would have loved these! 

Someone at the convergence told me they are highly toxic and shouldn’t be handled. (There is more where this came from … )

I’ve uploaded the initial list of exhibitors to the Paperific Expo web site. This is the big expo on the 12th, 13th and 14th of October. It is Australia’s favourite papercrafts event, attracting visitors from around the country and even from New Zealand . . . and usually a few folk from Singapore or Hong Kong. Pretty cool.

This year will be our first at The Pavilion at Waterfront City in Docklands. It is a great venue with heaps of parking, a tram stop outside the door and only a ten-minute walk from Southern Cross Train Station. The Pavilion is surrounded by cafes and eateries. I love the location, right on the water. And the building itself looks like a huge circus tent, though inside it is carpeted and air conditioned.

Anyway, today I went public announcing the bulk of our retail exhibitors and it feels really official now. “Whack-o!” as they say in Australia. “Yee-haw!” as they say in America. It is all systems go.

This is Laurie Mika’s work. I just love her icons. She makes a lot of the tiles from polymer clay. She stamps into it. You know I  love stamping in clay!

 Laurie has a book hot off the press called Mixed Media Mosaics and I’m looking forward to the arrival of my copy. I also wouldn’t mind owning a piece of Laurie’s work one day.

I’ve had an amazing week of connecting with artists on behalf of Go-Make-Art.com.  There have been emails exchanged with some pretty amazing artists - mixed media and textile artists - about teaching eclasses and  contributing articles to Astarte’s Mega-Zine. There are going to be 3 or 4 changes to the Panel of Experts come 1 August so emails have been flying back and forth about that . . . can’t leak any names yet, but it is all rather exciting!

I must have checked out 20 different artist web sites and blogs this week. Inspiring stuff. I like having a job that requires me to surf artist sites!�

The ultimate dream of any artist - to have your work hanging in a major museum.

Behold my lowly ATC, with my very own age-3 face stuck onto it. Here it hangs and I’m so proud!

You can do this, too.

Go to www.dumpr.net and play with your photos. Just for the fun of it.

This is not a picture of me. But it could be.

I suffer from self-doubt, sometimes. Do you know how I’ve come to recognize it? When I start procrastinating about undertaking some task on my ‘things to do’ list. Yep. That’s often a sign that I’m doubting my ability to do something well.

I gave a presentation recently to a group of artists about how to use the Internet to market themselves. I asked people to raise their hands if they didn’t yet have a web site or blog but had been thinking about it for awhile. A LOT of hands went up. So we looked at the excuses people were making for not developing a web presence, and “lack of time” and “lack of knowledge” were the two biggest reasons.

(There is more where this came from … )