Wild About Fiber

I'm excited to announce that I have been accepted as an artist in the gift shop at Bay Arts in Bay Village, Ohio, near Cleveland.  It is a beautiful complex that includes an Art Gallery, restaurant, and Gift Shop and is in a lovely area. I will have the Journey Guides for sale in the gift shop.  I hope you will look up Bay Arts if you are in the Cleveland area.   The Gallery space hosts regular events and is an open and inviting space.  You will feel when you walk on the campus that you are entering someplace special.  It is a delightful and fun space to walk around in.  In the summer there are concerts and farmer's markets to enjoy.  They feature many art classes.   I couldn't be more thrilled to have my work in the Gift Shop at Bay Arts.  Please go to their website to learn more about this wonderful art space:   www.bayarts.net  

Giggle Fest These little faces make me smile!  I hope they do that for you, too. Each one is unique, hand drawn and designed to bring a giggle.  I delivered new Journey Guides to Under the Stars in Batavia, Ohio, last week.  You can find the address on this page. It is time to replenish my supply, so I have been busy sewing and cutting out new Journey Guides and now stuffing the bodies, drawing the faces and deciding what "hair" they will get!  Along with all of that, I decided to re-design the tags that hang with each Journey Guide describing the characteristic that I assign to them.  Some are called Grace, or Skye, Nurturing, Joy or Fierceness.  As we travel through life, sometimes we find we want to work toward something.  Maybe we need to be more fierce in defending ourselves or even those we love.  These Guides are meant to be a reminder, and a reflection of what we already have within us.  We just need to bring it out and fine tun...

I recently started making Journey Guides again after 5 years.  They are fun little dolls that will hang on the wall and have characteristics attributed to them that we might need in our lives.  I am doing more embellishment on the bodies and more facial expressions on them.  I think they are fun and I hope you will as well as you decide which one you will choose to travel with! The Journey Guides are available at Under the Stars, 97 E. Main St., Batavia, OH 45103.  The shop phone number is 513-238-7913.  Under the Stars is a wonderful shop owned by Vicki Watson and she has the works of about 150 artists in the shop.  It's a gem of a shop and easy to find as it is right off of Rt 32 in downtown Batavia.  I hope you will check the shop out!

The Diversity Council at my place of employment brings many interesting events to us but one of my favorite is Dawali, the Indian celebration also called the Festival of Lights. Each year they bring in a Mehndi artist and sometimes I take part in that. I love the stylized design. The traditional dress is also inspiring to me as a figurative artist. I have been making a very simple figure lately so I decided to design one using a Bindi the Mehndi artist brought with her. She was offering them and I decided to put it on the covered button face I was drawing for my Indian doll. What fun! Someday I will make a larger figure with traditional Indian dress, but for now this makes me happy! What do you think? By the way, she has found a good home.  Somewhere she will be appreciated and I am happy about that!