Art Day! Come see me make something creative at www.moontreestudios.com.



This week, I thought it was about time to make a new set of my special Artisan Paper Beads, since it's been months since I made the last batch.


You may have seen (or made) paper beads before; usually they are created from scrap paper or magazines which have been cut up into long strips and wound to form bead shapes. Mine begin with a large sheet of handpainted paper which i paint with bright colors and designs, which I then slice up into long tapering strips and and roll into beads. After that I add layers of other papers and also my hand-drawn illustrations. Finally, I coat them in a thick layer of resin to protect them from moisture and wear.

So come have fun and see me get silly and painty. : )



And as usual, there will be plenty of madcap misadventures.

www.moontreestudios.com

Well, I was planning on putting this a little more eloquently, but I guess the jig is up. I have returned..... sort of.

I don't really like being a drama llama, so I'll do this as succinctly and quietly as possible. Yes, I just sort of up and left with no warning. Yes, I barely acknowledged a bunch of people who were really supportive of my projects here. Yes, I didn't even bother responding to a bunch of messages and emails I got wanting to know what the heck happened. No, I didn't suddenly up and die, nor did I forget you.  I neatly packed up all of my xanga projects, tucked them in a box, and put it away. If i'd suddenly decided i hated you or Xanga did me some terrible wrong oh boy would you have heard about it, or i would have just chucked the whole damn thing away!

In truth,, i spent a great deal of the past six months thinking about what i started here, and missing it pretty badly. And i do apologize, to each and every one of you who cheered me on, participated in a project, or just goofed off in the comments, because i couldn't have done that without you.

So here is the story, and there are some of you who might have already heard about it. Last summer in late August, my mother suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. I had already lost my dad two years prior to that, so her departure was a tough pill to swallow. She had been sick for a long time with severe lung disease, and towards the end of her life she couldn't go out at all and was becoming increasingly dependent on me to be her caretaker.

That's why we ultimately decided to buy a house in Maine together, so I would be right there if she needed anything. She was really excited and happy about starting a whole new life, but sadly she never lived long enough to see the new house. Kinda heartbreaking.

After that, I had funerals, family, lawyers, accountants, estate advisors, and all manner of crazy practicalities to cope with, and a steep learning curve to tackle. It became clear that making art had to go by the wayside while I dealt with the whirlwind of burdens placed on me. And once the brunt of it was over, my manic grief turned into a deep seated and pervasive depression, which i didn't emerge from until about a month ago.

I didn't make a damn thing. Not even a doodle. I just couldn't.

I really neglected this blog because my mother wasn't here anymore. I realize this is probably unfair to everyone else who liked reading about my art, but without her i had no heart for it. At least not on Xanga. Like i said, she didn't get out at all, and i loved the fact that she would go online on Monday and watch me make something or act all silly, and it would cheer her up. At the end of the day I'd get a phone call from her, all raspy and breathless, saying how excited she was about something i made. And after she died i couldn't come back to this art blog, knowing that at the end of the day the phone wasn't going to ring.

I mean, fark, I still go on big crying jags because I can't call her up and tell her I got into a gallery show last month, or that I'm going to paint a mural in our new house, or that i just really love her and miss her like hell, and I do all of this because i want her to be proud of her flaky artist daughter.

But no more tears for now, my lovelies, because Art, like love, is as perennial as the grass.  The ice began to thaw here in Maine about a month or so ago, and i came down to my new studio, turned on the lights, and began to draw. I have made many things in the past few weeks, and i suppose have been waiting for the right time to tell the world again.

I started a new blog on Wordpress, partly because it's a little more versatile than Xanga, and also because there are some old memories which are part of this blog, and I feel ready to finally leave them behind. I would like it if you guys would come to see me there, and I have been working on a new way to update Xanga remotely from another site, which allows me to post updates to a bunch of places at once. (that Etsy pulse was me fiddling with the controls..... i actually didn't realize it had posted here until i heard a hullabaloo from this end, ha!) That way, when I update the wordpress blog, I can post an update here on Xanga which notifies you that I've posted something there if you want to come visit. The juicy stuff will be on Wordpress now, but you can still comment or email me or message me however you like, here or there. Or EVERYWHERE!

You can either get there through the link above, or just go to www.MoontreeStudios.com


Anyways, I will be posting a project tomorrow on the Wordpress site, which is a big deal because it's in my new studio! and it's for a gallery show I'm doing in April. I told them about Art Day and they thought it would be cool to see how I incorporate spontaneous-making-stuff with participation from my readers.

So that's about it. Again, I'm really sorry for being gone so long, but here's to an abundance of creativity from here n in!