up north, and thoughts about stress

I went up north on the weekend to stay with my friend Jane Herrick, who was participating in the Herbster Art Crawl--open studios were being held by a number of artists in this small community on Lake Superior. Three other artist friends of mine displayed their work in Jane's beautiful studio also. Pictured above are Sandra Starck and Sally Bowker, with their work in the background (Sandra's prints and Sally's fabric constructions and paintings.)

It was good to get away for a day...I met some great people, networked and passed out brochures for my workshops, had an excellent dinner out with my friends, and walked on the lake shore on Sunday morning before I left. Beautiful rocks are everywhere on these beaches, and I found inspiration in their colors and textures.

The trip was a little pocket of relaxation in what has turned out to be a very intense month, with an unusually high number of demands and deadlines. It's all good and important stuff, and I guess I'm grateful to be busy. The present economy motivates me to accept almost any offer or possibility and run with it, which does make for a little craziness. That, of course, is true for almost everyone right now--the scramble to keep afloat.

I've never been one to insist that I need peace and quiet and isolation in order to work (having two kids while keeping my studio going made that pretty much impossible.) A normal amount of distraction and responsibilities is just fine with me. But when things edge into overload it is definitely stressful. The studio remains my refuge, and I'm working hard with good results (though pushing harder than usual past tiredness.) It's just much more difficult right now to emerge from there and deal with everything else--correspondence and business stuff, finances, paperwork, home remodeling, errands, other people's needs, regular household stuff, blah blah blah. Even my blog has suffered--I see it's been over a week since my last post.

This morning I woke up remembering my time just over a year ago at the artist residency in Catalonia, when all I had to do was paint, hike and eat. It seems like a dream to me now.  ¶ 8:23 AM