....it was an amazing week on the farm: part I

I spent a magical 9 days, June 18-26th, at the 13th Annual Fields Project Artist Residency. I'll split my recap into a few posts because I have a lot of photos that I would like to share. I stayed with the Pfieffer Family near Ashton, IL on their pig farm, and I'm glad to report that they have agreed to adopt me! ...do you like their license plate?! My toes are the green ones, painted in honor of the week, which was filled with laughter and an endless supply of rural artistic inspiration.

I'll start with the family farm dogs...this is Beauty.

...and Bebe, hard working farm dogs most of the time!

...and old, Tiger - he has quite a set of lungs!
Lots of kitties running around, too!
Pigs! I'll go into much more detail about these guys in the following posts. Momma cow and her calf...sorry Taryn, I forgot momma's name, baby'g going to be an 'L' name...I suggested "Louie", "Lester"....oh, how about "LeRoy"?
And this is Frosty (note the ears...struck with a little frost bite) and Daffodil in the background..they were really fun goats, totally engaging and loved attention! So beautiful.
A painting of them in process in my outdoor art studio at Castle Rock State Park.
Daffodil, so pretty.

Frosty was often 'standing' on the fence like this when I would get in my truck to leave for the day.
Look at that mug!
...more to come!

Thankful in the Cascades...

I took a long overdue trip out to my brother's for Thanksgiving, we went up to his cabin in the Cascade Mountains, it was heaven...every sight, breathtaking. I couldn't hike much outside as my ankle is still compromised a bit, but played cards (Euchre!), had my first Wii experience (ankle friendly) and enjoyed good food (as documented above), wine and great company.

Following protocol...

About seven years ago I promised myself I would do my best to 'either wake up or go to sleep somewhere I had not before, on my birthday'. So following protocol I woke up in Ottawa, IL on a very rainy Sunday morning. Fortunately we had made the short trip to the Starved Rock State Park area on Saturday where we had a great time hiking on a very spring-like day with temps in the low 50's and lots of sun. No tolls between here and Chicago, the park is free and you can bring dogs (we did not)... Semi-frozen water falls, which up until last week you could climb.The trails were mostly planked with lots of steps to different lookout points, a little muddy in places but otherwise very easy to navigate. Definitely got our heart rates up! Towards the end of the trail we came upon a great lodge where we enjoyed a little refreshment outside before finishing our exploration.This is overlooking the Illinois River at the Dam:

That evening we went to nearby South Peru, IL to try Mark Allen's Restaurant, owned by my friend Ann Weisbrod and her husband who is the chef. Great food and drinks and Ann's fun art work for the decor!So on the rainy morning of my 43rd Birthday we opted to drive back home to Chicago and relax with the dogs, it was the perfect lazy day...

• 42 Cleveland, WI
• 41 Lake Wenatchee, WA
• 40 Venice, Italy...I can't believe I didn't blog about it!
• 39 Saugatuck, MI
• 38 Bedford, PA...enroute home from a show in Virginia
• 37 The Dominican Republic

Map #211

The Hand Drawn Map Association (HDMA) is an ongoing archive of user
submitted maps and other interesting diagrams created by hand. I found out about HDMA on their Facebook Fan Page...it's a great concept and site. I submitted the map below that I made for my Mom and Bill a few years back...it depicts their favorite walking trail in McMullen Park located in rural Warrens, Wisconsin. It's now #211 in the HDMA archives. They now have monthly map making contests ...do you have you would like to submit?

I found this wonderful artist on their site, Dahlia Elsayed. Her map is #173. It says she created this map to represent the month of August. She tells
us that the map represents pretty much everything that was going on in
her life at the time. Check out her other amazing map related art on her site: www.dahliaelsayed.com. I love the abstract yet humorous nature of this!

Art Re-Treat

Back from an amazing art retreat weekend in rural Wisconsin with Rachel and Erica ..and remotely our dear friend Lois Keller. 

Rachel started this amazing new series of paintings and created several lovely water colors...

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Erica pulled this one out of her hat...this large piece consists of 10 separate panels:

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Lois shipped us a box of treasures, included for each of us was a lovely drawing (this is the one she sent for me) with sentiments and her wishes for each of us and our creative lives for 2008.

And these are some of my pieces - I did paintings on cardboard:

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These 3 women have impacted my life and art in so many ways, we have a very magical connection that has only strengthened over the last 7+ years. I'd love to share more as so many wonderful things transpired...but I'll just have to leave you with these snippets since I'm scrambling to get myself and things together before I leave Wednesdayfor my trip up to Minneapolis for the Uptown Art Fair. Not an easything since I've had a non-stop whirl wind of fun, adventure and travel over the last few weeks. I feel so lucky to be taking all these trips and for the chance to reconnect with so many wonderful friends and family.

Back from the farm...

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And just like that it's over....was it a dream? A beautiful week of blue skies, big puffy white clouds, endless gorgeous hilly back country roads, cows, pigs, goats and corn. I wish I could hold on to this feeling of completeness and happiness. No tv, no computer, a lot of times no phone (my outdoor studio at Castle Rock State Park had no cell phone reception). But it wasn't all sunny skies for me. I had some very real creative challenges and no where to run away from them...I seriously considered driving back to Chicago one morning. But I stayed and battled it out with myself and am very happy with the few pieces that I finished...I think what I accomplished out there mentally in a week would have taken me 3 months here in my studio with all its distractions.

The other magic that happens as an artist at a program like this is you

are PRESENT the WHOLE time, I mean visually and creatively, MENTALLY

PRESENT. Everywhere I went and every road I traveled I was scanning the

amazing lush green vistas all around me...appreciating every field,

cow, pig and hay bale..stopping, sketching, taking photos.

The community and group of folks that make up this organization (The Fields Project) are so amazing, they are like a second family after my 3 different years of participation in the program. I also met a group of wonderful artists from around the country and a few right here in Chicago (I had this silly idea that I knew all the aritsts in Chicago!)

The field sculptures this year were so vivid and beautiful thanks to a new grass field and all the rain of the past few weeks. Another huge highlight was Cathi Bouzide & Danny Mansmith's collaboration on the wrapped corn bin. PHENOMENAL!

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I'll post more photos and notes soon but in the mean time I did upload my photos to my FLICKR page so please check them out.

Trip #2...

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We had a nice litle trip to Milwaukee...we ate at a few of our old favorite places, toured the neighborhoods that Rich lived in and visited the Milwaukee Art Museum where I was very inspired by the works of:John Wilde, Alan Davie, Milton Avery (painting below), Edgar Tolson (sculpture below) and Gabriele Munter.

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Top photo...sketching on the drive up on Sunday, you'll notice this is one of those sketch book pages that has to span 3 days..that's what happens when I get behind. Snapshots from the trip below: 

Conejito's Place

where they serve your enchiladas on a paper plate...no muss no fuss. Ta

sted just like I remembered and I don't think they've raised the price in the last 17 years.

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Sorry to mix the food with the art, Typepad has me using a new beta site that is making it very tricky to layout the images with the text. Have to see if  I can get my old  format back.

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That's Rich in front of Sydney HiH...the building where we met. His band the Psycho Bunnies had a practice space (where he was living very primitively!) and they often played in a bar in the basement called The Unicorn. It looks like Sydney Hih's days are now numbered. Other treats...Kopps Frozen Custard...Butter Pecan..mmmm. These cows overlook the parking lot. A fun little get away..I've been playing serious catch-up after excursions 2 weeks in a row. Suddenly my show in Kansas City is only a week away! It will be a working weekend for me...but I'm looking forward to it! 

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Kohler Art Adventure...

On Monday I took this first of many trips I will be taking in the next 5-6 months if you include all the art fairs. I often feel like a shut-in working from my home studio but suddenly the season changes and my world opens up. I love a road trip...especially when someone else is driving!

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My first adventure was earlier this week when I took a long overdue trip up to the Sheboygan/Kohler/Manitowoc area to visit my dear friend Erica Huntzinger. She works as a teacher at the the wonderful John Michael Kohler Art Center and has also recently become involved in their Arts Industry Program which brings artists to the Kohler Factory for residencies. I love this museum, it is just the right size and they show such an eclectic mix of artists. The wonderful surprise here is all the bathrooms, each designed by a different resident artist. The Women's Room shown above has all these exquisite corpse tiles and each sink and toilet bowl is also adorned with art. 

Photo on the left Erica & Daniel choosing the spot to plant a new tree. Daniel is an arborist among his many other talents!

After our tour we lunched at the yummy Field to Fork, hiked around their home in rural Cleveland, WI.(that used to be a cheese factory!) and had a lovely bonfire that night. The photo below is a peek at the cheese factory from over the hill:

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On Tuesday morning we took an extensive 3 hour tour of the Kohler Factory. It was amazing, unfortunately cameras were not allowed so all I have is a photo from  Destinationkohler.com. I encourage you to take the tour if you get the chance. Our guide, Joe, was was fantastic. He worked there his whole life, and has been a tour guide for the last 20 years in his retirement. We were able to also take a peek at what the resident artists were working on, they have the opportunity to work in the Pottery, Iron and Brass Foundries, and Enamel Shop.

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After the tour we had the most amazing brunch at Whispering Orchards....

Strawberry Ruhbarb French Toast!Fed the goats and mules then later hiked down to Lake Michigan and collected lots of great rocks.

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Then visited Daniel at the Cleveland Post Office...a really sweet small town place where the postage has also gone up only one cent. Of course they were out of one cent stamps!

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Finished up with a tour of the area, saw lots of great birds, a yellow finch and this is a red winged blackbird on the sign. I had not seen one since doing my field sculpture last summmer.

It was a wonderful little get-away...now back to real life: Trying to catch up in the studio!