I have had a busy summer! If I listed all the things I have been up to this summer I might run the risk of having my audience fear for my lack of sleep and sanity...so, let me just report on my comings and goings one small bite at a time.

Today let's start with the emerging Beasts II series. This series will feature Heritage Breeds and Heirloom Seeds. A Heritage Breed is one that was originally brought to this country (United States), usually from Europe or Britain to work on farms in the new land. Those original breeds were largely inbred over and over and manipulated to give more meat with less illness (put simply). The result has been breeds of animals like cows, chickens, goats and horses that no longer resemble their ancestors that came over on the boat. There is an exciting movement to bring back these breeds to populations that can resist extinction. The Heirloom seeds have a similar history and fate and are being grown by professional farmers as well as back yard gardeners in an effort to bring back our ancestor's plants from nearing extinction.

In this new series I hope to adopt a looser, more joyful and intuitive way of working. I will continue to incorporate hand embroidery on layers of tissue paper as I did in the Beasts series. I hope to push the boundaries of my typical way of working with the embroidery needle as well. The pieces will be smaller and most likely just one panel per piece rather than the multi panel pieces in the Beasts series. I want to adopt a simpler, more straight forward way of working to mimic the spirit of our ancestors. Keeping it simple and straight forward will be my mantra as I work on this series.

"Lipizzan" 16" x 16" Acrylic, oil stick, gouache, tissue paper, ink on wood panel. All Rights Reserved

"Guernsey Goat" 10" x 10" Acrylic, gouache, ink and graphite on wood panel. All Rights Reserved

"American Cream Draft" 10" x 10" Acrylic, ink, gouache, tissue paper and graphite on wood panel. All Rights Reserved

"Arapaho Goat" 24" x 24" Acrylic, gouache, ink, graphite, tissue paper and hand embroidery on tissue paper on wood panel

Detail: "Arapaho Goat" - hand embroidery on wood board

I want to send a big "thank you!" out to Jacob Horton for being my host with the most for my visit to the Nantucket Whaling Museum! It was so much fun to share my work with the Nantucket Community that helped shape the artist I am today. The talk was not video taped (and I think I'm sorta thankful for that ;-) ). I talked about the Beasts series and the process of embroidering on tissue paper. I brought along the first piece in the Beasts II series (Heritage breeds and Heirloom seeds). My favorite part was the questions from the audience portion where I could meet some of the audience members and let my hair down a bit. Thanks again for everyone who came out and to the museum staff for being so gracious and accommodating. They even put me up for two nights in a beautiful historical home right on Main Street !