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Thirteen Threads from the Wild Heart Interview

http://thirteenthreadsfromthewildheart.com/?p=1839

What a ride to be interviewed by Lulu Red.  She started this wild blog on her birthday in January, and it explores 13 threads of creativity.  This month's theme is LOOP, and what a fun experience to think about the creative loops we all travel on our artist paths.  Lulu Red (Donniece Smith) is an entertaining writer, and painter & jewelry & fabric designer & collage paster & wild cowgirl.

 http://thirteenthreadsfromthewildheart.com/?p=1839

Mama Rio

Our old adobe home is located near the Rio Grande, close enough to see her waters glinting through the winterbare willows and cottonwoods.  We stay pretty close to home most days, fishing and photographing the river, making art, watching the ever changing sky and land.  Once a week or so we drive up the highway to Taos to visit the hardware store or down the mountain to Dixon's co-op and magnificent community library.  On rare occasions we drive to Santa Fe to pay homage to Trader Joe.  We did that this morning, and it dawned on me that when I travel too far from the Rio Grande, I really miss her.  She is a big mama river, and I just feel better when I'm close to her.  This surprised me as we drove back up the canyon.  I saw myself craning to see the first view of her as we passed the Velarde orchards, then breathed a sigh of relief when the highway sidled up to her near Embudo.  Home, again, in the arms of my mama rio.  

When we lived on the California coast, I enjoyed seeing and hearing the ocean nearby, but this feeling for my mama is different, more visceral, more intimate.  I'm just learning about this connection, and I suspect that my mama will be teaching me more about it, day by day.

We're here, in our new old adobe home in Pilar, New Mexico.  It seems like we've been moving forever, and we are far from being moved in....there is a sea of boxes still to be unpacked.  But we are here.  And it feels good.

Solstice Greetings!

Dear Friends of DolphinSmile Studio and the Sacred Heart Cafe,
Wishing you the fullness of summer's promise on the longest day of the year! I'm writing to share the some wonderful news: my husband Bruce and I have purchased a charming adobe home in the Land of Enchantment, near Taos, above the Rio Grande. It is our retirement dream come true, and we plan to move around August 1.
Our Tierra Nueva home is for sale and we are actively looking for a buyer, or if need be, someone to lease our home. For those of you who have been my loyal customers at my Open Studio Tours for eight years, you are familiar with Tierra Nueva's amazing resources. The Gudrun Hus where I held four of my studio tours is an art/yoga/dance studio available for use of the residents. We live in the midst of an organic avocado orchard, in walking distance to the Rutiz Family Farm next to Halcyon. Here is a description of our home's listing and more information about living in community at Tierra Nueva Home for Sale.
If you know of someone who may be interested in purchasing or leasing our home please forward this link to them. Thank you so much!
I have transitioned my business to become more internet based in the past few years, with my shop at 1000 Markets and an active FaceBook page where I post new listings and photos of my art.
I promise to stay in touch with you with quarterly emails like this one, on the Solstices and Equinoxes. And please remember that I would love to hear from you via email or FaceBook (link below).
My days are filled with time in my Halcyon pottery studio, finishing up the last of my pottery orders. I am still heart-deep in my love affair with mica clay from New Mexico, as you can see from my shop photos. My lastest work includes teapots, teabowls and "Blessing Bread Bowls" for baking bread.
All the blessings of summer to you: long, warm days of bright light, time with family and friends, vacation adventures and sitting on the porch under the stars! And once again, my deep gratitude for all of your generous support for me as I walk my artist's path,
warmly, PattyMara

I'm the Featured Seller on Craft is Art!

By Gustavo on May 3, 2010

Amazing Pattymara

The title of this article says it all, and I could not be more satisified with the outcome of this interview. I contacted her a few weeks ago asking if she would be interested in being featured as the "Featured Seller", and she said yes!. I wanted to prepare a more personalized interview for her, as I do with everyone else, but being completely honest, with so little time in my hands working on Craft Is Art, I decided to tweak one of the interviews I had made before so I could feature her. She managed to make of this interview a magical one; her wisdom, talent and experience are expressed in every single word of this interview, I could read it over and over again.  I am truly honored and grateful for her willingess to take the time to do this interview.
No more introduction, you know her, I give you... Pattymara:
Please, tell us about yourself?

I'm a potter, painter of silk, horder of handmade papers, gardener and heart rock collector.   I've been a potter since I wandered into a pottery studio at UC Santa Cruz over forty years ago.  I learned to paint silk about twenty years ago.  I've been fusing glass for five years.  I've loved poetry and collage for as long as I can remember.  I'm married to an artist/photographer/fisherman and we shake our heads in wonder and pride as we watch our two adult children make the world a better place.  We are native Californians who are planning a move this summer to our adobe home near the Rio Grande in New Mexico.  I aspire to learning how to be a beekeeper.
What are your hobbies?
Hobbies!  What a concept.  If hobbies means something I do for fun, separate from my work, then it would be baking bread from the most wholesome locally grown ingredients possible.  For me these days, that means organic whole wheat grown about twenty minutes east of my home at a farm where I assisted at two homebirths.  It means organic eggs from my friend Birgit's chickens.  I'm a pretty good cook and baker.  OK, I'm a foodie.  The first improvements we made to our adobe home is to build a greenhouse, to grow food year round.  Next will be an horno, an adobe outdoor oven for baking.
What is(are) your specialty(ies)?

Apple Tart (especially when I'm harvesting apples from my orchard in Pilar, New Mexico) and Pesto.

Oh!  You mean ART specialties?  Sometimes I get food and art confused.  I think of my art studio as a cafe, serving up nourishing art to feed the hungry heart.   My daily specials at the Sacred Heart Cafe are mica pottery from New Mexico clay, painted silk banners which usually have a poem or inspirational saying written on them, poetry collage books, artist cards,  jewelry.
Please tell us about your beginnings, how did it all start?
My mom gave me piles of butcher paper, crayons, paints, paper scraps, paste, multicolored telephone wires, magazines to cut up. I was encouraged and applauded as an artist since I was a tiny girl. And she took us all camping every summer of our lives. I never stopped making art as I grew up.  I also cooked for my large Sicilian Catholic/Norwegian Lutheran family since I was in fifth grade, when my mom went back to work in the early sixties.  I studied anthropology in college, got my BA in it, but really took more art classes than anything else, and have worked as a freelance studio artist for most of my adult life as an illustrator, potter, painter.

Where and/or how do you find inspiration? 
Outdoors, hands in soil.  Feet in rivers, wading, fishing, paddling.  Climbing rocks to find petroglyphs.  Landforms, caves, canyons, moonrise, dawn, twilight.  Meteor showers.  Birdsong.  Heart rocks.  Word play.  Songs.  Moths, bees, dragonflies, raven, dolphin, whale, rainbow trout.
When you are not creating, what do you do?
Most of my days, these days since my children are out in the world on their own, I have the great freedom to make art all day long.  When my children were young, it seemed the only time I had was in the wee hours of night ("mama time").  To be painting by daylight is a blessed event, or working in my pottery studio in the sunshine.    If I'm not making art, I tend my flowers and my garden.  I walk to a nearby farm to buy the most succulent berries and vegetables grown on this earth.  I spend too much time in front of this computer screen.  I go on treasure hunts at local thrift shops and am often rewarded.
How do you promote your work?
Mostly my customers do that for me. They just keep coming back for more, and they tell their friends about my art. I've participated in our local Open Studio Tour for eight years, and am signed up to do the Studio Tour this fall in own new tiny town in New Mexico.  People come and see my work, and they try it....then come back for seconds and thirds.  I do have my work in a couple of galleries, one all the way up in Alaska, but mostly I sell online.   I'm not very skilled at the social networking technologies yet, but Facebook has been interesting to dip my toes into for sharing my art with a larger circle of customers.   I think the best promotion is to always make art that is joyful to make, to look at, to give as a gift.  Then, the work promotes and sells itself, sending out an energy wave of delight.  Really, it does, I'm not being glib.
What would you recommend to new handmade sellers?
Fill your art with Spirit, with your best talents, thoughts and wishes. Chant or pray while you work. The prayers, the good wishes will infuse your art with good medicine.  Make something meaningful.  No throwaways. Make something that lasts, that uses supplies that are earth friendly.  Know where your supplies come from.  Is the earth damaged when they are created or mined or manufactured?  Use what you have at hand, REuse everything at hand.

Team up with other artists who share your heartview.  Find ways to support and encourage and promote your art together.  Collaborate with them, merging your skills to make beautiful creations.  I'm currently collaborating with Mannybeads.  I make the teapots, she stacks cairns of turquoise to serve as the knobs on the lids. 

Befriend your customers with respectful attention, and careful packaging (recycled or repurposed if possible!).  Listen to them, ask them for feedback, shower them with attention.
Anything else you would like to say?
Be kind to one another.  Buy art from other handmade artisan shops.  In my profile photo I'm wearing a "mantle" from OnSlenderThreads.  It is one of my most cherished possessions, exquisitely crafted, redolent with lovingkindness.  Buy supplies from small shops too.  Why give Walmart money when you can send some along to a small artisan shop?  Like DyeDianaDye who dyes silks, cuts it into strips and makes the most fascinating silken "yarn".   I buy my clay from native potters in New Mexico who hand dig the clay with deep respect for the Mother.


Like my friend the Dalai Lama says "Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon."  I'd say the same about art. Keep learning new skills and techniques.  Let your art branch out to unexplored territory.  Add new spices.  Stir often.  Savor.
Pattymara on CraftIsArt.com

PattyMara's DolphinSmile Studio: Freshly Baked Bread in a Mica Bleassing Bowl from the Sacred Heart Cafe!

I baked four loaves of bread yesterday.  Two in standard baking pans and two in mica clay blessing bowls.  What a lovely globe of golden bread emerged from each of the bowls!  A bowl for baking bread?  Yes!  Because mica clay is ovenware, you may bake bread in mica pottery bowls.  And so I did, using an heirloom Sonoma whole wheat flour grown locally at the Huasna Valley Farm, owned by my friends Ron and Jen.  I consulted my favorite bread recipe of all time from the Tassajara Bread Book by Ed Espe Brown, a Zen monk.  If you have a desire to learn to mix, fold, knead, shape and bake exquisite breads, this is the book for you. The basic bread recipe has 14 pages of clear instructions, each step illustrated with pen and ink drawings.  It will teach anybody to bake bread.  Try it!   http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-59030-704-5.cfm

Recently I had the good fortune to meet Ed at a book signing of his reprinted Tassajara Bread Book.  I brought my battered (literally!) book for him to sign, and bought the new edition as well.  When I asked him what the difference was between the two editions, he said with great solemnity "The new one has chocolate (pointing to the new hardcover) and this one doesn't (pointing to my antique, bedraggled paperback from 1970)".  But he signed each book with a tender personal message in a slow and mindful penmanship, careful loops, full of grace.  I felt a dharma transmission from my bread baking guru that night as his pen slowly formed each letter in his notes to a stranger.

Here's one of Ed's poems:

The truth is you're already a cook.
Nobody teaches you anything,
but you can be touched, you can be awakened.
Put down the book and start asking,
"What have we here?"

Though recipes abound, for soups and salads,
breads and entrées, for getting enlightened
and perfecting the moment, still
the unique flavor of Reality
appears in each breath, each bite,
each step, unbounded and undirected.

Each thing just as it is,
What do you make of it?

Edward Espe Brown


~~

About my Mica Blessing Bowls:

Food can be a sacrament when baked with Love, and served in Beauty. Holy Food deserves a mica clay blessing bowl. An elegantly shaped bowl luminous with mica and blessed with magnificent fire clouds, where no glaze chemicals were used. The clay is a tawny russet, infused with a constellation of mica stars. The smoke patterns from the final pit fire, are called fire clouds. A mica blessing bowl is mesmerizing as you gaze into the starry universe of its interior curve.

The Sacred Heart Cafe has two of these bowls suitable for baking tasty loaves:
"Magma"     http://www.1000markets.com/users/pattymara/collections/3076/products/71014

"Calico"        http://www.1000markets.com/users/pattymara/collections/11631/products/114421

They are kiln mates, born from the same litter of New Mexico clay.

Freshly Baked Bread in a Mica Bleassing Bowl from the Sacred Heart Cafe!

I baked four loaves of bread yesterday.  Two in standard baking pans and two in mica clay blessing bowls.  What a lovely globe of golden bread emerged from each of the bowls!  A bowl for baking bread?  Yes!  Because mica clay is ovenware, you may bake bread in mica pottery bowls.  And so I did, using an heirloom Sonoma whole wheat flour grown locally at the Huasna Valley Farm, owned by my friends Ron and Jen.  I consulted my favorite bread recipe of all time from the Tassajara Bread Book by Ed Espe Brown, a Zen monk.  If you have a desire to learn to mix, fold, knead, shape and bake exquisite breads, this is the book for you. The basic bread recipe has 14 pages of clear instructions, each step illustrated with pen and ink drawings.  It will teach anybody to bake bread.  Try it!   http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-59030-704-5.cfm

Recently I had the good fortune to meet Ed at a book signing of his reprinted Tassajara Bread Book.  I brought my battered (literally!) book for him to sign, and bought the new edition as well.  When I asked him what the difference was between the two editions, he said with great solemnity "The new one has chocolate (pointing to the new hardcover) and this one doesn't (pointing to my antique, bedraggled paperback from 1970)".  But he signed each book with a tender personal message in a slow and mindful penmanship, careful loops, full of grace.  I felt a dharma transmission from my bread baking guru that night as his pen slowly formed each letter in his notes to a stranger. 

Here's one of Ed's poems:

The truth is you're already a cook.
Nobody teaches you anything,
but you can be touched, you can be awakened.
Put down the book and start asking,
"What have we here?"

Though recipes abound, for soups and salads,
breads and entrées, for getting enlightened
and perfecting the moment, still
the unique flavor of Reality
appears in each breath, each bite,
each step, unbounded and undirected.

Each thing just as it is,
What do you make of it?

Edward Espe Brown


~~

About my Mica Blessing Bowls:

Food can be a sacrament when baked with Love, and served in Beauty. Holy Food deserves a mica clay blessing bowl. An elegantly shaped bowl luminous with mica and blessed with magnificent fire clouds, where no glaze chemicals were used. The clay is a tawny russet, infused with a constellation of mica stars. The smoke patterns from the final pit fire, are called fire clouds. A mica blessing bowl is mesmerizing as you gaze into the starry universe of its interior curve.

The Sacred Heart Cafe has two of these bowls suitable for baking tasty loaves:
"Magma"     http://www.1000markets.com/users/pattymara/collections/3076/products/71014

"Calico"        http://www.1000markets.com/users/pattymara/collections/11631/products/114421

They are kiln mates, born from the same litter of New Mexico clay.

April Musings

April is my birthday month, and of course, my favorite month.  Gardening, loving the longer days of spring light, throwing pots in my studio and cleaning/shedding/packing for our move to New Mexico in the summer.  We harvested our winter potatoes yesterday, and tomorrow I'll be planting organic romaine, basil and tomato starts.  Many orders are flowing in to DolphinSmile Studio, and I'm dodging April showers to throw and trim and polish the mica pottery. 

New painted silk Artist Card Originals, each with their own poem.

Taken by Surprise into the Arms of the Sisterhood

A few days ago, I received this luminous mantle named Flamingo Sky, from my two sister friends Diana and Kay.  It has set my heart aloft, coming at a time of need.  Diana (www.dyedianadye.1000markets.com) dyed the silk, stripped and spliced it into long feathery tendrils and mailed it all to Kay (www.onslenderthreads.1000markets.com) who then designed and knit a most wondrous mantle, added long wingtip featherings of silk strips and chose numinous gemstones:  pink agate druzy and quartz.  The addition of the gemstones adds a curious design feature...they weight the garment, settle it into place.  My favorite way to wear it is with one jeweled wing at my back, and one over my heart.  When I move, the gemstones gently rock against my body, reminding me of their healing presence. 

I won the prize for best newlestter design on 1000 Markets!

1000 Markets ran a contest recently and I won! My newsletter design was chosen as the best, and I am so proud. It was fun to make using their new template for email newsletters, but WINNING the prize is as good as it gets! I got a $100 gift certificate for anything my heart desired at 1000 Markets. What a joy! This is prize that I have chosen from "OnSlenderThreads" http://www.1000markets.com/users/onslenderthreads, a hand knit mantle that I have been wistfully watching for months...knit with handspun merino, bamboo, and silk noils. It's soft and warm with beadrops of carnelian and carved jade that give purity, protection, vitality, and energy stabilization. Isn't she luminous and sentient?

So....then.....while I await her arrival I found these perfect leggings from DyeDianaDye's shop, and I decided to jump on them and put them in my cart, because I knew they wouldn't last long in the "Succulent Wive's Holiday Gift Guide" http://www.1000markets.com/groups/thesucculentwife/collections/16643/products/105444


Perfect right?

Then add my ruby and freshwater pearl earrings from "Izis" http://www.1000markets.com/users/izis


I am glowing just thinking about wearing these hand made, heart infused beauties. Next on my list of gifts to myself is a ruby and citrine necklace from Mannybeads, http://www.1000markets.com/users/mannybeads

Going Within for the Holidays

With my Day of the Dead Hospice show completed, I'm looking forward to a slower pace for the upcoming holiday season. For the first time in over twenty years, I'm not doing a holiday showcase or sale, and I am jumping for JOY. It feels like a gift to myself, to focus on going within, taking time to soak in the silence. Here is my holiday wish for myself and you, dear Reader:

May this season of Silence bring us closer to the heart of Nature, closer to our Heart's Desire, closer to the spring of inspiration that nourishes our Soul. May we find solace in Simplicity, comfort in one another. May we find time to enjoy the gifts already in our lives.

Equinox Blessings and Happy Autumn

There's a crisp chill in the air and September is gone so swiftly. My garden is still pumping out tomatoes and basil and leeks and eggplant, and I'm roasting vegies for maranara ssuce for the winter.

Hello and bright fall blessings to you! I've got some news to share and an upcoming show at Hospice of San Luis Obispo

After eight years of participating in the Open Studio Tour, I have decided to take a wee break. I have been stocking my online shop at 1000 Markets with over one hundred works of art, including my pottery, painted silks, Day of the Dead festival ware, jewelry and collage. This year, since I'm not doing Open Studio, I will be setting up a gallery show of my art at Hospice for two weeks, from October 19 - November 3. I invite you all to see my work there. Follow this link for date, times and a map to Hospice of San Luis Obispo I will donate a portion of my sales to Hospice in deep gratitude for the healing work they do every day.

I have created custom art for many of you, and am available to creating your heart's desire for holiday gifts or something special for your home or office.

Drop me a note; I love hearing from you!

All the best, PattyMara

Day of the Dead Art with FREE Shipping!
Day of the Dead and Halloween Skull Mug: "Spiral Eyes" $22.00	Ceramic "Sugar Skull" Wall Mask for Day of the Dead, Custom Order $75.00	Dear Friend Ofrenda Tile and Family Tiles Too $15.00	Heavenly Fishing Day of the Dead Ceramic Tile $20.00
Ofrenda Tiles for Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Brother and Dear Friends $15.00	Eat, Drink & Be Merry Set of Two Black and White Bowls $35.00	"Sugar Skull" Mask for the Wall, Day of the Dead, Handpainted Ceramic $75.00	Sugar Skull Mirror for Day of the Dead and All Year Round $25.00
Day of the Dead Tall Mug Handpainted Original $22.00	Peace Please ~ Day of the Dead Clay Skull Free Shipping $75.00	"Poker Face Ace" Day of the Dead Square Plate Free Shipping $75.00	We'll Dance When We're Dead Skeleton Earrings or Pendants $18.00

About PattyMara's Sacred Heart Cafe & DolphinSmile Studio I paint silk, throw pots, fuse glass and collage poems in my enchanted DolphinSmile Studio on the central California coast. The spirits of the land and the devas in my garden keep me company. When it's real, art can heal! I've named my shop the Sacred Heart Cafe, because I want my art to nourish you and warm your heart, and be delicious, tasty medicine for all who see it, carry it, hang it, wear it, love it and give it away. Please visit my shop blog I enjoy custom orders, and have been very successful creating "heart's desire" art for my customers. Also, many of art products in my shop are made to order just for you. With this option you are invited to suggest a special color, image or message on the art I make for you. I offer gift wrapping for all of my products, and all mailings are packaged securely. BonBons of Gratitude for finding my shop at 1000 Markets!

PattyMara's Sacred Heart Cafe & DolphinSmile Studio Policies I am committed to creating an online gallery and shop that will delight you and give you the opportunity to purchase my art securely, with Amazon's A - Z Guarantee. I will ship your order within three days via USPS First Class or Priority Mail with delivery confirmation. Shipping charge includes packaging and handling. Gift wrapping is available at no extra charge. Custom orders will take longer since I am making it specifically for you, and I will keep in close contact to let you know of my progress and anticipated completion date. I do want you to be completely happy with your purchase. If you have any questions, or concerns about your purchase, please contact me. Your complete satisfaction as a customer is very important to me.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling DreamCoats

The talented artisans of Bohemia Esprit are collaborating on creating four Art To Wear coats. You can read about the travels of the four dreamcoats here: http://www.1000markets.com/blog_posts/8969

I have the great honor of working on the purple/bronze coat, and have begun by using a piece of silk that I had stuffed into my fabric closet after a I tried to speed up the heatset process and ended up burning the silk. It turns out that the burns added a bronze pattern to the dyed purple background which matches Diana's coat dye colors perfectly. I'm using the silk as a lining to the coat to make it reversible. The cut of the ingenious pattern created by Diana of DyeDianaDye allows for a simple lapel that folds back gracefully to reveal the inside lining.

I added a subtle new color to the silk, by wrapping and tying, then soaking in Dye-Na-Flow claret dye. I then hand painted accents of metallic bronze Lumiere fabric dye with a brush. After I heatset the additional dyes (this time I did it the safe and slow way!) I draped it onto the cotton coat and am pinning the edges and will hand sew the two layers with metallic thread.

Then I'll send the coat on to the next artisan, Kay of OnSlenderThreads. Magic is afoot!

Update #1 Two artists from Bohemia Esprit have now dreamed about the traveling coats and so I have taken to calling them "dreamcoats".

I've finished lining the coat with the silk and need to add embroider around the burn holes to stabilize the frayed silk edges. I've finished with all the sewing except for this final handwork, and decided to take her with me on a long train journey to Albuquerque, then sending her on to Kay (OnSlenderThreads), during my travels in New Mexico. When I mentioned that to Diana, she wrote: "I smile to think of the coat on the train with you, traveling to New Mexico. And what a joy it is to relax, and listen to the dreamcoats, as they give us their names and their needs, and fulfill ours."

Bohemia Esprit Market at 1000 Markets: You will love this beautiful collection of art!

1000 Markets

Bohemia Esprit

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Day of the Dead Market at 1000markets: Amazing Artists Here!

1000 Markets

Day of the Dead Market

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1000 Markets

PattyMara's Sacred Heart Cafe & DolphinSmile Studio

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Remembering My Emma on Summer Solstice

Today is Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. It also marks the two year anniversary of my soul friend Emma's passing. This light filled day is my day for remembering the bountiful treasure of our friendship of eighteen years. Two years ago I recieved a letter from Emma's sister Judy, only a week after I'd mailed off Emma's birthday gift. I remember thinking, 'Oh, goodie, there's going to be a big party for her in Seattle, and I'm invited!" But reading the letter brought me to my knees. Judy wrote: "Emma is here beside me but only for a short time now. A few weeks ago she experienced initial symptoms of a very serious illness, which has progressed rapidly and will soon claim her life." Judy was writing from Emma's hospice room, and three days later, on the Solstice, Emma smiled, her eyes lit up, and she took one long last breath and let go.

What took her life is not important really, a rare degenerative brain disease, mysterious and always fatal. What is imp0rtant is that Emma chose the short route home, lingering less than a month from first symptom to final breath. Her community of family, friends, clients and colleagues in Seattle was a riotous group, her memorial celebration proved that. There was music and poetry and drumming and dancing, outside in one of her favorite parks where she romped with her dog Murphy for years, rain or shine.

Judy's note continued: "The 'Murphy' scarf you painted for her is hanging in her room at the hospice, at the foot of her bed. Remembering Emma playing with 'Murphs' lightens my heart." That silk scarf was one of my first attempts at silk painting (it is full of globby mistakes), and I sent it to Emma when her cocker spaniel Murphy died after being her companion for nearly twenty years. I painted him with wings, flying in the clouds, with many bones to keep him happy. Emma grieved his passing by weeping into that scarf, and she thanked me with these words: "Tears of Grief deserve to be caught by the softest silk" She always capitalized Grief, acknowledging its sacredness, that altered space in between the worlds. On one of our many visits, I took the photo of Emma with Murphy, and you can see my mischievous seven year old daughter's fingers reaching into the photo (that same daughter who was just married in New York last week).

Emma was my Muse. A teacher and therapist by trade; a poet, wordsmith, photographer, singer, drummer, circle dancer by Joy. She accompanied me through the passages of my life, as a mother of young children, struggling to find time for my artist's path. When I experimented with a new medium, I mailed her one of the first of my efforts. The silk Murphy scarf was joined by the Emma Box, where I merged my illustration with lowfire ceramics for the first time, using ceramic glaze chalks on clay. It stood on her mantle for many years, filled with white sage gathered on one of her visits to California. We never lived in the same city, she was my Seattle sister. I met her at a retreat gathering on Whidbey Island, one Winter Solstice long ago. We recognized one another at first glance.

I sent her one of my first ceramic doumbeks, a drum which was played at her memorial. I filled he home and therapist's office with the first of my flying heart silks and many more banners featuring her poetry which honored the passages of women, celebrated our bodies and our souls. She was a Soul Collage therapist and teacher, and created stunning collage cards of her own. The photographs she took of me on my visits to Seattle are luminous with the joy we felt in each others presence. I treasure one she took of me standing by a Dale Chihuly glass sculpture. The exuberance in the poppies' glow, my gesture of open arms, my soft, dazed smile reveal what being with Emma gave me. Now, each year Emma has a place on my Day of the Dead altar, her picture near the tile I made that says: "Dear Friend". I plant marigolds in her memory each June, to decorate that altar.

A few months after Emma's death, I received a box from Judy, filled with all the art I'd sent Emma: silks, ceramics, a Soul Collage card she made for me, a silver Zuni bracelet from her travels and that last birthday gift (unopened) which I'd sent her a couple of weeks before her death: a pair of fused glass earrings. I wear them now in her memory, flashing pink and green and silver sparkles, Emma's colors. All of the art in that box was covered with ashes, her ashes, which Judy had sprinkled into a raku woman sculpture that had shattered in the mail. My art has never been so blessed, so honored, so anointed.

I'll finish with one of Emma's poems, which she gave to her Spirituality and Healing students at their last ritual circle, their last day of class:

May you walk your path with love,

with courage and curiosity.

May you rest when you need and take note of the lands

through which you pass,

the grand scapes of sky and mountain

the tiny plants and stones

at your feet. Hear the birdsong,

the crickets and the distant creek.

and please do keep following

the road before you, your road.

The call that draws you on,

until you find the next Sign,

the next clue, leading to your destiny,

your destination, your heart's desire.

Here Comes the Bride!

Our daughter is getting married on June 13, and these wee mice will be perched on top of their cheese cake. Their New York wedding will be an opportunity for us to meet the groom's family who live in Ireland. Notice what the groom is holding? A pint of Guinness.

We are so proud of our daughter for her wonderful life choices. And are delighted that our family is expanding!