Icon, clay and beads (including handmade glass beads), finished in acrylic by Tammy Vitale.  21" tall.  $115

Here's one of the pieces I've been working on lately.  Smaller pieces that make me happy.  and I'm not really worrying about sales with them.  I'm doing them because they want to come out and play and I'm experimenting with beads and wire.

Something's brewing and if I play at this long enough, it just might make itself known.

The detail picture for this is blurred – sorry.  You can still see the beads better than in the big photo.  I'm a lazy slub and just couldn't get myself back down into the studio to retake the pictures.

The next piece is Blackbird, Blackird, Sing Me a Song.  I politely asked her if we could please have a shorter name but that name has stuck since she was created and I don't think she's going to be happy with anything else, so I had to give in and let her have it.

You know how artists say pieces create themselves?  Believe it.  And name themselves too (I know I've read works by writers who say characters create themselves and then write their own stories…I do SO understand!).  We aren't kidding when we say this.

More pieces are wandering toward finished.  I need to kick things into gear so that I have a nice batch of totally new work to show for ArtOMatic (June this year).  I got myself a 0% credit card so I could get a ring saw so I can do more glass pieces.  I keep wavering back and forth about spending the money, but art is calling the ring saw and art seldom gets denied.  I can deny new clothes, shoes, dental work, hair cut (I am very ready to take scissors to my own hair right now.  That could be interesting), but I cannot deny art.  It's as strong a force as the biological clock.

Blackbird  is 32" tall and 2 pieces, clay with handmade beads, metal, shell and finished in mostly glaze with some acrylic.  $125.00

thought for the day:  We alreday have everything we need.  There is no need for self-improvemnet.  all these trips we lay on ourselves – the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're ood, the identities we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds – never touch our basic wealth.  They are like cloud that temporarily block the sun…this is who we areally are.  We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.

…From this perspective we don't need to change:  You can feel as wretched as you like, and you're still a good candidate for enlightenment.  You can feel like the world's most hopeless basket case, but that feeling is your wealth…There's a richness to all of the smelly stuff that we so dislike and little desire.  The delightful things – what we love so dearly about ourselves, the places in which we feel some sense of pride or inspiration – they are also our wealth…In any case, the point is not to try to get rid of thoughts, but rather to see their true nature.  Thoughts will run us around in circles if we buy into them, but really they are like dream images.  They are like an illusion – not really all that solid.  They are, as we say, just thinking…Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.  We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don'e really get solved.  They come together and they fall apart.  Then they come together again and fall apart again.  It's just like that.  The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen:  room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.  Pema Chodron quoted in  Sacred Voices:  Essential Women's Wisdom Through the Aged, ed by Mary Ford -Grabowsky