There are reasons to take a vacation.  Most of them are interior, some are exterior.  The interior are often inexpressable.  The exterior can be shown in pictures and, here, I hope they invoke the interior.

I have only begun to cull through all the photos….digital cameras are the best!  Except when you leave them at home (which I did the last Friday and missed a huge, spectacular, fast-setting orange-red sun sinking into the water.  Sigh).

I hope you have enjoyed the sporadic posts of the last two weeks, which were actually preposts that I did before I left just to stay in touch with you (and not loose you!), and to give myself a break from the daily routine which includes early a.m. blogging.

We stayed in Avon, NC, on the Outer Banks.  About an hour south of Nags Head which is better known and 1/2 hour North of Cape Hatteras and Hatteras Village which got hit really hard by Hurricane Isabel.  Life is slower and slower the further south you go.  Worked for me! The first photos (including the one in the upper left) are the 2nd morning at the beach when I was able to roust myself out of bed early enough to meet the sun – that only happened 3 times and the first was the best of all of them.  The sunrises and sunsets are NOT the same – they vary wildly.  Always always carry your camera!

Vacation was a great mix of business and fun.  I scouted many of the lovely shops from Duck to Ocracoke.  My first add to my galleries was the Island Artworks gallery on Ocracoke.  Kathleen O’Neal, owner and metalsmith, bought (outright!) everything I had brought along with me to show shops and so I talked to others after her but had nothing to show.  I should have saved one or two pieces.  But I was so excited about joining Kathleen’s artists that I didn’t even think about that.  From the whimsical exterior(photo to right of front wall), to the artists inside, this is a gallery who’s energy I want joined to my own.  I plan to go back in October to bring her some torsos to show – she asked if I could bring some more work down and I am most happy to have to travel back to the Outer Banks and take the ferry to Ocracoke….Now that is the kind of work that makes me very happy!

I will be making arrangements with other galleries to visit at that time, too.

I talked with the owner of Pea Island Gallery and she was interested and asked me to send along some jpegs of my work – I think my word tiles and elementals will do great there.  Linda Meekins Hilton, owner of Sandy Bay Gallery in Hatteras, was open to my sending down some samples for her to look at.  We agreed that my Pfish! would do very well in her gallery. 

I want to send a portfolio and make an appointment with Greenleaf Gallery in Duck.  They had wonderful work – Husband and I fell in love with one of their clay artists that does small figure sculptures.  I especially liked her man-and-horse wall hanging – and no, I didn’t get her name.  But I’ll be back!

Thought for the day: