Necklace:  pink quartz and pearls with matching biwa pearl earringsby Tammy Vitale, $98 and $22 respectively

The idea for this necklace was stolen directly from Sue at Artful Adventures.  Sue is into everything and seems to do everything well.  If you read her blog long enough you will find her lovely art book creations, jewelry, and flowers from her yard to die for.  Her husband, Gary, has even started to try his hand at creativity, and for my money he's going to be a real companion to Sue.  Here's his little found treasures creation which I've taken to calling a Garden Gremlin – and it can come live in my garden any time it pleases!

Sue shares some of the classes she's taking this summer (and oh am I jealous), including a class with Katie Kendrick who teaches Intuitive Mixed Media Collage…go look at these samples.  I am blown away by these!  I can see that mixed media is going to get me sooner or later because I LOVE this work!!!

Sue has also kindly given Body Politics a great plug on her blog and is planning to send along her skinny jeans to go into our installation…her enthusiasm around this project literally leaps off the page!  And Heather and I appreciate that, and her contribution, a lot!

It's that time of the month again:  time to switch out work at my two local galleries, Heron's Way and Leonardtown Galleria, for First Friday shows.  Heron's Way is also have a jewelry focus and a found objects focus this month, so I will be taking more jewelry and made some special totems just for this show.  It's been a while since I've made totems and I really enjoyed it. 

Additionally, I am coordinating and participating in the ArtOMatic Vendors Marketplace this coming Saturday.  I made two new totems for that too and packed them before pictures.  I'm out of the habit since I haven't been making much with clay lately, and totems are hard to photograph because they are long and narrow, but here are pictures (below) of the ones I have yet to pack.  The totems are about 5ft each, which is the biggest I've ever made them.  But I saw some glass "totems" by Sophie Bethune (who happens to be on the partition behind Body Politics) at ArtOMatic and liked that they were long and could be hung together – they really make a nice statement.  When a totem is this big, it takes up enough space on the wall not to get lost (Coral Reef to the right and Gifts of the Sea to the left, $250 each). Packed the car yesterday for ArtOMatic (taking along smaller ceramic word and prose tiles and some masks and tiles, photos, cards, jewelry and prints) and will finish up packing today for the galleries.

I also finished up my new plantings around the pond with the placement of steppables (you can walk on them, they are bred for heartiness and living among rocks and along pathways) at the pond along with some sand and top soil to fill in some of the spaces.  I planted zinnias along the edge and in the black pots you see lining the wall.  Not a lot of sun here, about 2.5 hours from 12:45 on at it's zenith, so I'm hoping that's enough for the zinnias, which the gold finches love in the fall.  And I love goldfinches, so I'm giving it the old try.  Picture of this newest addition toward the bottom as it seems to be getting crowded here.

thought for the day:  When any of us are stuck up against our limitations…we re disconnected from our spot of grace.  No small wonder – from the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits.  We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test, and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right.  by the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence.  If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning every so slightly and swimming gracefully in the water all around us.  Aristotle said that one's purpose is merely a matter of knowing where one's talents and the needs of the world intersect.  Dawna Markova,  I will not die an unlived life:  Reclaiming purpose and passion