2011 Year in Review

So, a lot of folks are eager to kick 2011 to the curb, and some of them have good reason to feel that way, but this was a pretty good year for me.

It started off with a trip to Kauai with my wonderful husband, pictured here. We stayed in Princeville, had a marvelous time just being lazy and happy and warm. Good thing, too, because almost as soon as we arrived there he got a call from a recruiter asking if he could start a new job the following week. Yeah, that made it so much easier to relax and enjoy the pool. the ocean, the food and each other. It also made coming home just a little bit easier as well.

Just before we left on vacation (Christmas day of 2010), I learned that a photo of one of my art journals was going to be published in a major art magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors. After we got back, I got busy making art for my first-ever one-woman show at Cafe Luna on Vashon Island. I also hosted a travelling exhibit, Leaving Dakota, a collection of photographs by Kyle Cassidy, and started an exhibit of my own, Art on My Door, which now stands at 175 pieces of art, each displayed on my office door for a working day during the past year. You can see all of those pieces on Flickr.
The Cafe Luna show kept me busy throughout the spring and was successful enough to encourage me to try showing my work more. At the end of May, one of my pieces was shown in the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. In June, I participated in 30 Days of Creativity, a wild ride of art-making that had me trying new things and really having a great time in my studio. Around this time, I noticed that there was no art hanging at our local coffee shop, Cafe Ladro and asked if they were looking for artists to exhibit. As it turns out, they were, and they asked me to hang a show in September.
The Seattle summer was mostly "meh," so I had plenty of time to work on pieces for the September show. We did manage to have some fun and go camping with friends. I also walked in the Komen 5K with some of the best people I know, among them my dear friend Allena who was undergoing chemo at the time and is now, I am happy to say, cancer-free.
The last few months have been busy and blurry and mostly filled with all the ordinary stuff that makes life good. Highlights included a week in November when we saw Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer in concert together at the Moore Theatre on a Wednesday night and then went back to see the amazing and wonderful Jason Webley in the most magical and strange concert I have ever seen on 11/11/11.
We are warm and safe and generally happy. We have love and chocolate and art and music. That's usually more than enough.
I hope 2012 is every bit as good for me as 2011 has been. If you're one of the folks whom 2011 treated poorly, I hope the New Year will give you some special treats to make up for it.
Happy New Year.

Book Review: Personal Geographies

Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking by Jill K. Berry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Berry's approach to maps and mapmaking as both art and spiritual exploration devices is full of enthusiasm and the genuine excitement of discovery. The book is well-written, richly illustrated, and includes ideas and projects that are inspirational for artists and explorers at any level. I read this book on my Kindle Fire and found that format perfectly suited to this sort of book.

View all my reviews