The Virgin Shrimp

Friends, here’s my take on that deep question, “What if Queen Elizabeth the First had been a crustacean?” She has also been chosen as a finalist in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine’s Art Prize competition — enough to please any Aquatic Monarch! :) She’s in fabulous company, which can be seen on the People’s Choice voting page (if you’re inclined to vote for your favorite pieces, the deadline Sept. 7, 2023 Australian Eastern time).

A Sculpting in Clay book by the Shiflett Brothers...

Friends, here's a fabulous sculpting demonstration book by the beloved and brilliant Shiflett Brothers, with guest appearances by Simon Lee, Aris Kolokontes and myself. The Brothers, Simon Lee and Aris Kolokontes present phenomenal clay sculpting demos, and I added a demo on mulberry paper fairy wings. The book is available direct from art publishers 3dTotal (who did a great job concisely editing my meandering brain) and from the Aves clay studios, as well as from Amazon and others. It's a truly super book for anyone who wants to explore what clay can do in our fantastical realm!

March, 2022

Words are bound to go wrong. They’re a bunch of little double-edged daggers that slice six ways to Sunday and always offend somebody. Often now every word feels to me like a lit match over at least a spoonful of gunpowder. And who am I to wield them at all -- a kind of toymaker with a poor memory for the hard details of the world.

But sometimes the need to speak has the soul thrashing in the night. Sometimes it feels like a duty to witness, even if one’s words are just a useless kind of itching powder. Silence has so often surrounded screaming atrocities. And we are awash in atrocities. Ukraine. And Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Myanmar, North Korea, abuses in Brazil and the Philippines, Haiti, and… Unspeakable anguish slathered on with our trowel. Lie face down and cry for our species.

The burning point of Ukraine: grievous suffering I cannot imagine, shot through with human tenacity and heroism I cannot imagine summoning. A blue and yellow morning star above the apocalypse.

History writes in blood that authoritarian strongmen produce lies and brutality and death. Betrayal. That lust for personal gain and more more more power twists toward madness. That people only hoping to build lives day to day drown in tsunamis driven by the inflamed egos of tyrants. It is a murderous crime and always will be, everywhere.

As Russian protesters are dragged to prison for their courage, Putin has shrunk himself to a vicious seed of destruction that will live only in infamy. I hear the World Wars breathing in the shadows.

So how in heaven do we navigate our little boats piled with hope.

Meantime, in my country, our facts have cracked like the melting Arctic and floated off in opposite directions. We stand on our broken ice and shriek at each other because our truths no longer line up and how will they ever.

Yet it seems we must all of us keep tossing the tiny flowers of our personal effort on the waters. We must do it even as the world burns, and perhaps beyond reach of this moment we will glimpse sanctuary. A swan among the lilies.

A Beautiful Bizarre Magazine "Take Over"

Friends, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine — https://www.instagram.com/beautifulbizarremagazine/ — asked me to pick seven favorite pieces of art, plus one of my own, and comment on why I love each one. They then posted these images and comments on their social media on Tuesday June 8. I was intrigued by the process and honored! Check it out if you have a chance, as well as all the other fascinating art on their site!

Sonnet II

Were my soul a land and sea, and thou begun
A wild climb ‘twixt the lichened stones to find
Midst tiny blossoms starred, bright fruits of mind
On thornèd tree, with much to seek and naught to shun:
Then deep thy reach, beyond the pale spines of sun
To salt anemone with fingered weed entwined,
And high, to arc of bird and leap of hind
The gentle shadow of thy hand would run.
But soft in human body snared and tied,
A single separate shade set ‘round with wrong,
I fold my beating heart within and, thus denied,
Shall be to thee but unexpected song
A dim and solitary stranger cried
Upon the road: I loved, I loved thee long.

~ Isabelle Rathbone Greene, c. 1894