Beach week!

I’m a little late in posting this week, but yesterday was a travel day. We spent a wonderful week on the beach in Corolla, North Carolina, at the north end of the outer banks. Normally I would have spent the transit time needle-felting ornaments for the holiday season, but the airlines frown on traveling with sharp objects. I have learned to pack my faithful Swiss Army Knife in the checked bags, but they still enjoyed running my purse through the X-ray machine multiple times. I think the culprit was the drill bits I bought in Michigan and forgot about, but who knows. I like to be prepared, so you never know what you’ll find in my purse.

This year we flew into Norfolk, Virginia, which shortened the drive to Corolla considerably. We arrived in time to catch some beach time, although high tide limited the shell collecting efforts. That wouldn’t be a problem for most people, but I’m always on the lookout for weaving materials and high tide doesn’t leave much room for collecting on the beach. We quickly settled into a routine of beach time in the morning, back to the house for lunch, off for an adventure like golfing or hiking, an ice cream stop, and then back to the beach either before or after dinner. Fresh fish shops abound, and you can’t beat fresh flounder. The HOA (Husband of Artist) and eSOA (elder Son of Artist) went on a fishing adventure on the sound and came back with Bluefish and Spanish mackerel. These were good, but not as good as the flounder. A week on the coast does highlight the one and only failing of our fair town, Bloomington Indiana—there’s just no great seafood to be found. We’re still glad to be back.

It’s hard to pick highlights from a trip with many. I love watching the lines of pelicans skim effortlessly over the surf and the dolphins popping in and out. Low tide brings all kinds of interesting critters, such as puffer fish, sea cucumbers, Jellyfish, sand dollars (OK, really sand quarters or so) and the very cool devil’s purses. They’re the egg casings from the manta rays that cruise the coast. Shells are everywhere, and of course they get picked over for compatibility with weavings. The sand crabs pop in and out of the sand to keep an eye on us, and the little birds that run in and out of the surf set a good example for the kids. Everybody is on board to make it a good trip.

On our last day we drove south to Hatteras Island. The Pea Island national wildlife refuge is home to an amazing collection of birds, and we even saw a banded water snake on the way. We ran into two very gracious volunteer bird watchers there, Pat and Neal Moore. Neal set up a telescope at Cubbie height, and he spent some quality time looking out over the wetlands and sketching in his new sketchbook. I was very proud. The Moores recommended the Dolphin Den restaurant, which served up some great tuna steak sandwiches. Next stop was the old Cape Hatteras lighthouse, which we checked out but declined to climb. We reached the top of the Currituck lighthouse last year, and the creaky open staircase wasn’t a good match for the HOA. It’s amazing to read that they moved the Hatteras lighthouse a half mile inland when the ocean threatened to eat the adjacent shoreline, then moved it back to the original site years later. That must have been quite a feat and something to witness.
All good things must end, and now we’re firmly back on Southern Indiana clay. The anti-deer spray seems to have discouraged our primary local nemeses from eating the remaining lilies that are about to bloom. That was a real bonus when we pulled in the driveway. The Tradescantia is also coming into bloom, but the peonies and irises are fading. I’m hoping that there are still a few strawberries around, and that a blueberry pie is in my near future. Let the summer begin!

Until next week…

Gold Fish in a Blue Ocean

The fish are swimming through my head this week. I’ve been working on a weaving project in the Creek-Love multiage classroom at Roger’s school this week. We recently completed a huge blue weaving of the ocean using recycled materials. I scoured the Recycle Center and Opportunity House for all things blue, black and weavable, and what I came up with were ties, socks, lanyards, and cords. Perfect! The kids, a little at a time, created the ocean. Then I made a compatible frame out of the recovered stretcher frames from Pygmalion’s. Of course we jazzed it up a little by gluing seashells on the face of the frame, another good class project. The kids also sketched the fish they wanted for their weaving. This meant that not only did I have to create fish out of recycled stuff, I had to meet the demanding specifications of six to eight year olds. Did I say I love a challenge?

Luckily, a school of fish appeared in my kitchen this week. I started out with soft foam from the recycle center and a pair of scissors. I’m sure this is how all the great master sculptors got their start—limestone is way overrated. Then I took thin blue Styrofoam trays—the kind that fish really come on from the store—and cut those into tails and fins that could be glued on to the fish. The whole thing turned out to be a little too soft and absorbent to paint, but the art teacher at Rogers—Jan Barnes—really helped me out. She suggested that I try using celluclay, which is finely ground paper and water. It filled in the crevices and dried to a rock-hard surface and my fish were swimming again. They’ll soon be painted and ready for release into the ocean. It’s kind of like the animal rescue missions that take in wounded animals, nurse them back to health and then release them into the wild.

If you think you’d like to see the piece when it’s done, it scheduled for display at Wonderlab from May 20 to June 30th, planned to coincide with the new water table opening. ‘Gold Fish in a Blue Ocean’ will then swim over to the John Waldron Arts Center to hang for July and August before taking up a more permanent residence in the Creek-Love classroom, the first grade home of my son Cubbie.

In other news, I dragged my scientist husband out of the lab for lunch on Friday. It was going on 80 degrees and we ate at the picnic table in the Third Street Park. It turns out we couldn’t park in our usual secret spot behind the police station and had to settle for a street spot almost a block away. Oh the horrors of the city! In any case the afternoon was the setting for an artistic epiphany (aka piffy). I’ve been trying to come up with a design for a commission piece that fuses a woman and a tree. Nothing worked for me—the face always detracts from the design. Then I was looking up at the trees as the started to bud out and realized my tree woman should be looking up! Her arms grow into the branches, her elegant neck is exposed and she reaches for the skies. It empowers her and has a feel that I really like. I’ll start that soon, but tomorrow (Sunday the 26th of April) is the Luna festival in the Showers building. I’ll be showing some of my work (and more is along the staircase leading upstairs). My friend Bonnie Gordon-Lucas will be there too, so we’ll have fun no matter what.


Until next week…