Raw Materials

Raw means many things in my life at the moment. Sometimes it describes the frayed edges of emotions. Sometimes it's the perfect word for my pile of unfinished art projects and all the accumulated "ephemera" thereof.

Lately, it most often applies to what I'm eating. Yes... it's back to raw food for me. It's the only way I know to get healthy and shed my winter layer. Am currently re-reading Susan Schenck's book, The Live Food Factor and have been eating what's called "high raw" (about 80-90% raw) for about a month now. On this wet, gray Pacific NW morning, after saying to myself, "I need some sunshine, damn it!"... this was my breakfast:

A huge, gorgeous, organic mango and two gigantic organic strawberries, one of which was nearly the size of my fist! Oh, yeah... I'm eating my sunshine today. I'm determined to get it somehow.

Went on an arty field trip to Portland's Alberta Street with my good friend, Carolyn, yesterday. Here are the supplies I could not resist while shopping at collage: 

We jaunted up the street to Guardino Gallery to see some of Stephanie Brockway's pieces. I absolutely LOVE her amazing work! While there, I had another cannot resist moment and picked up one of Dayna Collins' fabulous "Fearless Faces" cards... which I shot a photo of, but Blogger absolutely won't let me upload it right side up. Oh, well, be sure to visit Dayna's blog, just so you'll understand the raw and fearless energy I wanted to have around me by looking at her work!

Spent some time with Mar Goman a couple of weeks ago. She gave me a mini-lesson in transfers, then gifted me with a Chartpak blender pen, paper tags and some creepy-cool images to practice with. We have another collage day on the calendar for June!

My own artwork has taken a backseat to the ever-popular "Life Itself", although I did paint up a sweet little canvas recently for my granddaughter's 9th birthday. I finished this pink-and-girly piece and wrapped it up for her, but I realized I need to spend WAY more time with Stella when she greeted us at the door on party day with her Nerf battle axe in hand.

Instead of a birthday cake, she had "cake pops", brilliantly executed by Ali and Jaquie, that were little miniature Yoda heads (you know... from Star Wars), and Star Wars Lego sets were her absolute favorite gifts of the day.

She's definitely still the Star of the Universe... it's just that Grandma is still back in Sweet Pink Universe and will need to figure out how to get up to warp speed to keep up with her!:)