I haven't added to this blog for a couple years.  Primarily because I lost access it to and could not figure out how or why.  Well the mystery is partially solved.  I created a gmail account for Fire Arts and that seems to have triggered Google to hijack Blogger and Youtube and tied them to that new gmail address.   At no time was I asked to have this done.  I still cannot gain access to my Youtube account so although I have been able to view my content, I cannot use it as the owner of the account.  It is laughable that I came across comments from Google stating that the changes were for my convenience.  Not Happy!

Living in the Middle of the Vortex

Well this season's catch phrase is "polar vortex".  It is the phrase that the weather folks have been using to describe the arctic assault we've been victimized by for several weeks now.  Actually I haven't minded it much at all.  Knock on wood, our furnace keeps churning and the water pipes have not frozen.  All of us have been forced into our "cabins" for a number of days now as a result of driving restrictions and bans.  I count myself lucky because I have a warm home to hibernate in and although John got into a minor accident(no injuries and only a couple scrapes on the bumper of his car), we have been quite fortunate.  I worry about the homeless and the poor who have little choice for sheltering and whose utilities may have been shut off for non-payment.  Ironically the news services(at least that I have heard) have not mentioned these folks at all.  Perhaps there are safety nets out there for these less fortunate people. One can only hope that is the case. 

Here at home we have been frequently seeing cat tracks left in the fresh snow and ringing a path around our pole building, across the driveway and up onto our porch.  I caught a glimpse of this phantom cat only twice, once before winter began to pummel us and then a couple weeks ago I spied hindquarters and tail disappear quickly behind the pole building.  This seemingly feral cat displays a classic fear of humans.  I wish we could somehow tell it that we'd probably let it live in the pole building if it would not run from us.  In the meantime we put out a daily bowl of cat chow on our porch.  The tracks indicate that Phantom does appreciate our efforts.  

I bundled up and headed into Fire Arts today.  The driving bans have been lifted and it is time to open the studio to our artists who have been locked out of their spaces since Saturday.  Two artists showed up within the first hour my arrival.  One must feed one's addictions.  I have work that needs doing as well, pots to finish, and some that dried prematurely because I couldn't get to them in time.  Oh well, did them once, can do it again...and better.  That is an early lesson I  learned from Tom Meuninck, my high school art teacher who is a phenomenal potter.  I am so lucky to have had him as a mentor during my formative years. Time to get my hand muddy. Peace and stay warm.

It's 2014

The New Year always seems to have an aura of freshness about it.  I suppose that is because we are conditioned to reacting to calendars and clocks.  If you really think about, each moment, hour, day, week, month and year are always fresh, new etc.  The Zen idea of living in the moment is the best logical way to approach life.  Yes, you can arrange your days and schedule your future to accomplish certain goals.  I squirrel away money for my cherished lessons with Richard Gilewitz and for  attending the annual GillaCamp in Florida.  I build another fund to make my rent payments at Fire Arts and to pay for materials and firings. In order to make these things happen I must make financial decisions well in advance.   I have to keep the bank account building and restrain my nasty tendency for buying STUFF, mainly art and music STUFF.

 On Dec. 31st, my guitar student, Paul, wanted some company on a music adventure, so my husband and I joined him on a journey to music nirvana. I proudly came away from a first time sojourn to Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Mi. without having made a single purchase.  It was close although.  I nearly committed $800+ to the purchase of a Michael Kelly Octave Mandolin.  As I was handing the octave to the salesman, I discovered a flaw in the binding that may have indicated cracking.  They immediately refused to sell it.  I really loved the tone and action of that instrument.  I would have been really upset had I complete the purchase and discovered the flaw when I got home.  It was a great time as we spent several hours playing guitars and mandolins and conversation was lively and continuous on the trip there and back. 

 I brought along the banjo and banjolin that I acquired in 2013.  Both are vintage instruments.  The banjo was a gift from my friend Marilyn.  It had belonged to her late husband via his father. It languished un-played for many decades and prior to that was in the Grandfather's amateur museum.  It may be impossible to date because I cannot find a maker's mark on it anywhere.  The banjolin also lacks a maker's mark but it does have some provenance.  I purchased it on eBay.  The photos showed that its natural hide skin had been embellished with pencil sketches of old cartoons and other drawings including "White Plains High School" clearly penciled.  The vintage cartoons really attracted me to this instrument and I was very pleased when I won it.  Upon receipt I saw the original owner had written her name on the cross piece of the pot.  Her name was Jessie Hyde.  I attempted a Google search which brought me to a link for the 1924 White Plains High School yearbook.  I found pictures of Jessie Hyde, who was a member of the Mandolin Club and Art Club.  There she sat amongst the other student members with the mandolin in hand along with its decorated skin, but the sketches were different.  I can see where she had erased and done a few new drawings on the head.  I am guessing she had made a number of changes through the years.  I can feel an odd connection with this instrument and I wish I could learn more about Jessie Hyde.  It is unlikely that she is still alive because she'd be pushing 106 years old now.  All of this brings me around to the fact that the luthier at Elderly's did a basic check and head tensioning for both instruments and didn't even charge me.  The banjolin drew much attention from their luthier department because vintage instruments rarely have much documented history. 

All The Leaves Have Gone

Pre-winter winds are whipping through the area tonight.  We're in one of those erratic weather periods.  Earlier in the week the season's first snow visited us.  It was pretty inconsequential here in
South Bend but New Carlisle and my former school district were treated to the first snow day of the academic year.  These bonus days off school are almost always quite welcome.  NPUSC is about 20 miles west of home and the hills of Bendix County Park act as a battlement against dramatic weather events that come roaring in from the west. While NPHS area received about 8" of snow South Bend only got about an inch and the area a bit farther east was spared completely

The autumn has progressed smoothly.  I have really adjusted to not holding down a steady job.  Sleeping in as the result of staying up insanely late has become the norm.  I force myself out of bed by 10:00 am on most days after hitting the sack earlier in the morning around 3:00 am.  It is odd how I am enjoying little things like being able to keep up with laundry, cooking meals for John to enjoy when he gets home from work and having the freedom to schedule my own routines.

This has been a rather typical Saturday which I spent solely at Fire Arts. We had our annual artist's meeting.  Plans for the near and distant futures were introduced, discussed and decided upon. I have decided that now that I have more free time, that I would contribute time to keeping Fire Arts open for two more days during the week.  Soon I will be spending noon to 5 pm at the studio on Wednesday and one other day each week.  This will greatly help our artist members, give the public additional access days and provide guaranteed working time for myself.  It will be a "win" for everyone involved.

I have been splitting my time between household chores, artwork and playing guitar.  I have had to restrict my guitar playing time because of a nagging problem with trigger thumb.  I have a number of pieces of music in the works.  Richard Gilewitz and I teamed up on a project that he has incorporated into his workshop curriculum.  We developed versions of a basic 12 barre blues in the key of E.  This idea was spawned as I was whining to him about how our washing machine had broken down.  In honor of this very normal life irritation we christened the project The Washing Machine Blues.   It was a rather stimulating challenging to take the 12 barre pattern and create six  unique fingerpicking and six more strumming thythms resulting in a dozen different arrangements.  We approached it as an exercise that students could use to gradually increase complexity as they applied varied note values, dynamics,  special effects etc.  I did all the Tabledit work on the files and in the process learned much more about the program.  Richard has introduced our efforts to students in England, Ireland, and Australia.  He has made a point of telling them about my collaboration which is really pretty cool.  He has told me that the students are really enjoying the experience and the culmination of the workshop leads into each guitarist playing their practiced version as part of an ensemble.  I expect to participate in this experience if I make it to Gillacamp in Florida this February. 

Isn't Retirement Grand

I think retirement is a bit of a misnomer, at least for me anyway.  This will be the first Autumn in 35 years that I will not have spent the majority of my time in a high school classroom.  This feels like life phase 2.0.  Instead of an ending of a career this freedom from "job" has completely shifted my priorities.  I am now focusing my energies on personal creativity.  I admit one disadvantage of being an artist who teaches full time, is the drain on one's own creativity.  Days in the classroom studio can suck away expressiveness leaving a temporary vacuum.  Now any lack of productivity is my undeniable responsibility. 

My New Baby and three ceramic drums that I made

Been Busy

This school year has kept me jumping through multiple hoops and sometimes I feel as though I will crash and burn.  Miraculously I manage to work my way through this or that deadline, requirement and the day to day process of schooling my students in three dimensional arts.  I have been tweaking curriculum this year and that is always stress-producing as I need to figure out the best way to meet objectives and make it interesting for the kids.  I have incorporated some musical instrument construction into my ceramic's and Intro to 3D classes.  My ceramic's kids learn to work on the potter's and one of the forms I required was a simple open cylinder.  We took their glaze fired cylinders and stretched goat skin onto one open side and "voila!" they have a small finger drum.  They seemed to enjoy this challenge.  My Introductory 3D kids have been making  ocarinas from clay.  They are required to make them visually attractive and functional as well.  When they are voicing their instruments, it sounds as though I have a classroom full of morning doves. We've gotten some pretty cool results and the students seem to enjoy the process.  It is always rewarding when you see the smiles of success on their faces. 

In my free time I have been playing guitar whenever possible.  I have played during the last two openings at Fire Arts in an effort to combat stage fright.  The public attends these events primarily to see the work of the artist whose show graces the gallery.  This sets up the perfect situation for someone like me who is not a professional and is comfortable not to being noticed.  Most of the time the attendees are talking and not really paying attention to my playing.  It serves as a background and therefore my mistakes are not recognized by anyone but myself. 

 Apart from repertoire maintenance, my playing is taking the form of directed practice.  I am working at learning a few new pieces.  The newest crop that I am trying to internalize are Richard Gilewitz's arrangements of  "In Christ There Is No East or West"  and "St. Louis Blues".  These have been the focus of recent lessons and this past week Richard helped me get started on his composition "Sarah Natasha".  I have loved this piece since first hearing him play it back in 2008.  It is played in Open C tuning which at this time is my favorite alternate tuning.  It is chock full of really cool dynamics and rhythmic rasqueados and strumming techniques.  I suspect it will take years before I am really comfortable with it.  Timing is always an issue and my metronome never fails to kick my ass in the right direction.  Richard has really given me an excellent foundation and he continues to up the expectations as I get better able to handle more complex pieces.

Although the three pieces above are taking up a lot of my playing time, I am still working on some of David Walbert's Beatles' arrangements.  These are relatively new to me and although there is memorization happening, it is not reliable.  I really love Walbert's arrangements and someday hope to do them justice.  They are challenging and wonderfully melodic.  So far I am working on "Yesterday",  "When I'm 64", "If I Fell" and "Across The Universe".  The most frustrating aspect for me is that there isn't enough time in the day to do what I must do as a teacher, artist, spouse and guitarist.  This is not even accounting for those other roles as a parent and grandparent.  I have recently decided, after 30 years, to step back from teaching karate every Monday.  My arthritic knees will appreciate this change but it does feel odd to make that break.  More guitar practice will fill the Monday evening space. As I literally just told a friend, guitar doesn't hurt my knees.  

I did make a serious financial investment in a new guitar.  I did not need another guitar.  My husband is the first to tell me this.   Back in June of 2010, when I was at the Miami International Guitar Festival,  I had the opportunity to play Richard's Breedlove Signature 6 string and I was greatly impressed.  There were only eleven of these guitars produced and I had thought I'd never get a chance to acquire one.  Just before Christmas, I happened upon one offered for sale at a Missouri shop, Fazio's Frets and Friends.  In fact, it was new old stock.   This means I am the first registered owner.   It was built in 2006 but was kept in their in their humidity control custom guitar room.  It is a wonderful instrument, cedar top, rosewood back and sides, inlaid marquetry around the sound hole and an ebony fingerboard.  I have been spending the past few weeks bonding with it and although my Breedlove C25 is a nice guitar, this one moves into the realm of a great guitar.  The action is perfect!!!! The tone is beautifully resonant.  What more could you ask for?  Now I am the proud owner of both Gilewitz Signature Guitars as I owned the 12 string version for a couple years.  Yeah, I think I am now a confirmed "Gillahead".  Now I have to figure out which guitars in my collection will get sold to help pay off this new acquisition.