Festive spirit....part 1

It's been a few years since I spent Christmas at my own house but this year both my children are here, as Will visits from Oz and will be staying a while for hospital visits. It has been a challenging year and we hope for healing and love in my family throughout 2012. Of course, having an 18 month old grandson living round the corner is reason enough to celebrate; Louise, Mark and his parents will be here on Christmas day and Barney of course!

Earlier today Barney came to help me decorate the tree, he was fascinated with putting the decorations on. It's a great shape, having a fat, wide bottom! I had to move furniture to get it in but certainly worth it. Seeing the decorations after some years brought memories back... the nativity figures were bought in Maryland in 1994, my first holiday abroad on my own after some difficult years. They're made from corn husks and the animals date from my children's farm collection.

 I'd forgotten the box of fabric decorations I made, I used to sell these in a previous life...

Memories.... decorations given to me by children I've taught ...a glass boot...

a funky Father Christmas....or is it a Mother Christmas?

a relic from my corn dolly period....

...a peg doll is our 'fairy' at the top of the tree....

...decorations from my travels, a ship in a bottle from Annapolis in Maryland...

a doll from Hong Kong......

and a joey from Oz...

 

and these 'walnut babies' a friend used to make in the 70's - they're so cute!

a baby in half of a walnut shell, appropriate as I live at The Walnut House...

My 2011 tree, looking forward to a happy family time...

 



Curwen exhibition

I am back online after weeks without my laptop, which sadly crashed completely, no hope of resurrection! So here I am on brand new laptop, getting used to it and catching up on everything. All because I have a wonderful IT guru, my son in law Mark who set up my new laptop and is always patient with his Mum in law!!

So much has happened in the last month. My printmaking course has ended and we held our end of course exhibition at the Curwen on July 12th. The day before was hectic,cleaning the floor!!! and setting up our boards.

 My boards are nearly ready.

On the Tuesday it was assessment time with Stanley Jones and Chloe Cheese, we each had half an hour with them to show and discuss our work. It was a very positive and helpful experience although slightly nerve wracking; eminent printmakers with years of experience looking at my prints!! At the end of the day we were presented with our cerificates; I passed The Advanced Printmakers Certificate with merit, that was exciting!

The evening exhibition was a big success, with lots of visitors.

including my grandson and daughter....

........of course, he really enjoyed all the prints..........an art lover in the making!!

Actually, he was more interested in crawling around, a new skill he had just discovered!!