Studio Notes - March 2025
In thinking about the notion of solace, I thought of old friends and the roles they play in our lives. Jo Bradley and I have been best friends for more than 75 years. She is the gold-rimmed cup, I am the earthenware mug. Our conversations, whether with coffee or not, are essential to my world.
As I write, we are “springing forward”, setting the clocks an hour ahead. It is a ritual of spring that is totally artificial…we don’t really gain an hour…but it reminds us of the coming changes in weather, growth and spirit. An awakening, of sorts. This moment of change is welcome, especially when more light is needed, even if the hour “gained” is an illusion.
To see
Last spring, the fabulous folks from Fibre Arts Take Two visited Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. They filmed and interviewed the volunteers who appear each spring to open up the campus and do the extraordinary number of tasks that make being there as a student or teacher such a joy. This (above) is a 13-minute video of their impressions. It’s beautiful.
To read
Stu Kestenbaum is the former director of Haystack, former poet laureate of Maine and a longtime good friend. We occasionally have phone calls in which I feel as if we are skating on smooth ice in our conversation, gliding from one subject to another in great swoops and elegant lines. This piece in the Winter 2025 Maine Arts Journal shows his seemingly effortless manner of expressing something important in a manner both emotionally felt and intellectually understood.
To do
This is a big question, isn't it? What to do? No matter what our points of view, places of residence or hopes for the future, I think that we can agree that the world these days is challenging. Shifting beneath us. Unreliable. What can one person possibly do? My solution (in my own mind, at least) is that one person can do one thing. Choose one. Volunteer at your child’s school. Gather signatures for a local referendum. Attend town meetings. Write your legislators. It all sounds rather weak in the face of reality, but if each of us does one thing, we might see some direction out. Please forgive the preachiness but that’s what we’re left with these days.
Coming up
Maine Crafts Association is a vital arts group in Maine. I, along with eight other artists, will be teaching a workshop for them in May. I’m looking forward to being in the same room with other souls who just want to make things.
Four artists, Jane Sauer, Carol Stein, Jo Stealey, and I will have an exhibition at 108 Contemporary in Tulsa Oklahoma in August. The title and theme is Still. More about this next time.
An online course for Fibre Arts Take Two continues until early May. Online teaching is a new venture for me and there couldn’t be a more congenial and skilled group with which to dive in!
As if on cue, something that brings me great pleasure is arriving just in time. March Madness. Don’t know what that is? Well, you didn’t grow up in basketball crazy Indiana. It is college basketball tournament time, leading to championships for both men and women. Games galore on television with schools large and small. I am dismayed that the college game is being “professionalized” but for the moment, there is something gratifying about watching both men and women play their hardest on an even floor to win or lose. Seems simple.
Enjoy the coming of spring or fall, depending upon your hemisphere. Our small world is also very large, isn't it? Until next time…
My very best,
Lissa