April was a soggy month in Louisville. It was a windy month as well as evidenced by all the dead branches that have littered my poor neglected yard. The talking heads have promised sun tomorrow. We shall see. It sort of reminds me of the summer of 1999 I spent in Ireland. For several weeks I worked as a volunteer for Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Foundation's camp for seriously ill kids at Barretstown Castle in Co. Kildare. For 2 weeks we had nothing but rain, drizzle, fog, more rain and yet again more rain both night and day, with the exception of 1 amazingly clear night where a universe of stars put on a flirtatious display with racing clouds and a full moon. Magic. In any case the Irish accepted this wet mess in typical humorous fashion. The radio DJs all over the country had an ongoing competition with prizes for anyone who would call in with a verifiable report that they were personally seeing the sun at that moment. There were precious few sightings. It came to be known as the summer without sun. It was also a summer without much warmth.
So why haven't I taken advantage of these gray days to write more on this site? I've been way too busy trying to sort through everything in my studio, and I mean everything. I knew that going through the studio would be the most difficult task prior to putting my house up for sale. Once the projecty with Andrew was completed and my studio was an even bigger mess than usual I simply decided to work day in and day out until I had control of things. I threw out, gave away to friends, donated to arts groups, sortd through papers and articles and catalogues and magazines and photos trying to ceate order from 23 years of chaos. Unlike Georgr W, I can HONESTLY state,,,Mission Accomplished at last. Every single crayon was sorted and boxed as were all my embroidery threads and paints and brushes and pencils and soft pastels and water colors and every sort of paper and board a body might want. Things are in clear plastic boxes with labels and put away according to when I might think about using them. Meanwhile they are set for a move, whenever that happens. It felt wonderful to go through with this task. There was a sort of Zen meditative aspect to quietly going through each thing piece by piece, scrap by scrap coupled with the delight of discovering things long forgotten and being able to place them in a way they might actually be accesed in the future. when my large table was finally cleared I put a coat of gesso on it to spruce it up a bit. Thought about giving it a second coat but decided that could wait until I get moved and am ready to begin all over again.
