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Suite 2, The Coal Shed,
402 William Street, Wiarton, Ontario

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Friends. Josh has known Dev @rawecojewelry since public school when she caught him smoking by the river and lectured him about it. (She still lectures him about stuff. 😜) Dev’s mum Lory @artfestontario gave me my first teaching job and I met Dev after...she is a friend of my heart. We had a falling out once that was worse that any break up ever and I cried and cried and cried. Circle Craft is also “see Dev every day” time and “giggle all night with Dev” time, which used to be pretty much all the time until most of the country separated us. I filled up on Dev’s amazing jewelry these past few days (which I’ll post later!) , but also on her warmth...the ease of a friend who knows you completely. Which we mainly communicate by constantly harassing each other and laughing hysterically at ourselves, she’s a true love of mine and I miss her already. 😍

We are staying on a boat moored offshore for a rare treat of time off before heading home. Josh bought me a needlefelting kit that said “rabbit”, I didn’t follow the directions at all and my rabbit looks nothing like the kit...AND holy crap...needle-felting is fun! As are roaring wood fires on sailboats with good wine. 😍

And just like that...it’s time to go. An empty booth means a full bank account and fuller hearts and a readiness to return to snuggles with littles and the affections of furry beasts (and the damn snow!) This last piece will travel eastwards with us to land in the Beaver Valley, a new home not far from ours. It’s funny how that works, how sometimes things and people need to travel far to find something close. This show felt like that for me. It’s a time of transition in our lives and change turned here from something I felt I was barely surviving to something I’m anticipating with positivity. Josh and I got through some very hard times recently, not gracefully at times, by far not easily...but in the end, as a team. Together we make something that continues to touch peoples lives and deliver the respite of beauty. We are proud of that. And for persevering. For Vancouver ~ With Love and Squalor. (It’s a JD. Salinger reference...it means 😘 but just obliquely and pretentiously. 😜 Thank you! )

Hundreds of paper poppies made by the school children of Vancouver, lade out in the battalions and regiments that travelled from the west to distant shores to fight for freedom. The ephemeral nature of tissue fluttering in the elements, bright spots among fallen oak leaves beneath a sentinel tree...how bright the flash of a life and how fragile. Remember.

This year’s booth design brought to you by somebody deciding to use 12 linear feet of the booth panels for a super fun maze for rabbits, on the annual presumption that a fresh, new shiny booth would be magically created. While most are familiar with the phrase “smells like an old goat” and this arrangement of words manages to convey an objectionable scent, even if one does not know that the lusty ribaldry of a male goat extends to pissing on themselves, the phrase “smells like a territorial rabbit” has not taken off, nor does it conjure the same evocative revelry of the nose. And yet...a potent miasma of ownership did indeed emanate from one half of the materials with which a booth had previously arisen, while inexplicably, a new one had not appeared. With time and funds limited, the ever resourceful rabbit enthusiast purchased two large skids, hastily whitewashed and went with a...rustic...aesthetic. Two large skids that were promptly cut much shorter than the Cuniculus collector had intended, by a rooster aficionado type fellow, seen here repping a glorious @sineateruk for @toothandtalontattoo shirt. @circlecraft today through Saturday 10-9, Sunday 10-7, Monday 10-5. #circlecraft2019 #circlecraftchristmasmarket #circlecraft

So what did we bring to @circlecraft ? (which opens tomorrow at 10 and runs through Monday at 5pm). The closer we get to a show, the more frequent the private messages asking to see what’s being shipped across. And I haven’t had an answer. Not to be difficult...and not simply because I’ve been time starved. Partly because producing these big shows is a tremendous amount of work, and with the proliferation of ways you can buy art, it’s become increasingly challenging for show producers to deliver a significantly unique event that you want to pay to attend. I consider it part of our job as makers of one of a kind things to help bring people through the gates....so it’s only those that do that get access to what we make for the show. Buy the ticket, take the ride (or in this case, buy the things.😜) But the reality is that we also don’t know what we are bringing until right up until the last minute. It’s in the last week that we assemble things and some break. There’s also always pieces on my “finish” list that Josh doesn’t get to. There are pieces I pull bc I’m not happy with them...each year I get pickier and pickier. And there are the pieces I can’t finish because I run out of some material that I was hoping would last because I max all the cards getting ready for a show and hope to only spend what’s absolutely necessary but then need a crucial item, but not with enough time to get it delivered nor to time to take a day out to drive to civilization to get it. Hello, run on sentence. This year our board supplier got backed up and they couldn’t get what we needed made on time. Everything has a pace. We matched the live edge wood we had with the board sizes we already had on hand and let that lead the images. The pendulum swings between abundance and scarcity as a catalyst for creativity. I prefer constraints, the requirement for resourcefulness, make with what you have, not always with what you can get. In the end, we brought the absolute best that we could, given the time and materials we had at play. And that’s the only “success” of a collection that matters. See you tomorrow, Vancouver! #circlecraft2019 #circlecraftchristmasmarket #circlecraft

Tonight’s impromptu release is called “F*ck, a major, unexpected (yet entirely predictable, but forgotten about bc way too much in brain) expense a day before I get on a plane meets I’m too tired to carry this stuff on said plane anyway”. 7pm EST, on Facebook, usual process. 1 of 3. 12x36, elm. SOLD . Also brought to you by crappy photos on a dreary day in a house without clear shots of walls bc it’s full of all our studio stuff bc the previous tenant of the new space didn’t move out as expected for Friday. 😳

Mood.

3 of 3. Lots of greenish tones in this collection too. And a bit of waffling back and forth between this aesthetic...simple, somewhat stark, and elegant and more elaborate landscapes. I prefer the drama of simplicity...almost always but particularly with RG pieces. But it can be frustrating as I don’t really get to paint it out and the formula of a RG piece is constrained in subject matter. Simplicity also takes a certain confidence/boldness and months of significant troubles with anxiety really ran interference with my ability to to quiet my monkey brain that needed to prove itself by making things (ALL THE THINGS) more complicated. 12x60, spalted maple, gold leaf. $1350 plus taxes and shipping.

2 of 3 available tonight at 9. I did a lot of water/bird/distant tree lines this collection. Two years of driving along Colpoy’s Bay to the studio and then walking its shores at the Park, watching the changing moods of Georgian Bay broach this tiny inlet as the seasons cycled...it’s been a discipline of concentrated observation that has infused something of this particular body of water into my personal, internal lexicon of landscape. 12x48, walnut, $1125 plus taxes and shipping. SOLD.

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