I'm making this the year of the hike for me.  I need to try out new trails as well as visit with some of the old ones.  I've made myself a commitment to bring my creativity up a notch.  I got in shape by climbing part way up Hamlin quite often this spring and riding my bike.  On my first big hike of 9miles, I finished in wonderful shape, few aches and pains, about 60 photos, five sketches and two book ideas.  I'm mostly excited about the book ideas, although I might combine both books into one, to make it bigger.  Whether it's 20 or 40 pages, the cost is basically the same for me, so I might as well put some content into it.  I still wouldn't expect it to sell very well, probably in the $75.00 range for a hand bound book.

I've done several small hikes, but lets see if my wishes come true and I also do: Indian Pass from the north, Jay Mountain on my birthday, then in the autumn, Giant and Marcy.  I'd really like to get some new material for paintings.

Eatingart for Winter 2006-07

It's so great to have Corrine home for the Holidays, we all miss her so much while she's away at college, where she is doing very well.  Corrine and I cut down a Christmas Tree today and we have it all decorated tonight.

Sue and I have turned around our business in a fashion that I think is really surprising us.  We have two record months in a row and December is shaping up to be very good as well.  We might actually get some money in our IRA's again.

The web business has been lucrative and Sue is taking on more orders and is being very creative and demanding in her work.  She is making some wonderfully new pieces.

I'm involved in a new play, I play the part of an ice fisherman, who has a quiet, zen like life when he wins the lottery and everyone in the neighborhood feels that his luck is there's and so they all hit him up for money.  It's comical mostly.

I'm painting, making my books and now I'm committed to finishing my play on Vietnam.  It's called, "The Gulf".  The title is a play on words, "the gulf", between some members of families over positions on the war and "The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution".

I'm really trying to focus on the moment, all the time.  I don't like looking into the future anymore, because I've seen too much I don't want to see, not yet.  It'll all come in it's own time.

Age has a way of creeping up on you, I know somewhat of my Mothers frustrations at being 89 and not being able to hike anymore.  A trip to her mailbox and back now is her exercise and she doesn't like it one bit.  She's driving a lot less these days too I noticed.  She gave up cleaning her house, so we do it for her now.  She still brings in her own wood for the fireplace though.

I have things and health issues coming upon me as well.  I'm still young enough to overcome quite a few things if caught early, so I've had some procedures done and I'm sure glad I did.  I exercise almost daily, it's very meditative for me as well.

In my meditations I've made some major decisions having to do with my life.  I'm going to implement them in 2007.  We've already begun to make changes in the gallery, I'm being drawn inward, like a magnet, being pulled somewhere.  It's a blank canvas, like the one sitting on my easel right now.  I know there is something there and unless I sit in front of the canvas with a pallet of paint to my right, I'll never go there.

So in 2007 I will create the atmosphere in my life to go to this place.

I didn't really care for 2006.  I changed a lot of friendships and now I look at people and groups quite differently.  I'm taking on a new mindset because I always thought in terms of groups and now I have to leave that kind of energy.

If I find myself thinking in terms of group projects, I let that go and bring my attention to something, I, as an individual can do.

Eatingart for Autumn 2006

I've come along way from that last entry.  Good for me.

We're really turning our business around.  Over 25% of our income now comes from the web and graphic work I'm doing, it's moving along very nicely.  There's always several projects going on and most of the work is interesting.  Dealing with the clients it's always easy though, I try to establish a good communication between us.

I've taken on a job outside the home too.  It's for three weeks and it's for a local printing company, I'll be doing ads for their weekly newspaper while both of their graphic designers are off getting married.  

As a result of that I will be able to buy the computer system I really need to have to handle this new business.  We just couldn't swing another computer after getting CJ that new one for college.  So this works out very well, I'll still have time in the evenings to work on web and graphic work.

I'll have to sidetrack creative endeavors while I'm working out there, so I'm presently working on my twelfth pyramid and last in this series.  I want to get a bunch fired with books before I start in about three weeks.

Then in November we tentatively begun a new play production.  It's being co-written by the director and a pretty famous writer.  This writer has had plays made into movies and in 2007 (the same year this play will be in production) his newest adaptation of a book into a movie will be released with Martin Scorsese as the Director.  That's pretty cool, he might even be a narrator in this play I've been told.

Sue has taken on some pretty big projects and has more to do over the winter, I think shaking up the business was the right thing to do.  With less business coming in the gallery doors, it's forced us to look for it and that's brought on even new and exciting challenges for us.

Sue has examples of her work out to two Interior Designers.  The one in NY City requested photos, so that was nice, the other was on a recommendation of a friend.

After my stint at the printers I'll be going back to oil painting and book binding and setting up the new system and moving my web business over to the new one.  That's going to be a chore, but very needed chore if I'm going to take on more that 50 accounts.  I just received interest in building a web site for a watercolorist in Washington State.

Our percussion group Mountain Drum is going to be performing for the "The First Night" celebration in Saranac Lake this year.  We've already booked our rooms at the Hotel Saranac, for ourselves and the girls too and their friends.  Going to be a good party.  It is interesting to see the group change, ebb and flow.  I really wanted to give it up after that JEMS crap, but it's such a great creative outlet.  I realized I had to keep a good thing, and I think my relationship with S is improving.  

Eating Art  for Summer 2006

Eating Art has always been a true accounting or diary of our lives as artists in the Adirondack Mountains .  So many changes have occurred in the past six months, strange changes, but ultimately good ones.

  I'll just say that as a result I will no longer get involved with groups.

  I've worked with and started groups of people on all kinds of projects.  I've been on the Arts Council Board, the Library Board, the Planning Board, was instrumental in making my town one of the few Bi-Centennial of the Constitution towns.  I was a founding member of  MANY and helped run a very successful arts co-op for several years.  Sue and I helped the local PBS station to get an arts auction organized, 20 years ago, which is now very successful, and we started two juried craft shows over the years, one of them is a major juried show in northern NY now.

  I was very instrumental in organizing and running a successful artisans studio tour, which I requested someone else to run this year, no one stepped forward so there is no studio tour this year.

  Sue was very instrumental in getting an arts program in the local elementary school, which didn't have one.  Both of us donated much time to work with kids either in school or in our studio with both public and home schooled kids.

I guess I'm just laying out some information, probably for me mostly, to show that I was able to work very well with people in all kinds of projects for very long periods of time.

I've worked in groups, always enjoyed groups of people and the special energy that comes from it.  I've always enjoyed a studio setting, where creativity was being explored and nurtured and happening.  Group energy was always something I loved.

I was donating my web expertise and time to a non-profit and gave them a wonderful idea and they took that idea and hired a person to execute that idea and to also take over the web site that I started for free for them.  So essentially, they took my work and gave it to someone so that that someone could then make money from it.  I guess they thought I wasn't worthy of it for some reason.

That didn't sit well with me.  Especially when business in the gallery over the winter was just terrible.

My most treasured accomplishment though was in helping to create JEMS.  But over the last three months I have become very discouraged and disappointed.

  I was probably not a perfect team player either, but I know I tried to stay abreast of every aspect of the organization.  I was Treasurer since its inception, 19 years ago and did an incredible amount of work to bring music and the arts to my town.

  There's no way to put it nicely.

When a member runs the organization without regard or consideration of other members viewpoints and needs then that member has to go.  That happened and we lost a major member and friend.

Then while I was meeting with a contributor, (who was about to write a check for a very substantial amount of money) the contributor told me that he just met with another  member who told him he never wanted to have the theater and wasn't going to be involved with it. 

This was a major member of the group and I felt like I was being sabotaged in my efforts to build this theater, and when this same member started hassling me about putting up posters when I did all the work to get a winter music series going, handed out posters to members, who apparently never put them up, that was the last straw with him.  I resigned the Treasury and I didn't even wait for a replacement.

Shortly after that a whole other member come to me and tells me she just sabotaged an event I was in charge of and on top of that she informed me that the play that I was involved in, American Buffalo would never be allowed in the theater.  Wow…..this is the same theater I worked weekly on over the very cold winter, hammering and ripping out walls.  Putting in time like a second job to make sure we were getting the job done.

And now the play that I've been putting so much hard work into wouldn't even be allowed in the theater I was busting ass to get built.

I don't think any of these people understood the vision of where we were going, it was very disappointing to think that this wonderful project was coming apart for me.  One member considered the theater his own private project, one member was sabotaging and complaining about the project and one member wanted to censor what went on it there………

This was like a bad dream.  I was so burnt out, I knew I could argue my points but I thought why bother…….I just didn't have the heart to do it, for I knew that in my heart I had the creativity to continue without this group.

I spent as much or more time in that building, working and dreaming as anyone.  I saw many wonderful events that would have come about.  I was fully prepared to make it happen, and I was very excited to believe I was a part of it.

I'm out now.  I won't help anymore.  I gave the theater a year of my life, other people can build it now and run it too…..I don't even want to go inside it anymore.

I guess I'll never figure out the events and why they happened, of course people have their ways and their opinions, I just couldn't work with these people and their ways and opinions any more.

I'm 58 this year, I've given over 23 years of community service and I feel really good about that.  I'm looking out for myself from here on out.

The changes have ultimately all become very good for me.  Mostly I have a lot of time and I've portioned out the time for work and play and I'm making the most of it all.  I'm glad to be gone of all the headaches that occur when you deal with people. But I'll truly miss the group energy, that is when it was positive.

This was a very unproductive winter for me, no creativity in the arts that I use to enjoy, other than helping to build a theater.…..I've delved more into the graphic arts and web design and making good income from it, so I will continue this way.

Now that American Buffalo is over I feel totally re-energized creatively, Sue and I have a show in a gallery and we are going to be showing a lot of new work, that is in August.  So it's nice to have a deadline like this one, it's lit the fire under our butts to get out some new ideas.  On top of the show they've asked us to do the New Digs Performance.....and Sue and I are also working on that now once a week.