With the advent of an extraordinarily large paper cutter, some fantastic new (old) frames, armloads of cast-off and re-claimed books, I have felt a rush of productivity which has resulted in more shows, more work, and more piles of stuff.

There seems to be a direct correlation between the height of my piles of papers and scraps, and the degree to which I'm actually exercising some sort of creative muscle. I try to navigate through the piles, shifting them from one surface to another, and end up getting lost in the images I happen upon once again. It might be an unconscious act of imposed creative chaos when I 'lose' a piece of paper and have to go rooting through all the piles to find "it", only to stumble upon something even better. If that's the case, then kudos to the unconscious and I'll stop trying to outsmart myself because myself will (invariably) get the better of me.

And though the piles grow taller and denser and more precarious, I am confident that they will continue to generate good things which I couldn't have planned any better, even if I had been conscious of what I was doing and how I was doing it.

Amid the mid-winter doldrums and the hectic, hellish tempo of the holidays, the artwork has been both burgeoning and booming. Between the new show up at the Collegetown Bagels (N. Aurora St., downtown Ithaca, plug, plug, plug), and other little private projects that have been comissioned, this girl has been a busy little bee. Glibness aside, the days have been busy and I have felt the strain and satisfaction from having done multiple jobs at the rate of a job well done.

So of course I dig being able to do the visual thing, but since embarking on, and really investing myself in the type of art that can be hung on a wall, my writing has taken a backseat. This is no longer the case, yo! Just this past week I unearthed a snazzy red typewriter that some of my girlfriends thoughtfully willed to me - they're not dead, but were looking to free up some space in their trailer - and have been typing like a bohemian crazy lady ever since. If you walk the streets of downtown Ithaca late at night and hear the forceful click-clacking of an Olivetti Valentine, you'll know that the creative juices are flowing, and not only via the X-Acto.

I'm trying to invest myself in the creative oeuvre in a thought-provoking way, but lately that's only resulted in me being more introspective. This is not necessarily a bad thing considering I'm usually the talkative type whose [day] job it is to (more or less) keep talking no matter what the content. But the deeper the artwork delves, the more reserved I become. Maybe I should take a vow of silence and see just how far I can push myself; asceticism meets aestheticism...

Think about that... quietly.

My workspace is littered with piles of magazines, stacks of books waiting to be culled, bits of paper, old nails, frames without glass, etc. The list would be longer except that I felt the need to uncover my worktable last night and fell into a cleaning frenzy that we're going to label 'catharsis'. I had to clean house in order to sweep my space clean of the psychological dust-bunnies that invariably gather whenever my life gets busy and complicated. So with a clean (i.e. visible) worktable and clean psyche, I've launched phase two of the life of the artist: ordered creativity.

Kindly refer to the manifestation of my New Organizational Wave in the re-tooling of the collages on the site.

Last night I dreamt I was walking around a shopping mall carrying three crutches and was desparately concerned that people were going to look at me and think that I had a prosthetic leg. I'm no Freudian, but maybe this points to an anxiety over launching this website. I've started carrying my business cards around with me everywhere I go. The playful smile and eager gleam in my eye dispel any notions of severity as I distribute them willy-nilly, slapping them into unsuspecting stranger's hands right and left. However, I think the mark of the business card is generally read as a sign that points to a step up in career, and confidence, and seriousness. If you put a business card in someone's hand, they take you for a professional. Or at least, someone serious who (very likely) takes themself seriously. This need not always be the case! I carry my business cards because I want to and because I get a kick out of my pictures, and think that other people will too. I carry the business cards to generate business, yo. So when I dream about being misinterpreted because of some crutches I just happen to be toting around a center of commerce in the unconscious playground that is my dream world, I guess my psyche is telling me, 'chill out, lady'. So with the launching of the website, I'm going to calm down, take a deep breath, and put my best foot forward - prosthetic, or otherwise.