Showing posts with label Glass Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glass Art. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Day 273 #VanLife: What Do I Do Now? or Chasing Seventy Degrees and Sunsets


When I started this #VanLife adventure I had a different life filled with family and friends, a house, and all the things that go with keeping a house.  It was a pretty standard life with all of the ups and downs I suppose and, for the most part, it suited me just fine.

Buying a van and doing a build-out to convert it into an RV was simply to allow me to set up at art and craft shows, selling my art glass across the country while avoiding the costs of hotel rooms. It also offered me the opportunity to see other parts of the country in the hope of relocating our household to a new community  in which I could more easily make a living as a glassblower and our little family could thrive.  #VanLife was a means to and end and not meant to be a way of life for me.

There's an old saying in relationships that "distance makes the heart grow fonder" and then, for some, there's a cynical addendum, "for someone else."  In a polyamorous or open relationship (a relationship based on consensual and ethical non-monogamy) which ours was, one would hope, and more accurately assume, that wouldn't spell the end of a primary relationship but it did for mine.

When I returned home from my maiden voyage in the van from exploring the Pacific Northwest, I came home to a world I no longer recognized and a relationship that had ended at some point while I was away.  Oh, there were several extenuating circumstances but because discretion is perhaps the better part of valor, let's just say that was the end of our twelve year relationship.

I left my home, family, and friends, heartbroken and feeling homeless and somewhat worthless.  Certainly, I felt less than and I felt very lost and completely alone.  That all happened this last October.

I naturally started doing a lot of introspection, soul searching, and otherwise trying to remake or discover what my new life was to be like.

Much of the time since then has been focused on my glassblowing.  I'm so very thankful that my career is as it is and that it afforded me the gift of distraction.  I've been able to focus, as much as one could with such a heartbreak, on something other than said heartbreak.  The roar of the torch is music to my ears and brightness of the flame helps illumine a very dark time for me.

In November and December I rolled into my Christmas show in a major mall in Kansas and poured all of my energy into making glass art and selling it to the Christmas shoppers. 

After Christmas I headed to the southwest for warmer weather and to meetup with the 2019 Rubber Tramp Roundup (#RTR) in Quartzsite Arizona.  Some five to six thousand of us camped out in the desert for fourteen days, sharing our lives and stories while making new friends.

Being out in the desert I had a lot of time on my hands to think and my thoughts seemed to follow a kind of horizontal spiral: How did everything go so wrong so fast? What did I do wrong? What do I do now? Where do I go? How do I live?What did I want the rest of my life to look like?  I had lots of questions with few answers.

After the roundup ended and we all went our separate ways I headed into Quartzsite proper to the annual RV gathering and setup on the main drag at a marketplace making and selling glass art to visitors, travelers, and snowbirds.

As a result of having been a glassblower, going on half of my life, being on the torch sculpting glass is very comforting and meditative for me.  Due in large part to familiarity and muscle memory, it allows my mind to wander and engage in a sort of free associative state.  If I'm not working out my problems on my bicycle, I'm working them out from behind the torch.

Currently I'm still setup in Quartzsite making glass and I still don't have many answers but I do have a few that seem certain: There seems to be no way to return to my former life. I am now, for better or worse, living full time in my van for the foreseeable future.  I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don't want to be cold anymore and I'm going to be chasing seventy degrees and sunsets around the country.  One more thing is just beginning to dawn on me, for perhaps the first time in my life, I am free.

If there is one bright spot in all of this, it's the reality that I've fallen more and more in love with my chosen career.  It has been the one thing that has brought me the most constant joy in my life and for that, I am deeply and humbly grateful.  Glassblowing for me is as a life preserver for a drowning man.

More than that, I really do not know.  At this moment, my most pressing question now is: do I get a dog? 



Friday, May 18, 2018

VanLife Day 11 or GlassLife Day 9993


I'm feeling like this post has more to do with GlassLife than VanLife right now.  When you're on a long show, meaning longer than 3-4 days, it can sometimes feel like an eternity. Such is the case as I near the end of this gig.

It's been a delightful stay and I've reconnected with friends, made new ones, and generally enjoyed myself but it's time to move along down the road.  What's more, I'm anxious to do so.

This should be my last longer show for a while.  Typically I limit longer shows in malls to Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day.  So, I won't have another one like this for quite sometime and who knows where I'll be come Christmas.

I enjoy the music and art festivals quite a bit and all the smaller shows in-between are pretty fun and often profitable too.  When compared to a race, they're like a 50 yard dash as opposed to the longer shows being more like marathons.  You run them each differently.  Your inventory is different, your clientele is different, your expenses are different, and your profit is different.  Longer shows offer stability and security.  Shorter festivals offer opportunity and diversity.  There's a time and a place for each of them.


What do you call a flock of hummingbirds?  A charm!  I've made of charm of hummingbirds in the last couple of days to be sure.  Half a gross to be exact.  After having made thousands and thousands of them over the years, I think I could make them in my sleep and sometimes I think I have.

Production too can become a little monotonous but it also offers time for reflection and thought, not unlike riding a bicycle for me.  I can just kick on autopilot and let my mind wander around a bit.

While I churned out my recent charm of hummers I thought of different paths to my first major destination, the Pacific Northwest and of places and people I might visit along the way.  Colorado would seem to be the best way to go and as luck would have it, I have a good friend, who happens to be a priest in Christ Catholic Church, in Colorado Springs.  I think I'll pop in on him for a bit and see if I can wear out my welcome.

We'll see where the Kraken takes me...

Saturday, May 12, 2018

VanLife: Day 4 or How I Became a Kelly Girl Glassblower

I find I'm settling into a routine which is a good thing because I'm a creature of habit for the most part.  After four days of #vanlife perhaps I'm beginning to find a balance and a rhythm.

This was the first day that my glass show was fully up and running and that part of the setup work was done.  That's always a good feeling.  Now down to making glass and selling glass.


It always fun when I return to a place I have been several times before.  It's often like old home week.  You catch up with friends and acquaintances, see what's new and what's changed.  Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I think that's a very true statement for life in a shopping mall.

I spent a great deal of my life working in malls.  My first management position was in a Swiss Colony in the Battlefield Mall in Springfield Missouri and later in a Morrow's Nut House owned by the same company.  Those jobs opened the door to management positions in other stores within that mall and those positions ultimately led me to a General Manager position of a candy company that operated 10 stores in four states, all in shopping malls.

I became acquainted with all aspects of the building, owning, marketing, staffing, supplying, merchandising, maintaining, opening and closing of mall stores.  I worked with lots of different management teams and franchise companies on various construction projects and community marketing programs.

I was what was called a Mall Rat.  I lived and breathed the Mall life.  I was pasty white in those days.

Its funny how life twists and turns.  It was ultimately my familiarity with malls and franchising that I was able to find my way into the glass business.  I had just completed a contract with a company with multiple stores and interests where I had opened and staffed five more dollar stores for them, two in Chicago and one three in Tennessee.  I was ready for a new challenge and I answered an ad in the local paper.

The ad was for someone skilled in opening and franchising stores in shopping malls.  I thought perhaps it was friend playing a trick on me because I had said to him earlier in the week at a dinner party I threw that jobs like mine were getting harder to come by without moving out of the Ozarks.  Out of mere curiosity more than anything I inquired about the position and I realized it was the real deal.

The company had contracted with Kelly Girl, a headhunting/temp agency, to find a suitable candidate for the position.  In order to pursue the job, I had to become a Kelly Girl and so I did.

I eventually met with the owner who was a lampwork glassblower.  He had a little shop up at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri and he wanted to spread out his operation to shopping malls and amusement parks.  I knew immediately that I was the person for the job and I also knew immediately that some how, some way, I would become a glassblower.  I sold myself and we arrived at a mutually beneficial contract.  My one caveat was that he teach me how to blow glass and to this he agreed.

Little did I know he was incapable of teaching me how to blow glass.

I fulfilled my part of the bargain.  I used my contacts and expertise to get him into two different malls, two different shopping centers, and one theme park.  I took him from this side of bankruptcy to being relatively financially flush and moderately successful.  In all that time, he never once gave me a lesson.

When I reminded him of his contractual promise, he said,  "You've seen me make enough hummingbirds.  Hop up on the torch and make one."  And then he walked away.


I hopped up on the torch and made what look like a fledgling hummingbird just hatched out of the egg that had been subjection to radiation poisoning.  I wasn't pleased with my finished product but I was excited about the possibilities.

He returned only to puff himself up after looking at my attempt at making a hummingbird suncatcher and say, "I've been doing this long enough to know whether a person has an aptitude for glassblowing or not and I'm sorry to tell you, you'll never be a glassblower and that little mess will never hold together."

It's odd how a person can at once experience and the cold chill of dismissal or indifference and the fiery heat of rage.  Right then I dismissed him and his opinion and raged at his words.  I simply replied,  "Squat and watch fella!"

I left his employment with a white hot self-righteous indignation and a forged determination to become at glassblower, come what may.

It took a while.  There was no YouTube in those days and the craft was pretty secretive.  If someone knew you wanted to learn to make glass and you were watching them, they'd shut down on you in a heartbeat. I wasn't sure where or how I was going to learn the craft but I knew I would.

In the meantime I went back to doing what I do, managing stores in malls.  I took a position with Bailey, Banks, and Biddle Fine Jewelers which worked its way into management training.  They were part of the Zales Corporation which had just emerged from bankruptcy and they were in the process of closing some of the less profitable stores. They wanted me to become a store closer.  This wasn't something I wanted to do because I fundamentally disagreed with their methods though I understood their need to do it the way they did.

During one Christmas the mall leased out a kiosk space in front of my store and low and behold, they had leased it to a lampwork glassblower.

It was one of those moments that the 19th century British author, Charles Williams, would describe as an infinite moment: a moment that if recognized and seized could change the course of one's life forever.

I soon met the glassblower and I kept my mouth shut.  He, on the other hand, did not.  His name was Jerry Capel and he was warm, inviting, inquisitive, talkative, and full of zeal.  He had also been blowing glass for about 40 years at the time of our meeting.  He saw in me my appreciation and attention to the glass but I let him approach me about me learning how to blow glass.  I didn't want him to shut down on me like the rest had.

Let me back up a bit, while I hadn't met him, I had seen him in my former employer's gallery several times, so I knew who he was but my former employer had made it a point to keep us from meeting.  I was soon to understand why he had kept us apart.

As we got acquainted, I shared with Jerry the story I shared with you dear reader, of my escapades with the fellow who told me I'd never be a glassblower.  That was one of the few times I would see regret in my new friend's eyes. 

Jerry told me the story of teaching my former employer only a year or two before and suddenly I understood what had happened.  I had unwittingly been duped by a person who was not what he portrayed himself to be at the time and he was not capable of teaching me how to blow glass because he hardly knew how to do it himself.  He used me and his usury was premeditated.

My new mentor however, was capable and more over he was eager to teach me.  He loved glass and would share his talent and expertise with anyone who would sit still long enough to listen and watch.  Seldom have a met in my life people with such a zest and passion as he had.  We became student and teacher and good friends as well and developed a relationship that lasts to this very day.  He didn't teach me everything I've learned about glass art but he taught me everything I needed to know to be successful at it and imparted his passion to me.  For that, I will be forever indebted to this man who changed my life in a moment.

My dear mother helping me out at my very first Christmas show.

I soon quit my job and never went back to managing stores and businesses for other people.  I became a glassblower and the following year I had my own little booth at a mall for Christmas.  My journey started 28 years ago as of this writing and the rest, as they say, is history.

Long story short, that's how I became a Kelly Girl glassblower.


Sunday, May 6, 2018

Future Perfect Tense

I will have returned to Eureka Springs Arkansas sometime before my death.  That much is certain, unless death comes suddenly and surprisingly.  However, even so, perhaps even then, I will have returned to Eureka Springs after my death.  All the best ghosts do you know after all it is the most haunted place in America, so the tour guides say.

Be that as it may, I returned today to call on my wholesale accounts and to deliver some handblown glass hummingbird suncatchers to one of my favorite little stores, the Velvet Otter.


The Velvet Otter is a quaint little antique/gift store on Highway 62 out at Inspiration Point.  For many years, it was a glass shop owned and operated by a lampwork glassblower by the name of Jerry Driggers.  I loved visiting his shop as a kid, watching him blow glass and often watching the sunset out his back windows overlooking the White River.  It's a picture perfect place.

Periodically I get to missing Eureka Springs and I have to get my fix.  I had been experiencing withdrawals of late and so it was time to return for a bit.  My trip was shorter than expected.  After I got there, I just wasn't feeling it.


It's a beautiful place and if you've never visited it you should.  It's a wonderful little Victorian Village out of the late 1800's sprinkled with hippies, artists, spiritualists, religious fundamentalists, survivalists, motorcyclists, poets, writers, romantics, and misfits of various kinds.  Just about everyone will find something to love in Eureka Springs.  I certainly have.


It has many beautiful Victorian homes in the downtown area that rival the great Painted Ladies of San Francisco even and it has a very interesting and eclectic shopping district full of artists, craftspeople, and unique shops.


It's a place to see for sure and one that I will have returned to some day if time allows.  I've visited Eureka Springs on and off throughout my life, I've loved there from time to time, I've lived there for about a year, and had art galleries there over the years but it's the springs that will always call me back.









Sunday, July 19, 2015

Open Doors

Again I find myself coming back to the theme of returning home and whether returning to a place is actually going backwards or rather a forward movement from another direction.

Eureka Springs was not my childhood hometown, that was Springfield Missouri, but I spent enough time there that I feel a kindred spirit to the funky, quaint, artsy alpine hamlet of queers and fundamentalists alike.

I spent much of the day there today and realized that feeling of belonging still hasn't left me. It's one of the very few places or perhaps the only place I have ever felt like I belonged.

I started the morning making my rounds peddling hummingbird suncatchers to several wholesale accounts. It was a beautiful day but offered the promise of getting very hot. My first couple of stops were on Bear Mountain, the mountain I lived on while residing just outside of Eureka when I made the great exodus from the netherworld called Branson Missouri.

My day was a little off kilter simply because I had planned to meet someone for lunch and when that person canceled I planned to take someone else with me on my journey but sadly that wasn't to be either. Fate or folly intervened and I was on my own, footloose and fancy free. Good enough.

I thought I'd stop for brunch at a restaurant favored by another friend of mine who has since abandoned me and moved to the great Pacific Northwest. While there was a certain familiarity there and thus some comfort, the food had changed and not for the better. Oh, there was plenty of it, just not the quality I was use to in times gone by. Be that as it may, it was sufficient and my sufficiency was fully surrensified.

If it's one thing I can't stand it's selling myself. I would not have made a good male prostitute. I have been a rep for various wholesale lines in my life and never had a problem asking for business but for some reason, when it comes to my work, it's like pulling teeth to get me to walk into a shop and offer them my artwork. Perhaps I am uncomfortable about rejection. Who knows?! So as a result I eagerly finished my chore and sold all of the hummingbirds I had with me. I laid the ground work for some follow-up orders and then went off exploring a town near and dear to my heart.

Now for me, exploring Eureka Springs is like someone exploring the back of their hand. I have been all over that town over these last forty years. Sometimes there's a new shop to see and sometimes someone has painted their house a different color. However, other than those two situations, things seldom change in the little town. Yet again, I wasn't disappointed.

While my outward exploration seldom offers anything new I guess I go there for the inward exploration that Eureka Springs offers me personally. It gives me a place from which to gaze backward and then to gaze forward within the realm of familiarity. I did a lot of that while I was there today. I visited many of the springs, spending time at each one in thought and in prayer and visit two of them at least twice before I packed up my doll rags and headed home to Fayetteville.

Living in Fayetteville and spending a lot of time on the bike trails I take a lot of pictures. Few are ever inspiring to me, though I try and I try. I have spent two years in Fayetteville trying to get a "sunbeam" picture and have yet to do it. In Eureka today, the opportunities were limitless and I took advantage of several of them. What I ended up with were some pretty inspiring pics, for me anyway.

My only frustration in the whole day was when a family visited my favorite spring. They were loud and very out of place visiting an underground spring. They cried about spiders, the cold, the dampness, and they poked fun at the sacredness of the space by blowing out the candles that usually burn twenty-four seven, lights that shine in the darkness, lit by loving folk.

As if that wasn't enough, they lit up and smoked cheap cigarettes in the spring. I had to spend some time praying down my wrath. I hope they had a pleasant visit but in the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

While I was visiting, I was also calling about various shops for lease, partially out of habit and partially out of simple curiosity because you never know. I was just heading up Mountain Street to where I had parked the Blackbird when my phone rang. It was a shop I had called about earlier in the day. The landlord was a venerable shop owner in Eureka Springs with whom I have spent several hundred dollars in years gone by. He wanted to show me the space I had called about. I trotted back down Mountain Street to Spring Street and made my way over to the shop for lease.

Not only was the shop space perfect but the landlord was very gracious and solicitous of me and my artwork, thinking we were a natural for the little burgh. I have to admit that it was and indeed is tempting. The space itself is perfect in many different aspects. I couldn't ask for a better space for the money. What's perhaps even more important, I couldn't ask for a better landlord. A door has definitely been thrown wide open for me and all I have to do is walk through. The temptation is great.

So now I ponder on what direction my future is to embark upon. My dear mentor, Fr. Martin, told me to always watch for open doors and so I have. This last year I have had door after door slam shut in my face, many of them personal, a couple of them ministerial, and some of them professional. Much of my life has changed as a result but I have yet to experience an open door in the last two years. Today's experience was a clear and present open door invitation and I don't take that lightly. I don't yet know what it means and I don't quite know what I'm going to do but I am definitely paying attention. As I always say, time will tell the story and indeed time is a great tool of discernment.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Feel the Heat

This morning everything was so clear in my mind. There was a gentle cooling breeze and the day was fresh and so was I. Not long after that, the heat hit and it’s been all downhill since. It’s amazing how working out in one hundred degree heat can rob you of your strength and even, in my case, my wits! I suppose I complicated matters by working with a torch burning somewhere right around three thousand degrees give or take a little. It’s a hot job I know but someone has to do it.

I have been trying to start my day by blowing glass in the cool hours of the morning, hours that had previously been reserved for riding Dominic, my Globe Vienna hybrid bike, on the bike trails of Fayetteville. Today as the temperature rose I pushed myself further and further into the heat of the day wanting to make one little glass hummingbird suncatcher after the next.

I have set up my glassblowing studio in the garage and while that offers some cover from the elements, heat is not one of them that it protects me from, in fact, it acts like a little roasting oven and I’m the turkey. With the torch, lights, and oxygen concentrator I create a generous amount of heat to contribute to global warming and I have yet to install and fire up my little woad blue kiln.

As I sat there making hummingbird after hummingbird and listening to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, my mind raced over my next few blog posts. It was like a manic attack of creativity. I was in the zone. I must have composed at least eight of my next one thousand word posts and indeed mapped out the rest of the year. The juices were flowing and if I had been set up to dictate from the torch I would have had it made.

But no and as a result, as the temperature continued to rise, the creativity started to sweat out of me…

As the heat rose my brained hazed over and my body complained until eventually, sometime this afternoon, I dripped into the house to the sanctuary of a darkened air conditioned room and drifted off to find refuge from a pounding headache.

As a child I was always out and about. It didn’t matter the weather conditions hot or cold, wet or dry, whatever. I was almost always off on my bike somewhere doing something. One summer day, not unlike today, I had spent the greater part of which pedaling around my hometown of Springfield Missouri. I didn’t have sense enough to come in from the heat as it never really bothered me, that is until it did.

On this particular one hundred five degree day when I must have been about nine, I had pushed myself just a little too hard. I remember being about a mile from home when I thought I might be getting into trouble physically. My head started to pound and then, even though I knew I was hot, I began to get the weirdest cold chills and start to shake. I made it home on my bike but at a price. I had a heat stroke.

I’ll never forget the pounding relentless headache and the odd sensations in my body, the dizziness and the nausea. I lay on a couch and didn’t move for hours that evening. I finally found the strength and presence to climb into bed and sleep it off. I haven’t been the same since. After that day I’ve been particularly sensitive to heat and never allow myself to in be a position of being too overheated. As a result when the thermometer reads 90 degrees I no longer ride my bike.

Today wasn’t nearly like the experience of my childhood. I knew I was getting to hot and I shut down. I was just a little taken back by how much it drained me mentally and creatively. I joked with a good friend of mine earlier in the morning about being in a manic creative state and I was just waiting for the crash. Well the crash came.

So now all of those outlines are a jumbled mess in my mind. My outline for the year all but a forgotten memory. This was not even my planned blog post of one thousand words today but I refuse to give into writer’s block so early in the game.

This whole event has helped me to plan for better cataloging of my ideas, thoughts, and inspirations. It also offers the occasion for me to pursue a new piece of technology that I’ve been wanting for some time, a smart watch, and no not an Apple, gack. As I spend more and more time on the torch, a “smart watch” or “wrist computer” as a friend likes to call them, could be a very convenient wearable piece of technology for me. Of course Google glass could be even better but that’s a whole other level of technology for this one eyed person to embark upon.

It’s interesting. My first smart phone was a purchase to augment my glass business. My foray into bluetooth ear buds was also an aid to my glass work. Once again my glass work drives my need and new technology is explored. Fascinating.

Speaking of new technology and the glass business, I’ve also been thinking about investing in a GoPro camera with which to do videos for glassblowing lessons on my YouTube channel. I realize I could accomplish the same thing with my phone, laptop, or even my Samsung NX300 camera but somehow I feel the need for a more professional and or dedicated piece of technology to do the job. And then, it could simply be an excuse to buy a new toy but that’s okay too!

We’ll see. At the price of hummingbirds these days, ten dollars apiece, to purchase these new devices I would have to sell at least fifty of them retail and twice that amount wholesale. I better get back on the torch and stop spending time on this at the keyboard typing.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Can You Ever Go Home?

Can you ever go home? Conventional wisdom seems to say no, you can never go home. Such wisdom would suggest that once you leave, things change and try as you might it's awful hard to find your way back to that which you left. Such is the state in which I find myself...

I visited Eureka Springs Arkansas today, as I had an order of blown glass hummingbird suncatchers to deliver to a shop over in that neck of the woods. It was a gorgeous day, even it it was a tad bit on the sultry side and the drive through the Ozarks Mountains was refreshing and inspiring as always. I concluded my business in the afternoon and headed to Eureka Springs to try and entice a few shop keepers and gallery owners to purchase some of my art work. 

Eureka Springs is a little Victorian oasis nestled on the side of Crescent Mountain in the Ozarks of Northwest Arkansas. Now, truthfully, Eureka encompasses more than the historic loop which winds its way up to the top of Crescent Mountain but that's the heart of the hidden little hamlet.

It's rich in history, eccentricity, art, crafts, Christian fundamentalism, commercialism, beautiful geography, magical springs, Pagans, Wiccans, Faerie, hippies, nudists, and it's as queer as a three dollar bill! It has been called the San Francisco of the Ozarks and rightfully so, what's more, it flies its colors with pride. We even have our own version of the Golden Gate Bridge!

Eureka has been a tourist town since, well, forever I suspect, and over the years the demographics of the tourists that visit, as well as those folks who call it home, have changed as the times have changed but it's always been a melting pot of sorts. The factions have lived in civility for the most part and blended nicely to make a flavorful soup. We are, after all, Southerners, and that counts for something. And like that statement, Eureka isn't always what it appears to be at any given glance and you have to peel layer after layer to sometimes get to the heart of the artichoke. Are we talking about artichoke soup?

What's more, with perhaps one exception, I have always taken the loves of my life to Eureka Springs, of which there have been several. It's like some sort of romantic rite of passage for relationships of mine. I've been married in Eureka Springs and I've honeymooned in Eureka Springs, not with the same spouse both times. The one exception to this eros-sian rendezvous was a wonderful girl who lived in Michigan and with whom I fell madly in love one frigid evening in downtown Chicago. We were teenagers at a high school journalism conference, loose in the city, looking for adventure, and we found one another. It was teenage love but alas we never made it to Eureka Springs together. Who knows what would have happened had we made that pilgrimage of the heart?! Probably charges of kidnapping and transporting a minor over state lines or some such nonsense but that's another story.

I think I've explored every square inch of Eureka Springs and most of it multiple times. It's my go to place when life is being life and not what I think life should be. It's my place to regroup, to rethink, to re-purpose, to reevaluate, and somehow I always manage to find myself again when I visit. Perhaps it's because I left a little part of my heart there forty years ago when, as a child, I discovered the magical place of my dreams.

The Eureka of today is somewhat different than the Eureka of my childhood. The "dragon trees" are still there and the candy store where we would procure the giant jawbreakers is still there - with a taffy machine in the window working on the same pull of taffy it was working on all those years ago. I've had a love affair with that city for perhaps forty years. The Eureka today though has become a mecca for the motorcyclists and not just a couple of them, all of them. Of all the different folks who have taken up with Eureka Springs, the motorcyclists are my least favorite. Not that I don't care for them as people, though there are some who try my inclusive little heart, but I hate the noise pollution. The noise alone shatters the sacred and unhinges the heart.

Anyway, I ventured back today, partly because I wanted to hit up the shops and galleries for some business, partly because it was a beautiful day and like a homing pigeon on such days, I just head that direction, and partly because life has been kicking me around a bit lately and I needed some time to be there. I didn't spend nearly enough time there and plan to go back in two days to spend more time.

A couple of years ago I fulfilled a dream to move to Eureka Springs. I had always wanted to live there and just knew that if I ever did, I would be in heaven. I really did love it and maybe more than I realized at the time but for several reasons, none of which I'll go into in this blog post, after a year of living in Eureka Springs on Bear Mountain, I moved on to Fayetteville Arkansas, a place I call the Promised Land.


Since that move I have toyed with moving back to Eureka Springs. It always calls to me and has always done so. I suspect it will never be silent, being a place that resonates with my soul on some deep level. Today when I was there I kicked around where my old studio use to be and to my surprise it was empty - my heart fluttered! Could it be? Could I move back and have my old studio again? Really? Oh, it seemed too good to be true and it was. 

The complex where my studio had been is now owned by Harley-Davidson. Across from where my quaint little Victorian studio was now sits a big fat in-your-face Harley-Davidson shop flanked by a smoke shop, a tattoo parlor, and Bud's Beers and Brauts. What's more, half the parking lot was dedicated to "motorcycles only" and had been sectioned off with gates and warning signs. Hardly the neighborhood for me. The noise alone with drive me to fits.

My heart sank...and I left...I really couldn't go home after all.

After that rather shocking discovery I made pilgrimage to the Holy Hill where I visited some dear friends at a delightful place called Hillspeak, an Episcopal retreat center of sorts with books galore. I was blessed with the most delightful conversations and I had a particularly wonderful conversation, as is always the case, with one very dear friend. She is perhaps one of my most favorite people in my beloved little alpine village and we laughed and carried on as only we know how to do. By the time I left I had almost forgotten about the motorcycle scourge that is spreading throughout Eureka, almost.

I'll return in a couple of days and I plan on giving the Harley people a wide berth. I'll wander the Carthage stone streets, climb the hills, and visit the sacred springs. I doubt I could go back to live but I will go to visit my heart.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Ex Cathedra Studio

From June 1, 2014

On this Feast of the Ascension, I would like to announce the opening of Ex Cathedra Studio in downtown Fayetteville Arkansas.

Upon moving to Fayetteville this last summer, I began looking for a space in which to be and to do, whatever I was to be doing or whatever it was I was to do – being. I know, I know, confusing, right?! Try being me!

Unsure as to whether to attempt a retail space, a gallery space, a studio space, a ministry space, or an office I began a wide search of possibilities. My search took me in many different directions but always seemed to bring me back to a particular location, a place that just felt right, but that never had an available empty space.

As I continued to look, I secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, longed for a space in this wonderful, funky, old building just off the square on Center Street. Finally, after much patience, prayer, and perusing of real estate listings on Craigslist I was able to secure a small space in that very same building.

The availability, nature, and location of the space actually informed my understanding of what kind of a space it was to be and what adventure awaited me within those four walls.

Tucked away down a hallway on the second floor of an old building just off the square, Ex Cathedra Studio lends itself toward quiet exploration, contemplation, and re-creation. It’s not a place of commerce per se, nor a place of corporate worship, nor even a place of labor alone but rather a place of pilgrimage to experience all of the above.

This is what I tell myself anyway, through an evolving understanding of the cloistered little space. Perhaps it’s all vanity but we shall yet see. I feel like I’ve just stepped into an old musty wardrobe and closed the door. I wonder what adventure awaits me!

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” ― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Ex Cathedra – From the Chair of the Bishop.

Ex Cathedra Studio will serve as a studio, gallery, office, and oratory – a place of creation or re-creation or even recreation, as the case may be. In other words, it will simply be a place to be.

Should you find yourself in Fayetteville Arkansas, please don’t hesitate to drop by and say hello, share a story or a prayer, check out a book, and or maybe even paint! Who knows! There are even two wonderful restaurants on the first floor, one Greek and the other Thai, where we might share lunch. Just be sure and check in with me first though, as you never know where I may be.

“He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe