Recently read: Louise Penny’s Still Life

This is the first in the series of Chief Inspector Gamache books, and is as enjoyable as the rest are. Set in the picturesque village of Three Pines in the countryside of Quebec, Gamache and his team are called in to investigate the shooting death of an elderly woman on Thanksgiving Day. The village folk desperately want it to be a hunting accident, but too many things strike Gamache as suspicious.

Using collage to create a vision of your future

Joan Dempsey, the developer of the Literary Living program (http://www.literaryliving.com/ ), asked me to write a piece on using collage to create vision boards for the program. In addition, I have posted a selection of my vision board collages above. From top to bottom, the images are my vision board for creative space (acrylic, photos, ephemera, sketches, stamps and handwriting), vision board for moving to Colorado (words and images from magazines, poster paint), and journal pages to inspire creativity (poster paint, ephemera, handwriting, stickers, art paper, and stamps). Click on each image to enlarge for details.

America Indian Art at the Denver Art Museum

Grand Procession: Contemporary Artistic Visions of American Indians by Lois Sherr Dubin

This weekend, Carl, our friend Cathy and I went to see the expanded exhibit of the Denver Art Museum’s permanent collection of American Indian art. It was stunning, with ancient art and artifacts, clothing, traditional work and contemporary art beautifully displayed. My favorites were the doll sculptures created by contemporary artists. These sculptures are fully clothed with traditionally made beaded clothing, two feet tall, each representing the garments of the eighteenth and nineteenth Plains and Plateau Indians. I bought the book about them at the museum shop. Fascinating stuff.

In my quest to break my Internet news addiction to the Huffington Post, CNN and NPR, I've been doing a lot more recreational surfing. I recently saw this web site, which is a job listing for professional bloggers (or those wishing to be). Check it out http://jobs.problogger.net/view/258

Recently read: Norma V. Toraya’s Paper Puppet Palooza

In my ongoing quest to play with and create paper dolls, I found this book that not only has all sorts of fun art dolls made of paper, but also explains how to use sticks and brads and string and other things to make the dolls into moving puppets. Toraya is an animator for videos, commercials and television, and is the creator of Crankbunny. I love her mystical, funny and dark creations like Zahmoo the Puppet Shaman and Ms. Ananushka Puppehklova. These puppets are not for kids!

Recently read: Leonardo Padura’s Havana Gold

This is the fourth in Padura’s Havana Quartet series with Lieutenant Mario Conde. I am fascinated with Padura’s descriptions of life in modern Cuba. In this a school teacher is brutally murdered, drugs seem to be involved, as do some of her students. It was interesting how Padura describes the use of marijuana as rare and extremely scandalous among high schoolers—not what we would expect here where even grade school kids seem to have access to a buffet of drugs. Worth reading, yet I wish the translator would not sprinkle the text with outdated British slang words.