Giving Thanks

This past week was full to the brim for us, as I'm sure it was for all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, with family, food and celebrating.

Here are some glimpses into our time. The highlight of our week was the visit of my dear brother and sister in law from England with their baby daughter,

Not since my own children were babies have I felt that a baby was so sweet, so cute, so dear, as this little girl. We are all completely in love with her, and her precious smile!

Frank (my hero) cooked up a huge feast on Thanksgiving day, with my mom's assistance,

My mom fell in love with this beautiful apron that has been on heavy rotation since I won it last month over on BananaSaurus Rex, such a pretty combination of soft cotton fabrics.

My painting Joy was chosen for the cover of our church's bulletin for the Advent season and this past Sunday was the first time it was on the cover, so that was fun to have it in everyone's hands...

After bidding a fond, and sad, farewell to our guests, we cleaned up the house and then went out and bought our Christmas tree! Yippee! We were all so excited to decorate it,

And I've been working on a felted Angel tree topper that is almost finished (I'll share pictures when she is done!), the kids have been loving having her sit up on the top of the tree,

With my opening this Thursday, and another good friend from afar coming to visit this week, things are feeling very festive! I am feeling very thankful for everything, and everyone, that I have in my life.

Show at Swallow

As the holiday season approaches I always get excited about the merriment and joy that this time of year brings. This year I'm thrilled to be able to share that I am having a show during this special time of year,

Please join me for the Opening Reception of my new show Winged Blessings: New Work by Faith Evans-Sills

If you are in NYC I'd be thrilled to have you come and see my new paintings from the past two years in person, and have a glass of wine with me. I'd love to see you! The Opening Reception will be from 6 to 8pm on Thursday, December 2, 2010. At Swallow Gallery, 361 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY, between 2nd and Carrol Streets.
The show will run through February 2011, so if you don't get a chance to stop by the opening please visit the show at another time. Swallow is a great spot to pick up holiday gifts. I will have lots of small affordable originals for sale, along with prints and cards of my work.

I can't wait to see my new work up on the walls at Swallow again, my work fits there so well. Here is a shot from my last show there in 2009. I can't believe it was already over and year and a half ago, I've done so much new work since then!


Before I have a show I always get a little nervous, and pensive (I summed it up pretty well here last time), this time is no different. I'm pretty much running around like a crazy woman, getting last minute details finished, glazing paintings, still have to put the finishing touches on two of my paintings, then all in all I'll have 35 new paintings to put in this show. Horray. It is so fun to step back to survey the work that I have done, I think that is one of my favorite things about having a show. Its like putting the period at the end of a long sentence.


I'll be back soon to share glimpses of our holiday last week, and to share some peeks into the wonderful felting that the kids and I spent our weekend doing with the felt-a-licious class! Loving the felt!

xo 


P.S. You have until midnight EST tonight to use the coupon code "livelovegrow" to receive 20% off of everything in my shop for my Cyber Monday sale. Enjoy!

Gratitude

Gratitude

Beauty Everywhere and a sale!

 I've been knocked down by beauty so much recently. It is everywhere. In the dark silhouettes of the newly naked trees.

The ripples of leaves floating on the river.

The rainbow of florescent light reflections at the pizza parlor.

In our looooong shadows in the golden light at the park.

Saturating a couple of the early sunsets that we have watched recently.

So many moments that just take my breath away.

We are preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday which will be on Thursday here in the States. My brother, his wife and baby girl are in town from England, staying with us all week! My parents and uncle will be joining us for Thanksgiving, so we'll have a full house, and are already enjoying the feeling of celebration that having visiting family brings. We are off to do some exploring (and shopping) in Manhattan later on today.

I'll be adding new gift tags to my shop for the holidays, they are really cute, complete with gold string to tie onto your presents,

This next weekend I'll also be doing my second annual "Cyber Monday" sale in my shop to kick off the holiday season, but I'd like to offer it to you dear blog readers first...so please, from now through Monday the 29th you can take 20% off of everything in my shop. Just enter the coupon code "livelovegrow" at checkout to receive your discount! Consider it an early happy holiday wish from me to you! I'll be taking a blogging break for the rest of this week to focus on celebrating the holiday. Warm Thanksgiving wishes to all.

xo

Things we can't recall

Things We Can't Recall

"And I believe in love. And beauty. I believe that every single person has something they find beautiful and that they truly love. The smell of their child's hair. the silence of a forest, their lover's crooked grin. Their country, their religion, their family. And I believe that if you follow this love all the way to its end, if you start with the thing you find most beautiful and trace its perfume back to its essence, you will perceive an intangible presence, a swath of stillness that allows the thing you love to be visible like the openness of the sky reveals the presence of the moon."

This quote is from Geneen Roth's book Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything which is rocking my world right now.

Things We Can't Recall is a new painting about those details of the things that we find most beautiful, that permeate us until only the trace remains because in time, we have become them and they have become us.
It is about the distant echo of a heartbeat. The trace of a scent long forgotten. A quiet dear voice.

Felt-a-licious

There is something about heading into these winter months that makes me just feel like crafting with wool. A friend and I started sewing wool felt food for our children's play kitchens two winters ago. I jumped right in and I think that winter I must have sewn about 12 little cakes and cupcakes. Then last winter a friend offered a workshop for the parents in our Waldorf Playgroup on wool felting. From the moment I started working with the soft wool, and all of those colors, I was hooked! There is such a meditative peaceful feeling that comes over me when I have my hands in wool, and that is why I was so excited to learn about this delicious looking online workshop, being taught by two beautiful women who I have become friends with online recently, Nicole and Emily.

The wool that Nicole is sourcing from Australia, where she lives, looks so yummy doesn't it! I'll be taking this workshop and I'm really looking forward to it, as it feels like the perfect way to decompress after the busy Thanksgiving holiday that is fast approaching.

If you'd like to join me you can find out more information about the class and teachers (they are lovely!) and registration here. I can't wait to make lot's of wonderful woolly Christmas presents, especially these felted ipod/phone pouches, so sweet!

Mountain Weekend

We spent this past weekend visiting friends who recently moved out of New York City to the sweet hippie town of Woodstock, nestled in the Catskill Mountians of New York State. After driving out of the city in traffic the night before it was such a pleasure to wake up to the quiet of day break in the woods on Saturday morning,

and the calm of beautiful asian details through out their home....

We had the most magical weekend with sunny perfect weather as the icing on the cake. We feasted on food that we bought at farm stands,

Hiked a trail called "Poet's Walk",

Stopping at this mysterious structure that seemed almost to have grown in that spot,

We enjoyed the bits of foliage that were still changing color,

Meeting some wildlife along the way, my "animal whisperer" boy's favorite part!

My favorite part, truly, had to be the huge bonfire that we made on Saturday night. It felt powerful, wild and dreamy...that's just how bonfires make me feel, especially when I can look up and see a sky full of stars. It really was the best way to finish off a perfect time spent with friends.

Marrakesh

Marrakesh

Sometimes when I am working on a large group of new paintings I have a couple in progress that are pure fun, that I jump in and out of when I need a light hearted romp to play with color. Marrakesh is such a painting, built on daydreams and fancy. I've been loving this blog about life in Marrakesh for a while, and some day dream of going there. I'm picturing sitting by a lotus pond on a blindingly sunny brilliant day,

You step inside to the cool of the shaded courtyard,

Where the soft sound of the trickling fountain refreshes you, but there are surprises waiting for you through the courtyard door, beckoning you out again,

Out onto the winding, dusty streets, with crumbling walls and inspiration in every direction.

Out into the dark bazaar, where light sneaks through the slatted ceiling and exotic wares of every kind catch your eye.

OK, OK, enough day dreaming*. I'm snapping out of it and heading back to the studio. Sending you lovely weekend wishes. Prints of Marrakesh are now available here.

One last note...I had a nice surprise this morning, my new painting Cinder and Smoke, along with another of my paintings called Essence, were featured on the front page of Lovely Clusters in this beautiful spread...

*I took all of the "Morocco" photos at Epcot in their version of Marrakesh, a pretty cool place to wander around and daydream.

Cinder and Smoke

Cinder and Smoke

In the midst of my flurry of studio activity here I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel as I am putting the finishing touches on multiple paintings this week. I am so excited to share them with you over the next few days. The first one, Cinder and Smoke is so close to my heart right now, I'm completely enamored with it especially with those turquoise horses!

As I was working on it I was thinking about things that drift away from us as we grow and mature, as we let go of things (parts of us even) that we no longer need, to make room for what is coming into our lives. Moving ever forward.

I went to see the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" this past August, since I loved the book I was so excited to see the movie, but honestly as often happens to me when I see the movie version of a book that I love, the movie felt a bit one dimensional and left me a little cold. The most exciting part of going to see the movie came during the previews, as I was watching the preview for a movie called "Secretariat", the female character was asked, "Why are you doing all of this?" and she replied, "It is about life being ahead of you, and running at it!". Something about that line gave me chills and has stayed playing over and over in my mind.

So this piece has that idea in it too, it is about life being ahead of you, and running galloping full speed to embrace it.

Prints of Cinder and Smoke are now available in my shop.

Lantern Walk

This weekend we celebrated the annual Lantern Walk with our Waldorf playgroup. This festival celebrates the turning inward of the season and carrying our inner light through the approaching winter months. I look forward to this festival all year as it is my favorite of all of the seasonal festivals that we celebrate on the Waldorf school calendar. Last year's festival was very special and this year was just as beautiful.
We gathered together in the park, at dusk, around an old tree.

Each family brings lanterns that they have made at home and that the children have been working on in playgroup.

These are the lanterns that we made as a family.

In the growing darkness we begin to light our lanterns,

That is when the magic really begins. Every year I am whisked away to a fairy land as we gather together in a circle and sing songs as the children's faces glow in the soft lantern light.

Then we walk through the park as a group, until we reach a spot where the "fairies" have left a picnic of finger foods for us to feast on. The children eat treats and run around playing while the parents chat, and all of us are filled with the newness and thrill of being outside in the chilly darkness.

Afterwards, we walked home through the park, crunching leaves under foot, the children were tired but smiling. Frank and I feeling so blessed to be a part of this special group of friends.