http://www.whodoesshethinksheis.net/

Please spread the word about this. I am about to email The National Museum for Women in the Arts to find out of they will screen this in DC. I have volunteered to host a home party.

Artists, read between these lines.

A great argument for supporting the arts during a recession from the Miami Herald.

Stay tuned..... there will be some announcements soon!

In an email I received this morning.....

"Thank you so much for your recent inquiry to the XXXXX Foundation regarding grant opportunities to individuals working in the arts.

The current, virtually unprecedented economic crisis has hit small nonprofit arts foundations such as ours especially hard. At this time, we cannot sustain the level of giving that we offered in years past. We have received an overwhelming number of inquiries and are not equipped at this time to process and, in all fairness, grant sufficiently in proportion to so many new potential new applicants. The XXXXXX Foundation will NOT be holding an open call for new applications this year; instead, our 2009 call for applications will be an invitational for prior grantees only."

.....somewhere in a university classroom in Australia.....

Off to West Palm Beach for 3 days. Will visit with old friends, and do some career strategizing by the pool, with no interruptions. With the housing market as it is, it looks like we will not be able to sell our house right away, which means we are bleeding money paying for rent on top of a mortgage. No one is buying art these days, at least no one that I know. Grant money running out, studio expenses are not. I appreciate these moments, when one must search for the opportunities that The Universe is offering in this time of hardship. May go back to teaching for a while, or come up with an alternate plan.

I like alternate plans. Etsy. Workshops. or maybe build an empire of some sort....

Just returned from a few days in New York, visiting relatives and attending the opening of "Dress Codes: Clothing as Metaphor in Contemporary Art".

My Defense Mechanism Coat, now owned by The Belger Family Foundation, is part of the exhibition that includes Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Mimi Smith, Cat Chow and other amazing artists. The show is at the Katonah Museum of Art, about an hour north of the The City, and will be up through October 4.

The exhibition was curated by Barbara Bloemink, an independent curator whose former positions include Managing Director of the Guggenheim Hermitage and Guggenheim Las Vegas Museum; Curatorial Director of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Museum; and Director of the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia.

"Recession Adds New Meaning to "Struggling Artist", in The Gotham Gazette.

Living in a limbo in a 2 bedroom condo in MD, outside of DC, waiting for our NC house to sell. For the past few months, been commuting back to NC with a dog and a newborn every Weds-Sunday to work on the house to get it ready to put on the market. A very difficult time in my life, but filled with moments of joy, coming almost exclusively from my baby daughter. Just started the first of several embroidery projects I brought to work on.

Packing up one's studio, especially not knowing where or when it will be unpacked, is tortuous. I already need about ten things that are in the back of our storage pod. I miss free access to my art books whenever I feel the need to reference. But they say that there is much to be learned from creating with constraints.

The fact that my husband was unemployed for 7 months during my pregnancy means that we cannot afford the help that we were planning on hiring, so I am making art between caring for my daughter full-time. The embroidery is excellent for the stop/start aspect of my current life, and we are blessed with a happy baby, who gives me lots of work time during her naps and cooing play sessions.