favorite blogs and snow days never get me down

A snow day--stuck at home. The house is as clean as it is going to get. I have finished shoveling, finished all my correspondence. My studio alas is eight miles away--down the mountain. Tomorrow I will venture out and get some work done but today I get to explore the internet. A treat and a richness that normally I don't have time to enjoy. So let me put up a favorite image of my quilt moonlight and share some of my finds.

 

Where to start--there is so much out there.  I go first to Maureen Doallas's fabulous blog. She is a poet, a writer, a friend of many artists who has such a lust for life and the larger questions that are asked. Her blog is full of poems, questions, facts. For instance I read about what could be the world's smallest periodic table--what fun. Check it out here. http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/

As she says--quoting Mark Twain "When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear
and life stands explained." Isn't that wonderful? Of course she finds a lot of other fabulous blogs.

For instance I can't resist reading about sun halos on Deborah Barlow's blog http://slowmuse.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/winter-light-parsed-or-not/ She is currently spending lots of time examining how we live--what a great question that is. There are lots of reviews of artists--especially older artists and she also has so many great links to other blogs.  Can I resist the blog about Thriving in a Desert--aboriginal paintings from western Australia? Oh it is wonderful. http://thrivinginthedesert.blogspot.com/  Or there are the great architectural pictures on the Eyecandy blog.  http://eyecandy-webcandy.blogspot.com/  At ColorChunks I find North Korean posters which are absolutely amazing. http://www.colorchunks.blogspot.com/

I could go on forever. But then I see the familiar name of Nancy Natale and her fabulous Art in the Studio blog. http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/ Nancy is an artist making abstract paintings in encaustic, oil and water. It turns out she used to work across the river from my studio--I am sure I met her at the local deli at some point. Now she works in a town just south of me. It is a small world. Her work is wonderful too as is her new studio.


And this reminds me to check out Joanne Mattera's blog and her Marketing Mondays. So much wonderful advice there.  This time I was delighted to see she had a new post on the show Baby, It's Cold Outside at the Kenise Barnes Fine Art Gallery in Larchmont, NY. The pictures she provided were fabulous--there is such wonderful work in the show. Do check it out http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2011/01/one-from-hearth.html  What a treat. For more inspiration I loved the It's a Plane series of posts. So many different ways of thinking of planes and surfaces--my mind is spinning with potential quilts. http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-plane-part-3-of-3.html

Well it is almost time to work on dinner--I think I will make a lemon meringue pie. Yummy. But first I have to check out the new Google Art Project. http://www.googleartproject.com/ Have you been there yet--they have wonderful images of some of the art in museums from around the world as well as shots of the layouts of some of the museums themselves.  Check out some of the work at the Museum Kampa in Prague--wonderful pieces. The Starry Night by Vincent VanGogh is at the MOMA Museum. You can enlarge whatever areas of the picture you want to really study the brush strokes. Looking at my moonlight quilt, I bet you can figure out why I like it. After browsing all the art displayed on the site--and there is a lot of it, you can then set up your own "art gallery" of your personal favorites. Which would you like to have? Which have you seen?  I could (and probably will) spend hours here.

What fun. Have you checked out these sites? What other blogs and web sites do you consider must visits? What can you add to my list?






So much here. When will I have enough time to examine all of them?