The World is a Wonderful and Curious Place

The other day I was taking a little break, lying in the grass outside my studio, when a dragonfly came and landed on my knee.  We looked at each other for a little while, and she flew away.  She returned, landed briefly on my nose, and flew away again.  I sat up and held out my hand.  She came back (not even kidding) and landed in my hand.  She stayed there for a good minute.  The wind started blowing hard, and she was struggling to hang onto my hand.  I didn't like the way her delicate wings were blowing all willy-nilly, so I lifted my other hand to shelter her from the wind.  This scared her, and she flew away.

I finished King Kong Cardinal earlier this week and took more high quality digital pics of my latest batch.  I made it to the framer with this series and my big vine piece, so everything will be ready for my show at the end of August.  

I've been spending the last couple of days working on my bird egg installation.  So far I have seven eggs completed, and two in progress.  Actually, one of the two in progress was finished, but I decided I didn't like it anymore.  I like this one, though:

On Monday I played around a lot with different ways to mount them on the wall.  I made a mockup mini installation with masking tape and push pins, just to get an idea of how the eggs will look when they are grouped.  

After playing around with different ideas--making tiny shelves for each egg, wrapping wires around them--I decided I want the hardware to be invisible.  So I came up with this:
The result is that the eggs really become paintings, instead of little sculptures, because they no longer work as free-standing pieces.  But I think they're more interesting as paintings, so I'm happy.  

Lately I have also been inspired by my kitchen:

And by the inadvertent (and awesome) fort that Charley constructed in our living room:
He thought he was just airing out our tent.  

Naps in the fort are very nice.