Introducing a New Blog!

Good morning busy bees! Hope you had a restful little holiday. I've been secretly assembling a new home for my fashion work and I can't wait to share it with you!

Today, I'm happy to introduce :

It's my new fashion blog. You can click here to go and visit if you'd like. With the launch of several recent style projects, my fashion work requested an exclusive place to sprawl and stretch and spread its wings. "The Cinnamon Rabbit" continues on as a blog for all things narrative and children's publishing. "Palette" is a fresh new place for all things visual, a place for color and line to live and breathe! ENJOY ♥

Rainy Day Spell

If you are living near the East Coast, chances are you've been living in a cloud for the better part of this month. I don't mind cloud-life too much. Rain wakes me up on the skylight in the morning, birds still go on building their nests in the rafters near our windows. The storms haven't been meddling or mean, but mild enough to just add a little curl to your hair or an umbrella to your bag. Rainy days make me FINALLY sit still and that's good for work! And I can't get over the GREEN that they bring.

The best studio days are rainy. There is a productive energy to them, the Earth is busy with photosynthesis and you are busy at your desk. I'm usually (selfishly) wishing for a week full of them. They have always soothed me, been able to put me under a spell. It's that constant chanting, hushing "shhhhhhhh" outside the window. Nature's entranced too, I think...the birds sound like they are singing in the shower. And my cat is seriously cozy-ing himself out in here:

Do you love rainy days?

It's been almost a year...

since Paris. Maybe that's why I'm painting these. 

Inspired by the beautiful photos of Ramsay de Give for Mille-feuille's feature ,WSJ.

Oh, the butter (le beurre)!

Digging For Stories: Plymouth, MA

When the Plymouth Antiquarian Society put out a call last week for help at an archeological dig they've begun in Plymouth Center, I said: Yes, please! Digging for history is probably the EXACT way I'd like to spend any Sunday afternoon, so we jumped in the car and headed south once again to grab some shovels. (Thank you to husband! His sifting skills were much appreciated <3.) They are still working and needing volunteers to anyone who might be local.

We met Donna Curtin, curator at P.A.S, when we arrived and she set us out on a hunt for 2 types of evidence to prove this storage shed was a Slave Dwelling. We worked under the direction of local archeologist Craig Chartier (director of the Plymouth Archeological Discovery Project). Having met the rest of our digging team: Joyce and Noelle Poremski and Robin Tozzi (all lovely and welcoming and connected to PAS as well), we set out to find chopped bone and shell bead evidence...here let's let Donna explain more (by Rich Harbert via Wicked Local):

 

Matching soil colors... with a soil palette. Be still my heart!!

Scratching my history-itch!

Once all necessary evidence is found, they'll receive funding to protect the site and hopefully turn it into something educational too. No bone or beads for us, but we DID find what Mr. Cartier believed was a stem piece of a 17th century clay pipe, as seen below here in the Pilgrim Hall exhibit we found later on.

That's the 1600's, folks, right in the palm of your hand...

A Boston Globe reporter, Constance Lindner, who had done some archeology herself, was there and we discussed the visceral feeling...the feeling of direct connection to people and lives long ago.

I'm always thinking of the stories buried right underneath our feet, how history activates legend in the present. History will always provoke art because it is the ultimate story. It is not in a dusty book that has a beginning, middle, and end. It is very much alive, everywhere we walk. Nothing is “lost” to history, history is now, in us, in physicality and in spirit. I think you feel that especially when you're digging it up...you invoke the big story arc when you dig.

It's something that will probably always keep me fascinated, keep me drawing, writing, searching, learning, sifting through, and wondering...

Matt's Blue Blinds Bakery reward...