Joy is visiting the farmer's market....

Flowers, pumpkins, homemade breads, cookies and even homemade potato chips to snack as you wander over to watch the soccer field, visit the young artist working with Todd Camp on perspective and future dream scapes for another exhibit created for and by children diving into discovery. Honey soaps, flowers and dried bittersweet on the grounds of Bryn Du mansion and the location today for our board meeting. The sun is calling me as I try pay close attention to details in cut backs and possible saving measures without hurting our fresh marketing evolution. The Licking County Arts will be one of the featured articles in next year's publication and with 75,000 issues going out this should really open up doors for future patrons and supporters of the wonderful artists we have creating their visions. Thank You Susan Fryer for all you do to help the little guys play in the big playground.

I went after my stroll through the market, to select some remnants for a family "cupcake" project for Morgan Elizabeth's Gourmet Bakery Shop in her little bedroom. I found bits and pieces of this and that and began looking for small doll pieces and vintage looking buttons and patterns to have on hand to explore a small installation I am mulling around in my brain. My Mexican dream is coming together but I still have a great deal of ephemera to sort through from my three summers down South. The Aguilar Sisters are almost mystic in their journeys as three ceramists each making their recognizable marks on the earth around where they live and survive in a beautiful magical land. The Milagros ...little miracles...are everywhere you look in every direction when you slowly travel around Mexico. It would be so difficult to be there, visit, explore and not find yourself a changed person.

Chris McCandless is a young Emory graduate of 1992 who gave away his worldly posses ions and then donated $24,00 to OxFam and then disappeared from his family and friends to go into the wilds of Alaska to "find himself in Nature". I found this book at one of my Goodwill runs and was immediately captivated by the driven young man from the Y generation. The fragmented story and journal entries found in his makeshift home on an old abandoned school bus offer insight into what others have identified as madness and yet his intentions were so pure and authentic I felt a sense of grief and loss when this man left his earthly home. It was a different time...supposedly...but I can see many of the same questions being asked over the last four decades....what am I to do with my life? His thirst for extreme experiences ...primordial beast was his quest. July 1992 he began his journey and walked out into his rebirth on the shores of Lake Mead. He was a performance artist both in reality and a metaphorical sense.

Have a great evening and Imagine and Live in Peace, Mary Helen Fernandez Stewart