It’s been forever since I’ve blogged. Forgive me. I’ve been both busy and lazy.

Today I finally finished a giant proposal for the National Museum of Women in the Arts Library Fellows Program Artists’ Book Grant. I have totally revamped my Houses idea into a new edition of 125 – that is, if I get the award. Everything is different now. The poem, the images, the papers, all of it. If I don’t get the award, I’ll have to revamp it again for a new smaller, special edition.

It took me all week to write the proposal, the budget, and create a dummy book, but I am happy with all of it and I am sending it out first thing tomorrow. I haven’t had much time to do anything else. Now I can get back to my busy schedule, which I have been lazily not doing. I have three paintings started – one is from a year ago! and I have not been working on painting since the two new ones I made for the “NO JOKE” show, which is still up until the end of the first week in July at Coagula Curatorial in Chinatown.

Well wait, that’s not entirely true because I did paint a couple little watercolors for the dummy book. One is a gouache, quite simple, and the other is a full-color watercolor and ink. They are both 6 x 9 inches.

I don’t know if I have mentioned that I have been mentoring an artist named Idelle Steinberg. I am trying to help get her career going and giving her as much inspiration and as many tools as I can. We meet about once a week and go over plans and it’s been a nice artist’s friendship so far. I actually put an ad on Craigslist for an apprentice who I could mentor in exchange for a little help in the studio and got a ton of responses. It was wild. I picked Idelle because she has a wonderful imagination and a super distinct style that I felt deserved nurturing. I had no idea I’d make such a good friend, but I did.

I am still waiting on being assigned my young teen girl from Create Now to mentor. I am very excited to meet her and do art with her. I wish there were such programs available when I was 13. If there were, I never knew about them. I believe this girl takes residence in a nearby orphanage. I am hoping to meet her at least twice a week.

If I have not mentioned this before, I got an editor for the literary book I have been working on for these last couple of years. Her name is Lisa Teasley. She is an award-winning novelist published with Bloomsbury and she is committed to taking on my book. I am still on the rough draft, but I am more than half way finished with that now. I wish I could, but I can not rush the process. I estimate I’ll be getting it to Lisa in a little under a year’s time.

I didn’t win the COLA, nor the California Fund Fellowship, but onward. I apply for those two grants every year for maybe 10 years now and I’ve never won, but I always know someone who wins them, which just makes me feel like I’m that much closer. But does it mean that? Maybe not.

I’m going to be in a group show at the Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation in Troy, NY in October and also another group show at the JCC Gotthelf Gallery in La Jolla, CA in December. Something to look forward to.