Wow. I LOVE this. Perfect for the moon.

Hi grace! Funny how different colors feel to us at different times. I don't find the orange glaring at all, I absolutely love that orange. It is calling to me. But we know what chakra that is!

Love, Love, Love her work. Would go to the zoo just to see her murals. Hope someday to stop in and see the Children's Hospital one.

shared on facebook. Love your work

grace, you left Ann Arbor in '89, but I saw you in New Mexico in '94 the last time and then lost touch. Long time anyway. Still so thrilled to find you again. I do so remember the "innocent willingness for possibility". Oh, yeah, the Magic. That's what I remember most of the old you. I have lost some of that, too, but not all. For me also, this is a time of great shifting and new horizons. I think you are right, it is a perfect time for a collage. Maybe a mixed media of paper and cloth?

One breath One step back and you can see the Illusion in Motion.....Oh, grace, that is so beautiful and so you. I remember us doing collages. Haven't done that in a long time. Perhaps I would now again.

Placing the brushfire cloth on top of the other cloth has amazingly softened it. It feels more like a warm internal glow now. Is the bottom cloth a light pink? It looks like it at the top, but different toward the bottom. Anyway, a whole different feeling now. I like it, too.

I have my dad's old electric chainsaw in the garage. Used it a few years ago on some thick branches. I was astounded by the ease of it, like cutting through butter. I finally understood men and their tools. I used to get so mad at the Edison guys butchering the trees when they came around trimming for the electric lines. But once it was in my hands, I found it hard to stop. I ended up killing a peach tree I was supposed to be "pruning". It was shocking. I'm a tree hugger. Only use it on dead branches now!!

Moth to the flame?

Moth Love (That was the title for sections of book I just finished reading, Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Lots of words about moths and other creatures and their "love" I keep thinking of that when I look at your piece. I'm naming it Moth Love in my mind!)

grace, you've probably already thought of this and I know you like the heat so probably don't mind the summers in New Mexico, but why couldn't Chico and northern California be where you spend your summers or part of them in the cooler climate. Then you winter spring and fall maybe back in NM? A snowbird kind of thing. You could put up a small yurt for when you are there. And it could be a way to transition as well. You keep going and staying for awhile until you see if you like it enough to make it permanent without having to give up your current place all at once. You'd be there to help Jenny and Alyssia for a longer stretch, but then you can come back. Maybe find that middle-aged Mexican woman you'd visualized to watch over/live in the NM place while you are gone and tend the garden and living things you love so they don't die. I think that's what I'd do so it could be a more gradual transition if at all.Maybe you don't need to be there full-time, or not at first?

Well, I can see now why you are having struggles with the idea of leaving. You've planted and nurtured so much in that space, it would be deeply a part of you. Reading that, I don't even want you to leave now, lol !! Can't you just visit Jenny and all in the new space?!!

por vida for life... Like that. Following this story of the tree, feeling it, and my memories of similar love for them. I had a huge one in Bird Hills that I would hike to and lean my body into to feel her energy, a mighty grandmother oak. Really like the two photos above. They make quite the story in themselves together. Exodus, moving on, transition, part 3. "trying not to make the story" That is what I keep telling myself this year is about for me, letting go of trying to control the exact outcomes, just staying open to what will be, what is coming. You've always been good at that I thought, taught it to us. That it's all perfect for the moment.