Crafting an Artful Life: LA... I Love It!

The only downside to traveling great places to teach is that I don't often get to see much more of the city I'm in than the studio where I'm teaching, the bed where I'm crashing, and the roads in between, so these last two trips I made sure that I could squeeze in a few cool things on the front end. November's trip to northern CA was a combined teaching and birthday boys adventure, which started with a run to the Exploratorium and ended with a stop by Otto Frei, a tour of Revere Academy (Alan, I envy the view from your office!), and a mad dash through the Afghan Gold exhibition all before catching a 1pm flight out of San Francisco.

For my trip to LA, I flew out early the day before, and fab hostess for my stay, Kay Taylor, and I blitzed through the Getty and the Huntington before stopping by Farrin O'Conor to get a feel for the studio where I taught for the 3 days that followed. Between the 2 museums, I saw the exhibition, The Belle Heures of the Duke of Berry, oogled at Medieval paintings, a Rembrandt portrait, some Van Gogh irises, a Turner, a Gutenberg Bible, an illuminated copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a first folio of Hamlet, and Gainsborough's Blue Boy to name only the highlights. It was a good day!

O course, the real reason I was there was a one-day Drusy Ring workshop for Farrin O'Connor and a two-day Russian Filigree workshop for the Metal Arts Society of Southern California. I'm always so fortunate to teach such dedicated and appreciative students, and these two workshops were no exception. I had an absolute blast working with everyone and was very pleased to see the students' results. There is simply nothing else like watching a proud student bring me his/her piece and realize that I got to be part of that creation.

The pond labyrinth at The Getty