Do you remember all the anticipation you felt about who your teacher was, at the end of summer before school started when you were young? Who’s in charge? What am I in for this coming year?

I know that sense of WHO’s in charge never left me, all the way through high school – very important – and college, even more important because then there was choice. So great. And the area that your were interested in – you wanted to find the best of the best. You wanted to feel enamored.

AND then, it doesn’t stop there. In whatever field you are in, there are the leaders. I’m not sure that’s the best word for artists, but it works for the idea of any field. In art specifically, the most renowned are also known outside of art. I recall in the introductory assembly for freshman at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the head of the school asking the rhetorical question: how many famous artists we could name, and it was an impressive number. And most were names familiar to the general public.

This is all to say, that we do care about who’s in charge. AND maybe, just maybe we do really love art. All of us.

Many of you know the long story of my love of art. Starting likely in childhood, wanting to draw and horse. But the magic medium for me: silk, first entered at age 18 when I was doing my year of college at U. of Colorado, where I was introduced to batik, a method I used for my first years of working with silk. Then when I transferred to Middlebury to study languages in order to promote art worldwide (still my mission, actually), I took a semester off to live in Yugoslavia, where I learned to love embroidery – done with silk. I earned an Masters in education at the U. of Washington, focusing on art with children, and then went back to get my own art degree at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and then on to an MFA at the Art Institute of Boston working only with silk.

Lots of art. And exposure to exceptional artists from around the world who use silk – which is the most important medium in some cultures. I went on to do a number of 30′ length wall installations in galleries in DC and Maine and Spain. Silk – such a diverse, sumptuous medium; I consider it the best for someone who loves color in all its brilliance and all its subtlety. Something I’ve explored for many decades.kindness7!

And, then there’s Peaches.

Who’s in charge?
(you can guess)