Going to Italy!

Wahoo! I'm going to Italy...again! I am tagging along with my mother, Cheri Anderson. She applied and received a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship to study bookmaking at Santa Reparata in Florence. We're looking for an affordable apartment since our stay is five weeks. While she's in her class, I'll do my downsized art thing, read, people watch. I am taking my alabaster I originally bought in San Gimignano and exotic woods to carve.

Giving In

I'm giving in to the pressure of blogging. I've lots to share...I love sharing to the point of overkill. Its been two years since my grad thesis show. Wish I had access to the equipment and mentors, course my hamsters give great advice.

I'm on ETSY selling my jewelry as thegirlwithacurl. ETSY is addictive. I have 105 hearts and 1 sale + 1 local sale and been on the front page once! Wahoo! Check it out. If you're in Indianapolis, we can meet up, which saves you cash on postage.

I passed up applying for the few teaching jobs. I need more work to show them. I am working on three pieces for Gail M. Brown's Girls Play Games invitational exhibition at Facere Jewelry Gallery. She invited 8 jewelry artists to explore the title theme.

So for now, I'm still at Holy Cross Central Elementary spreading my love of books with the kids. I do love this job! Every day there is child who says something great about reading: loving it when they didn't before, wanting to stay after school just to read, buying they're own copies of books I'd lent to them (then buying others that just plain sounded good!), or they start asking questions about the ideas in books (when they use to just shrug and grimace), or repetitively ask to come to the library...a 4th grader student just popped in to tell he'd finish his book...it was a 400 pager and I'd only checked it out a day ago...wow! it's amazing! Plus I get to catch up on my reading during middle school classes. I learned quickly kids only read when you read.


I remember my reading habits when I was their age - I read pee wee scouts, dark is rising series, - and how it dwindled in high school. I was fortunate to be in the middle and high school alpha class (back when they had them), because we read the good stuff like Tale of 2 Cities (the only dickens I really like). I didn't pick up reading for fun until the summer after I graduated from IU. I took the summer off and picked up harry potter for the first time...and fell in love with reading all over again. Of course, I inherited this passion. Thanks mom and dad! My sister was a different story. We couldn't keep her out of a book and still can't. She read the Bronte sisters in middle school. I was jealous, but I had art projects to keep me busy.