Irene!

My sister, Irene, from Vashon, Washington, has been visiting me for the last few days here at the ranch. Irene is a known artist and tile maker. She's supported her family with the tile business for many years. There must be thousands of people and businesses who have Irene's tiles for their backsplashes and swimming pools and libraries and companies. I feel artistically humble in her presence.
We are having a tradition, a few years old, of the two of us coming together in my Florida studio for several intense days of making art. We just feed on each other's minds. We don't know what will happen. Often, we collaborate, and we share our best. I have every sort of art supplies and fabric to use. Sometimes we make quilts on the wild side, we sometimes make purses, and sometimes we paint. We have never made ceramic things, though that is what we really do best. Our creative sisterhood seems to be about making stuff we don't ordinarily do. My sister, the professonal, never diminshes me for my artistic dillentantism.
Irene and I are 'can do' women, especially in crafts. We got it from our mother. We can sew, quilt, weave, paint, knit. We are always extending anything we try. And we love to do it!
Irene has spent the few days she was here painting a floor cloth, larger than this photo. In about ten minutes she had the canvass measured and hemmed, and was ready to paint. We only had to make one trip to get more paint, no worries, and then the days were spent in the early mornings taking long walks and swimming, and then-back to the studio to work on "The Project".
All the while we talked non-stop about us, our family, politics, and the incredible wild world outside the studio. Irene worked on this floor cloth painting and I made preliminary drawings for an oil pastel painting and made forays to tend to ranch maintenance. Sometimes I would creep back to my computer to work on a writing project.
One night when we were working in the studio we got to thinking about a family scandal (recently, my first cousin was indicted for murder), and we started looking up everything about this on line, then moved on to looking up many other relatives. We decided that we should write a book called "Skeletons!" about this amazingly weird southern family. But, then, aren't all families weird?
I am looking at the finished floor cloth. It amazes me! I have witnessed the facile creativity, the sense of fun and vacation.