Spring has officially arrived and brought with it a trio of new goat kids at the Jardin des Plantes...

I've added a few spring favourites to my "micro garden" outside the apartment door...

  

 

   

 And soon it will be time to find places for everyone out of doors in the courtyard...

 

Inside the cats are still in their cozy winter mode, sleeping much and taking over all the most comfy chairs for long siestas.

 

Twiggy Miranda in her favourite place...

 

There's not much room here but still I manage to make and do quite a lot... This week began with some new fae furniture coming into the human world...

 

A fae seamstress' work table with tiny hand crank sewing machine, vintage style.

 A fae reader's corner for curling up with a good book and a cup of tea.

 A fae fireplace with cheery flames cut from dried Chinese lantern flowers and a basket of logs close at hand.

 

 I have also begun experimenting with some lovely naturally twisty wood, copper and quartz to make fae wands. ( Available on my Artemis Jane shop: http://www.artemisjane.etsy.com ).

 

Come and visit again soon...Flea market dolls await...

 

 

as do vintage bottles---mind the mischievous faery trying to squeeze free!---

and a shelf full of art and magical things..

Wishing you all a joyful spring!

Paris in June

Sphinx along the route, Paris, June 2012

Late June in Paris--just a quick trip but long enough to experience the magic of the Les Maîtres du Désordre exhibition at Le Musée du quai Branly and see the permanent collection on display in an intriguing and at times disorientingly dark space dotted with pools of theatrical lighting. Earlier in the same day I also had the thrill of seeing the extensive Artemesia Gentileschi painting exhibition on view at the Maillol Museum. It was an outstanding journey with nary a trace of the mysterious "museum fatigue" that often accompanies a day of too much beauty and wonder.

Bolivian festival costume, the archangel Michael

wild men festival costumes, maîtres du désordre exhibition

wild man of the woods, maîtres du désordre exhibition

installation, maîtres du désordre exhibition

Afghan hunting regalia, permanent collection

Swiss mask in carved wood, maîtres du désordre exhibition

Oceanic art, permanent collection

view from the Pre-Columbian galleries

slit drums from Oceania

Australian indigenous paintings

Chinese shadow puppet, a bat-like dragon

Pre-Columbian miniature figure in gold sheet, Peru

sculpture from the permanent collection of oceanic arts

view from the museum's extensive gardens

a section of the Musée du quai Branly green wall

Spring segues into Summer

Away from blogging for such a time that now spring is turning towards summer, I have plans to be away yet again in travel, in Paris and other parts of France and then on to do workshops and performances at festivals in the UK in August. Life is interesting and ever changing---my art is the creative thread that holds it all together, no matter how tenuously. I do hope to stay in touch better even during my coming time on the road! Let me share with you some of what I've seen and done of late...

One of my recent projects was a papier-mache pulp and fiber mask adorned with flattened, rusty bottle caps and sea glass, made for a dance performance in Paris. Here it is on my work table nearly complete...

So many fae furniture orders have been coming my way as well... Here are a few ready to ship...

 

I have been obsessed with recording the plethora of blooms and the lovely spiral beginnings of ferns in the Jardin des Plantes and most particularly the baby goats at the mini farm of the Jardin. I was there for the birth of one kid who is my special favourite. He is quite tame, content to climb into my lap and curl up like a cat even though he is a bit older now and sporting tiny nubbin horns. Here he is at a few days old...

There were so many varieties of fiddleheads in the Jardin, varying from around nine centimeters across to delicately minute lacy curls...

 

I played with fallen petals and listened to the frogs' mating songs... 

 
I am not long back from the beautiful countryside of Burgundy (Bourgogne) in the east of France, where I traveled by train to spend two and a half weeks. I walked at sunset along quiet roads...

And conversed with magical hoofed beings of great beauty...

 

 

There were roses in the gardens and hedgerows...

and vintage doorways with mandala like designs...



















And when I came back to the west, I spent a day in the countryside near the ocean. The light was so intense that the world became a high contrast composition in shadow and highlights...

 

And once again there were flowers everywhere...

Well... not quite everywhere...