I am once again, participating in a studio stroll in the Kenilworth neighborhood of Asheville, NC. There is great information on the 19 artists participating in this years tour at this link: kenilworthartists.org, along with a map of the studios to visit.
My sheep family was inspired by the mountains I now live with, wrapping around us at every turn. This latest work will be on view along with a number of other new pieces for the studio stroll.
A few more samples of what you will find on Buckingham Court! Hope to see you there!
The wings of angels are often found on the backs of the least likely people.
~Eric Honeycutt
I crafted another whimsical winged woman I named “free bird” – she allowed a tiny blue bird to nest a top her head. I dug in my salvaged treasure box and came up with a necklace, collar stays and pearl tear drops that all seemed to fit. But when it came to the wings ….
I decided to attach them differently and give her a bit of whimsy, so they are actually attached at what should be the bottom of the wing. She likes them just fine!
Who is she wearing you ask? Well a fine gelli print by yours truly!
When babies look beyond you and giggle, maybe they’re seeing angels.
~Quoted in The Angels’ Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994
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Homage to our life chapter in San Francisco….
A few months ago I took a workshop based around collage/assemblage/ shrine boxes. I had always wanted to do a piece based on San Francisco due to the fact that our daughter was born there. But as I dug around in all my buried treasures at home to work with my theme I realized how this west coast adventure altered our lives in many ways….
Starting with a cigar box and a beautiful Cavalleni Paper I began piecing four years of our family history together.
front: 
Back:
detail:
I also had a few loose cabinet cards that were a treasured gift from my favorite art teacher – Jane – Thanks Jane! Trying to capture my time line and engineer the cards and items to work together proved to be a challenge!
If you are familar with California History or follow baseball history you will see that – yes we lived through a BIG ONE! We had moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1989 following my husbands hotel career path to the Stanford Court Hotel. 
We were enchanted with the landscape – it was our first time to really experience the west coast and San Francisco. When you move to a new area you always hear the local crowd tell you what the weather is like in the area etc…well in CA of course we were worried about earthquakes and heard ” oh you feel them all the time ” ….no big deal ….right? Well a 7.1 we found out is a pretty big deal! 
We stood in line to find our seats at the World Series Game at Candlestick Park and were rocked to our core. The earth roared – literally and waved like the ocean – it was no special hollywood effect it was the real thing.
This was some welcome to California but it would not upstage our next event – the arrival of our precious baby daughter. We treasured every second of her arrival and how this was something that would change how we really looked at the world.
We spent the next three years raising our daughter and experiencing the wonderful life the city and bay area provides. Aside from the earthquakes it was a truely wonderful place that provided us with some treasured memories that we can now be prompted by with this shrine. 
The extras in this piece all have ties to our memories: the Beringer cork is a reminder of our fabulous trips to the wine country and Shannon taking her first steps in the Beringer tasting room, with Shannon we learned to chase butterflies and look for ladybugs (also her first halloween costume was a ladybug), the spoon is a thrift store find fitting because it seemed the size of a baby spoon,
the paper umbrella reminding us of our days in the city living near Chinatown, and passages about friends which we had a wonderful network of and were so important to us since our family all resided on the east coast. The last frame I made into a pocket of postcards that were cards I had saved from my mother (a note in her handwritting a treasure in itself!) and husband that they had sent years before we ever thought of the possibility of living there – how ironic! 
Lisa Murphy ~ Art 