We have been so busy this year. In addition to creating the new body of work for our first solo show next month, we have also been working on three commissions with another waiting for my attention as soon as the show opens and two more waiting for proposals. Not to mention going to the country house on weekends to work on it. We are starting to move parts of the studio into the new place, those materials and equipment that we think we won't need to complete the work we have. We started a small food garden and last weekend ate fresh picked peas, green beans and yellow squash. So good.

The new work for the show is nearly complete. I still have a few pieces I am doing cold work on and am waiting for some of the display materials and stands, but it is a relief to be so close to being finished. I'm ready for a break. I finally selected on a title for the work. I'm calling it 'The Losses of Gain'. These pieces are about the loss of the urban forest and wild life habitat due to the gentrification going on in my wonderful old inner city neighborhood. It's heart breaking really, to see all the old cottages and mature trees being bulldozed and replaced with concrete pads that literally cover the entire lot, with two and three story lot line townhomes that are inches apart, with no yards and the streets now lined with garages. No children either. But lots of people walking their dogs since there are no yards for them either. Well, it won't be long now til we are out in the country.

Here's the only piece of the new work I have had photographed so far. I've titled it 'Remnants' since that's all that is left after a property has been cleared, some leaves and a few chunks of bark.

We've declined participating in several exhibitions for this year because we have just been too busy to think about them, plus holding all our new work back for our solo show.

As I mentioned, we have been working on several commissions as well. We just completed four 3/4 lite interior door panels with a peacock design. We are also doing work for a wonderful contemporary asian home being built in Colorado Springs. We've finished the seven interior doors and the entry door and still have two glass walls in the master bath to finish in a bamboo forest design. We are also doing three large windows in a stairwell for a home in our neighborhood and have seven interior doors for a highrise condominium waiting for my attention after the show opens. I'm also in negotiations with John Wesley United Methodist Church to do a glass wall and entrance doors for their new chapel that they broke ground on this week as well as a master bath window for another residence. Did I mention how busy we are?

1/28/08 - The holidays have come and gone and now January is almost over as well. As much as I enjoy the end of the year and all the holidays and gatherings with family and friends, I am always glad to see it come to an end. Last year was full of opportunities for us and the beginning of a big change. Our home town gallery, Goldesberry Gallery, scheduled our first one person show which opens June 7 this year; Riley Galleries took our work two two major international shows last year, Glass Collector's Weekend and SOFA Chicago; we were invited to participate in the Texas Chair Project and Morgan Contemporary Glass' teapot show, and we bought a 1/2 acre place outside a small town about an hour from here.

We are very busy now preparing for our show here that opens the end of May. I'm pretty excited about the work we are doing and the theme that has sort of emerged. Our inner city neighborhood here that we have lived in for over 30 years, was a racially, culturally and age mixed working class neighborhood with small cottages, yards full of beautiful mature trees and families. Unfortunately, this and similar inner city neighborhoods have been undergoing 'gentrification' which is a fancy way of saying that the cottages are being dozed, the land is being clear cut and two or more lot line two and three story town homes are being built in their place. Streets are now lined with garages, no yards, no trees, no families, no diversity. I think in our neighborhood alone we have lost at least a third of our mature trees if not more and the 'homes' (I think of them as investments, not homes) are back on the market in two to three years. So the work we are currently engaged in for the show is about the loss of the urban forest with it's habitats for wildlife.

Besides being very busy preparing for our show, we are also working on a large commission for a contemporary Asian home being built in Colorado Springs CO. The work comprises two glass walls in the master bath, 7 interior doors and the entry door.

Backing up a bit, we had to have our chair for the Texas Chair Project completed and sent off by Dec 1st last year. The Austin Museum of Art is hosting an exhibition of the chairs opening November 15, 2008. Here's the chair we made.

And here are the teapots we sent to Morgan Contemporary Glass for their 2nd annual teapots! show.

As if we were not busy enough, we are also going to the country house every weekend trying to prepare for our move this summer. The house is in good shape but we are making some cosmetic changes. There are hardwood floors in both bedrooms but the previous owners put carpet down in the hall and the living area and linoleum tile in the dining area. We have removed the carpet and tile to expose the hardwood floors and are having them refinished this week. When that is done, we are installing wainscoting in the dining area and the hall with a chair rail continuing around the living area. Next is painting the entire interior of the house. We have laid out with stakes and string where the new shop will be built and are ready to get the slab poured.

You may have noticed that I didn't start out this entry with a garden report as I usually do. With everything in transition, pulling up our roots here in the city, the yard is totally neglected. The baby blue eyes are starting to bloom though. I dug up all my white butterfly ginger roots, the first of many things to be dug up and moved, but the yellow butterfly ginger is still blooming. The yellow angel trumpet was covered with blooms when the last really cold spell hit. The red hibiscus is still giving us an occasional flower but for the most part, the yard, the gardens, are resting. Ah, but no rest for us til the middle of June at least.

August was a demon month. If it could go wrong, it did. It took me four tries to get the top to the bee box done and we had a casualty in the commission work so we had to re-make that piece. September saw us teaching our first full week workshop in pate de verre at Helios Glass in Austin. The first three days were long and intense but the class went well overall and we learned a few things ourselves. We are tentatively scheduled to teach again next September 2008 at Vitrum Studios in Beltsville MD and possibly next June at Small Planet Studio in Portland OR either before or after the Glass Art Society conference there in June 2008.

Right now I am very busy trying to get my teapots finished and sent to Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery for their 2nd Annual teapots! Invitational which opens November 2nd and runs through January 4th 2008. I'm also getting several new pieces ready for the SOFA show in Chicago IL during the first weekend in November. Riley Galleries is showing our work there in booth #620. Marc and I will both be at the show so if you are going to be there stop by and say hello. As soon as we get back from SOFA, we will be getting our chair finished for the Texas Chair Project which has to be delivered by December 1st. All this coupled with the commission jobs we have in the shop make me a very busy girl.

Amongst all the goings on this summer, we sold our second property here in Houston to our daughter and her family and with that money, we bought a nice little house outside Wharton TX on 1/2 acre of property. We've been going up weekends working on the house and laying out the footprint for our new shop that is yet to be built. We're taking up the carpet which has hardwood floors underneath and doing general cleaning and disposal of the stuff the previous owners left behind. I want to paint the whole inside of the house, give it a fresh start. It's actually a little bigger than our house here.

Lots of good things happening this year. We've been toying with the idea of moving out to the country ever since our working class inner city neighborhood has drawn the attention of the 'gentryfiers'. They have been tearing down the old cottages in our neighborhood and clear cutting the land of all our mature shade trees to build lot line townhomes at an alarming rate. Getting tougher and tougher to be an artist in the city. So we finally bit the bullet and are buying an acre of land with a nice little house on the outskirts of a small town about 50 minutes from here. We will have to build a shop before we can make the move but we are very excited about it.

Other good news: Our local gallery, Goldesberry Gallery has scheduled a one person show for us next year, May 31 - June 28 2008; our piece in the Texas Juried Glass II show at the Galveston Arts Center won one of the two Juror's Merit Awards; and we have been asked to participate in sculptor Damian Priour's Texas Chair Project. We are very excited about this. We received our chair in the mail today so I will be getting busy right away designing and making my contribution.

We had a great time at WheatonArts Glass Collector's Weekend this past week reconnecting with artist friends, gallery owners, and collectors. There was some stunning work there this year as usual.

6/2/07 - As you can see, if you have visited our website previously, the new design is up and, I hope, all the bugs worked out. I do still have two of the new pages under construction and these may take awhile to finish, especially the etched glass process page. I can't seem to remember to take pictures when I am working on a project.

June is upon us and summer is here and though we had several hot days in spring, it has rained a lot in the last month keeping things cooler but that's about to peter out. The night blooming jasmine has been blooming profusely for several weeks and coupled with the four-o-clocks that have started blooming as well so the night air has been incredibly fragrant. All the spring bloomers are done now but the sunflowers are very tall already and putting out their bright yellow flowers. The day lillies didn't do very well this year because I let other things crowd them but the new nile lillies I put in last year are a nice addition. The several days of freezing weather we got in late winter has had a big impact. The plumeria, bouganvilla, hummingbird bush, shell ginger, angel trumpet, and the mexican bird of paradise are still recovering. Last year, they were all blooming by now so the yard looks a little bleak. And no bees this year. I'm hoping that it is because so little is blooming but I fear the hive collapse syndrome is mostly responsible. No honey bees, no bumblers, bummer.

The new work is going well. The three boxes are getting closer to being finished. I still have 12 out of 24 small wax flowers to make for one of them. We're also starting on the two large architectural panels for a medspa in Chicago now that the art work is finished.

We have two exhibitions/shows coming up this summer. We had a peice accepted into the Texas Juried Glass 2 show at the Galveston Arts Center in Galveston TX. The show opens June 14th and runs through August 19, 2007. Unfortunately, we won't be at the opening because we will be in Millville NJ at the WheatonArts Glass Collector's Weekend. Thomas Riley Galleries will be showing some of our work there.

We were informed last month that two of our pieces will be included in a new book coming out later this year by Kennedy Publishing titled Best of America Glass Artists and Artisans Vol.1.

Class Schedule Pate de Verre - September 2008 in Beltsville MD. Contact Vitrum Studios for information.   Current and Recent Shows and Exhibitions 1. Pate de Verre Glass - Ellen Abbott & Marc Leva; Goldesberry Gallery; Houston TX; June 7 - July 5, 2008 1. The Chair Project; Austin Museum of Art; Austin TX; November 15 - February 8, 2009 1. SOFA - Chicago; Thomas Riley Galleries; Chicago IL; November 2 - 4, 2007 2. teapots! 2nd Invitational; Morgan Contemporary Glass; Pittsburgh PA; November 2 - January 4, 2008   Recent Installations 2007 - The client wanted the same design for each pair of doors but more privacy for the conference room. This is a good example of how the same design can be rendered into glass in different ways. For the entrance to the offices we used applied clear textured glasses to give it more elegance than the conference room doors across the atrium.