2 pieces of paper, 8 1/2" x 11" x 2 = 200 Pistachio shells, painted with my charcoal paint and then scratched away. It's so easy to loose my way in the studio, to get distracted, to loose my focus, to get tempted by other shiny objects and possibilities but I keep finding my way back to this series, daily, and it's so fulfilling and satisfying.

A big thank you to Rye Orrange, Sky and Papa Mike Peredo for your participation and joining me in the studio. 

Old, colourful, plastic covered telephone wire, kept for many, many years. Now being repurposed for the Pistachio installation. Its so hard to let go of potential and I see potential in everything.

245 more Pistachio shells. The continuation of painting Pistachio shells with in studio charcoal paints will go on all year. I usually paint some every day, sometimes 2, sometimes 20 or 100 and it is always a contemplative and productive practice. Also working on hanging mechanism and installation methods. Sgraffito (Italian: [zɡrafˈfiːto]; pl. sgraffiti) is an artistic or decorative technique of scratching through a coating on a hard surface to reveal parts of an underlying layer contrasted in colour. It is produced on walls by applying layers of plaster tinted in contrasting colours to a moistened surface, and on pottery by applying two successive layers of contrasting slip or glaze to an unfired ceramic body.[1] The Italian past participle sgraffiato is also used for this technique, especially in reference to pottery.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgraffito                      

In the fall of 2025, I collected local walnuts and chestnuts and then fermented them for 300 days. Some I soaked in plastic buckets and others I soaked in aluminum pots, two different coloured inks resulted.

Organic beets grown at Cedar Isle Farm, Agassiz, BC. In the processing of cleaning and washing beets, unwanted leaves and stems are discarded. With this by-product, I am making a castable paper of sorts. 

The leftover remains of campfire, charcoal. How was it made? There is no Retort (metal container) to deprive the presence of oxygen from the firing. Does pouring water on burning wood in the open air, instantly deprive the wood from oxygen? Or does the campfire charcoal happen when covering the burning wood with sand or soil to put out the fire? I have now collected charcoal from several summer campfire sites and am in the process of making paint from it to paint my used teabags.

This is what is left of Yucca flowers, dried by the sun. So much of my time this month is about drying potential material for processing into castable material. And there is so much to be dried and properly stored otherwise it can be wet or damp and spoil to waste so much time. But I am reaching the point of no more collecting, I almost have enough material to start focusing on particular series

                                           Ode to Rothko #2 -
Mixing Art History into my everyday life. Mark Rothko, one of my first art loves and the collected at work scallion roots and leaves, drying for processing into materials for casting or painting with. These materials feel and look so sculptural but after the drying process they are flat and less colour

Material collections of flower petals to dry and process for near future use. Everything must be dried for paper making or for carbonizing so the hot summer days are for collecting and drying. This is a Yucca flower grown in my front yard. the flowers get to be 5 feet tall and the biomass is remarkable. 

Material collections: Processing scallions for market, I get to keep the fine roots trimmed off for paper making experimentation in the studio.