A short break and now back to work

I spent the last week in Chicago helping my Mother move from her apartment in independent living to assisted living. She had to decide what to give up from a two bedroom place in order to fit into a studio room. Lots of furniture will be put into storage and the rest will be squeezed as best as possible into her new place. I'm glad she made the decision and I think she is glad, also, even though it was difficult leaving the other place. But now there are people around all the time to help her when she needs it. And she doesn't have to do any food preparation at all.

I'm working my way through two books I just got from Amazon. The first is on Creativity - Living the Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists - and is very interesting. There are several fiber artists included, Susan Shie and Bean Gilsdorf, but it also includes artists who work in other media. There is lots of talk about journaling. Some of them do it and some don't. Keeping a journal is something I always have good intentions for doing but never seem to actually get around to doing it consistently. Of course, looking at some artist's journals is quite discouraging because they are works of art in themselves.

The second book is Why Is That Art?: Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art by Terry Barrett. Terry has written several books about art and critique and there is an ongoing discussion on the Ragged Cloth Cafe blog referencing his book Interpreting Art. I haven't started reading the Why Is That Art? book yet, but it's next on my list. Here are links to two of these books but for some strange reason I can't get the link for the Why Is That Art? book. Amazon says they don't have it, but they do because that's where I got it.