So...The Cassandra Pages turns twelve today. I'm sure this impending birthday was a factor in all the thinking I've been doing about my work and the future. As the 20th of March rolls around I always ask myself if it's time to call it quits with this blogging thing, but no, I'm not ready to do that. If I weren't writing here, I'd be keeping a private journal as I did before the internet, and frankly the blog is a lot more fun, mainly because I know you are out there. Posting more of my artwork over the past couple of years has solved the problem of keeping up my interest without feeling the posts were getting too repetitive, and having a place to share these projects has been a good motivation as well. I greatly appreciate your comments, the many friendships this blog has given me, and the fact that you keep coming back here to see what's happening: and it seems kind of incredible that what began here has been going on and evolving for a dozen years.
However, I decided to celebrate the end of Cassandra's childhood -- we're adolescents now, watch out -- by giving her a vacation. I've never done that in all these years! While I won't be posting new material for the next month, I will probably be putting up some photographs or repeating some favorite posts from the past, so don't go too far away. And I'll be back on these pages, hopefully with new energy and ideas, in the middle of April, when this entire mountain will be melted:
Well, we can wish it, anyway!
Love to all of you, and see you in the spring.
xoxo Beth
Happy 12th birthday, Cassandra, and many more to come!
Posted by: Nina T | March 20, 2015 at 04:53 PM
:-) Lots of love. xoxoxo
Posted by: Dale Favier | March 20, 2015 at 07:00 PM
Happy Blogday, Beth! That snow mound reminds me of an hourglass slowly seeping away, counting down the time to spring... well, to when it really feels like spring. Enjoy your blog vacation! xxo
Posted by: Leslee | March 20, 2015 at 07:05 PM
Come back when that has melted! A friend pointed out that when parking-lot mountains melt away, change and lost items scraped up by the plow often come to light.
Posted by: Peter | March 20, 2015 at 07:58 PM
Happy 12th and happy equinox and may both of you enjoy the rest. :)
Posted by: Siona | March 20, 2015 at 09:58 PM
Happy 12th to Cassandra and Beth! You return is anticipated as springtime is!!
xxoo
Posted by: Kathy Hughes | March 21, 2015 at 06:53 AM
Happy 12th. It's awesome. Have a great break and come back for many more years of blogging
Posted by: Jan | March 21, 2015 at 09:40 AM
Get a flame thrower and come back soon. I keep remembering the guy I saw who shoveled his mountains of snow into the street. I'm just about that tired of ice and snow.
Posted by: Marly Youmans | March 21, 2015 at 10:50 AM
Happy Birthday Beth and many, many more.... Mike
“ Creativity in all its forms is a passionate engagement with making something happen. Like falling in love, art is a disturbance of what is; a reordering of existing material; an encounter with otherness; and a baffled certainty that what is happening – long or short, brief or lasting – has to happen (the urgency of love and making). The happening of art renews, replaces or renames the tired old cliches of the obvious. Love changes us. Art changes us.
Visual artists do the looking on our behalf in the same way as religious orders used to pray on our behalf. The looking of the artist’s eye creates an object that we in turn pay attention to, because we know you have to look at art. Paying attention in this way both relaxes and stimulates the brain. It hardly matters whether or not you “like” the object in question. Concentration, engagement, the thinking and discussing that follow, lift us out of a mode of being that is purely instrumental. Art galleries are places to stand and stare; places to be human – and that includes being curious and voyeuristic.
Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt but it does lead to blurred vision. Visual art is a kind of cataract operation.”
Jeanette Winterson
Posted by: michael lewin | March 21, 2015 at 02:47 PM
Happy spring; happy blogiversary; enjoy your time away!
Posted by: Rachel Barenblat | March 21, 2015 at 05:00 PM
The first break in twelve years! Enjoy every day, dear Beth.
Posted by: Duchesse | March 21, 2015 at 08:49 PM
I do check your blog every day so I hope you will continue. You make me think I should go back to regular blogging because there are so many good things about doing it.
Waiting for spring here, my garden notebook says the frogs woke up April 21st last year. That's 3 weeks away and there is still about 18 inches of frozen snow in the yard. And I think it is about 10 degrees out!
Posted by: Sharyn | March 22, 2015 at 08:35 AM
Happy 12th, Beth. So enjoyed the last few days thoughtful ruminations. See you in the spring!
Posted by: mary | March 22, 2015 at 11:21 PM
Bravo Beth, enjoy the break!
Posted by: Lucy | March 23, 2015 at 11:22 AM
Have a good time on your sabbatical! I'll be looking forward to your return in April!
Posted by: Hattie | March 23, 2015 at 06:47 PM