this sunday i'm heading off to woody point to start a month long gros morne national park craft residency. an opportunity to spend lots of time on my own work and also make connections with craftspeople in the area - with an artist talk, mentoring, a 2-day work shop and a visit to a local school. if I have internet access i'll be keeping this blog going. if not, know that i'm making and walking and recording and will come home with tonnes of inspiration to share.

tipples pond in

autumn

 

i've been walking in around town. choosing routes that i wouldn't normally take. pretending i'm in a new place with new eyes. lovely peeling paint on some of the old buildings on brook st.

 

corner brook exists because of the pulp and paper mill. the town is built around it. at  8:00 and 4:00 every day you hear the mill whistle and it grounds you in time. from 3 bear mountain (behind my house) you can look down on the mill and then out the bay. the steam funnels then tumbles and mixes with the clouds.

                         
                                                         counting my blessings

often this time of year, preparing for Christmas craft shows, i'm too busy to get to the cabin. we made a decision this autumn to just do it. so, every weekend for a month we've gone down saturday and back up sunday. we're learning how to enjoy the long dark evenings with the fire and lamplight. to go to bed early and get up early.










 to cook on the woodstove as much as possible.












 to watch the hills come into colour and begin to fade.

i've lived in corner brook, newfoundland for almost 30 years (and 10 years before that just outside of corner brook).  it's a small town of about 18,000 (it was much bigger when i first moved here). it's slow and pretty sleepy. the biggest attraction here are the walking trails - and they are magnificent. but the town itself is kind of boring. i figure i know corner brook pretty well. one of my goals with all this walking is to find things i hadn't seen before and to look at what i do know differently.