It’s been an explosively creative year!
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been going on. . .

The year saw me stretch into new areas of creative expression – blasting into totally new territory for me – in addition to creating installations, drawings and paintings, I pushed myself to explore performance, video, music, spoken word, sound and dance – combining many of these disciplines with the intent to create more experiential expressions of my ideas.

I’ll give you a quick rundown. . . Just over a year ago, I put Matteo on a plane for Paris and used the two weeks he was away as a self-imposed Artist Residency @ Chez Moi.  During that time I created several new pastels, prints and drawings.

In July I premiered my very first performance piece called I Tuoi Segreti for the Berkshire Fringe Gala and in August I spent two weeks in Scranton PA creating a temporary site-specific wall drawing with graphite powder and my bare fingertips called Terra Temporalis for the Everhart Museum.  Savoir-Faire generously donated the materials for the project and support for the project came from donations from several individuals (maybe even you!) through our crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter.  I was also lucky enough to find Ian Ryczak who generously gave more than 30 hours of his time to videotape the creation of the work over the 2 weeks I was there as well as the destruction of the piece when the show closed at the end of 2011.

In the fall I created 2 more temporary wall drawings – one as part of my solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and pastels at Sanford Smith Gallery in Great Barrington; the other for Jim Benson’s YBar in Pittsfield.

In September I celebrated my birthday by launching a new business called Computer Tutor Gals – a team of tech-savvy tutors who teach individuals how to master their electronic devices.

From the beginning of December into February I was busy renovating my new studio and shared workspace for professional creatives called ELEVEN.

In February I started taking a singer-songwriter class and have written a fair number of new songs, including some about domestic violence, Hurricane Irene, and deep friendship.

March was a busy month with the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, and I was honored to be a speaker on two panel discussions about the film called Miss Representation.  In addition, I spent two weeks in Vermont creating the 4^th Terra Temporalis installation, this time in the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, as part of the exhibition “Bridging Earth and Sky”.  Also in March, I began Co-Hosting with Seren Mastriani, Radio 2 Women on WBCR-lp, an award winning program featuring guests talking about issues pertaining to women.

In April my work was included in an exhibition called Inside/Outside at Thompson Giroux Gallery in Chatham NY, and in June it went to SoHo for a  group show called Arcadia at OK Harris.

Several articles and a couple of features came out in papers around Scranton, Brattleboro and the Berkshires.

This year I spent much of May devising a soundscape for two cellos working with a couple of professionals – Francis Morris and Beth Craig.  It was for a beautiful play called Isis-Chernobyl, A Tale of Uncertain Fruit.

I was also invited to start writing a column in the Advocate on being an artist, activist and single mother, and have published two already.