My 2024 solo travel adventure brought me to Portugal! I rented a house in the historic section of Albufeira, southern coast in the Algarve region. Beautiful sunshine greeted me almost everyday, along with an americano with extra hot water that I ordered at a beach cafe. These travels are all about routine, usually involving meditation, […]
“Songwriting and visual art share the same creative process, and self-discovery is a big part of it. Sometimes it’s hard, but mostly it’s magical.” Throughout the pandemic, I’ve ebbed and flowed with my creative practice. Sometimes it was easier to binge something on Netflix, play free cell on my phone, or just sleep. The first […]
I got my first guitar for Christmas when I was eleven years old. I immediately fell in love with the strings and tuners, and inevitably snapped the top E string on the first day. So, I learned to play a five string guitar! A couple of years later I upgraded to a – not much […]
Each year, I travel somewhere in the world, alone, for my own creativity retreat. I treat it as an Artist Residency – time away to focus on my songwriting and visual art. Sometimes I throw a dart at the map, and other times a place is suggested, but wherever I land, I make the most […]
From the moment I set foot on Quiet Valley Ranch, I knew I was in for a truly rare and exceptional weekend. At the Kerrville Folk Festival registration building, I was given a special button that said, “Performer”, and among festival goers, the prestige of being a “NEW FOLK ARTIST” was the equivalent of […]
I feel so fortunate to be a creativity coach and I have the most amazing clients. Recently I had an opportunity to produce an EP for one such client, Jan. Our collaboration has been going on for a few years now, and Jan’s songs are so great we knew the next step was to book […]
Staying Creative I’d like to do morning pages every day, but I’ve never been that disciplined. Object writing is a fabulous practice, and I do this often, but not daily. I love stream-writing, but I have to be in a particular mood. In the Artist’s Estate, (chapter three of our book), Laura and I talk about […]
A few years ago I invited a small group of women to my home to play with some of my art supplies. I love to teach, and I wanted to share some of the techniques I learned in college way back when. We created handmade paper and we bound books. We tried block printing and […]
October 24, 2018 This past weekend, a dozen women gathered up in Freeport, Maine in an atmosphere of camaraderie and excitement to experience the first-ever Spark Creativity Retreat weekend. I’ve been hosting creative workshops and activities for many, many years, but this is the first time I’ve taken it to this level: renting a creative […]