On a dark mid-November day in 1982, the boisterous, heavy-breathing Hurricane Iwa* swept in and wreaked havoc upon the island of Kauai, in Hawaii. (*pronounced EE-vah) I was a studio potter and stone caver. My kids and I lived in one of the plantation houses in the tiny, sugar-plantation town of Kekaha, way out on […]
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Category: Art by Angela
The POWER of A PINCH and A TWIST
On a sunny late afternoon in NYC, I was on my way home from art school. Exhausted. We’d had a full day at the easel, standing on concrete floors, the instructors particularly nasty all day. As if our not knowing what they were talking about was our fault, somehow, and they were taking it out […]
THE REAL POWER
Last night, I happened upon a new show on Amazon prime called The Power. In it, young girls are discovering they have a new, odd sensation in their bodies — little courses of electricity that travel down their arms and make zippy jumping lines of lightning, that jump finger tip to finger tip. Sparks ignite upon anger […]
ROSIE PEARL
When I was in my twenties, I lived with my then-hubby and our two small boys, way out in the country in northern California. One day as we were driving home from a trip to Eureka selling our pots, I spotted a really sad looking horse in a pasture by the side of the road. […]
SUCH A BAD DRIVER!
After I left Italy, I went back to Hawaii, living there for about a year. More on that later. I then moved near San Francisco for a few months, until my friend Melissa invited me to come to New Mexico, to stay with her and help her renovate her house. So I packed up everything […]
STONE CARVER, Part 6
Our first day! On a hot day in June, 1989, our carving group, comprised of five students all from the US, stood poised before the hunks of stone we’d selected, waiting for us on our sturdy, well-worn, waist-high carving tables. They had been set up for us in a well-shaded summer courtyard outside of a […]
STONE CARVER, Part V
Just by looking at people’s feet, I could always pretty much dependably tell who was American and who was European (or other nationality) before I even met them. Whereas we bumpkin Yanks almost always wore some brand of tennis shoes, flip-flops, or sneakers, Europeans mostly wore fine leather shoes or leather sandals (with socks!). But […]
STONE CARVER, Part IV
Upon buying my tickets to go carve marble in Italy, I also bought a language system called Sybervision so I could study Italian. It was the easiest language system I’ve ever used. By the time I landed in Rome, I could ask where’s the city center, what street is my hotel on, where to eat, […]
STONE CARVER, Part III
I loved hanging out with the master carvers. They were there from before-god-gets-up early until 5pm, when they promptly took off their newspaper hats and scuttled home. They were incredibly skilled, and so fast! They spent most of their time carving replicas of famous works, like the David, and on enormous commissioned pieces and public […]
STONE CARVER, Part II
The Quarry In 1989, I was thrilled to be invited to go carve marble in a weeks-long workshop in Lucca, Italy, under the instruction of a bona fide marble-carving maestro, Professore Roberto Bertola. I was excited because up until that point, I had only carved the softer stones like soapstone and softer varieties of alabaster. […]
STONE CARVER, Part I
I’m a self-taught stone carver. I had been a studio potter for 15 years when, in late 1981, my car was struck right behind my driver seat by a guy running a red light through an intersection as I attempted to cross. My car did a 180 into a parked car, which slammed into my […]
GIVE IT UP!
Since my parents took me sailing almost before I could walk, being able to sail is like being able to breathe. It’s more than second nature — maybe more like a second set of senses. I can tell right away if someone is a sailor — there’s just something about them — the way they […]
MAKE ART, NOT WORRY!
I was stunned when the first lockdown was announced. Like most, my first thought was, “I can’t go OUT?” But then I realized – I hardly go out anyway! I’m an old fart, so I don’t walk well, and I’m deaf as a post with failing hearing aids, so interactions are difficult to start with. […]
SHE’S NOT THERE!
You’re writing a book! That’s great! You’re going to help people, entertain them, introduce them to something new and/or innovative, or even change the world with your ideas. Let’s say you’re a therapist or health or emotions specialist, and you want to help a person get past unwanted memories of trauma. You’ve gone to school, […]
PRACTICING PEACE
Many years ago in the mid-80s when I lived in Honolulu, I had a psychic reading with a gal named Alice Anne, who was well-known and very popular. At the time, I had a fairly large house with a living room that had enough space to seat 20 or so people. I hosted classes and […]
THE ANCIENTS
When T and I moved into the little one-BR house on Maui near the beach, no one thought to mention it had been built over an ancient Hawaiian burial ground. It had been covered up in the late 1800s to make room for a white-man’s housing development, rows of little plantation houses for the cane-field […]
UNDER THE ORDERLY NIGHT SKIES
We finally got to Huntington Beach, and stayed with T’s mom for a couple weeks. After our snowy misery back east, the good weather seemed just this side of paradise. T got to bliss out surfing every day, while I filled drawing pads and played in the sand. But soon it was obvious we were […]
THE CORNER THAT ALMOST KILLED US
The rest of our visit with my folks was blah-normal. At last it was time to go back to California. After about a nano-second of deliberation, T and I decided that finding a hire-car to deliver to the west coast for someone was a much preferable idea over hitching back. We had had enough of […]
A HARD-WON PEACE
Our drive from Des Moines to Long Island was flawless. I was almost shocked at how easy and fun it was, after our two almost-fatal encounters with truckers. Our ride, Harley, was a delightful man who, instead of leaving us off in Des Moines as we had planned, invited us to stick with him all […]
BILLY’S 18-WHEELER
We left the thrift store wearing every single thing we’d bought. They may have been new-old clothes, but it was beyond description how heavenly it was to be warm again. Now we were seriously hungry. Good fortune was ours — there was a diner close by, so we trudged over, lugging our heavy back packs […]
DONNER PASS
T and I came back to California in the middle of January. Being used to the weather in Hawaii, I forgot all about how wet and cold San Francisco was, and was wearing short-shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops. By the time I got off the plane and over to the baggage claim area, I felt as […]
SNOW BIRTH
“Nurse! Hand me the scalpel, please, it’s 9:00 and my dinner is waiting!” Nurse hands scalpel to doctor, and my first live birth, my first son, Aaron, comes screaming out into the ice-cold delivery room air. “Nothing wrong with the lungs on that one!” the doc declares, as he rises from his chair, gloved hands […]
MA’S GARDEN
I didn’t want to write this. I’ve been back and forth, afraid to post it. But I have this feeling I Have To. Know what I mean? Not for me, but for Someone Out There. I hope it somehow brings you peace, whoever you are. So to preface the story: It’s been a hair less […]
IT’LL BE FUN, HE SAID…
Seven hours, crammed in with T’s squiggling, wiggling 2 and 4 year old boys in a narrow, silver tube, flying across the 3000 miles stretch of treacherous open ocean with nowhere to go to escape. I thought I’d go mad. Finally, Honolulu Airport. I was so ready to dash out the door and board the […]
LET’S GO TO MAUI, HE SAID…
Hurrying, stumbling, trying to get our packs and jackets out of the car as fast as we could, we knew our Ride would drive off without even waiting for us to close his precious bright turquoise 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air’s thick, heavy doors. And he did, the doors swinging shut with a clomph as his […]
MAKING LOVE UNDER THE SLINKY STARS
I met my second hubby in Big Sur. I had been working at Dancer, Fitzgerald and Sample in San Francisco as a junior art director. My very conservative boss, Sam, had a firm hold on the department. Despite the restraints, my co-workers and I spent our days rocking out to the Beatles, the Stones, Van […]
SEND LOVE, NO MATTER WHAT
This was a hard lesson for me. I grew up in a family that loved to sit around after dinner and make fun of, criticize and totally shred politicians, celebrities and other people in the news. It became second nature to be arrogant. You can imagine how many friends I lost, one by one. I […]
EYE LIGHTS
I have this weird thing that happens if I’m looking straight ahead, and there is a shiny thing on either side of me – the shiny thing makes light rays that go out and catch me – kind of like strings that pull my attention. Hard to put into a drawing – this is as […]
RAMEN YOGA
When I first moved to Hawaii in 1966, I was introduced to a local oriental dish called Saimin. It was a rich chickeny or maybe fishy broth, with thin slices of roast pork, chopped green onions, long, skinny, squiggly, tangled rice noodles, and seasonings rich with ginger and other spices I didn’t know of at […]
CRUNCHY YOGA & AUDIO BOOKS!
Recently I’ve been creating a 1-2-3 systems webinar for teaching authors how to make their own audio books. Why audio books, you ask? Because although it’s easy to publish kindle books on amazon, you can get your audio books onto 47 other platforms! Imagine you have one book, and you put it for sale on […]