Between cleaning the house and cooking for a New Year’s Day brunch, I thought I’d pause and reflect upon the past year. And since I know that you’re all busy doing the same thing, I also want to take the opportunity to thank you for visiting here with me from time to time. I truly enjoy your company!

So, in brief, here are a few Highlights of 2007: A Motmot’s Chronology:

January:

• a Northern California visit with Mike, my sister Dori and her husband Jim to celebrate Mom’s birthday, and a picnic at Point Reyes for a bonus treat. I distinguished myself by first insisting we take only corked wines, not screw-topped, and then forgetting to take the corkscrew to the beach. The only possible solution was for me to run back and fetch it- a four mile round-trip. I’ve since changed my mind about screw-top wine. It goes with everything.

See those tiny people waaay in the distance? They’re holding a bottle of Pinot Noir and trying to decide whether they should drink it or hit me with it.

• I get a GREAT makeover from the Hair Gods of Oklahoma at Moda Salon.

February:

• continue working on paintings for Collecting Oklahoma. I must have been very busy. There’s nothing else at all on my calendar.

March:

• Retired my beloved old Honda and bought a Prius. My two favorite things about the Prius? #1: it’s a splendid birder’s car- perfectly silent at low speeds or when stopped. Rolling down the country roads with the windows down I could hear every chirp and twitter. And the slower I went the better mileage I got. #2: in cold, dry weather, I don’t get static shocks. With the Honda, I’d get out and touch something metal and get zapped. No more. Can anyone explain this to me?

• Turned 50, spent the day under the covers with the “flu”. Found facing the world unbearable. God help me when I turn 60.

April:

• Finished with Collecting Oklahoma and turned my attention to my solo show in OKC, Passionate Menagerie. Began painting like a slave (unpaid hard labor) for the next three months.

May:

• According to my calendar, on May 18th I walked 3.29 miles, on the 21st I stuck cuttings, whatever that means, and on the 25th I planted cucumbers. In the midst of all of that busy madness, I must have been painting.
• It rains like crazy.

June:

• Collecting Oklahoma opens.

• Art of the Animal Kingdom, a show in which I have a painting, opens the same day at the Bennington Center for the Arts in Vermont.

• It rains like crazy.

July:

• Traveling Through Artist’s Eyes, a group show put on by OVAC, includes some of my tropical sketchbook pages. It opens July 9 in the Oklahoma Underground, a really interesting public venue which reminds me of the corridors aboard the Starship Enterprise.

• It rains like crazy.

August:

• Passionate Menagerie opens at the JRB gallery in OKC; some good press and a nice opening, well attended. I managed to sneak out and hoist a banjo for a few tunes with the Boys, who were providing some very good music that only improved when I put the banjo down again.
• American Artists Abroad opens at the Bennington Center for the Arts. This time I have three paintings in the show. I have to miss the opening, alas.

September:

• A ten day trip to Panama where I get obsessed with drawing trees and giant Nephila spiders.
• OVAC’s 12×12 art auction opens and closes the night of the 29th. My 12×12 canvas of a Scarlet-rumped tanager flies out the door.

October:

• I’m invited to teach at the Oklahoma Arts Institute’s Quartz Mountain Fall Session, an unforgettable experience. I want to do it again!

• Artist Gathering in New Hampshire. Enough inspiration to get me through the rest of the year.

November:

• A short trip to Berkeley again, and one to Nebraska and Kansas, where I learn how to make gnocchi and thirty-minute Mozzerella.

December:

• Huge Ice Storm hits Oklahoma, power goes out, we go live in Mike’s office. Oklahoma is declared a Federal Disaster Area for the eighth time this year, a national record. Let me tell you, I was in Norman today and it looks like a barricaded city: everyone has great heaps of branches piled up six feet high along the curbs in front of their houses, waiting for the City to collect them for one of four new compost facilities created after the storm.

• I’m awarded the Eckelberry Fellowship for 2008. It will get me somewhere in the tropics for a round of bird drawing. The location is as yet unselected, but I’m looking at cloud forest habitat as my next stop. Stay tuned- the coming year promises to be an exciting one!

There you have it- six shows this year and one grant, plus I learned how to make cheese. Happy New Year, everyone!