Carol Wiebe

There are some ideas that won’t leave you alone. They demand your attention, are always coming back even if you try to ignore them. And once they know you are thinking about them, they are unstoppable. There is no denying their growth. They fill your mind, your heart, they take over your life. If you haven’t had at least one of these kinds of ideas yet, hope and pray you will. It’s incredibly exciting to be part of an idea that takes on its own being and gets way bigger than

Yupo is a fascinating material. More accurately, because of it nature, using your usual materials on it causes unusual things to happen. Or not. You can choose to ignore what Yupo can do, and impose your usual methods, but Sharon had ample examples to inspire us to the playfulness inherent in embracing Yupo-ness. I was determined to drop my hard-earned, well-learned processes and techniques, but that is easier said than done. Try walking differently than you usually do. As we

This young woman (age 13)  has so many “wise” things to say. Really. If you are surprised about that, Adora’s talk is specifically aimed your way. These are a few quotes from her speech: The traits the word childish addresses are seen so often in adults that we should abolish this age-discriminatory word when it comes to criticizing behavior associated with irresponsibility and irrational thinking. (Maybe we should use the term adultish.) Sometimes a knowledge of history and

Thanks to Leighanna Light, I was made aware of Lori Gordon’s Katrina Collection. When a ThinG MaKEr like Leighanna calls someone incredibly talented, I pay attention. I think you will too. The Katrina Collection is one of those series that has a huge story overshadowing it. In this case, the whole world knows about the 2005 hurricane that “was the costliest hurricane, as well as one of the five deadliest, in the history of the United States.” But what of the smaller stories, 

Mary Ennes-Davis admits publicly that she doesn’t know how to measure. There is a gentle irony to the fact that many of her works of art feature rulers. Though she grew up in a family of artists, Ennes-Davis pursued a marketing career, and had “little time to create with [her] hands.”  But a sailing trip to the Soviet Union revised her course of direction: I saw a country lacking in many of the things that we take for granted. This changed how I saw the world, and rather than

I have a new friend who feels like an old friend, a forever friend, and in correpondence with her I felt moved to share the following quote from Annie Dillard. One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, everytime. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend i

Barack Obama, Ilinois’s Democratic senator, has written a book by this title. In an interview on amazon.com, Obama is asked ”If readers are to come away from ‘The Audacity of Hope’ with one action item, what should it be?” And he answers: “Get involved in an issue that you’re passionate about. It almost doesn’t matter what it is–improving the school system, developing strategies to wean ourselves off foreign oil, expanding health care for kids. We give too much of our power a