Speaking One Word Of French

Here's a photo I took several weeks ago when I was in the area we call the back patio. Several artists use it as an extension of their studio, the Board of Directors uses it for meetings, and some of the artists give classes back there. It can be a fun place to work in the evenings with lots of folks out there.

It was a relatively quiet day today, not many people around. We're trying to decide whether our fairly regular customers may avoid coming up because they're concerned about the traffic that the Dead Sea Scrolls is causing. However, it seems to me that there isn't a problem. In addition, the museum is providing parking and shuttle rides from a parking lot across the canyon. East Mesa they call it.

I spent the day working on clay pendants. The fish definitely take longer to carve than the other pendants. And I'm fussy. I like the lines to be smooth and deep, as though they are carved in stone. You sometimes can see little bits of clay when people draw or write on a tablet or vessel. I don't want any of those little crumbs to remain, so I spend a fair amount of time smoothing them away. But I like doing it, and I'm not satisfied with it unless it's done that way, all the little bits of clay gone.

Today while I was working a woman came up to me and asked me in French whether she could watch me. My French is very rusty, but I understood her and said, "oui." I told her that I was carving "terra" the word for earth. I think she understood. Then she asked me if I was going to paint it. And I said, "oui." I showed her a fish I had finished and then held it up to me to show her it was going to be a pendant. And she understood that, too.

We don't interact with very many French people, but occasionally I hear people speaking French. Mostly around here we hear Spanish. But in the Park, I do hear a number of people speaking different lanuages that I can't identify, probably Eastern European. Middle Eastern and Oriental ones are easier to identify. I like the idea that we're spreading an appreciation of art to people from all around the world. Like the internet.