The Issaquah Press has officially announced the news that they are re locating after being in the same location for over 80 years!

 The flock has been given the tour of the  new space and they are  preparing for the  journey across town.

I  don’t know how things are at your  house  but at our  house I have  found that some of the smallest  changes can  create an uproar. We are after all creatures of habit. My little habit is moving things around. If I had my way our house and yard and everything inside the  house would be on wheels.

When dining at home do you sit in the same spot for meals? We seem to have imaginary name tags on the furniture at our house.  I try to get people to sit in different spots by moving the furniture around which usually causes some stress and tension. Even at home we can become a bit territorial.

We all deal or cope with change in our own ways.  I love to mix things up. I find most changes to be inspiring. This has not always been the case! In the old days I used to freak out whenever I had to install or download a new version of the email client I was using. My saying Technology has not always been my friend, is a true understatement!

When we moved our family from Washington to Texas our children complained and belly ached for years about how horrible the move was and how much better our old house was, they missed the friends they  left behind and they were never going to make new friends.  When we finally moved back to Washington they belly ached again about how wonderful the house was in Texas and how much they were going to miss the friends they were leaving behind. Yes, the bed rooms were bigger in Texas but hell everyone knows that everything is bigger in Texas!

Moving is one of those things that can be hard on a family of any  size. Moving my little flock from Issaquah to Seattle was even a bit stressful. After all I had to figure out how to squeeze 13 birds into the  back of a pick up  truck without getting all their  feathers ruffled.

My friends at the Issaquah Press  are not moving  far  but I am certain that many are  likely feeling some stress.  

New office space means new surroundings , establishing new areas for  personal space.  For a team of dedicated individuals it’s still  going to take a ton of  cooperation  and compromise and all this can take a while to get used too. I am hoping the team has a smooth transition as anyone who has ever moved knows that it’s not a lot of fun.

How do you adapt to changes in your life?

Over the next three months I am working on an installation for the Survival of the Interesting, at Gallery Context. My portion of the show was inspired by a team of people that are dedicated to my hometown newspaper.

As I was preparing to move my sculptures to the venue my hometown paper was also making a move to a new home. This got me thinking about my life and about the times I have made sudden or planned changes. There are many reasons to make a move and not all the reasons are always obvious.  Not all the moves or changes  I  made  over the  years were necessary, if I had only been less spontaneous…

I try hard not to jump to conclusions without having all the facts, and I try to encourage others not to assume things. The one thing I have learned (more than once) is things are seldom how they seem.

My recent  project which I  jokingly call  Meet the Press, has  reminded me of a bird that had built an  amazing  nest on the  side of our  house a couple years ago.  Each  spring the mother bird would take clippings of our hanging fuchsia plants and carefully  place them so that they were hanging down the sides of her nest. Each day as I would take out the trash I would admire the nest. Seeing the flowers hanging from the nest and listening to her morning song put a smile on my face and a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart. I was delighted that the bird had picked the side of our home for a place to live.

A year ago we had to have some trees removed on the side of our house. During the removal of the trees the mother bird fled and never returned. She was not in real danger but the noise from the chain saws and crew were mostly likely enough to give her reason to think she needed to leave. 

How do you  know when to abandon something?