New Year. New Orleans?

I am still going to be working on those happy little bird quilts. Perhaps just not as quickly as originally planned. Artistic ADD has set in again and I must move onto something new.

No matter that I have had doubts about continuing to make art. Those doubts do not matter. I must do it.

But what about? The most common advice is to create from what you know about. From where you live. Someone from Florida should not be writing novels about living in Alaska. So should a resident of central Pennsylvania create art about New Orleans? What do I truly KNOW about it. A tourist has little knowledge of the real living that takes place in those cities they visit. But, then again, what do I truly know about central Pennsylvania? Well, in the winter (which is 5 months long), it is gray, and grayish brown, and grayish green, and black (when it is night). I don't feel particularly inspired to create from this knowledge.

I have been playing with fabrics and stamps for a couple of days. I have skimmed most of my books on New Orleans, several of which have been written post-Katrina. I have considered water, destroyed homes, and black X's which have been spray painted on remaining homes. I have spent the morning surfing New Orleans blogs. Many of these blogs relate tales of the aftermath, but most are on the authors' day to day lives in that city. I no longer want to include such depressing imagery, but this destruction is still a part of the residents' everyday lives. What story would I have to tell? I don't know yet. I do know that I love that city, though. It is part of my everyday life, somehow.

Right now, there are no plans on the book to go to New Orleans this year. New York would be next on the list. Aside from seeing family and perhaps joining my husband on a conference in a new city (London this year????), our vacations always alternate between New Orleans and New York City. But when I start to think about New Orleans this much, well, I usually become quite despondent until I go there.

Above is a photo of the French Quarter taken from the top floor of the House of the Rising Sun, otherwise known as the Hotel Villa Convento on Ursuline Street. Wish I were there. Unlikely there is ice covering everything like there is here. Sigh.