Artist's Notes Painting and drawing were my favorite childhood activities. The advent of the felt-tipped marker, when I was twelve, launched me on an early career as a poster maker. I loved experimenting with printing styles and eagerly volunteered for poster projects at school and around town. In high school, this remained my focus and fortunately an art teacher took it upon herself to teach me a little about silk-screening- a very little - but she did whet my curiosity! During college I was determined to perfect my silk-screening abilities so that I could easily make multiple copies of poster designs. After graduation, a friend and I opened a community silk-screen workshop. At this time, a local center for continuing education commissioned me to make a series of posters for lectures on a great variety of topics, from making jams and jellies to hiking in the Andes. For hundreds of posters made over a three year period, my unifying theme was a consistent 11x14 inch format. People began to look for and collect my posters, and it was one such collector who suggested the idea for a poster calendar. In the early seventies, my husband and I moved to coastal Maine and opened a seasonal gallery for his hand-made furniture and my silk-screened prints. In 1976, I made my first very primitive calendar, complete with black flies stuck to the wet ink. Adapted from the 11x14 inch format of my earlier silk-screened work, it was the first poster calendar of its kind. With the help of friends and apprentices, the years that followed were taken up with printing ever-larger editions of what was essentially a colorful, yearly, chain letter. Even today, it sometimes seems that everyone on our mailing list is a friend of a friend of a friend! In 1980, hand silk-screening gave way to off-set lithography as a more practical method for printing large editions. The originals are made with a combination of water colors and colored pencils. I am most thankful to my "calendar friends" who have given artwork to their friends and families over the years. Their support has provided me with a livelihood in an activity I have loved all my life, and which I have been able to pursue at home while raising a family. I continue to look at life through calendar glasses, and through them most things seem humorous, poignant, and ephemeral.
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