Barbara Sparhawk

To all my good friends at RedBubble (and you are legion) my apologies for being more absent than here to comment on your fabulous work. I’ve been able to look but not stay long, no reflection of the joy from seeing the photographs and artwork of the excellent people on these pages.

There have been a lot of ups and downs lately. A very close friend, Deborah Szarkowski Effron, brilliant photographer, passed away on January 16th. I won’t say much here except this: what we have inside that registers as creative impulse needs earnest protecting. Fight for it, explore it til you bleed, don’t let anyone talk you out of it or injure that wellspring. Don’t allow deprecation. You know who you are and why.

I’m moving!
Something I seem to do often, this time to a dream come true. It’s down the coast from me by about 50 miles in Big Sur, California. It’s next to Pfeiffer Beach which is worth a google or two, very raw and beautiful spot on the Central Coast. The house is a fair sized cabin on 80 acres of wilderness, it’s the last property on a part of very empty coastline next to the Pacific ocean. There are only about 1200 residents in that wild and gorgeous stretch of 50 miles of ragged coast. Lots of building restrictions. You need to be either a multi-millionaire to live there or rent from one. I’m the latter, renter.

I’ve wanted to live on the coast since I moved to California in 1997. It’s taken awhile. Mostly these places never come available, and if they do someone else has a foot in the door. It’s pretty much a miracle, and a dream come true. It’s an incredibly beautiful place. There’s even a pond outside my front door! Very rustic, woodstove for heat, little sauna next to the cabin! and the ocean a 7 minute walk. I’m still not sure I haven’t made it all up, but I’ve paid the deposit, lined up the movers, and will be in on March 1st. So I’m heading for somewhere between reality and halucination, or both.

It’s also way out of DSL range. I’m feverishly looking for a new system to keep the computer uplink fast, and there’s some hope. But I have no idea what the inaccessable land will mean to accessable computering. It won’t end it, there are places nearby to travel to where I can plug in the laptop and get DSL and that may mean the solution. If it is, there won’t be much midnight or 3 am logging in.

I know it’s going to be a spiritual boost, Big Sur is famous for it. I’ll be doing work I’m sure I haven’t done before. And yes, taking and posting my amateur photographs, bear with me. I’m finishing up three paintings now that I hope are dry by moving day, and I’ll post pictures of them before I move, I pray.

So there’s the story. I can always be reached on bubblemail, or hawk@hawksperch.com through my website, The Hawks Perch (www.hawksperch.com). There may be a brief bump in the road but I’m here and I’ll be back shortly.

I love you all dearly. RedBubble’s population has been a source of great inspiration, discovery, and some of the best damn friends I’ve ever had.

Best to you all!
Barbara