Another month, another year, where does time go? I have kept busy with art and travel these last few weeks.

• South Pasadena Art Show

• Me and Art in Mexico City

• Slowly but surely, we heal

I was happy to meet so many new people at my recent art show in South Pasadena. During the Fall Arts Crawl, over a hundred people came through to see my exhibit. I answered questions about my technique and shared my thoughts behind the Natural Alchemy work. Thank you to all who made it.

Congratulations to the lucky winner who won a beautiful small print of "Montecito Rebuild."

Wall View of Handle Art Exhibit

Travel has been an important part of my art life since I was 19 and went to Paris. From that time on, I have made trips all over the world as often and as long as possible, give or take a couple years off for various life roadblocks. First I went to Spain for a month, then Italy, Austrailia, Guatemala.... I caught the travel bug and wanted to go everywhere - and that has not changed. I just returned from a week in Mexico City.

Travel is mind opening, body invigorating and art inducing. Obviously, seeing great works of art and architecture is a valuable experience for any artist. But just being in another world is what I crave and enjoy so much. Once I get my mind outside of my everyday world here in LA, I look at life with an outsider perspective. Seeing Mexico as an outsider, helps me see the US as an outsider, and then my mind breaks open with new perspectives and true excitement.

There is a much larger world out there. People do things differently, think differently, live differently. Who would I be if I grew up here? What if I painted skulls for the Day of the Dead all day long? How many pesos does it take to Uber from my little hotel to the biggest anthropological museum in the world? How could the richest guy in Mexico have accumulated that much art? Is my Spanish enough to get me by if it had to?

I finally made it to see Frida's hometown!

So don't ask me why it took so long to get me to Ciudad de Mexico. It's cheaper to fly there than to fly back to see my brother in Michigan. I've made it to Cabo San Lucas, but that was not Mexico City - not at all. A bustling metropolis more the size of Shanghai than little New York City. The number of museums, classic architecture, parks, statues and monuments is overwhelming. Anyone whose been there knows the food is seriously great, world class amazing. Even vegans are in heaven.

The Soumaya Art Museum is so cool looking on the outside, I was absolutely fine about not going in at all. But I stuck my head in the door and no one stopped me. That's right, it was free. So I wondered up and around the white ramps that led up and up (like the Guggenheim) and from one outstanding floor to the next. It seemed it would never end - and I was hoping it would end because I was still wearing my walking boot and starting to feel the pain. But the top was an unexpected reward - all sculpture, I mean tons of it, beautifully displayed.

Soumaya Museum is covered in hexagonal tiles

Now I expect to come down off my travel high, dig into the depths for a minute. I'll try to breathe clean air despite the frightening wildfires around me, that have become a normal part of a California life. Ugh, the air is too dry and often smells like a campfire even though I am many miles from any active blaze.

I will buckle down and lie low for awhile. Try to catch up with my life here. I will be brewing and marinating and playing around in the studio seeing what ideas my travel has inspired.

As always email me here to set up a studio visit or just to say hi.