I have had a good, actually, very good residency for the past three weeks but leave-taking is difficult for me.  Off at 6:00 am this morning to the Budapest airport with a kind, courteous and clean taxi service arranged by the ever efficient Emese. Deb was up at 5:30 to sit with me, eat oatmeal, drink coffee and see me off.

The third week was full of surprises in addition to the wonderful two days we spent in Budapest in sweltering conditions… Tim Andrews, a raku artist from Devon, and Marianne Ban from Budapest, a musician who makes small loved objects, were teaching at ICS.   Both were most generous with their time and ideas – lots to be enjoyed and learned and as an additional bonus, Maria Gestler arrived with her packed car to load her favourite gas kiln.  She is a model for us all, working incredibly energetically, measuring her spaces and filling the kiln as I have seen rarely filled, still working with her beautiful forms and gracing her surfaces with her screen printing and free form brush work.

As my cabbie and I drove through the lush countryside I was moved by the way things had changed so dramatically since I arrived three weeks ago – touching down to a barren, cold land to now have lush deciduous trees in bloom, and the flowers gone all too early because of the unseasonabe 30 degree heat.  I thought about the good things at the institute – the wonderful sense of morning with the clanging church bells and the song birds joining in chaotic song – the delight at the end of the day in having a beer or glass of wine with Deb and sometimes an other who would join us after a day of saying little and working in the comfort and stress of our own studios before we went out to dinner, deciding which of our restaurants we would go to.  The daily rhythm of the studio will be remembered and definitely missed.