LianBrehm Art Blogspot begins!!!

Today is September 30th, and I want to share my artwork and my world with others!!
I am really excited about this and it looks like it will be a wonderful, fun journey.
This is also the day that we are scratching the earth here at the Stone Bottom House, where I live and work on my art. It's an exciting day because we are building a space for my dad, a jeweler, to live and work and a studio for me as well.
Since my current studio (I've been there for 8 or 9 years) across the road has no running water, no heat and no bathroom, it will be a huge change in my work environment and will mean that I can work all year around. Right now I am still planning on my annual clean up and pack up anything that freezes mode, which is quite the interruption to my work. I typically do not get much done over the winter at my house, but that is soon to change!

I am a mixed media artist and I work in ANY material that I find challenging. The daughter of creative artist and teacher parents, I consider myself incredible lucky. My mom was my first art teacher, of course. She maintained a studio at our home on Long Island in New York. At an early age,my sister, Pia and I were taking trips into New York City to take art classes, at the Museum of Modern Art!! While I don't remember much of that (My mom told me I was only 6 at the time), I do remember going through the museum and spending lots of time looking at Modern art. Reflecting back to that time, I realize the museums were practically EMPTY, and quiet, not like the current supershows that draw tens of thousands to expensive tickets, long lines and constant moving, not to mention the white noise of all those folks talking!
My mom, Emelyn, also took it upon herself to help start a Children's Cultural Workshop nearby in the town of Amityville. she would hire artists from around the area to come and teach workshops to children on Saturday mornings, and I remember taking jewelry, pottery, puppetry, drawing and sculpture classes typically for about 3 hours every Saturday for years. I still remember fondly some of my teachers: Julian Wolff, glass and ceramic craft artist from Long Island, Louise Kramer, sculptor now living in NYC and a long time member of the cooperative A.I.R gallery, and Lynn DeRosa, art teacher and artist from Huntington, now living in Arizona.

These people shaped my life, as well as a constant good dose of creative encouragement from my Mom and Dad. THANKS Mom, she passed away in November 2006 of kidney cancer, and THANKS Dad, who is currently living in an assisted living facility here in Vermont, while waiting for his building to take form and shape so he can work in his studio, albeit new, again.
It seems so appropriate that I begin here, on this day since I owe so much of who I am to my parents!! YAY! What a journey this will be.