My friend Suki, a professional mermaid, came down too and we had a couple weeks of beach time together. She had these amazing watercolors and we did a lot of painting. I taught her how to make woven dream catchers and we did a lot of dreaming together about how to offer the services of Deep Dream Diving to other mermaids…stay tuned.

Jade Mountain infinity pool

driving around in the back of my dad's pickup truck is how we got around

farm goodies

learned more ukulele on this trip...this is pretty much what i did the whole time.

some watercolor paintings i did

me at the mineral baths at the botanical gardens

my dad and his neighbor at the Green Store

making dream catchers on the beach all day!

cafe in Soufriere

Piton

Lahaina Aloha: A Mermaid Catcher!

Foam Magazine ran a feature about my work in their print magazine and asked me to make a little video to accompany their online DIY article. Great excuse to learn how to use iMovie on my iPhone!

Here’s a shot of the magazine with the article.

Sea Dreamer feature in Foam Magazine

I made two pieces for the feature — one is called Lahaina Aloha (after a Beach Boys song) which features a huge doily center and salvaged hula grass from SCRAP PDX. It also has hand-felted jellyfish from my mermaid-in-arms Suki Kapinao of Suki Healing Arts. Her stuff is super fun and you can see it on her Etsy shop: http://sukihealingarts.etsy.com.

with Suki's jellyfish!

With sand from Canon Beach, Oregon, The Great Salt Lake, Utah, and Bellows Beach, Hawaii

The other piece I made is called “Little Surfer” and I got a lot of the materials at the hardware store…chain…paint samples…neon nylon…

so easy!

Thanks Foam!

I spent too long trying to approximate the look of Neil's Harvest album.

On February 25th 2012 I produced an all-female tribute to Neil Young at Mississippi Pizza Pub in Portland, Oregon. It featured over 20 performers and was the first event of its kind I’ve done out here on the best er, west coast.

L to R: Marilee Hord (fiddle), Alexa Wiley (guitar), Renee Muzquiz (lead guitar), Gina Noell (in the back), Alex Nicole, Rachael Rice, Christine Havrilla, Darka Dusty. Photo by M I R I Photo

Miriam German of Miriams Well - Photo by M I R I Photo

Yours truly. Photo by M I R I Photo

I knew that when the Facebook event was at over 100 rsvp’s I was in trouble…the evening sold out before it began. It was a kickass night playing with women I’d barely met.  Despite some technical difficulties (hello, no stage monitors) we rocked…hard. Here’s a YouTube playlist of the entire evening:

Exactly two hours after the show ended I got on a plane to the Caribbean to visit my dad.  More on that in my next post.

heart garlands

I’m not into flowers and chocolates but I do love an excuse to cut hearts out of paper. In Montpelier, Vermont where I was living the Valentine Phantom would plaster the town with thousands of red hearts. That means spending several hours in sub-freezing temps in the middle of the night taping pieces of paper to every window on every store in town. Amazing when you drive down the street on Valentine’s day…

Sometimes my friend Suki and I would do guerilla arts and crafts for V-tine’s with kids or other women and would write love poems on pretty paper and stick them in random public places…on elevators…bathrooms…etc. I love the idea of spreading love…not just romantic love…but love for everyone.

Anyway, here’s a simple project I used to do with my students. Start by taking a magazine and cut strips about 1″-3″ wide. I used an older Free People catalog.

Fold strips accordion-style…

If it’s helpful, you can draw a heart on one end, but make sure you leave a little room where they will connect to each other on the folds!

Cut the top half…

And then the bottom! Unfold and tape together to hang where you please, or to wrap around a small gift.

Happy New Year, friends.

I’m not gonna lie, 2011 was a tough year for me and a lot of people I know. A lot of creatives are struggling now, and finding themselves at a crossroads. There is an old way of doing business that depends on competition and what I call the Myth of Scarcity (with apologies to the word “myth” for becoming so pejorative): the notion that there’s not enough awesome to go around, and you must grab yours before someone else gets it. That we must undercut our prices and feel threatened by our “competitors’” success.

I call bullshit.

There is a new breed of artists and businesspeople and thinkers and #occupiers who understand the way of surviving in the future “in these tough economic times” [I barf a little in my mouth when I hear that] — the way of SURVIVING at all on this spaceship Earth — is to remember and act as if we’re all in this together. There is more than enough for everyone. We will be successful when we are generous. That doesn’t mean work for free, (but find ways to give it away now and then), it means work for what’s right.

The new paradigm is catching on in popular culture. You can see it in Oprah’s LifeClass (where she interviews people like Eckhart Tolle), in the savvy advice for the solopreneur of Danielle LaPorte, in the viral spread of ideas repackaged by the folks that gave us the Teachings of Abraham and the Law of Attraction. I mean, these ideas aren’t new. What is new is how modern business practices are being influenced by the connectivity power of community (especially via the Internet). It ain’t just for lolcats anymore people, it’s for toppling dictatorships. People are literally sick and tired of modern business. The business of “health care” [read: insurance], the “business” of agriculture, the “business” of business. There is a sense of hunger for new ways of living, of making money, of using our hands to learn old ways of making new things. Politicians are clearly not moving us forward (thank you, Occupy Movement, for giving us a visual map of this). So it’s up to the creatives: the musicians, the crafters, the geeks, the artists.

It’s a great time to reflect and set intentions for this year. Here’s a great article from the HuffPo that asks some excellent questions such as:

• Because I wanted to make 2012 count, I…

• Because fear of failure was no longer a good enough reason to not do it, in 2012 I…

• Because the world needs my service, in 2012 I…

I love using words as reminders. Toward that end, I made a little poster. I can make one for you, too with your own customized words on it if you’d like. Just email me: rachael(at)rachaelrice.com. Thank you Craft Magazine for this project.

You can make your own, too. Wordle.net is a great place to make word clouds.

Anyway, let’s do this thing. And it will be the best. Year. EVER.

This piece took about 3 days to complete and features vintage metal fringe, a detachable fox tail fur charm, earrings from fortune cookie fortunes and vintage lace, with a huge vintage doily behind a hand-woven “web” with vintage button “spider”. There’s also a plastic water bottle feather garland, which was featured on the Free People blog!  You can see tons of photos here on my Flickr.

the beast! it's over 6 feet tall!

detail of the large piece at Free People

this piece features a detachable fox tail charm!

on either side of the piece hang earrings featuring fortune cookie fortunes and vintage lace!

The second one I made is MUCH smaller, but no less charming! It features vintage trims and gold painted feathers.

here are the two raffle prizes!

raffle prize #2!

pic of me and the beast!

So many that night dressed like the original performers; I think we were all scouring Good Will stores trying searching for 1976 duds. After a lot of internetting and geeking out on the 70′s vibe, I took a bunch of photos. And I’m blown away by the similarities! Here’s my own little visual tribute to The Last Waltz, which includes the poster I made of my last show in Vermont.

Here are some photos and photo collages based on The Last Waltz, and taken from The Next Waltz.  Hard to tell which are the newer photos!

from The Next Waltz

clockwise: Little Sue, Heidi Shu, Michael Hessling, Kris Deelane, and Miriams Well

I want to dress like Joni 24/7

Bob Dylan/Al James

Dan Haley

The Band and the other band...and Jeff Roseberg as Van. Priceless.

Adam East as Neil Diamond - nails it.

The Next Waltz photo collage

For more about the Occupy movement, visit http://www.occupytogether.org/.  I strongly encourage you to participate.