i'm not sure if that's the right lyric, and this post is more about how a friend and I are the way we were, but more vibrant, but I always just type the first thing that comes into  my head as a title for the rambling. soooooo.  I graduated from Kutztown University in December of 2002. In the summer previous to that, I was a resident artist at Peter's Valley Craft Center. It's a pretty interesting place. As the story goes, and feel free to correct this may be more lore than fact, in the 1960's the state of New Jersey took the village of Bevans to create a resevoir.  The project fell through and what was left was a collecction of houses and barns and beautiful property minutes from the Delaware River. A group of artists and the state I believe turned it into a crafts educational center. Here, you can take a one week intensive workshop in woodworking, blacksmithing, fibers, clay, jewelry, photography and other special topics. So it's like summer camp for adults and artists.

So the summer before my last semester I met Erin E. Castellan at The Valley. Erin is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where she concentrated in fibers and sculpture and painting.  We have stayed in touch over the years, through studio moves and business propositions good and bad. When I lived in Philly for a minute and a half, we even got to spend lots of time together. Her studio is my favorite to visit because there's fibers and sculptures and paintings in various forms of completion and since Erin works all the time there is always new stuff. Plus, i love her shapes and colors and textures.

This past weekend Erin debuted her knitwear at The Peters Valley Craft Show. Living only forty five minutes away I took the opportunity to see her work and visit The Valley. It's incredibly gorgeous in the fall, we took a hike and visited some of the places we would take field trips to that summer -(like dairy queen). It was one of those weird growing moments also. That summer was the last summer of our childhood. When all we had to think about was making art and what the canteen was going to make for dinner and what our last semester at school had in store. We were both about to step off the cliff that art school feels like at the end. You're not really catapulted into a job. You know you make your own opportunities and that it's incredibly competitive. It was nice visiting as we both enter the worlds of professional crafts, still knowing we create our road ahead but having some miles behind us to edge us forward.

you can see more of Erin's work at www.erinecastellan.com