Six months ago I had the honor of spending time with a beautiful soul named Jean. Jean had spent her life caring for many with her tough love and kind words. As Jean lay in a clinic near the end of a long battle with the cancer that was deteriorating her organs she taught me many things. Here are a few.

- Appreciate the rain. Take a drive or stroll and watch how it fills the low places.

-Celebrate your birthday. If you don't, few will.

-Live each day to its fullest. Not a single one is promised.

-Respect yourself. Others will do likewise.

-Remember. The memories can be difficult, but they are so worth it.

-Listen. It is a Holy act that can usher us into the Divine.

My friend Stuart and I interviewed Jean 5 times before her death. The audio has been edited down into a 6 minute narrative for her family about her life and the wisdom she held. As I listen to her voice still fresh in my head, I am reminded that simply living life intentionally is an act of beauty.

One night a few weeks ago I dreamed a triangle. I have been avoiding straight lines, hard geometry, or anything that seems mechanical in the least. We are human, why not have an art that reflects our flesh and blood, pulsing, shaking, breathing existance. So for me a triangle is something new. It started out as a posative black shape with a biomorphic form inside, then I realized the triangle is too strong to be posative,ie black, so I made it a negative shape. I cut out a triangle and did a wash on the handmade paper to start. Then gold biomorphic form inside and black outside. It seemed to work as a poetic representation of the universe.

I couple of these are now showing at our local art gallery in the 'under 35's' show. For a review of the show and a photo of the couple of us that dared show up look here at our local newspaper . Sorry, it is only in Romanian. I also had a 1.5ft x6ft oil painting on board I posted earlier of a sunflower. The line about my work was quoting our local city art critic Mrs. Cocos, "mă bucur că expune din nou Joel Klepac, care are un potenţial divers şi o sensibilitate deosebită", Which very generously says, "I am glad that Joel Klepac is showing work again, he has diverse potential and an unusual sensativity". The art critic has liked my work in the past especially the Sarcina series and I think was a little bit disapointed that the work I showed now was abstract and tightly tied to nature.

How to make paper...find some girls who think you know what you are doing...tear up used paper and place it in a blender with water...

Then take out the blender with the burned out motor and use a drill to jimmy spin the blades using a bench to hold the contents still...

Listen to the descriptions of this beautiful goop you have just made...'it is just like the wash water before you throw it down the drain...

get some kind of frame, cheese cloth, and a bunch of hands to hold things...

Dump two buckets full of paper pulp mixture into the box quickly...and...

Ooops, well, maybe it didn't work out so great the first time. We pulled the pulp back together, mixed the pulp back in with new water, held the cheese cloth tighter to the bow, and added another sac under the cheese cloth to get the pulp to flow slower...

It did work better. We ironed for a good 20 minutes and got a nice hunk of unique paper.

This drawing was done at camp on the back of a sheet of paper when the child finished the planned project. The past years Romania has had horrible flooding, leaving many people with a roof on the ground. Many of the kids also live in an area which has historically been flooded when the Danube swells. I would say that for many of our children life must seem like a flood. You climb on the roof and hope for a miraculous escape from the forces swirling around you.