Ranch Life

Husband and I are here together this year. We're on a 100 year old ranch in Santa Paula, home of David Bunn and Ellen Birrell. They have a number of guest houses and we are renting one. It's very hard to understand how we got so lucky, but we have. The ranch is like some kind of retreat. Lemon and avocado orchards are commercially picked and the fruit sold, with plenty of fruit for us and additional grapefruit, orange and pear trees. Chicken and ducks lay eggs and there is a vegetable patch with chard, squash, herbs and I'm not sure what else. Our veg bills will be non-existent. As a vegetable eater this just heaven. We only really need to buy dairy foods, tofu, cereals and pulses to sustain us. There is also a swimming pool shaped like a lagoon, designed by Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch designer earlier in his career. The ranch backs onto National Parks type land (forgotten their terminology here) so when you run out of the 3800 acres of ranch land you can keep going into park land.

We hope to subsidise the rent by working on the ranch. The commute is 40 mins to CalArts, but its a straight drive. We really hope to make it work living up here. Its not city life but it is something rather unique and idyllic. We had to grab the offer with both hands.

My three months at home were great. I got to see pretty much all my friends (bar two) and spend time with Dad. When I got home I really need to rest after the nine months I'd had and with my broken wrist. Husband and I watched two seasons of 24 in a short period of time followed by the Hitchcock Signature DVD collection and a Film Noir boxset. I caught up with one of my old workplaces, the Sheffield Yoga Centre and spent some time with my lovely yoga teacher. A friend's very dear mother whom I visited two days before I initially came out to Calarts last year, lost her battle with breast cancer and I was so privileged to be home and able to attend her funeral. I was home for my own mother's birthday and the tenth anniversary of her death. We don't morbidly dwell on such dates but it was nice to reflect on them at home. I went from a disorientated shell shock of recognising home but not quite being there, to fully being present there. And now I'm here. Again, with a kind of recognition of CalArts but a disengagement of it. That will all change soon. As the term starts the pace will pick up and I'll feel like, 'we're off again'. I'm so lucky to have husband to ground me this year.

I really hope I have a good year this year. I have a plan of what I what to do and I really hope it happens and goes well. The challenge of the year will really be in taking part in the Mid-Residency show and the end of year Los Angeles show, that the students organise. This will be where the diva egos raise their ugly heads. And they will. I hate diva behaviour, and from artists it makes me cringe.