We sent to see our friend Emily, the artist baker and collage maker in her booth at the Bennington Farmer’s Market, as we often do on Saturdays. We bought some food to give friends who are coming for lunch tomorrow.

I was happy to see the new fish collage Emily made, she’s on fire. Every week, I see some new and exciting and fun work, it a pleasure to see her grow and experiment. You can follow her on her very beautiful blog.

Emily bakes and teaches and creates collage, paper books, and other kinds of art. She is loving to reach, and from the response, so are her students from all over the place.

She also is giving increasingly popular collage lessons virtually to parents, kids, grandparents, and teachers. She’s also selling how-to-collage kits that she made herself.

Last week, she taught a family on Zoom.

Emily is a Vermont-based creative, and she and Maria have become good friends. It is a pleasure just to see them together, they are sisters from different mothers.

Their enthusiasm is infectious, even in a video.

They challenge each other, inspire each other, and spend hours Zooming together.

Emily and Maria – me too sometimes – understand the importance of encouragement for creative people. We work alone and create our own destiny, every single day. We need to support one another.

We are also committed to never giving up on the creative life, as bumpy and unpredictable as it can get. Emily is on a roll, and she has a lot of fans for her baking as well.

Come and meet her on the video and on her blog. It’s empowering just to see these two talking to one another, it reminds me of the power of encouragement.