Finding Home: A Creative Journey

Mining for Inspiration

2012-01-31T15:55:00.000-06:00

This time last year, after having discovered the world of online art education, I was embarking on my first real creative endeavors to draw and paint. I had joined the Yahoo "Everyday Matters" group, was enrolled in the first Strathmore Artist Papers workshop with Pam Carriker, and was learning for the first time how to work with basic art materials and how to mine my own life and art for even more art inspiration. I had made a first journal page based on the experience of staying in a favorite hotel (go here), and another about dinner at a favorite restaurant (here), and then in Pam's workshop I had learned to combine those elements into something much richer, layered and more fascinating (then here.) Since then my drawing time has produced somewhat more literal interpretations of the favorite bits of my life, but as with my blog, there tends to be a story to bind up the parts.

This January I have been fortunate to spend some quality time under the excellent creative coaching of Traci Bautista. (The first four week class of Strathmore Online Workshops is over in real time, but you can still sign up and work the lessons on your own.) I included the results of week one doodling last time, and now I'd like to show off the rich results of the last three weeks' joyous play.

In week two, we moved into all water based media, and I was able to learn about layering not only with brushed-on paint, but watercolor crayon, pencil and markers as well. The result is a painting that is sheer and glows, and when mined for closeup detail images, displays every bit of the energy and inspiration that went into three non-stop hours of fun.

"We Drank all the Limoncino" is 18 x 24 inches
(all the images from this and last year's class may be found in
this flikr set.)

When my Designing Women met for our January creative play day, I decided to take some of the mined detail shots and turn them into something 3-D and practical, and created a pattern for a lidded box inspired by a self-closing tea box I was getting ready to discard. Lined with a coordinated calico print, my art is now ready for gifting or selling.

Next up was the need for something suitable to inspire a series of pieced and embroidered panels for my ongoing class with Arlee Barr, and her highly textured techniques in surface embellishment. I have been collecting fabric forever, but most recently have started acquiring OOAK hand dyed linen bits from Jackson Art Fabrics and Deb Lacativa. Of course the colorways were highly suitable to the inspiration of my painting, since I long ago learned that my intuitive sense of color mixing will generally yield a consistent palette without much conscious thought. Color is the one area in which I am most confident and happy to experiment.

Nothing purchased. Just pulled from the closet.

This photo shows a detail inspiration shot on the right, and the design starting to form in fabric on the left.

Moving on to a new assignment for workshop weeks three and four, we returned to the use of acrylics and various found items of a household nature to use as texture plates. We were creating backgrounds for what would be fanciful "girly glam" faces a la Traci's style in week four. Here are the three pieces I made in quick succession. Much of the work was done in a finger painting style. My favorite textures came from the sequin waste and the dry walling mesh, although some other useful materials were the cut off end of a plastic basket and a stamp made from rubber bands adhered to sticky back craft foam.

Everything I used minus the hose connector used to stamp
the large circles above.

We also doodled on newsprint in India ink and a script liner (skinny brush).

Last week we faced the hardest part of the doodle challenge: faces! Although I did an intensive week of faces with Carla Sonheim last summer, well, that was last summer, and I haven't done any since. This was supposed to be totally simple and stylized, but I needed some real glam inspiration. I opened W Magazine to the first ad I saw and this was perfect.

The face and hair area laid in, and several ink doodles secured with matte gel to use as line inspiration.

After Session I: The facial features were done in watercolor pencil and some overlay of paint, and the rest in basic craft acrylics with various small flat and round brushes. (The colors appear a bit more golden due to the ambient lighting.)

The finished painting (minus varnishing, done later.) The colors were read very true by the scanner. Although Traci's style was to add detail in various markers and pens, and colored pencils, I stayed with the paint and brushes for all of the layering. I did use some metallic gold paint for shimmer.

This happy accident is how the painting scanned when I mistakenly hit "color correct". I love this blue based palette as well, and I expect I will mine this image for all sorts of details to be used down the line in other art and projects. And so goes the inspiration.

Full Speed Ahead

2012-01-12T14:10:00.000-06:00

Since last we spoke, the holidays came and went, the new year slipped in on little cat's feet (maybe not my cat, cause he usually enters howling), and the whirlwind of my plans and expectations for continuing at the "University of Cheryl and Her Internet" became a new semester.

We're paddling as fast as we can, fueled by enthusiasm and caffeine.

In December I celebrated the shortest days by frequently photographing the night in it colorful raiment from the perspective of my cozy living room. I especially loved the beautiful sunsets framed by the icicle lights around my living room window. Sometimes I painted with the blur of their movement and I was sad to see them go back to storage so soon.

Dispensed with a tree this year and just added enough
twinkly lights to warm the night.

White icicle lights are so passe!

Intentional blur is fun to do.

Let's not forget the most meaningful lights of the season.

The weather has been unnaturally warm and clear to end and start the years, and it seems a sign that winter expects us to just continue with whatever we were doing before the distraction of spending and eating disturbed the creative flow. The last of these wreaked havoc all through 2011, as I quite forgot in the midst of my studies and practice of drawing and stitching that eating was not one of the skills I needed to learn anymore. In fact, moving enough and eating properly became my first refresher course of the New Year. Let's hope I get an "A" in that one.

Most of what drives me from waking to sleeping these days is ongoing from all I started in 2011. Once experienced it is hard to say "no!" to an interesting challenge. I may not be an athlete, but I am a team player in my Internet world of art, and so I've been completing some races, prepping for others, and standing in great expectation of the starting gun of the new challenges.

One of my long time real world commitments is to my local quilt guild. While I haven't been active with the monthly goings on for some time now, every two years I become immersed in the group show. I am working to finish quilts that may have been started last summer or as long ago as 1999!

Last summer I was still completing the embroidered ribbon.

Perseverance payed off. After a mere 12 years, the quilt is finished and hanging, and ready to be my star entry at the quilt show in March.

My association with Australian embroidery teacher extraordinaire, Sharon Boggon, has led me to join many hundreds of other fans worldwide to participate in a weekly lesson/challenge to learn or practice 52 different stitches and their variations this year. Everyone involved comes from a different background of skill and interest, so we are all completing our projects to suit our own needs. I am following the lead of a small group blog where members are doing color themed monthly pages to contain all the stitches from that month. At the end of the year, my pages will be sewn into a (hopefully) beautiful fabric reference book.

Two facing pages ready for the first week's challenge stitch. The completed size of each will be 9x12.

On the Aida cloth side I will be practicing a row of the four or five stitches in basic forms.

On the right side will be a collage of interesting fabrics to encourage stitch variation and exploration.

I am a newbie to any kind of drawn and painted art, but last year I was especially taken by the fun of mixed media explorations. I took a class with Jane LaFazio in mixed media for textile arts, and I also participated in two of the Strathmore Online Workshops. Currently we are in week two of the four free lessons with artist, Traci Bautista. Having spent last year collecting many drawing and painting supplies, I am having a ball learning to actually use them effectively. What I am loving about this workshop is that there is no pressure to do anything but have fun, and that is why I am in this game at all!

The first layer of media set up basic lines and forms to work with by using liquid acrylics sprayed over stencils and other resists.

This is the left side of the page as seen above. I stopped layering the media and designs after the paint layers.

This is the right side. Here I continued with several more layers of markers and inks.

In my ongoing lessons with fiber artist, Jude Hill, I am currently playing catch up with a course she taught in 2010, before I knew how wonderful it was to learn this way. So I am working at my own pace to learn to develop story with characters of my own design in her Patchwork Beasts class.

This photo collage (not to scale) shows the various bases I made in my first two lessons to use for the development of the beasts.

Finally, I am spending some time adding to my "Frankenstitch" class samplers from the fall, so that I will be up to speed when the advanced class begins this weekend. Can't wait to begin, since we will have the opportunity to create textile art for three dimensional formats.

In this photo of the buttonhole sampler you can see I have concentrated on the upper left quadrant, adding padding and woven stitches.

A closeup of the plain weave and raised buttonhole.

Encasing the padded ridges in buttonhole lace and a woven cap.

Have I tired you out yet? Not me. I'm just getting going. Let's see: which pile is calling me with the loudest voice this afternoon? Maybe lesson two of the mixed media (we're doing watercolor backgrounds this week), or my week two stitch for the January page? No, I think it's that hunky Beto Perez and my Zumba DVDs. After all, we have our priorities.

Collecting The Sparkly Bits : Chicago Holiday, Part II

2011-12-12T20:44:00.003-06:00

There is something so satisfying about taking bits of color and texture and artfully combining them to make a whole that is so much more interesting than any of the elements involved. As the puzzle comes together, the brain plays lovingly with the new combinations to find meaning and story to amuse and delight itself.

That combination of bits is a great part of all the arts, as in the creation of a piece of jewelry, or a painting, or a woven piece of cloth. It plays into the creation of each new memory of time well spent. It is ultimately the formula of an interesting life.

A finely crafted day is especially wonderful when the bits and pieces include the experience of wonderful art. Those details double the fascination for me, and helps to create memories that enrich with the retelling. One of my best reasons for wanting a city life in retirement is to be surrounded by the possibility of falling into art. I like the serendipitous nature of the hunt. Knowing that it is all around me, on the street and hidden behind walls, a day in the city is a scavenger hunt for something I've never seen before, or a deeply loved favorite that I intend to revisit. Some of the findings will come from previous announcement through the media, and some will be by fortuitous accident. Every trip to Chicago has a mixture of these elements, and stumbling upon the unplanned feels like the universe is complicit in my pleasure.

The completed bracelet from last month, a labor of love and about forty hours of work. Don't know that I'll ever wear it, but who would buy it?

Such simple unassuming parts as tiny glass beads or over-sized rhinestones (rivolis). Here you see the beginning stages of adding the fringe. After sewing about seventeen different fringes between each rivoli, others were sewn around each of the beaded bezels and then around the edge of the beaded base to achieve that sumptuous fullness seen in the finished bracelet.

Self portrait of a couple off to have a city adventure
on a festive Friday evening.

The big city is full of big street art. Tribune plaza has hosted Cows on Parade, "American Gothic" farmers, and now, Marilyn.

A view that we never really saw in the movie or the famous photos. This is the very heart of town, just over the Michigan Avenue bridge north of the Chicago River. She draws much attention, some controversy, and frankly was more beautiful than I thought it would be. She seems to embody the bold energy and excitement that you feel when you stand in this heart of American culture.

Just like last year, one of us took great advantage of the tree-house-like space of the window seat. Looking in from the perch...

...looking out on the night (at Wabash and Wacker, and the Chicago River).

Saturday we went in search of culture at (among other places) The Chicago Cultural Center. Formerly the main branch of the city library, the building was designed in a long gone era of fine craftsmanship and bold investment in public wealth. This was a palace for the people of the city. It is still awe inspiring.

A grand entrance serves as a gallery of amazing tile work.

Newly restored to grandeur, the Tiffany dome.

Beside the beauty of the building, the Cultural Center hosts fascinating free art exhibits, often with a more controversial, modern, or local provenance than the Art Institute. As usual we were not disappointed. The outstanding current exhibit, on view through April of 2012, is "Write Now: Artists and Letterforms".
The trifecta of enjoyment was completed when we stumbled upon a festival sponsored by the local public radio station, WBEZ91.5, called "What's Your Art: Celebrating the Art Centers of Chicago." In the huge ballroom-like Yates Gallery, were about twenty booths and activity stations, with enough live art to keep you busy for hours if you cared to immerse yourself in talking to all the artists. In addition to getting a sales pitch to buy hand blown glass from some enthusiastic local students, and a great talk about camera lenses with a local photographer, I had a linoleum block print custom made for me for free, and watched (although I sorely wanted to participate) an "impromptu" communal dance with knitwear.

Getting ready for the reveal...

Just like children's flip books, we each got to choose which head, body and feet went together to create our unique character.

Laid out on the floor covering the center of room was a zigzag of knit tubing (the kind we all made as kids on one of those spools with nails) connecting about 100 knit and crocheted hats of every imaginable style and color.

At the designated time, the dance leader gave a few quick rules of the dance, instructed the volunteer participants to don a hat and the music began.

What good is a giant hat dance without a rousing brass section a la New Orleans and Mardi Gras?

The Man waits patiently. Because I am not dancing
he knows we will leave sooner than later.

And so it goes, it is time to culminate the weekend's festivities with the original purpose of the trip, a yearly dinner dance sponsored by the Association of Iron and Steel Technology. Never the best of the trip, but the catalyst to prompt us to experience the rest.

A couple of pink "cosmos" make the table and me more festive.

Happy Holidays to all my friends and readers. I hope you have enjoyed our adventures together this year and that I will see you again in the New Year. If you aren't already doing so, I hope you will sign up to follow, and feel free to leave comments on this or any post.

Snapshot Interlude: A Chicago Holiday, Part I

2011-12-08T15:34:00.001-06:00

Life is good, life is busy and fulfilling, but I am so badly missing the drawing track I was on. It was starting to become such a good habit, but has currently fallen by the wayside. First, however, I have promises to keep. And the promise to myself that as soon as I finish some of my lovely projects that have been patiently waiting for me to love them too, then I can go back to daily journaling of the ink and paint nature.

The first love of my creative life has always been textiles, and I have quite a few fabric-y things piled high in the studio. I am just this week completing (and I mean before the week ends) a quilt that started with an inspiring class in... 1999! Several times I almost called it quits, but I'm so glad I persevered, because I love it now. My guild's next show is in late March, and so I have set a rigid schedule to help me have a good showing there. I'm sure I will be glad I did.

So instead, this week I am sharing the first installment of visual candy of my recent trip into town to gather and participate in that good holiday vibe of early December. I always take the sketchbook and journals with me, but when there is a short time and much to capture, there is nothing like a camera. I love to see how much energy I can pack into my shots, and so share a bit of the excitement with you.

The Hotel Monaco, just south of the Chicago River is our favorite place to stay in town. They have just redecorated and the room was quite elegant.

The view from our third floor window took in the Trump Tower
across the river. The crystalline blue makes it look
like a computer-generated image to me.

In Daley Plaza, we drank hot spiced wine and ate gooey chocolate soft pretzels. Two "porcelain figurines" posed in front of the giant Christmas tree.

Hanging out at the Christkindelmart is a nice time to stop and look around at the dramatic beauty of the city buildings.

I love all the overlapping reflections and intersecting lines. Just a pop of red.

Always on guard and always on duty.

"Flaming Pigeons"
It was hilarious to watch them warming their "heinies" in front of the memorial flame in the plaza (especially since it wasn't a terribly cold day.)

An elegant Macy's Window foretold the exciting decor to be found inside. (Although it's still Marshall Fields in the heart of many locals, I am a Philadelphian, and the fabulous building reminds me of the Wanamaker's of my youth.)

Trumpets on State Street

The amazing tree in the Walnut Room restaurant

Real tree "skirts" along the sidewalks are always holiday festive.

Sometimes "The Bean" makes you catch your breath with how it appears as delicate as a bubble.

It is mandatory for tourists and locals to visit and take
photos of their reflections.

When you walk under Cloud Gate (the real name of the artwork,) the reflections multiply and produce dizzying effects. If you aren't careful you can walk into the surface.

The girl behind the camera

The sun was beginning to set and we headed off to the Art Institute for our afternoon coffee at the Modern Wing.

Lines, textures, colors (and this was just a hallway out side the lavatories!) I think it would be a good start for an interesting painting or quilt.

Crown Fountain "spews" water from the ever changing faces
on the two 50 foot glass block towers. (Well, not in winter; but in summer kids of all ages frolic in the water.)
Note the moon directly overhead.

Heading back to the hotel, the magic glow of the city at sunset.
The building on the far right is the Aon Center,
previously the second tallest building in the city
(before Trump was completed.)

Hope you enjoyed!

Next time: a bit of the night, plus an arty stop at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The Space Between

2011-11-22T15:42:00.001-06:00

This morning they sucked up the last of my gathered fallen leaves, clipped vines, and denuded brown stems, to cart them off to the community composting field. I watched them earnestly through my front window until finally satisfied that I had put the garden to bed for the year, and could now move forward to welcoming the winter break.

Once again, my surroundings feels stripped clean and new. Sunsets are more intense this time of year, maybe a change in the angles and the clouds, or maybe they just appear that way because their competition is on holiday. In any case, I treasure the occassional showiness of the earlier setting sun as a sign to stop and appreciate what is given freely by the world. It makes me turn a critical eye to the inside clutter. Time to divest, clean, and think about a new fresh color scheme.

The fire of a November sunset echoes the emotions I feel
toward the new year to come.

This year we are simplifying our holiday celebration. We have decided to welcome the dark with lights both indoors and out, but dispense with the tree. Instead I created an evergreen display in the urn by the front door. It has already drawn notice, waves and good cheer, and that is the real purpose of this time. Connecting with others and our own personal gratitude.

Preparing for winter solstice with a bit of evergreen and bright red berries

Having recently written and thought about the successful conclusion of my "first" year in art mode, I have been pondering where I go from here. It is so easy to fall out of habits you try to establish when there has been more time in a life not doing than doing something. And yet each day only has so many hours to embrace the myriad goals and pursuits I enjoy. The one thing that stuck me most strongly in this evolution of my creative life is that I need to work on giving up the guilt. I need to fully embrace the philosophy of not owing anyone my time or life. That I don't need to be doing anything that doesn't bring me joy or fulfillment, or why I am doing it?

Let me be clear here: we are not talking about responsibility to family or society, this is purely about my personal life goals and pursuits. As much as I am loving learning to draw, I came into that mode with a purpose: to give up the guilt about not doing it! To get passibly good at it so that I could use drawing as a basis for designing textiles and jewelry when it served me. Finding out that I loved to draw everday objects and scenes to document my life, or that I could actually draw passibly from imagination, well so much the better! But I was starting to feel that I could not just sit and meditatively stitch one loop into another because that was not "creative enough". Says who?

A new wardrobe of bead crochet bangles

I decided it was okay to set aside my pens and journals for a break and return to some of my other obsessions like bead crochet, bead weaving and knitting. I also have been continuing to engage one of my larger goals from the past year, which is the development of my embroidery skills. I have taken three classes so far this year that were partially or fully about developing story and design through hand stitch (with or without applique). Thanks to Jude, Arlee and Sharon, and please check these links for the their wonderful new year's class offerings. I will be continuing with all of their teaching and inspiration in 2012 as well.

In Arlee Barr's "FrankenStitch" class we have learned
to embrace textural embroidery.

My buttonhole stitch sampler is still at a stage far from complete.

The straight stitch sampler has made some progress, but will continue to be layered and developed.

This place I inhabit between my reality and my goals recently took inspiraton from a trip to visit family in Philly and Jersey. As I am normally too far from these people to see them more than once a year, it was so wonderful to have the opportunity for not just a visit to the close circle, but a bigger life event that drew cousins to celebrate a rite of passage. At once I was trying to accept the issues of the narrowing possibilites that age and age-related infirmities may impose on our options, and on the other, the endless opening doors of youth into adulthood. A cousins' eldest daughter was called to the Torah, and with the family and community gathered about in an inspirationally beautiful sanctuary, and with the help of her spiritual advisors and the cantor's angelic voice, she proudly and admirably took her place in the world of awareness of the "other". Her Bat Mitzvah project was involved with feeding the hungry in her own community. In addition to raising money and awareness for her local food pantry, she had collected donations of food that, made into beautiful gift baskets, served as centerpieces for the celebration that followed, and a reminder to the guests to be gratedful for our personal bounty. I thoroughly enjoyed my family reunion and danced my tush off.

Still life with party favors

Since returning home, I have completed my knitting project and pulled from the stash of UFO's a "blingy" wonderful bracelet with seed beads, rivolis, and drop bead fringe. I did some further work on the two machine quilting projects that I hope to complete before year's end, and pulled out the silk kimono from Jude's "Magic Diaries" class to work on. I was inspired by Melly Testa to join a December challenge project in "Rockstar Boro."

The linen stitch knit scarf truly looks hand loomed.

This bit of bling has been waiting patiently for a year for me to return. I think it will be finished this week.

This space between the years is filling up fast. Almost no break at all. But then I don't really want one. My years are too few, my loves too many. The colors of sunset are in that scarf, the colors of spring in that bracelet. I plan to fill the clean quiet space of winter with the color of joy.

They Say It's Your Birthday!

2011-10-28T14:24:00.000-05:00

Today we celebrate our arrival at a full year on "The Journey." What a great year it has been. Yes! Yes! If you weren't here with us, you can check out where we began.

Sunrise on October 28, 2011
A fresh new day in a fresh new year of art and journaling

Technically the journey started about ten years ago when I realized with great certainty that a change was required. That something important and necessary on the road to fulfillment had been left behind, that I'd been languishing on the wrong path.

By the time 2010 was halfway through, and many false starts abandoned, we reached the point of heeding advise from a fellow traveler on the creative quest: quit waiting for "retirement" to begin studying and making art, do it now! And so, I discovered my first online class, a very beginning exercise in color theory. There was very little interaction with fellow students or the instructor, a well know and talented quilt artist who paints whole cloth quilts, but still and all there was paint on paper, a fine text to reference, some "aha" moments, and a first step down the road.

Just in time for this new resolve, a brand new mixed media retreat was fashioned and brought to Chicago, "Create" by the magazine, "Cloth, Paper, Scissors." Knowing nothing of visual journals or mixed media, I was drawn to attend by the promise of something different than a quilt show, and the perky personality and designs of crossover artist, Melanie Testa, I signed up for a full day class in visual journaling. This was my breakthrough. I felt an instant connection and camaraderie with Melly and the type of art she did. I could understand how all my years of textile art experience could only be enhanced by learning to draw and express my own visions on paper first.

Pokey Bolton captured this photo of me making my first ever mixed media journal page in Melly's class. I later discovered I was the "poster girl" for the registration page for a number of Create retreats.

Melly offered her help as mentor to my next step in the process: using the blogging world to find my community and record my journey. Her ready assistance and support made it possible for me to begin attending a stream of online drawing and design classes in both textiles and mixed media, while starting this diary to chronicle the trip. It has been not only a way to reach out to others, but an invaluable reference tool for myself: to see how far I've come.

My earliest and most favorite drawing and painting explorations have been with my furry friends as inspiration.

So what has this year of blogging and art brought forth?

A record of my travels so far.

An appreciation for my own abilities (a bit of the self love I was lacking.)

Expanding the skills to record what I see, create and share a story (visually and verbally), connect with strangers and through that connection become friends.

A link with the broader world of creativity and exposure to new artists and ideas every day.

Connections with lovely people from all corners of the world, from the next town over to places like Australia, Finland and Tunisia.

My growing stack of journals and sketchbooks, including handmade storage boxes and folders.

Some statistics will wrap up the activity of my year--

The blog by the numbers:

32 blog posts hit over 7700 times

65 public followers

A visual record on flikr:

a photostream with 23 sets, 297 images, and over 19,000 page views

The formal study of art and design:

at least 20 classes and workshops with 8 different artists

The media in which I record my art:

8 different journals/sketchbooks started

2 recycled paper storybooks created

2 collections of small watercolor paintings (totaling 32 pcs.)

2 boxes, 1 folder, and 1 journal cover from painted canvas

2 lutrador hippo themed story books

Some of my favorite projects have involved drawing in my handmade journals and books.

Textile art:

3 machine technique quilts (in progress)

3 embroidered panels (ongoing)

4 mixed media pieces (ongoing)

9 hand technique textile panels (woven-based, embroidered and quilted) (two completed and sewn to jackets)

My most recent painting, using a never-ending inspiration: my garden.

Looking back on all this mountain of productivity has both amazed and delighted me. It has shown what I am capable of, what I want yet to do, and where my next year is likely to go. And yet, if you asked me a year ago where I thought I'd be at this moment, my modest answer would have been that I hoped I'd be able to draw passably well. But life has brough me so much more than that. I wouldn't want to jinx anything by trying to define the future. I'd rather embrace it with anticipation and delight in all its surprises. I'll see you there, my friends!

Scattered

2011-10-20T11:36:00.000-05:00

Today's Forecast: Warming toward life, but chance of scattered brain activity.

The Man got called into work in the middle of the night last evening. For us, one a.m. is the middle, since he usually rises at 4. I was worried about this emergency, because I hate when he misses sleep, and there was a wind and rain "event" going on outside where he had to drive and also face the "crisis." Finally asleep again, I was awakened by his alarm at 4. This time a pill to help me under, and when finally resurfacing this morning, way past my usual rising time, of course there was dizziness and discombobulation of brain waves. I tell you all of this to illustrate my general state of mind lately. I'm the one who has the good fortune to go back to bed, yet I am the one who always seems out of focus.

Part of this loss of a direct path to goals lately is due to the usual up and down of the change of seasons. One week above normal, one below. Autumn this year had been a see-saw from summer to winter temps. I even caught the newscasters on the Chicago station saying that we were expecting the first storm of winter. Well, not really! It's hardly winter yet! But I can see I am not alone in my confusion.

The slightly out of focus view of my busy breakfast space. (The CD cover is actually in focus.)

Yesterday, David brought in two gorgeous purple clematis blooms that thought spring had arrived. This morning I was dithering over sitting down to paint them, or to write the blog, or to return to crocheting a metal bead bracelet I have wanted for at least two years now, or maybe take up my promise to myself to work out indoors since the day is definitely not one for walking outside.

Of course, there is also the new stuff to study. In our household My Guy is generally the one to research and buy new mechanical and electronic gear, and I am usually the recipient who must learn how to use it. Often these things arrive before I am ready to study them. Take for example the new car I got last May. It replaced the same type of car I had, but came with all the updated features that seven years of development will bring. Sure, I can drive it, but can I run it's computer system? Heck no! I got a smart phone almost a year ago, and that too, is still a mystery to me most days. Everything we purchase these days is a computer unto itself, only it wants to connect to all our other computers and they don't necessarily play nicely together. I hit the wrong button on my steering wheel the other day and the car told me it couldn't find my phone! I didn't want my car using my phone. Who was it going to call, the Camaro down the block?

The new Sony camera, pictured above, is another example. I haven't even taken the tag off the carrying case. David is one of the most excellent price shoppers you will find. He has a knack for finding the "returned but never used," and "display model ready to be changed out," and getting them at a fraction of their current retail price. I treasure all this opportunity to have updated technology, and yet, again, there is that manual to study, that system to learn. I think I will be giving up on ever learning how to use my "older" digital SLR. Why bother? This one pretty much does the same thing, but better.

There's also the Paul Simon CD I bought two weeks ago, loaded on the computer and pod, that I haven't listened to. When I was a kid, my brain was such a busy place that if I didn't distract some part of it with music all the time, I couldn't concentrate on reading and studying. Now I pretty much need total quiet to pay attention to really creative pursuits.

Meanwhile, I think the statute of limitations has run out on telling you about my summer vacation. I had planned to go into some more detail about our trip around my favorite Oregon places, but for now I just want to share these two journal ink and watercolor sketches from our stay at TuTuTun Lodge. It's the most beautiful and relaxing corner of "nowhere" I can imagine.

I have been somewhat preoccupied with fabric and stitching lately, but I did complete three pages in the last month, sort of closing up summer and beginning autumn.

Playing with greys and using a selective sprig to represent the entire plant in the planter of her head.

Sheer layering of the vine over the arbor. Again, just a detail of a very large and dense growth.

One day after shopping at Costco, this little leaf was waiting on my car door for a ride. I took it home, painted it, then sat in my garage and painted the reflections on the car door and handle. A lot fun to do.

A friend who admired my Junk Mail book wanted me to show her how to transform junk into drawing paper. I used the "good" gouache paints I bought nearly a year ago, and got some beautiful results. Can't wait to draw a second book.

I am currently taking a class in embroidery with a favorite textile artist, Arlee Barr. Her class is called "Frankenstitch," and she is teaching us how to work big, bold, and chunky, to achieve texture and tell a story through simple embroidery stitches stretched to their creative limits. It is very freeing, and fits my "design as you go" personality. I have no plan or pre-design. I am making what I am calling samplers, although they have potential to be finished pieces.

Here is an example of running stitch gone interesting.

This piece is using various silks I have dyed, dye-painted or stencilled with a strip off a "boro-class" weaving. It will be an all buttonhole stitch sampler.

Here is a little sample of "Frankenstiched" buttonhole as I got started.

One of my creative friends called me this week to say she wanted to stop by with a gift of Indian Corn she had grown this year that took on a creative twist of its own. Some of the ears had gone all "rainbowy" with soft pastels of every hue. In all her years of farming she had never seen this happen. It was a fun surprise, and I think I will make a simple wreath out it for the front porch.

Of course, I could paint it while it's still in the warm house. Nah, I'd better read that car manual first, before my "MAXI" starts dating behind my back. Who said she could use my phone!

The Top Ten Reasons Why...

2011-10-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

Regular readers of my blog will already know that The Man and I are looking forward to retiring within the next few years. He's had more than enough time working for the steel industry, and a job that gets him up at 4:00 in the morning and not home until 5:30 pm on a good day. But beyond the need to stop slaving for big industry is the soul's cry (his and mine) for something more fulfilling: we crave a new adventure. We are long past due for a big change. Change can be scary, change can intimidate. But it also beckons with the promise of new riches, new inspiration. Places to go, people to meet, ideas to hear, new colors and textures to life. Who is satisfied with waiting for change to come and get you? That sort usually involves something unpleasant, something out of control, maybe something on the road to breakdown.

We want to choose our highway, and so we are planning. We are seeking this big move in both attitude, and in longitude and latitude. We have explored our options and have settled on the Rose City, Portland, Oregon. What could possibly be bad about a place that celebrates the fabled flower of romance? So why else Portland? (It rains a lot, you know? Yes, we've heard. But in reality no more than it rains where we live now. Have you ever lived with the extravagant weather of the South Shore of Lake Michigan? Wind, rain, ice, snow, humidity, tornadoes, oh, and of course, sunshine, which Portland has, too.)

But why this spot in the Pacific Northwest above anywhere else in this broad and varied county? I could go on for days about the positive experiences we've had on our three trips to the frontier, but let's just say: when you know, you know. There is a personality to a place. It either embraces you or it doesn't. And this one welcomes us more broadly every time we return.

So in no particular order of rank, how about my top ten list of why I'm sooo ready to move to Portland:

1. Size Matters. I have always wanted to live in a downtown neighborhood of a chosen city, be surrounded by the the culture, just walk out my door and fall into life, yet not get lost in the noise, the dark of the high rise canyons, the overwhelming energy of the larger metropolis, like our current closest, Chicago. Portland is sized to human scale. (And we love how close the airport is.)

Sampling fresh baked croissants and more. Hairnets required.

Portland Walking Tours: Epicurean Excursion

We attended cooking school for local farmers market cuisine.

A favorite deli from past trips has a new outpost.

Silk, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Pearl District.

2. Feed Me. Now that I'm here, I need places to eat. Interesting and varied cuisines abound, farmer's markets pretty much every day of the week, cooking classes, micro breweries, wineries, chocolatiers. Artisan is a word with integrity here.

Drinking "Fresh Laundry" at McCormick and Schmick's

A Latin beat, and couples are up dancing.

3. Party Hearty. We appreciate that that when people have places to gather and a town with civic pride, all sorts of gatherings for the purpose of a good time will arise. And this is not only for the young. Families and singles, young and older, locals and tourists, all find planned and spontaneous entertainment around every corner.

4. Hitchin' a Ride (on public transit).I have lived in and visited cities all my life, and used subways, trains and buses from Toronto to Philly to DC. Where I live now, they pretty much don't understand the concept; Portland, outstanding transit system.

Outside the Portland Art Museum

The Oregon Symphony prepares to play a free concert in the river front park.

Just fun!

Saturday Market

5. Cultcha'. All sorts, from free symphony that we happened on in the Tom McCall waterfront park, to Latin quartet on a public plaza in the middle of town, to fantasy auto shows at the art museum, quilts at the Japanese gardens, Saturday market crafters, Voodoo Donuts (a touristy but wonderfully fun institution of sugary badness.)

Cycles...

to kayaks...

to Segways!

6. River and Bridges. The romance of water and a way to cross over. In Chicago it's a lake that looks like the ocean. Here a river called the Willamette fits the scale of the city. I grew up in Philly and the gritty industrial areas and rail yards are a part of what defines city for me. But here they decided to move the road and make that waterfront accessible for recreation. A big loop of exercise and possibilities.

View of downtown from the East bank.

View of downtown from the West Hills.

7. Hills and Views. It's a little like San Fran, built on hills. Mt. Hood watches over, and if you are located on higher ground, you can see all the way past Mt. St. Helen's to Mt. Rainer. Now that's a view you can boast about! So many wonderful attractions on the West Hills--zoo, rose gardens, forested parks.

8. Fit, Active and Attractive. The population that is. Almost seem like another species when compared to home. Oh, and way more laid back. The airport experience alone tells the tale before you even set foot out the door. And when you do, the air will be sweeter and feel cleaner. No lie.

Portlandia

9. Ideas into Action. Fitness here is more than a personal philosophy. It also pertains to making society a better place. Civic involvement in creating a positive future is on display around every corner. It's like a workshop for the rest of the country to get a taste of the possibilities. Watch us, we're willing to try the grand experiments. The excitement is palpable.

The Columbia River Gorge at Crown Point

Multnomah Falls

Mount Hood

Wine Country in the Willamette Valley

The Oregon Coast near Yachats

10. It's in Oregon! One of the most beautiful states in the nation, with an embarrassment of riches, it boggles the mind--mountains, rivers, oceans, fertile valleys, wildlife. A retirement playground with abundant variety.

I'm going to need a little extra income to support that city lifestyle. Do you think the tourism board needs any help?

Practice Makes Perfect

2011-09-15T14:35:00.001-05:00

There is so much to tell about my recent travels out West, but first I must catch you up on my summer of art.

I have been doing some sort of visual creative expression all my life. If you have read my blog in the past, you know something of my history of the pursuit of art vs craft. Every day there is a project (or three, or ten) that I wake up to and look forward to working on. And just as surely as I continue to "work" every day, I constantly hear from whose who do not, how talented I am, and how easy it is for me to achieve success. I use to just thank them for the complement and move on, but lately I feel the need to clarify the reality. No, it's not all innate talent, it's about passion to try and try again. And it is also about work and practice. Something over fifty years of daily practice surely will improve and refine many skills, and passion for the process as well as the results will show in the final product.

I have been a quilter for twenty years and with every quilted project I did, I included new techniques and skills. In quilting as in every other visual art, I make the project my own. This means that every time I start something, I must use my own ingenuity to figure out technical aspects, and how to best alter them to fit the needs of my vision. Above all, I strive to improve my own artistry and express something important to myself.

This first image is from a photo of my husband that appeared in one of my first blog entries last year. I am learning to interpret a photo in fabric without being entirely literal about color and detail. I show here phase one, where the basic color values in the self-imposed rule of only four gradations is maintained. Should I decide to add more details, they will be added in free-motion machine stitching. Right now I am contemplating the needs.

I am in a collaboration with the "subject" who would like to see this made into a panel of three different colorways, each building in intensity, and finished without a binding, but with something "more modern". My husband is an engineer, not an artist in practice, but he is every bit as creative, because he sees, and feels passionately about his vision.

This next photo shows how I was kidnapped by a yarn shop in Ashland, OR, a couple weeks ago. I had vowed that I wasn't going to knit this fall, but after being dragged in the door kicking and screaming and made to sit on the floor sorting out the endless choices of color in this Koigu yarn, I had to buy the pattern too, and of course, a new size needle missing from my vast collection. Even though I have been knitting since childhood, I have never done the Linen Stitch. I think the approximately 28,000 stitches in the completed scarf will give me enough practice to master it.

Here is the completed, but yet to be mounted, bordered and framed first piece from my Sumptuous Surface Embroidery class last month. I was sad not to have the time to participate as fully during the class as I would have liked, but learned so many new stitches and have acquired so many new resources to go forward, that I am glad I signed up when I did. The best part of the class was getting to design the piece from the ground up, and use a visual journal as a design tool for the first time. It now makes sense to me how to use one.

When I last left you at "Art Camp," with Carla Sonheim, I had completed week one of "Imaginary Creatures." Week two was even more exciting as we had a super intense practice at drawing faces. "Faces 101, " was literally drawing at least 101 faces in five days. Practice Makes Perfect! (Or at least it begins to free you and take away the fear of what you can't do.) I loved drawing faces so much I can't wait to get back to it. Each day we would warm up with expressive lines and then move on to two complete and different techniques and mediums.

One liners are "ten second" sketches you do by not lifting your pen from the page. They capture the essence of your subject.

Cheater blinds are blind contour drawings done with just a little bit of looking. We used two sizes of felt tipped pens, and no erasing. These are from pictures of high school teachers in my yearbook.

These "eraser faces" are drawn with the finger and a kneaded eraser using pastel powder: lay down the colors with your fingertip, then erase in the highlighted potions of the face. Repeat as necessary. Just a couple minutes for each.

Ink drawing done with the dropper from the bottle, and blotted with toilet paper. Wonderfully fun.

Extra Credit: Tea box drawing. We used gessoed tea box or other packaging as a base, and drew in markers. My first experience with Copic markers (the grey shades). I'm collecting them now.

The final week of art camp with Carla was the "Junk Mail Artist Book". This was an opportunity to create the paper media for a storybook from gessoed and watercolor painted junk mail, and then draw a storybook of about five two-page spreads with a front and back cover. All in one five day period!!

While creating the physical book we practiced the technique of creating interactive drawings: drawings that connect from one page to another.

My tied together book with offset pages waiting for the story.

A look at all the page spreads before they had the story added. Some of the papers were bubble wrap liners of envelopes. Some had plastic windows. Some printed ads. All sorts of colors and textures showing through the layers of water colored gesso.

The completed front cover.

The completed back cover. I hope you will take a look at the rest of the book and the rest of the faces by checking out my photostream on flikr.

And so it was an intense and productive month. Practice may not make perfect, but it will lead to self-discovery and wonder.
The things we can do when we just: Do It!

Art Camp or Bust

2011-08-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, summer was all about the out-of-doors: enjoying the weather (never too hot for a kid), the friends in the neighborhood (real face-to-face friends), playing in water to keep cool, using your imagination and savoring the sweetness of something inherently fleeting. Times were simpler and we were of average means. Water might mean the huge community pool with mobs bobbing, then sunning on towels on the hard concrete, the foot deep baby pool in the backyard, or most especially, running through the lawn sprinkler. We built forts under trees, caught fireflies in jars, drank pitchers of Kool Aid and waited every day for the pied piper music of the ice cream truck. Life, in short, was great.

Our favorite past time, beside art, is observing nature and the garden.

Chillin' after a wild storm played havoc with our nature.

Sunset on the front porch is one of the best times of our camp day. Work done, satisfaction registered.

But for some we knew, there was a different sort of summer routine. People with more money then we went away to "camp" where they took lessons in the arts, rode horses and played team sports, put on plays, sang around the campfire, and engaged in myriad mysteries we just knew belonged only to that special society. We were given a taste of camp several times in our youth, but that meant a two week session at a nearby day program, or the endless overnight misery of Girl Scout camp, with latrines we not only used but had to clean, sleeping bags in wet fields, tents with huge spiders on the ceiling, and more chores than fun.

Chores still need tending.

July 1 ?

I thought I had found my final chance at real camp the summer after my freshman year at Penn State (sweet 1970). I was recruited with a lot of other foolish dreamers in need of a few bucks and a place to continue escaping home, to be a counselor in the Catskills of New York, in a little town called Bethel. If you're old enough, you might recall that's where the original Woodstock music festival had taken place just the previous summer. I went with high hopes that quickly turned to homesickness and desperation after realizing I was neither cut out for camp life, nor was I the camper. I was a designated slave for ten weeks at slave wages and almost no free time, and nursemaid to five year olds who wet their beds and didn't like sports in the sun any better than I did. I broke out after two and a half weeks (along with about a third of the staff who felt the same way), returned home to work in a factory assembling riot control guns in a time when I was likely to be marching and in need of "control". But those were days when you did what was necessary to be independent of your parents, and I was trying the best I knew how.

In "Shoot Your Art" with Steve Sonheim, I learned about the magic of a couple of shop lights and a level. This quilt, called "Dancing Solo" was made specially for illustrating the design technique, blind painting, for the book "Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter" by Katie Pasquini Masopust.

Getting psyched for summer camp with Carla, we drew on our imaginations and sidewalk cracks.

Fast forward to my current life in "almost" retirement. In a sense, every summer day is camp. Sure I have many household responsibilities to fit in to the mix, but I can craft a day to take advantage of sun and summer opportunities. This year I have been doing what I would have if I could have as a kid: attending art camp. Of course, it hasn't been the sleepover variety, but that would've involved a lot of travel if it did. You see, my teachers and fellow campers are kind of spread out around the world. So we meet each morning at the computer to get our schedule, go off to a day of creative sessions (with some responsibilities squeezed in) and return at dusk to share around the campfire, although our fire is the flame of "flikr" or Yahoo groups or our counselors' blogs. Works great except for having to make your own s'mores. But I don't have to take swimming lessons (not a water baby), I get to sleep in a private air conditioned room, eat when and what I want. For exercise, I choose to walk every day for 4-7 miles instead of having to sit on the sideline of a hated team sport, have iced coffee breaks on the porch and a grownup beverage, if I desire, at day's end. I don't have to drink bug juice in a saggy wet suit or be bullied by mean girls. I do miss the story time around the fire, but some days the stories on campmates blogs are far more captivating, and I get to choose which ones to read.

Learning to loosen up and be expressive, these one-liners were so much fun.

As was scribbling.

Coffee breaks are important in a hectic camp schedule.

Just a little shout-out to my great counselors: thanks, Steve and Carla Sonheim (calling in from Seattle, USA) for photography and drawing lessons, and happy attitudes. Thanks to Sharon Boggon, stitcher extraordinaire (all the way from winter in Canberra, AU) for her excellent lessons in creative embroidery design, the art of discipline with freedom. You can check them out for your next summer camp. But why wait, when summer is a state of mind, and it will soon be summer again in other parts of the camping planet.

At the end of week one, four paintings entirely from imagination, with the help of Carla's techniques for discovery.

Never a plan, just working from the "gut" and having fun.

When you finally like them, they are done, and not a minute before!

Oh, and as counselor Carla says is the first order of business: "spring out of bed enthusiastically!" You know that I always do!

My "blob" creatures are full of joy!

Groovin'

2011-07-13T18:39:00.000-05:00

It has been a groovin' summer for me so far. Maybe not in the sense of lying-on-the-beach laid back, but mine is a kind of permanent vacation, being retired and all. Still my days usually come with as much work and scheduling of projects as a thoroughly supervised corporate peon. Really, my summer project should be learning to climb down from the machine, step away from the idea, forget about the goals. But that's just not me to do that, and I think I really don't mind the structure. It's more a matter of degree. How many projects are enough, are they relevant to my current goals, do they bring me joy or at least satisfaction? So that is where I stand. Having achieved a strong turn this past year toward the life journaling arts, I am finally stepping back, breathing, and feeling a sense of connection to my story.

So yes, a happy medium has got me groovin'. What exactly does this mean? Well, in the sense of the 60's Hippie slang, my life is "groovy"--I am liking, enjoying, being one with--summer! I am sitting still enough for it to warm my bones, soften my consciousness, engage me in just being. Every day possible there is a long walk in the sun with music in my step, there is quiet time in the shade with a beverage, special moments of connection with my husband, time observing and recording my world.

Groovin' is also "in the groove." Literally, fitting in to the stream of the moment. Connecting with a flow both in my online and local worlds. One that I have created over time, and that absorbs me, supports me and lifts me.

So what have I been up to in the last month (when not just being there?) Starting in mid June, for two weeks , I was totally absorbed and stimulated by 14 lessons in 14 days, in a class called "Photo Silly" by Steve Sonheim. Each morning I woke up to a new challenge, and ended each day with an amazing new vision of my world and my abilities, as well as connections with new friends from, literally, around the world. Two of my newest Facebook friends are from Germany, and we met through the flikr class site. Others were recording their lives in France, and Russia, and New Zealand. While I might be taking shots of an all-American supermarket bagger gathering carts, one of them was doing a portrait of a Maori couple and their wonderful tradition facial tattoos. It was amazing fun.

Here are some shots taken during each day's lesson. These are generally not the completed or chosen entry for the assignment, but illustrate what I was striving to achieve. The complete set of final cuts can be found here on flikr.

Assignment #1-Shooting 20 shots in a row with our eyes closed, but trying to imagine the shots we were getting. This resulted in, to say the least, some unexpected, but often interesting images.

Assignment #3-Blink. Compose shots with a cardboard viewfinder and commit to memory or sketch. Two days later we actually went back to the images and captured them with the camera.

Assignment #4-Biographer Frog. A Self portrait without the self, from the point of view of a wee thing on the floor. I chose this dark image from a series of seven bracketed exposures, because I like the drama.

Assignment #8-Take Your Camera to Work Day. A rainy start to a day of recording it all. The final pick of twenty shots went into a photo collage.

Assignment #9-Really? Turning our hand into a character and photographing with backlighting. The final pose became the giggle getter on flikr. Look for it there.

Assignment #10-Flip Flop. Teach Steve how to do something in four photo steps. This shot was a warm up idea for "How to Brew Satisfaction".

Assignment #13-Blur. Learning to capture a blurred image on purpose.

What pleased me the most was not any particular technical skills I learned (although the camera started to be less of a mystery, for sure), but three important concepts applicable to all my art:

   1) Find a new focus: look beyond the expected.

   2) Wait for the light: the best photos are real and don't require a lot of artifice to make them work, just look for the best and shoot, shoot, shoot (then toss, toss, toss.)

   3) Connect with my work and the people and animals within it, lose my fear of the stranger and the strange situation, make friends with life.

None of this is what I expected to learn, and all of it was wonderfully useful for moving forward in many disciplines.

Starting next week I will be taking a one week class by Steve called "Shoot Your Art," a more technical set of exercises in how to capture images of your 2D art. I'm expecting this to prove useful and enlightening. (Small pun :-) )

Following the June class I recaptured what I feared I had lost--my need to draw and paint without prompts from others, something I have done on a regular basis since. The carry over of lost fear is allowing me to draw more easily in public, and at a recent minor league baseball game, I did these two journal pages.

Waiting to get in the stadium, I stood in the shade of a tree and sketched a streetlight with my Grey Tombow and water brush.

Very new to trying to draw the human figure, and these gentlemen NEVER stopped moving. An interesting challenge. I was also being watched by my husband's workmates who were sitting nearby.

My little themed handmade books are calling me and I decided to fill the garden journal with ink and watercolor pages that allow me to practice creative composition and record scenes from my own garden while I vacation there in this first half of summer. I am able to do more complex and leisurely painting on my home turf that may take two or more sessions and several hours. Later in the summer I want to practice a simpler, looser style on locations away from home.

The fountain in the center of my garden, under a large shady elm. The plants were brought in to the house for closer study.

Fourth of July morning, instead of doing the parade, I painted the hot of the day.

Each of these pots holds a complex floral planting. I decided to go simpler.

One of my online creative friends recently remarked that it doesn't matter how we express ourselves, creativity must out! Less defining, more acceptance and integration with everyday life. The needle is tracking the groove, and it's all beautiful music to me. Care to join the dance?

In the Summertime When the Weather is High...

2011-06-14T12:35:00.001-05:00

The creative life presents such a quandary. To be creative you have two paths to follow. Practicing your craft is the most obvious: drawing and painting, photography, stitching, time spent designing and recording the parts of your world into interesting new manifestations of your perceptions and feelings. And yet there is an essential and primary path to being an artist: knowing how to be alive in the world. Being both an observer and a participant in the order of things is where you find the meat of your creative vision. There are many ways and places to do that interfacing, but for myself, the recharge comes best from direct connection. And in the summertime that means just go outside and plug in to life.

Looking at life through the canopy of a Japanese maple.
What was planted as a spindly leftover that lost one-third of it's bulk the first year is now a beacon for my house from down the street.

Life and inspiration are everywhere right now. Sunlight and shadow, soothing breeze and violent thunderstorm. The constant movement of birds and insects across my path. The drone of mowers. An endless stream of golfers in carts and golfers addressing their shortcomings.

The cool spring was perfect for abundant long-flowering of my azalea.
The garden hippo approved.

Ah, but the birds. They have been my constant companions lately. The drama of the territory and the building of homes. The whole birthing cycle with me as enemy of the peace (sometimes the squirrel gets chased from her new nest). Hey everyone, it's a big tree and plenty of space for all. But in reality, always the sad realization that some will be found lifeless in the grass and others too slow in the streets, and the hawks ever circling and watching. On my walks across the end of the lake, the swallows dive and swoop around my feet as if I weren't there, but the lone great blue heron will be threatened and take off across the water. I haven't seen the trio of swans yet, but they are probably nesting in a cove. At sunset, the entire population of seagulls takes to the sky and circles the big lake, always moving counterclockwise. I don't know why.

One of the backyard nursery occupants. She shared the gazebo with me on a couple occasions (until Mom and Dad wised her up about the ways of humans.)

The last of four to leave the nest. Never leave home during nest building, or robins will take all your favorite spots!

And my garden. Built on twenty summers of love and careful attention, and it's own will to return, expand or contract, give and receive. It has grown mature and lush, and I am continuously startled to know it is mine. And yet it is not, for when I move on in retirement, it cannot come with me, and those who come to stay in my place may abandon or remove it. I cherish it while I can, and try not to feel sad to move on.

Early growth in the formal herb garden: Echanacea and Sweet Woodruff, plus an interesting planter that will hold mint.

My favorite clematis produces a major cascade of these lavender colored blooms.

Cranberry iris: a week or so of glory, and gone.

Oh yes, summer can fill you up before you ever gather friends to the grill, or head to the beach. So art has slowed down for me on this first summer of my declared art life, and yet I am happy and at peace. More often than not, I am pulling out the camera instead of the sketchbook. I need to record the constant changes of color and light and growth, and I need it to be quick, and not a major project. In fact, I am beginning a two-week class to improve my skills a notch. Photo Silly is being offered online with Steve Sonheim (and a great assist by Carla). I am excited for the assistance and the feedback of the forum. I am learning to love this ongoing connection to other seekers of the creative life.

This practice assignment involved looking at light sources to begin to understand their effect on the subject. Then we ate the meal and shot the changes. What would life be without peanut butter and jam?

Because flowers are here for the picking, it was a good time to try eco-dyeing this past weekend. I'm not sure I have the big passion for it, since I started studying silkscreen printing last year and expect to return to that after the photo class is over. I like intentional mark making and graphic, bold lines which silk screen can easily reproduce. But it was fun to try after Jude showed us some delightful purple from petunias. I gave it a go after realizing everything was at hand, including a copper mixing bowl I had the foresight not to give away cheaply at my yard sale last week, some gorgeous dark eggplant petunias and grape purple pansies, a bit of habotai silk leftover from my recent shibori class, and some cotton twine. The resulting cocoon sat in some water in the copper bowl for a day and produced a seemingly tight connection between fabric and purple (with a tinge of green and some green cotton string.)

Copper Magic

The cigar is a roll up of habotai silk and flowers. The green comes from the copper bowl.

About twenty hours of contact between flower and silk. Rinsed and ironed.

Because I'd rather stare out the window and daydream, I have resumed a pleasant UFO from the late '90's to complete. It needs much rambling stitch for a ribbon effect, and them some simple free motion quilting. The blank powder room wall has been waiting two years to receive this quilt, and I will soon enjoy looking at the Finished Object every day.

"Almost" as good as being in the garden. (Not really.)

Machine embroidered ribbon detail.

Another set of curves.

I am also continuing to practice telling stories in stitch by embroidering a woven piece I started just prior to becoming a member of Jude Hill's cadre of slow cloth storytellers last winter. I loved it mightily before the stitching began and it is very difficult for me to use it as an experimental learning place, but how else can I make art or learn to be better, except to do that? I recently shared the story with my SEW forum buddies. It involves years of self doubt stemming from childhood. You see, as a kid, all I wanted to do in life was be an artist. But family and teachers without my vision steered me from this path, and onto none in particular, wasting a lot of creative time trying to fill the void. Before the Internet, a person's world was considerably constrained to family and friends of a local nature, and sometimes that wasn't a wide enough support group. So this piece is entitled "I'm Tall Enough to Do This Work" (a reference to other's unfair stereotypes laid on my shoulders.)

In the just pinned stage. The piece is currently being hand embroidered to continue the story.

The weave is built on the shortened hems cut from my jeans, and many types of hand painted cottons, recycled kimono silks and a bit of linen napkin. The journey to today plays out from left to right with childhood in fresh green, thwarted by black through some muddled and diffuse middle years, and on to a time of upward growth and warming self-acceptance on the right. This piece came to me in a flash--probably my first stab at conceptual art. It started my journey.

A sculptural teak root bench on the front porch.

This summer I will absorb life, and I will practice new skills. I will think about how far I have walked in less than a year. I'm going to "chase right up and touch the sky." And then maybe a picnic at the beach.

Smokey Mountain High

2011-05-23T16:25:00.000-05:00

I've recently decided I need a vacation. And you might say, "Cheryl, didn't you just get back from some travel?" Well, yes, but that's the very one I have had no time to process and share with you yet. I've been so busy with life's have-to's, I haven't even done much art since I returned. Even the "Silly" drawing club I paid for and joined hasn't seen me since the first week of the month. The "Sun, Moon, Stars" Whispering is going on without me, as are the Strathmore Visual Journaling lessons with Roz Stendahl. I have been seriously AWOL. Of course I haven't been doing nothing. Not possible with us A-types.

I'm scouring the house for things to sell at a yard sale this weekend, filling out paperwork for passport renewals, planning the next trip, working in the yard between rain events, getting back to a daily hour of exercise, trying to relearn basic embroidery stitches. In other words, I have way too many passions in my life for any one to have permanent priority (and that includes my new love, drawing.) So for a while I've given myself permission to put down the whip and leave my life to go where it will. I know for a fact it will return to drawing very shortly.

Where to begin telling you about Asheville? Let's just say there are certain requirements the man and I have for what makes us love a place, whether it be for a few days or the rest of our lives. They would be many and complex, but start with this list: approachable art, a sense of history with an ongoing story, food that entices and excites, beautiful (and interesting) views, safe and clean public places, and a soupcon of eccentricity to keep you just a tad off balance, and wanting more. Of course, having all this also means you will find a community of the kind of interesting people who would create such a town.

We were only there for three days this time, but the detailed telling could take as long. Therefore, to keep it brief, I share these annotated photos, bits and pieces to wet your appetite. Check out some of the links for a fuller picture. And whatever plans you are making for your summer, either near or far from home, I wish you a grand vacation from your ordinary.

Asheville, Old and New

The porch of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Old Kentucky Home, is just a across a small quiet street from the Renaissance Hotel (our favorite place to stay), the type of odd juxtaposition of country and city found all around Asheville.

Historic architecture abuts a modern public park in the center of town.

Classic and modern blend in this lovely walkway adjacent the government center.

Town with a View

Capturing (in a handmade watercolor journal) bits and pieces of the atmosphere from the club lounge at our favorite place to stay in Asheville, the Renaissance downtown. Walking distance to almost everything you see in these photos.

Set among some gorgeous mountain views on all sides, the town itself is a very hilly walk, reminiscent of a little San Fran or even Portland.

Destination Attractions

The view from the club lounge was to this amazing structure on the North hills of town, the historic Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa.

You cannot visit Asheville without taking a walk through history at the largest privately owned home in the country, the Vanderbilt estate, Biltmore House, set on the South end of town. Be prepared for a hefty entrance fee.

Street Art
This is only the tiniest sampling because it is EVERYWHERE, both civic, commercial, and private.

The peaceful inviting courtyard of a Thai restaurant.

Details of tile work at the Roger McGuire Green Amphitheater.

Wall mural outside an Italian restaurant.

Public Spaces

Empty stalls await sellers and buyers.

Sunning ourselves and sketching in the center of Pack Park complex to the tinkly musical mix of workers at lunch, tourists at play, and water fountains and falls.

Whimsy
Some of it is in the buildings and the art, but much is in the constant street performance, intentional and not, of some of the more eccentric residents and artists. Sorry I have no picture, but I promise this is the truth: a bearded young man in full nun's habit riding a sort of double decker bike through downtown traffic at rush hour!

Bold colors are not unexpected.

Alley entrances to homes graced with collage art.

We didn't get a chance to imbibe at this punnily named bar but we did indulge in sampling oils and vinegars at Olive and Kickin'.

Food
More choices than you could sample in an entire summer in town. For two nights we gave up "regular" food to indulge our dessert fantasies.

Chocolate heaven, no jokin'!

Chocolate heaven has a dark chocolate couch.

In chocolate heaven you can also order wine and beer to increase the pleasure of the cacao high.

Stupefied by Highland Mocha Stout Cake, or was it the Spicy Nibby Brownies (with cayenne and cinnamon), or the Lavender Creme Brulee?

"Peace, Love, and Noodles." If you have to eat a real meal, you might as well do it where there's a party going on.

Best ever fortunes!

Is this woman enjoying herself? You bet!

Is It Retirement Yet?

2011-05-10T15:41:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately not; but some days I am so ready. So is my husband, of course, but for different reasons. Like being tired of working sixty hour weeks at a crazy, difficult, dirty industrial job for the last forty years (that after making it home intact from a crazy, difficult, dirty jungle-fought war.) No, I can't compare my pain to his, since I actually retired from my last full-time job (teaching middle school home economics) twenty years ago this June. I have been a privileged "kept" woman since.

Dave tries out the concept of retirement: Nope, not quite ready.

The retirement I want is where we get to move on to a new adventure, together and individually, to have new surroundings and experiences, and think about life in new ways. Our destination, on hold for a while yet, is the gorgeous Pacific Northwest, with the city of Portland as our likely base of operation. We have been there: we are smitten. You can't talk us out of it (at least, I hope not.) But we'll have to settle at the moment for a late summer vacation there and continue to plot and plan.

Enjoying the beautiful campus of Furman University in Greenville, SC

These ducks were excellent "posers," but alas, I had come with
companions and there was no time to draw.

Meanwhile some very close friends who have shared our life in both Maryland and Indiana did indeed find a way to retire early and skipped out on the "Lake Effect Snow Belt" we call Michigan City to move to the year round warm climate of South Carolina. For me, a tad too Southerly. I'm a Northerner, a coastie, and a cool weather kind of girl, but after the winter (and spring we've had so far) it was wonderful to thaw out with a week of Southern climate and hospitality.

We set out on our road trip in the midst of all those torrential rains of Easter weekend, nervously crossing the Ohio River to see Louisville somewhat submerged around the edges already. We were hydroplaning on bridge surfaces, and large trucks were menacing (passed one that had made it into the median just short of the other side of the highway.) The news had daily reports of evil winds playing havoc with threats of more to come. I kept wondering why it had to be so crazy just when we most needed some uneventful and laid back time. For a week we traveled on the edge of disasters, but were blessed to personally skirt it all.

I had decided to start a journal specifically for trying out and saving patterns and textures. I found these individual doodle blocks to be the perfect size before-bed project for a hotel room. Something I may carry on at home.

Although Lexington, Kentucky is the midpoint of our mileage and a stopover, this time we had to pass on the horsey delights of the wonderful Kentucky Horse Park, and the pre-Derby races at gorgeous Keeneland. If you have experienced neither and love horses, put them on your travel wish list. On our last trip through I got to meet (among others) the horse that played the role of "Seabiscuit" in the movie with Tobey Maguire, and when the crazy cocktail-party-in-heels at Keeneland was standing room only, I got to stand at the railing next to the winner's circle.

I finally started my practice of journaling on this trip. Yeah! I used the little accordion fold ones I showed you last time. This one is for all "coffeehouse" related subjects.

First time drawing flowers in their natural setting. I was also standing most of the time, and trying to create a pleasing composition on the spot. Unfortunately I had to do the painting a couple days later from photos. You can only keep friends waiting so long, and the hot weather was defeating my enthusiasm as well. This one will be all about gardens.

Our brief stay in Greenville was a foray into summer (before knowing spring), and as lovely and fun as was the experience, it was also a reminder of why I don't want to retire South: I hate humidity! I don't do sultry well (at least not in that sense!) I also require a bigger town with more variety of scene within and without. A little edgier. A small scale big city set between a mountain and an ocean, well you get my drift.

Posing outside our friends' house. It was too warm in SC, and we only had a couple opportunities for wearing them later in the week. To this date, no comments from strangers!

But I totally understand our friends' love affair with their new home. Number one is their proximity to Furman University, and its welcoming attitude to townies, and especially seniors. They get to call campus home to attend the arts, walk the gardens, but further, to study, tuition free with the same respect and involvement as the paying clientele. Oh, the joys of a well endowed university. My friend is planning a two year course in photography for only the cost of materials and lab fees. I am quite awed at this opportunity.

Back home I couldn't wait to get back to my needle and cloth. I can tell I'm going to be a fool for embroidery. This is a detail of the heart sampler I'm working on.

I am hoping and dreaming that such situations will arise for us when we finally make it to the next phase. Meanwhile too much busy reality intrudes from the here and now. Yes, formal art study would be grand, but this home schooling business isn't such a bad thing. Gives me a chance to build my "portfolio," find my preferred medium. Every day is a gift and life is the best school. So what should I work on next? Time to get back to Carla's "Silly" lessons. No time to talk about Asheville today. We'll save that for our next chat. Later, fellow travelers!

The Spirit Within

2011-04-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

I did it! I backed off just a little. I gave myself permission to close my eyes and breath, and it had a wonderful effect. This week I am feeling so much lighter, so revived. I got caught up with the need for mental quiet and an incredible amount of energy poured in...and then the work poured out. It's been a great couple of weeks of completing things. Plus I have resumed reading blogs and searching around and joining again. I am pleased, and I say: there is a happy balance to be found.

Before I talk about the art that showed up I want to acknowledge all the people that do. My Baby Blog, born on October 28, 2010, will be six months old next week, just in time for Momma to turn, well, another decade older. But who's counting? Momma feels young as ever, Baby Blog is thriving, and it's all because of you, dear readers. You leave me wonderful affirmations, and return time and time again. I'm not always sure when I have something worth taking up a part of your precious day, but I guess if you didn't enjoy the visit you wouldn't keep returning. Just yesterday we reached 4,000 page views and 41 (Google) followers. Others of you may be returning by Networked Blogs on Facebook, or privately by email or RSS. There are so many ways to keep in touch, and I am grateful when you do. Please feel free to leave a comment, or if you are shy about the open page, contact me directly. So, thank you, new friends, and I hope you will continue to be entertained, or made thoughtful, or learn something new to enlarge your own creative world.

A selection of small accordion-fold watercolor journals, ready for action. They were an unfinished project from my sketching on location class, finally completed.

The covers were all made by me from recycled materials and parts and pieces left over from my mixed media class. The painted canvas box was made to store them.

As I mentioned at the start, lately the art is flowing freely. When I began this blog, I was just beginning to examine my need for a better level of creative adventure. Something deeper and more of myself than the rehashing of others' styles and designs. I began to be a student of creativity once again, through classes and mentors, through reading, and most importantly--daily practice. I was not sure how to proceed except one day at a time, and one image at a time, being open to materials, techniques and inspirations.

"Secret Garden," from a mixed media lesson in painting on fabric (the poppies are acrylic on muslin), the green is painted cotton batting, and the frame fabric (sunprinted with bleeding art tissue) was found in my stash.

I had been playing tentatively at this "student" business, but suddenly last week as I worked, I began to feel a vision of sorts. The art practice was truly building a framework inside me to hold and nurture the creativity. That is was jelling--becoming a real thing, something good and permanent and mine.

"Hippo Love--Purple Version"--a tiny mixed media book on Lutradur, with a torn, sewn and stencilled watercolor paper cover.

"Hippo Love--Pink Version"

Now I feel ideas are flowing more freely. I don't have to search for them so hard, they just come as I work. I have long been averse to totally planning an art piece. I work best in stages, leaving open the paths to go down as they beckon, as they seem the next logical way. The serendipitous find, the "Aha!" moments, they thrill me. I am studying this immersion process with Jude Hill in her "Whispering Hearts" class right now. She is there as an artist, creating for us in real time as we look in, and if we want to, participate. I am loving the insights.

"Crop Circles", a completed project in woven, embroidered and quilted fabric from Jude's "Cloth to Cloth" Workshop, also know as "The Husband Cloth" because it was requested by the same for his denim jacket.

The other revelation is just how much I live and breath this thing. I long to work on art. I wake up thinking about it. I constantly search for paper to jot down ideas. (Next comes the discipline of keeping an actual sketch journal for that purpose.) I run downstairs after retiring to bed to set aside fabric or other ingredients to add to the design mix for the next day. I have even dreamt designs that I was able to remember. The art sometimes seems as important as breathing. It is never a chore, unless I force it. When I channel it, it is always joyful. I used to do "crafts" all the time, and by that I mean completing a copy of someone else's design. Whether knitting, beading, stained glass objects, I had to touch the materials, combine the colors, see something grow. Now I hope to see those well crafted items begin to express a deeper meaning, a more personal creativity. I am moving on. Will you be joining me?

Reach Out and Touch

2011-04-05T16:39:00.000-05:00

It's been an intensely arty couple of weeks. No time to think about blogging. Sure, the Internet encourages instant sharing: it's possible to finish a piece of art or a step in a piece or a thought about a step in a piece, and within minutes your blog world fans can be there with you communing, commenting, commiserating, cheering. All the sharing, so warm and fuzzy...or eventually tiring and meaningless? I mean, how many times in one day or week can we find something that someone has done or said to be remarkable, say something witty about it, be kind and helpful, contribute in any useful manner?

At what point as an artist do you need to shut the door and just be with yourself, your muse, and your process? Too much Internet sharing and we not only lose time and energy better spent on the art, but we lose the integrity of our own vision. A poem (by someone who hasn't written one since high school):

We like too much,

we see too much.

Our art becomes homogeneous.

So as much as I love my blogging, online classes and forums, I am trying (with baby steps) to back off just a little, and give myself breathing room to work. That said, let me show you the recent reality.

One of the most constant creative muses in my recent life has been textile artist extraordinaire, Jude Hill, a true original. She doesn't teach her designs, she teaches how to design, how to think about design, how to let go of the rules and be original. Of course, we, her students, will tend to mimic her as we study, but we are learning something so much bigger as we build the pieces to a new type of "quilt" art, based on something ancient, but thoroughly modern at the same time.

Jude makes all her art by labor intensive hand sewing, and sells very little of it. So recently, when a small piece I had admired (as I watched it be born on her blog) found its way to her shop just at the moment I was paying attention, I was able to adopt this lovely creation. "The Edgekeeper" now lives in my sewing studio and looks over my shoulder as I work. Along with this small cloth came some of her magic thread, and an extra surprise cut from a piece of her exploratory work--treasures all!

The "Edgekeeper" under a March full moon

Fellow student and follower, deanna, has a marvelous blog that recently celebrated 200 entries with a giveaway, and somehow, on April Fools Day, I had my name drawn from the basket to win. Deanna's gift will serve as a daily reminder that my Internet friends are real (and talented) people.

A gift of friendship in my mailbox today

Lucy likes it! She says--no reason a pin cushion can't be beautiful.

Meanwhile my very real Designing Women met this week for the first time since the passing of our best pal, Jeri, in late February. It was a bittersweet reunion, because Jeri loved to try anything new, and missed out on a day of relaxed creative fun, food, and sharing. I passed along, to a great reception, the technique of making craft foam stamps that resemble entire paintings (as learned the best I could) from the article "Faux Silkscreen"by Patricia Gaignet, in the September/October issue of "Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine."

My friend, Jeanette, created the stamp, and gave me free reign
to customize a picture for myself.

For the past five weeks, I have been taking two classes online. One is "Mixed Media with Paper and Cloth" by Jane LaFazio, that has kept me massively busy producing parts and possibilities of interesting pieces that I will continue to work on for months to come. So far two are done (or nearly so.)

Time Machine--how a small paper/fabric collage became a quilt

Detail view to the layers of color and texture

Comfy Chair--mixed media paper on painted canvas,
adapted from an original watercolor journal page

The other is an introductory course in shibori, or the Japanese art of shaped dyeing of cloth. It is taught by "Shibori Girl," Glennis Dolce. Motifs are dyed into cloth (rather than printed on the surface) through a combination of folding and clamping, stitching and drawing up, and wrapping around poles with string. The designs can be simple or complex, but are never identically the same twice. Again, I will be working on my own for many moons (an inside joke) to really put in the necessary practice to feel even somewhat accomplished.

Itajime Shibori--overdyeing with resists

Stitched shibori--mokume (wood grain)

Stitched shibori sampler showing the process

Stitched shibori scarf

As if my life hasn't been interesting and colorful to the max, I recently received a totally out of the blue surprise invitation to come visit an Internet friend on her own turf, a place I know from my youth, but haven't experienced for many years. I am more than stoked for that!

When I think about this creative life, it brings to mind the vision of a circle of people from my folk dancing youth. You always had to reach out both hands and take the hands on either side of yourself. Often they would belong to strangers. It didn't matter. They reached back and took yours. The music would start and the circle would begin to move. Together for just a moment in time and place, you shared a joyful creation through motion. Then over, but not lost. For the artist, the real creations are not the results, but the experience of the doing. Create something this week, alone or with someone. Make a friend, deepen a friendship, know yourself, find your place.

Let the Sun Shine

2011-03-21T16:01:00.000-05:00

This week is all about a love story. Yes, I know that terrible things are happening in the world, there is sadness and fear and people are hurting. But even so, side by side with this reality are the wonders of life, ongoing. I say, if you are fortunate to have the good things happening, then you best show your gratitude and enjoy every blessing. We never know what tomorrow will bring.

Spring Cycle--a story in weaving and embroidery
of the earth coming alive in Spring.
The embroidery is done, and currently being sewn to my favorite jean jacket.

The newest member of the hippo clan wanted to say "Hello."

I found my first love in the early days of finding myself, when all was new and intense, we (the country) were at war (as always), society was in an uproar of competing ideologies (as always), the economy was difficult (as always), but young people had love, and hope that peace and prosperity could become a reality. Well, that first love came and went. We know what happens with the cycles of social change (they come and they go). Once again I found love, only this time his vows were for the long haul, and two weeks ago we celebrated our 20th anniversary.

Two loves: My Man and the energy of the city

Of course I'm smiling at him (and maybe the view from
the Corner Bakery at Michigan and Wacker)

What is it to be in love at the dawning of...what to call it...the second act? The time in life when you realize that you still have one more chance to reinvent yourself, make good on the promises you gave that young hopeful you, to do something special, to live up to a dream. Well having that person to make those plans with and look forward to every day yet to come, that makes the next act ever more satisfying than going it alone.

One of the most breathtaking, fabulous, ornate, old time theaters anywhere. (Not that I've been everywhere, but I'm just sayin'.)

Too bad it had such a short visit.

The weather had not been kind this winter (finally officially past!), and we were not able to spend our usual romantic overnighter in Chicago for Valentine's Day. Now that we are planning for a spring vacation, it seemed best to put that on hold. By the strangest of coincidence, we were able to celebrate instead by attending the 40th anniversary Broadway revival of the play "Hair", which has begun it's national tour with a very brief stop in Chicago. In my hippie days, (and oh, yes, I was there for it all) I certainly couldn't have afforded these tickets, although I got to see it as a Penn State student (on March 13, 1971) almost exactly forty years ago. One factor which makes our romance so unlikely and so wonderful is that in those days I was that hippie girl searching for utopia, while my husband-to-be was a U.S Marine, trying to survive in the jungles of Vietnam. Had we met at that time, it is certain we would not have ended up together. But we both survived those years of craziness, found each other somewhere in the middle, and hopefully will continue to write our story for a long time to come.

Hair Joy

I just recently acquired this fabulous book from 1974,
by Jacopetti and Wainwright. Original cost $7.50. I paid $50 on Amazon.

The production was very enjoyable. "The Tribe," as the cast of friends is called, was performed by extremely talented and enthusiastic young artists. The usual fourth wall is broken throughout the play as the actors interact with the audience, speak directly to us, come down off the stage and crawl over and around us, and during one entire song, the main male and female characters, Berger and Sheila, sat next to us, with actor Steel Burkhardt's arm around my David! At the end of that surreal moment he ruffled David's (ahem) hair, and during the course of the play so did two other female characters. (He loved it!)

A man who loves his home and cares for it entirely on his own
(note the torn, muddy knees.)

You may recall a watercolor sketch not so long ago
of a certain snow-covered bench.

But something bothered both of us even in the midst of our good time: the tone of the action. Where was the mellow, where was the true belief in the causes? The message of the show, something I lived and understood, was terribly garbled in a sort of showoff style of performance, and a staging that had the actors all acting all the time, (and often in crude sexual role play) rather than bearing witness to the message of the moment. For all its pop culture hit songs and fun antics, the play has the potential to tell a very serious story. Moment somewhat missed.

First Happy Hour of 2011 on the front porch: celebrating spring

Fragile, wonderful, perfect

The second important story of my week will already be known to many of you: Spring has finally arrived! Sure it promises to take a road trip around here at the end of the week, but we are refusing to let winter back in. The flowers are popping, the lawn furniture and fountain have been uncovered, the first happy hour celebrated on the front porch. My relaxed shoulders tell the story, a permanent sly smile always on the lips. While I am able I must declare it: Life is Good.

Love the One You're With

2011-03-06T11:32:00.000-06:00

A certain Stephen Stills song has been an anthem in my life lately. Maybe not in the original literal sense, but relating to the need to forget old worn connections that block my path to the life I need to live. Let go the old tired stories, it says to me, the unproductive ties to people and institutions. Truly love the life you have or find a new one.

In my youth (and I consider that period extended until about age 50), I was an emotional thinker. I dealt with change in my life in a very personal way. I was living under the control of what Eckhardt Tolle calls the "Ego". If you aren't familiar with his philosophy, this is the part of our personality that saves all the stories of our lives and retells them again and again. Mostly, Tolle believes, this is to our detriment, because the retelling of the past is the very thing that separates us from our true life, here and now. It feeds on the negative emotions and defines boundaries, and builds walls between your true self and others. Its main job is to justify its own existence.

At first it is a scary thought to contemplate not needing the past, but that is not to say we need to forget. What is imperative is learning the skill of living in the moment. Most people will say that of course, they live in the moment, where else could they be? But the reality is that very few actually do. Most people's conversations, if you listen closely, are centered on the past or the future; their bodies, even down to the act of proper deep breathing, are strangers to them. How many people do you know who actually eat and move with conscious awareness of the experience? Even participating in sports in not in the moment if your mind is set on the completion or the win.

I am coming to believe, that for an artist, presence is really the only way to live. When you are truly in the now, you are in the work at hand. In fact, it is no longer work, just a conduit to something that you are. Sometimes your art will convey a story, sometimes emotion, other times just a quiet connection. This last is for me the state I am most often in these days.

My first attempt at painting a moving object, my very active kid. Even completing the portrait involved following him around the house for several sessions.

I have been practicing Tolle's lessons of being present for several years now, and the more time goes on, the more I am enjoying the release from the past.
At first I thought, how can I live without my stories? But the irony was, living in my stories kept me from enjoying the life at hand, the possibilities it held. It is only since I let go of so much that troubled me that I have come to find the mental space for art as a way of life.

The Hippo Journal: with good humor and joy

The Hippo Journal: and other select friends

A close friend passed on this week. She had battled cancer for several years with grace and dignity and fully engaged in her life until the last few days. That is how I hope to continue with my journey, however long that may be, no regrets for what didn't happen, but always ready for more. My reaction to the news of my friend's passing, and then through the events of honoring and celebrating her life that followed, may have seemed a tad distant or cold to those who continue to live with regrets. I felt an utter calm and acceptance, in my head and in my body.

Mourning has begun to enter a new sort of understanding for me: I honor the dead by continuing to live. It has become quite clear to me that change is the constant rule of nature, and all loss must be balanced by gain. My job, while I am here, is to be a conduit for life. If I take loss as a personal affront, I might as well be gone myself. I remember well a conversation with a famous quilt artist about her father's 100th birthday celebration to which 100 guests had been invited. I asked if this wondrous crowd were the generations of an especially large family. She assured me that, no, these were mostly his friends, because this was a man who had continued to celebrate his life by making new connections all the time.

A spring story continues: basic quilting is done, time for embroidering the details

So I am learning not to mourn the broken connections in time and place, the body that by nature, must wear out before the spirit. While my flame still burns, I'm wearing a smile. I'm seeking connections to other bright flames. I'm putting myself into the painting and the stitching. I'm talking to others to share as best I can my understanding of joy in the moment.

My new Facebook profile picture. A recent shot by my husband seemed to capture it just right (with a little tweaking on my part)

I hope my art, the physical manifestation of this presence with life, may pass on and be an inspiration. But if, (and surely it will be), it is lost to the ages, I won't mind. I did what I was supposed to do. I burned my lamp and lit the darkness for just a moment. I passed on the torch of the human race. I mattered.

A New Paradigm

2011-02-22T16:26:00.000-06:00

This week's story caused me a big brain cramp trying to birth it. It may be because it's more about my messy state of mind than the neat and pretty art I've been up to. Change, which I can't control, versus drawings and designs, which I can. I've interspersed the art for relief when you get tired of the words. Hope you don't get a brain cramp too.

When I was a public school educator back in the eighties, our school administration conducted a serious of lecture/workshops to introduce the faculty to some "new" social terminology (lifted from the field of scientific research): the paradigm. Simply stated, this is any philosophical or theoretical framework widely accepted as the norm. When you embrace the paradigm, you are "in the box."

The goal was to acknowledge our current habits of reasoning and learning, and to begin thinking "outside the box." This movement to new social structures is called a "paradigm shift." As I recall, we were instructed that a BIG ONE was happening in society. The computer was starting to be everywhere, and for that and other reasons, our world was getting smaller. Now we had to be on board to teach our students the art of change.

Sketching at the mall with water soluble pen

Soon to be a victim of changing paradigms

At least that's how I recall it. Maybe I was doodling in the margins, and thinking about a guy named Fred, but I swear there were boxes and arrows and all kinds of lists of "what's in" and "what's out" and "what's about to be in and out."

That was about twenty five years ago (I gave up teaching about five years later, for numerous reasons I may talk about another day), and it's all really a blur except for the gut memory of confusion and boredom at these sessions. But in the end, a lot of change has come to pass in the way we think about and live our lives. This considerable shift in social structures has brought about what I believe is a big change in brain function as well. In those days, even with the prevalence of computers and video games, most of my interaction with people in my life was face to face, or at least ear to ear (with extended phone conversation.) On the days that I couldn't get to my friends, we would talk in endless detail in cohesive phone chats.

Sketching on location: outdoor details (as seem through a window)

Just before the snow melted

Nowadays the phone almost never rings, and "chat" is barely more than instant text exchange. Most of my daily human interaction (outside that old school presence of a live in spouse) is done in tiny tidbits of short isolated postings over the Internet. As much as I love to death all the new people I am meeting and the possibilities of relationships that abound, it no longer has the same intense, messy personal connection of those pre-cyberspace days. I look at the sheer number of humans I talk to daily and then consider how many of them can be there for me in real life. What can be so comforting in theory (unlimited connection), fails to fulfill the real human need for physical proximity, eye contact, touch. "LOL" is definitely not the same as laughing together.

A box made from art to store small art journals

The bottom and inside of the box; a real, not theoretical one

And yet, if it weren't for this new "box," I wouldn't be talking to all of you, and I wouldn't be exploring my art which has become, in a very short while, the center of my life. I think I understand there is no going back and I wouldn't want to. So I've decided not to emphasize the negative aspects that come with change, but embrace what's good in it.

My most recent design in Contemporary Woven Boro, called "Blue Moon Heart"

Being aware of the box, I too can think outside. If I can help it, I will have a long connected life. It is far from over, and I intend to continue looking beyond the horizon where the best of the future will be. I'm going to follow that sun.

So Over It

2011-02-08T10:29:00.000-06:00

It has got to be my fault. I didn't have a holiday tree this past December, but instead decorated my living room mantle and stair railings with colored lights to cheer the shorter days of what used to be called "Winter". I always used to say I didn't mind "Winter". I rather like the break from an expanded life to cozy up by a fire, stay in my cocoon a while, and apply my attention to creations of the hand and heart. This year especially, with studying drawing and weaving in online classes, I am well occupied in the warm spaces of my lovely life. Instead of the usual ritual of taking down the tree on New Year's Day, those lights are still being lit against the dark and cold, and well, maybe I've created the curse.

Winter in shades of indigo

Lighting the Winter night with promises of Red Buds on dark branches come spring

But let's face it, the calendar says it's almost Valentine's Day, and I do believe on average the "Jailer" season should be moderating by now. You know, the occasional sunny day without wind, when you can bundle up, but not too much, and walk in the open air. The day when my "Fargo" hat can be left in the closet. I thoroughly miss walking. In season (which used to include this one at least sometimes), I do it almost every day. I'm so ready to make plans with friends or to attend events that don't get cancelled by snowfall and ice. I'd definitely rather not be healing bruised ribs sustained in an awkward tumble onto my book bag.

Yes, that says minus 1.7. Walk, anybody?

I read that some of my California friends are planting and enjoying Spring flowers. Who says they get to start Spring without the rest of us? All my flowers come from Costco, and seem to mock me from their perch on the kitchen island.

Instead, I must satisfy the longing for warmth with warm art. I have been drawing cozy chairs at Starbucks, and weaving Spring themed cloths. One of my favorite cloths in progress is a representation of my open heart, reaching out to the positive things that have been entering my life lately. It speaks of longing: the heart growing from a grid of warm red tones, layered on the infinite deep blue of the night sky. It is only in the beginning stages, but it cheers me and feels solid already.

From my class with Jane LaFazio, Sketch and Watercolor on Location

An Open Heart

Another piece is airy and light and feminine and has no purpose yet other than to reconnect me to the lightness of the air in Spring. That smell of warming earth that stops me in my tracks just to breath and go.....ahhhhh, it's back!

The tree destined for the back of my Spring denim jacket has acquired blossoms similar to a local favorite, the Red Bud, with its delicate fuchsia pink sprouting on the bare dark branches. It is a pleasure to work on it with its lovely complex colors and soft textures. I am almost ready to further define the story in embroidery.

A collage of closeups of pure joyful color

And so, in the face of the relentless snow and cold outside, falling even as I write this, and the start of yet another stretch of deep freeze canceling a romantic trip to the city this weekend, I am letting my art dispel the funk, and bring me closer to the eventual achievement of "Spring". I have faith because what else is it to be alive, but to accept the circles of change, to make the most of the times we are given, every bit of it. Around me I have friends and family members stricken with adversity not in their control: unemployment, illness, loss. And me? I am lately blessed with riches beyond measure in the shape of opportunity for connections and growth, for love and creation. I mean to acknowledge this every day.

So I take up my paint and pens, my cloth and thread, and I create my thanks for all these blessings while I can.

Get Your Motor Running

2011-01-30T11:59:00.000-06:00

Sometimes my mind goes quiet for a stretch and I don't have a need to connect in verbal ways. I mentioned this last week, and yet it struck again. It is not to be construed that I am out of ideas or projects or general joy with life. Actually, just the opposite. I am lately in the "Artist Zone". I am full of the doing. I am absorbed by the doing and don't need to justify, clarify, or quantify. Every day seems to just flow lately. The To Do Lists aren't being written, because there is basically just one DO--create something.

Actually many somethings call me daily, but I let them whine and scratch at the door to my attention. I'll open it when I'm good and ready for you! Today is blog day, yesterday was watercolor journaling day. Each session belongs to itself and no other. Each has all of me. So even with the enticement to "do it all", I am gradually coming into a place of focus and concentration.

The one area that still vexes me and gives me that twinge of guilt is the online connection. As I mentioned last week, I am taking two different classes in two different disciplines with at least 150 other creative souls. If you participate in these forums, you know how demanding of your time and attention they become. You are torn between wanting to know these people who stories are so like yours they could be you, or so different and mysterious, they fascinate with rock star aura. Here is the opportunity to make worthwhile and even lasting connections and yet the time spent talking, knowing and commenting often saps the quiet and the space required to create and learn. So I say here today, if you are one of these new friends, and I've not been duly attentive, it isn't for lack of wanting to, it's to be able to keep up with you!

The Strathmore Recycled Journal Pages lesson has come to a completion and I am thrilled with how much I learned in just these three drawings (in four incarnations). They have given me a leg up on the use of many materials and techniques and an excuse to just run wild. No pressure, no purpose and yet, a lot of joy and good result.

(You'll get the most out of seeing these if you click to enlarge, or better yet view them on my flikr page where they can be framed in quiet black.)

Where Did Pinky Go?
The addition of a whole lot of doodling with markers, white and gold ink completes the craziness.

Fifi and Cow
Same materials and techniques, more subtly done. Really pleased with the outcome.

Deconstructed Hippo
My total favorite of the recycled pages, complex and very satisfying.

My class in Contemporary Woven Boro has produced two new starts. Unlike the drawing activities, most of these cloth designs have no endgame at this point. They are pure experimentation. Some will be embroidered, embellished, quilted, and used. Some will be considered "sketches" and put aside. Either way, they will mostly not be completed within the time frame of this class, so that I can concentrate on getting the most learning rather than the most product.

Initial layout designed in an online program by Jude Hill. After being woven, the fabric strips representing the earth began to grow a tree. That's how things work in this class. That's why you need time to consider and let the cloth tell you what it wants to do or be.

Experimenting with weaving parts of one t-shirt into another, seeing how knits react to the process.

The place I achieve both learning and product is the class designed to teach me how to get started with visual journaling of my daily life, specifically in small sketch and watercolor vignettes. My skill with both has progressed tremendously since I began the first lesson in session one last October, with three pieces of fruit set in a simple single line frame, with no particular journaling or story.

Week one assignment: keys

Lately I'm all about the storytelling

Now we are being required and released to head out to our public lives, to set aside the concept of still life, and bravely draw what we see in front of us in the "real" world. My first coffee shop session yesterday broke the ice and moved me to a new place. I went to my artist zone, forgot the other patrons and painted. The only distraction was a truly lovely moment of connection with another artistic soul. A young cashier with a joyful smile came to peek and said, "Isn't drawing fun? Don't you just love it?"

I wanted to drink that latte so badly! (No worries, I didn't let it get cold.)

Truly I have taken last week's keys and headed out to the highway in search of my life. It's going to be a blast of a journey.

Out of Words

2011-01-20T14:02:00.000-06:00

This week's topic has been elusive. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that I have written fifteen blog chapters of some length since October. I am generally not a person who is good with verbal self expression. Most of my life I tended to keep my opinion on "important" matters to myself. When I think of this trait, then and now, I'm not sure if it's the lack of communication skill, or just the disinterest in having to have an opinion. I think I have always had a part of me just content to be one with things. When I do want to share, it is mostly personal rather than political and social. I best express myself in color and form, and mostly through the years, by ornamentation of myself and my surroundings.

Naturally, this let to the battle for control over my appearance, both as a minor, and beyond into adulthood. My clothing called "costume" or just inappropriate, my hair too long, the makeup/no makeup battles, glasses vs contacts. Every confrontation just serving to strengthen my position: being different was my mode and my battle cry. You cannot critique and devalue my expression without showing you feel the same about me.

Starting early in life, I started the habit of making things on a daily basis. I can't recall when I didn't have a project involving needles, yarns and cloth; cardboard, crayons and glue. Drawing and painting, the 2D things of expression, while generally encouraged by my artistic dad, was not as favored an outlet for me, because I realized early that the results generally ended in large piles of paper in the closet, out of sight and eventually to be tossed. Meanwhile, things that were "women's arts" were more likely to be used or displayed.

Kindergarden: The awards started early, but the actual art is long forgotten.
(Note that the day I was starting this scrapbook was July 20, 1969, "Moon Day")

First grade art: A little too stiff and defined, true? School art in those days was not so much about originality as about following rules.

By 6th grade I was being recruited for schoolwide projects like designing programs for music events, and gifts to school superintendants. This rug eventually returned to my school and hung in the foyer.

Of course, at that time, there was not the popular concept of journaling or saving creativity in book form, except the occasional scrapbook of paper souvenirs. Only a handful of my high school or college art has survived in a portfolio that somehow was not tossed. But memories do remain. Memories of loving visual self expression of any sort. (And also of being discouraged from the desired path to an education and career in fashion design.)

So here I sit, near the close of my sixth decade of living in this complicated state: no longer interested in a career, but with the great luxury of time and support and self-determination to do whatever I choose. The Internet allows me to "self-publish" both my thoughts and my visual arts. I can take classes and partake in the verbal exploration of the arts we are sharing. I am taking time every day to delve into my new pursuits in ways I never knew I could without formal college classes. I sit for hours now, drawn to the page or the cloth to express with color, texture and form. I thrill as these things pour from me. And the wonderful change is this: I no longer care what results, as long as it is freely done and mine. It does not have to be practical, or fit a definition, or please someone else. It is not a kit, a pattern, a hobby. It is just me, doing what I need to do, finding a way around the words.

The latest page in my hippo collection journal

Week 3 of the Strathmore recycled journal pages
adds background texture and depth

I have purchased some sequin waste
and I'm having fun with circular texture

No real plan, just lots of play and fun

I will be starting my two new classes today, one in drawing my world, and the other in finding the personal story as bits of cloth come together. I will share ideas and energy with my fellow classmates. At the same time, I hope to hold onto my new freedom to not care what they think of me, or let others define me or limit my self expression because of expectations. This is not about talking about art. This is finally about living it.

One Man's Trash

2011-01-12T15:16:00.000-06:00

The theme of my art life in this new year has been very cohesive. This is a wonder to me, because the source of my projects is coming from many people and places. There must be something in the air. Yes, I do believe that after all the media attention to "going green" and caring for our planet, it has come down to this: you aren't in the proper groove unless your art is REDUCED, REUSED, or RECYCLED!

It all started with an article I saved from "Cloth, Paper, Scissors", a magazine for mixed media artists that touted the magical transformation of colorful magazine photo pages into abstract backgrounds for collage, or further for the stories that one could read within the blobs and streaks created by the process. This magic happens by treatment with a certain brand of concentrated orange cleaner ("earth friendly"), not easily found in my vicinity. So far my experiments with the dilute product haven't worked, but my husband, who loves a shopping challenge, is on the case of finding it and making this thing reality.

The second experiment involved a common food source for dyeing, some cloth on hand and some patience. Tea dyed fabrics have been around for years, but tea stained tea bags, now that's the new rage! Recently made popular by quilter and painter, Judy Coates Perez, the resulting papers are used as base layers in both paper and fabric constructions. One cheap box of iced tea sized bags brewed up, some leftover muslin, two days of waiting, and then the patience to deconstruct, clean, and iron the bags, and--voila!--dyed muslin, tie-dyed muslin, and a sort of tie-dyed paper for almost free. When I calculated my lifetime consumption as a tea lover, I could have had about 40,000 tea bags by now! I could have gotten rich selling those cute stained papers to people who just can't be bothered fussing with those teeny, tiny staples.

Deconstructing the tea bags which have been sitting for two days dyeing the "tie-dye" cloth

Three pieces of tea dye cloth and a couple dozen dyed papers

But lest you think I've just been spinning my wheels collecting trash, I've actually been making some cool journal-based art and getting ready for some soulful cloth and stitch. By now you may have read about or participated in the Strathmore visual journal online workshops. Some of us are working on a month long layered project called "Recycled Journal Pages". This is a fine way for newbie artists like me to learn about basic art materials and techniques, and how to take our own ideas and efforts to another level. I have found in just two weeks, I am making images I never would have imagined and stirring my creative pot into whole new recipes.

"Deconstructed Hippo" Week 2: Added layers of gesso, charcoal pencil, and oil pastel

Two journal pages related to a December visit to Chicago have been combined and enhanced. Fifi swims in her world of wine bubbles while the cheese cow looks on.

"Where's Pinky? Greg and Pinky are transformed into little monsters.

I haven't forgotten that I was, in my previous life, primarily a cloth and stitch artist. Part of my reason for learning to draw and paint is to find a more creative and personal voice to bring to that work. Late last year, a new (old) technique and movement of cloth artists became known to me. The term "boro" (mended cloth) is a Japanese concept of reverence for the preciousness of old cloth with history. It is a slow and careful sort of repair and creation of new cloth from old or scrap cloth, instilling story and spirit into the new piece as it is made. One of the leaders of this movement, and the teacher of my upcoming class, called Contemporary Woven Boro, is Jude Hill, the Cloth Whisperer. If you haven't heard of her, you might enjoy taking a look at her work and her philosophy. She is a poet who lives her poetry.

Old linen fabric, dyed, is woven with rust printed fabric.

An unfinished project from the Cloth to Cloth workshop by Jude Hill. A walk on the beach, the waves, seaweed...?

Meanwhile I am off to spend some time learning to hear the story that my cloth has to tell me, so that I may stitch it in, and bring it to life. Ah, the poetry of recycling!

Dust in the Wind

2011-01-03T12:28:00.000-06:00

New Year's Day, "The Littlest Hippos" painted and shared with my world, my husband and I head out for out first coffee date of the decade. We enjoy the simple routine of hanging about and people watching at the Starbucks across from our mall. Living in the almost rural burbs, we've only got one mall to choose from and a couple of coffee shops worth hanging in. It will be several years yet before we can retire to Portland, and people watch in many new places, even walking to them to burn off the snacks.

The smallest members of my collection: earring, pins. button and beads

After an hour of filling the senses: coffee, sweet treats, the colorful parade of characters, and a general sense of good beginnings, we headed home in the rapidly chilling afternoon. Grey, blustery skies made for a bleaker drive back. On the radio a favorite downer song of the late seventies, "Dust in the Wind" by the group Kansas. The well known lyrics seemed to send a clearer message on this day of beginnings, to go deep and feel fresh: we are only here for a moment and then we are over. What we do here really doesn't last or matter, accept that you as an individual are just not that important. For just a moment, a sense of loss and sadness, resignation to my utter smallness.

But the next moment brought a second realization, the knowledge of how wonderful that concept really is. I, and what I do with my moment of existence, counts just as much as any other soul and their moment. What I choose to do with that opportunity is just as valuable or inconsequential as any other. So why should I feel less important or more afraid to tap my creative forces?

At home I started cleaning the work station for the next hippo painting. At Dave's suggestion I will draw the unglazed porcelain with the baby and birdie on her back--an Egyptian themed page, probably. As I stored away "the littlest ones" I realized that once drawn, the objects seemed so much less significant to me in their physical being. I realized that if I lost them now, I don't think I'd care so much. If I lost the painting, I probably wouldn't care either. What mattered was having the experience of recording a vision of my life that day--I had seem something fully, and now I could let it go.

On Sunday, I started a lesson on Visual Journaling sponsored by Strathmore Art Papers. It involved a sort of multi-media art I'd never done. This one, Recycled Journal Pages, had us use our previously made journal pages or art, photocopied and cut up to create new images. At first I was hesitant to start, not sure it spoke to me, and then I just let go and fell into the experience. The hippo quilt that I shared in the last post has morphed into something new. This is "Deconstructed Hippo". The process thrilled me and the results even more. It is something I didn't envision doing. It just seemed to happen. I let it flow uncensored.

"Deconstructed Hippo": torn and cut paper and ink

One of my drawing teachers and mentors asked the other day for her blog readers to share a word they will live by in the New Year. What came to mind at that moment, and that I shared there, was: fearless. Now I understand how true that will be.