For Crowabout, Illustration Friday, Theme Thursday, and Three Muses...
Sometimes the lines get blurred, and it's hard to tell the heroes from the villains.
I'm extra busy right now, so there's no long post to go with this one.
Have a great day, Everyone!
For Layers of Color, Mixed Media Monday and Pointy Hats and Wings
A Celebration...
In my opinion, one of the brightest spots on the web is also an online shop. If you haven't visited Layers Of Color art stamps, you owe it to yourself to stop by and take a look at the gorgeous artwork that owner Laura Campbell lovingly puts into the stamps she sells! And visit the gallery, too! There is plenty of inspiration not only from the talented design team, but from customers as well! This is the perfect time to do so, because if you visit right now, you can pick up all the details about the huge give-away that's coming up on November 14th and 15th in celebration of the release of nine new LOC original art stamp sets.
The Collage...
I'm going to go into a bit of detail here so you can pick out the LOC stamps I used in creating this collage. The background was painted with layered acrylics. I recycled a piece of gift wrap tissue with script by adhering it to the surface with gel medium and then added successive layers of medium and acrylic paint over the top. I buffed it smooth, and assembled my little party fairy using wings, hat and body parts from Lisa's Altered Art, a star from Sandra Evertson's Fanciful Paper Projects, and two different Layers Of Color architectural block stamps for the skirt and top. I drew and painted the hand on a separate piece of paper, then cut and collaged it to the surface. The sleeve was made using another one of the stamps from the LOC architectural block set, colored in-between with watercolor pencils. I added the scrolling, flowery rub-ons from Heidi Grace, and as nice as they are, in retrospect, wish I had painted them myself by hand. Lastly I laid-in the shading and the dots.
"Opposites attract" is this week's MMM theme, and what could be more attractive to a human than a tiny fairy bringing beauty and hope. There are also the obvious opposites of color and contrast, handmade and mass produced elements, and rough and smooth textures.
A Spot of News...
This is the only place on this blog that you'll hear about my next piece of news, so if you're interested, please read-on! I've begun another blog. It's a home on the web for the very satisfying cards and crafty pieces that I love to make to unwind at the end of a long day. Early on, I tried to blend these pieces in with my other artwork and into this blog, and while this may have worked, it confused me, and some other artists who emailed me, wondering just what it was that I did primarily. The answer was, and is, that I'm one of those rare-ish half-right, half-left brain people who's hemispheres are so equally balanced, that I find it just as easy and just as satisfying to make fine art on the one hand, and graphic design on the other. I spent a great deal of my life drawing and painting and getting an arts degree, and just as much of my life writing and working with publishing layouts and graphic design. As one graphic designer friend of mine put it, "You've joined the ranks of artists who get as much satisfaction from creating your own art from scratch, as you do from pushing around and arranging the elements created by others." This is so true, and it describes me to a "T"! So for my own peace of mind, and at least for the time being, you can find my arty cards and crafts at ArtyCardsNCrafts. ArtiphyTheHeart will remain the place for everything else I do. Maybe I'll even choose to post some of my drawing and painting in the future...we'll see... But for now, that blog will link back to this one, but this one will stand on its own.
Asking A Little Favor, If I May...
If you decide to visit ArtyCardsNCrafts, or if you get there through a blog challenge I've entered, please take a minute to look at the list of links in that blog's sidebar. My hope is that it will become the most comprehensive and up-to-date listing of card and craft challenges on the web. So if you know of a challenge that is not listed on that blog, please email me with a link so I can add it to the list!!
And now I'm off to:
Have a late lunch
Catch up on some reading
Visit GoodReads, as my DD recommends it so highly,
Do a bit more tweaking and blog maintenence, and
Work on an art journal page, already in progress
Have a great day, Everyone!
... For Crowabout #58, Creative Catalyst #85, Created By Hand, and Theme Thursday
The Carnival...
We all know that there's a first time for everything, and often its the singular impact of those "first times" that set the stage for the "rest of the times" in our lives. My first onset of bravery and outspokenness, together with the way it was handled by my parents, set the stage for a lifetime of not being afraid to speak my mind, but also taught me to think before speaking.
The theme for this week's creative catalyst is "the scariest or most daring thing you've ever done". Before I begin to tell you about my scary and daring moment, it's necessary to consider that bravery is a relative concept. An act of bravery is dependent on many variables and factors. It's relative to fear, time, place and perception. So when I tell you about my experience, please keep in mind that I was five years old, attending my first fall carnival. It was outdoors, Halloween night, pitch dark, and occurred at a time in history when parents weren't as afraid for their children as they need to be now. For some reason, I found myself not quite lost, but temporarily separated from my parents, and holding a big bunch of tickets in my hand. So I walked into the bright lights of the midway all by myself.
The Scary Thing...
In the midst of all the open games, there was a closed, draped, tent which was beyond my power to resist. I had to know what was inside, so I parted the curtains and went in. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust, not only because it was much more dimly lit than the midway, but because the scene was in complete contrast to the noisy booths outside. The walls and ceilings were lined and draped with multicolored silks, and glittering specks of light moved about the room. Finally my eyes settled on the turbaned figure in front of me, eyes deeply shadowed, face lit from below the chin by the light of a glowing crystal ball. At first I was too enchanted to be afraid, but then she grabbed my hand, at the same time taking about half of the tickets I was holding while she forced me into the seat at the table in front of her. Then she proceeded to read my five year old palm. I have no idea what she said to me. All I heard was the deeply mysterious sound of her voice while I tried to look away from her shining face, but my eyes remained fixed. Somehow I knew that this was exactly where I should not be, and as soon as she finished talking and let go of my hand, I tore out of the entrance and found my parents. We stayed at the carnival another hour or so.
The Brave Thing...
Before I continue, there's something else you need to know about me at that time. I was an only child, a bit shy, and I really spent my days just going with the flow. I got along with everyone, and didn't push issues, throw tantrums or rebel against anything. I didn't tell my parents about the fortune teller until just before we left, but they knew something had spooked me, and were waiting to give me the opportunity to say what it was before they asked questions. As I told them the story, my feelings about it began to change significantly. What had been my fear, converted into a sense of righteous obligation, and as we walked by the tent on our way out of the carnival, I dropped my father's hand and ran back inside. The "gypsy" was bent backwards toward the exit, boxing up the decorations and entrapments, and I guess I startled her because she had a look of mixed surprise and anger on her face when she turned to look at me, but that didn't deter me. I told her off. Inside my brain, I was seeing the faces of kids I knew who were younger than I, and I told her she had no business scaring the beejeebes out of children and taking their tickets to buy things for herself. She stood up and began a sentence: "You little...", but my dad had walked into the tent so she stopped. He stared at her with stone, cold eyes while he took my hand silently and steered me back outside. I thought he would be angry with me for running back in there like that and for talking to a grown-up that way. But the only mention he made of it at all was once, in the middle of the ride home, he said, "Sad, how easily some people will abandon their freedom for the hope that someone will determine their future." I don't think we ever spoke of it again.
The Seer...
As I was cutting up this week's collage sheet for the Crowabout group, the only thing on my mind was color. I had painted the background a few weeks ago and it was perfect for the colors in the images. It was while I was arranging the pieces that memories of the carnival and the fortune teller came back to me. And I still think it's funny that I don't remember a word she said. In fact, I remember distinctly that I wasn't hearing her the entire time she was speaking as she read my palm. But I remember my father's words, verbatim.
Now I'm ready to
Brew another cup of tea
Finish filing collage images
Get back to work on a series of papers I'm designing
And try to stay awake (it was a night of interrupted sleep), and
Put some music on!
Have a great day, Everyone!
...For A Prompt A Day and Saturday Surprise
It's more like spring than fall in my area of the Southwest, but the rusty colors of autumn are synonymous with cowboy culture. Old, rusty hinges, tools and even spurs can be found all over the desert, and it doesn't take an archeologist to dig them up.
Standing for something, and standing up for what you believe in is also part of the character of the old west, and something that is deeply rooted within me. A few generations ago, Phoenix shed it's rodeo culture to become a mecca for tourists. Sadly, the trade-off for development, economic growth, and an influx of dream-seekers seems to have been a an ethical one, and now, defending the dollar is a much more common argument than defending a principle. I'd even venture to say that for many, simply defining a principle would be too great a task, let alone defending one. Instead of cowboys, opportunism now hold the reins.
But leaving won't make it better, and this time of the year the weather turns the hell-heat of summer into a paradise. Besides, you don't have to look too hard to find communities in Arizona where the old west is still alive. However, you might need a trail guide to find them. Not so much to locate the actual geographic destination, as in the past when you needed full day, a guide and a pack animal to get where you were going, but a guide to help you discern the true spirt of west, which unless you were born to it, you'll find it difficult to pick out from among the curios and latter-day fables that are sold to tourists like snake oil cures.
So I'm staying put, at least for now. And you can't fight progress--even when an economic evolution devolves a culture. Some would call it a revolution, and maybe it is. But instead of a helmet, my hat of choice is an inverted flowerpot energy dome. I"ll bet Devo never guessed it would become the new Stetson.
Have a great day, Everyone!
Beatrice, again...
In my last post I talked a bit about ceramist Beatrice Wood. At the time I was working on that post, I was also painting backgrounds in a smaller journal with the idea of putting her on paper while I was out.
I'm not sure I'd call Beatrice a "muse" exactly, but she's more than just an artistic influence. I like her outlook and share her craving for freedom to create without the hypocrisy of, or judgements imposed by society at large. She had an enviable ability to shun convention with graciousness. At one and the same time, she was a seasoned professional and an innocent. She lived her 105 years with about as much honesty as any of us can hope for. And like Beatrice, I too have "a burning desire to be hugged".
Process...
Nothing needed to be added to this page. But this morning when I remembered the Three Muses "Hair" theme, I thought I'd see what my muse looked like with a modified page boy, so I clipped her one from a piece of black paper and liked it enough to glue it down.
And now I think I need a nap. It's been a long 20 hours.
Have a great day, Everyone!
...For Crowabout, Pointy Hats and Wings, and Mixed Media Monday...
Beatrice...
Last night I watched a documentary on the famous ceramist Beatrice Wood, titled, "Mama of Dada". If you can get your hands on this, you need to see it, and I'm told that the entire documentary is on the web, so I'm sure if you Google it, you might find it.
Beatrice died at 105. The film was made to celebrate her 100th birthday, and the interviews with Beatrice were done when she was in her late 90's, still working, and sharper and more alert than many of us when we are in our 30's. Her artwork is sheer genius. She was a true alchemist. Her glazes are without equal--anywhere, anytime. But it's her chosen mix of independence and self-discipline that speaks to me most clearly, and I believe that mix is the secret of her long career and her total presence of mind.
DADA...
Webster's defines Dada as: "A movement in art and literature based on deliberate irrationality and negation of traditional artistic values." In reality, Dada cannot be defined, as labeling it as an art form of any kind would immediately classify it as something other than "Dada". Dada is a mindset which insists on the license to create without the constraints of surrounding societies. Beatrice's work is pioneering and classical at the same time. Beatrice as an artist, and as herself, embodied the spirit of Dada like nobody else, exceeding even Marcel Duchamp with her intense combination of freedom and discipline.
Tying It In With The Process...
The documentary played in the background while I worked with the Crowabout images, and I'd pause it from time to time and play parts of it back as was necessary while painting, drawing, cutting, glueing, and taking stretch breaks. For me, placement of images and painted areas on paper often are made by shape and color, regardless of subject matter, although I am basically a storyteller when I create, and without thinking, I am thinking of scenarios and painting new ones in my head as I move ahead with what I'm doing. So much of it is subconscious work, that when I declare a piece as finished, I let it "sleep" for a period, then go back to it and allow it to tell me what influenced it.
Is there anything more self-disciplined and independent (read DADA) than a cowgirl? There were other images on that sheet that I could have chosen, but this was the combination that my eyes and hands picked and placed, along with other pieces of ephemera, a child from Lisa's Altered Art, and additional paint and dots. Now that I think about it, a cowgirl is probably the perfect combination of pinks and blues, and all the gradients in between, and while I think that idea was somewhat present at the time, it wasn't until I was finished that the symbolism took hold.
Beatrice said, "If I could sum up my life, I would say it was a burning desire for freedom and to be hugged." My vision of Cowgirl Ranch is a place that provides a girl with both.
Now I'm off to:
Paint some pages in one of my handmade take-along journals to fill some down-time while I'm out this afternoon
Make sure I've packed a decent supply of pens and snippets
Choose a new "before bed" book to read tonight, and
Think about what we'll have for dinner
Have a great day, Everyone!
...For Me, for Crowabout, for Three Muses, and for Pointy Hats and Wings
No Satisfaction...
Sometimes you're just not satisfied, and that's how I felt with my last collage, "Row C". The puzzler was that I liked it to look at, it was definitely "finished", but I felt personally unsatisfied, like it got there without me. After forgetting it while I worked on something else, I realized that it was nothing about the collage itself that bothered me, it was something personal. It was about the process. I felt cheated because the collage was finished and couldn't hold anymore, and I really wanted to play with pens and inks and paints on top of something. So I just had to do something else, and that's how The Tooth(ache) Fairy was born.
What I Did About It...
I chose one of my simpler layered acrylic under-paintings to begin with so that I could indulge my urge to doodle without the distraction of a multi-colored background, then I mixed some pink and started painting. First a border, then some funky flowers. Then I grabbed my tiniest black Micron and filled in part of the bottom with a million tiny ovals and circles. Then came dots, circles, squares, an object here, an object there, some rub-on numbers and stars. Before I printed him, the doggie was enlarged and adjusted in Photoshop as high contrast screen tones, and was given a pale-pink wash, which I later intensified in areas with a couple of Prismacolors. His heart (Lisa's Altered Art) was too red, so it got a dusting of pale pink pencil to tone it down. I created the box body of the fairy from items in Crowabout's collage sheet and glued on an altered pointy hat, then some wings (Lisa's Altered Art, again). The arm was the last thing I added.
In Search Of A Home...
Here's a true confession: I don't enjoy making things just to illustrate themes. It feels like work. Probably because a lot of the work I do in real life involves illustration. Even teaching art revolves around illustrating themes and concepts, and I now just want to create from what's inside of me. That's why now, when I design commercially, I choose to design for vendors of products I use, and I do this for the express purpose of using their products in my artwork rather than illustrating a product itself. It's their products shown off to advantage, but my art, my style, and my themes.
I think that's why I am so in love with the Crowabout group. Nancy chooses collage images that are wonderful and often zany, and I get to express myself using these terrific things that I might not have run across on my own, and I get to use them in and out of contexts, all my own. I know it's why I love Kelly Kilmer's A Prompt A Day. Even when I'm not actively participating, the vast stores of prompts and the infinite combinations thereof, are creative DNA that subtly find their way into the things I do!
Also, I really love web challenges. I love this wonderful community of blogging artists, and seeing what others create around various themes. But when I participate in themed groups, I usually do so when I have a piece that fits. Rarely will I create something on the fly just to fit a theme, so when I finished The Tooth(ache) Fairy, I took it around the web in search of a theme, and discovered The Three Muses "numerology" theme in the process, where it fit.
Now I'm off to:
Clean up the studio and file images
Try and motivate myself to do some long over-due blog maintenance
Get people where they need to go
Figure out what we're eating tonight, and
Get back to the book I'm reading before I fall asleep
Have a great day, Everyone!
...For Crowabout and Saturday Surprise
Creative Vitamins...
Kelly Kilmer was in Phoenix over the weekend, and being with Kelly is like taking vitamins! She refreshes and energizes my creative spirit like nobody else. Yesterday was extra special, because my daughter, Amy, worked right along side of us and I hope she'll share on her blog what she did in the workshop.
Process...
"Row C" is an approx. 6"X9" layered acrylic underpainting collaged with transparencies, images and decorative tape. I never rush to finish a piece. This one needed something more, so it came home with me unfinished. Picture it without the dress, "row c", and "face the facts!". Things don't often resolve themselves so easily or so quickly, but when I set this down on my worktable next to the sheet of Crowabout images for this week, "face the facts!" and the dress found an immediate home. "Row C", which is undeniably the most important, did not reveal itself until I found it hiding in the words "crow" and 'bar".
Books...
We make books with Kelly. All different, and all wonderful. We aim for beautiful, meaningful, and unexpected. At least I do.
I've spent years layering acrylics on two-page spreads of art journal after art journal. Occasionally, and lately often, I've had people inquiring to buy a print, or an original page. Prints work. Original pages are two pieces of art, since there's another piece on the back. These don't work as anything but prints.
This has been a dilemma. Especially when I've wanted to put one on my own wall. But as much as I work in studio, I thrive on being able to work everywhere, and I love working in books, and I love art journaling. Something of the inspiration of the place where I'm working goes onto the pages. More places per page often equals more depth to a piece.
I take books with me everywhere so I can work anywhere. I wouldn't take a canvas, or a watercolor, or a sketch outside of a sketchbook with me in my bag. I feel comfortable getting a book out of my bag to work on in public. I would not feel so comfortable pulling out a canvas of the same shape and size. People tend to leave you alone when you're working in a book. Few people exercise the same respect for your privacy when you're working on a single piece out in the open, and I hate the exposure of having people who are not artists themselves peering over my shoulder while I work.
Solutions...
Last night the dilemma solved itself. I had actually solved it by accident yesterday afternoon, but I didn't realize it until late last night. Without thinking, I had done two things differently yesterday. First, I didn't paint two-page spreads. I have no idea why, except that I wanted less paint on my brush than usual so I could make thinner layers, and this worked better doing one page at a time rather than on two. Also, I think that I didn't want to be distracted by the color on one side when painting the next page, so without consciously thinking about it, I flipped each page when finished and worked on right sides only.
In the car on the way home, I took a look at the book. The few pages I had begun to collage were all upside down. I might have gotten around this problem, but the book cover was done and bound, and it had a definite right side up. I toyed with the idea of deconstructing it, but I love the binding and the stitching on the spine. Then I got home and set the open book on the table next to the Crowabout sheet, and I really wanted to work on the face-up page, flat. I didn't allow myself to think or cringe. I just picked up an xacto and sliced out the page. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up. Surgically removing a page made this book a very flexible idea, and potentially, a far more interesting work of art!
Ideas...
Now there are so many ideas flooding into my head that I can't turn off the light bulbs: Continue painting one side of the pages. Continue taking the book(s) with me wherever I go. It's still an art journal and a sketch book, but whenever something wants to be a stand alone piece, I can slice it out. I gave myself permission simply by doing it. And I can add more pages...duh! I've been adding pages and stuff to books for years. The difference is that before, I planned it that way. Now it's going to happen when it's natural to do so! I used to rip pages out of sketchbooks all the time in college, tape in new pages or parts of pages, and never gave it a second thought. But I hadn't bound those sketchbooks myself. The books themselves weren't works of art, I bought them at the college book store. Something inside me had always treated my handbound books as if that made a difference. Guess what? It doesn't! Is this liberating, or what! I love art! It's the only spot in my life where making mistakes so often make things better.
Now I'm off to:
Work in the wonderful book that shifted my vision
Make everyone a (very) late lunch
Do some long-overdue blog maintenance
Enjoy the much cooler, almost springtime weather, and
Continue reading a really great book--a library discard that I was going to use in artwork until I started reading it and discovered a great old author! (...which brings me to a pet peeve about the indiscriminate way some libraries toss out their books, but I won't go into that now...)
Have a great day, Everyone!
Zetti
What makes a Zetti? We all know various components of Zetti, but how is it defined by its creators, Tracy and Teesha Moore? Am I correct that Teesha and Tracy invented all things Zetti? If not, then please set me straight. I'm really interested, not in a personal interpretation, but in the actual definition, and in how big a role personal interpretation plays in this, if at all. Why? I don't know why, must I have a reason? I just am. And not from a legalistic standpoint; more from curiosity.
At any rate, here's my Zetti, apparent in image, border and concept, but just what it is that makes these things "Zetti", I couldn't really say, at least not precisely.
Conceptual Art
I choose to illustrate concepts, not words or phrases. If I'm asked to illustrate "chair", for instance, I don't rush around looking for images of chairs, or draw a chair before I've internalized the concept and made it relevant to a part of my life. I don't find it necessary to explain the relevance, but I believe that you are more likely to find something in it that speaks to you, if something in it speaks to me. The meanings can be different for both of us, and are more meaningful if they're personal and individual. But for a piece of art to be relevant, the meaning must come from somewhere other than the observer's making it up on the fly, and while you probably won't see my story in it, hopefully you'll see something of yours. Not everyone works this way, nor should they, necessarily. It's just what I do.
Suffering
You can't study art without noticing how often the word "suffering" pops up, and in so many contexts. At some point or other, students always ask if suffering is a necessary component of creating art, and if so, why this is so. It depends on how you define suffering of course, and if your definition is ghetto poverty, then the answer is, no, it isn't necessary, in fact, it can be a hindrance, although it doesn't have to be.
But unless you're just mindlessly knocking off crafts, and hey, I'm not knocking this, it can be fun and relaxing, but in creating a piece of art, each piece has a growth cycle, and there's always some suffering involved in coming to grips with getting to know the piece and what it needs. There's a period of struggle, a push and a pull, sometimes even a fight, before you can move into the phase of peaceful execution. This type of suffering, like suffering in raising children, and working at relationships in general, carries with it an aspect of beauty and nobility.
If you separate the act of suffering, the work of it, from physical pain and the fear of death and failure, then you extract the beauty. This, simply stated, is the work of the heart. It's the added components of fear and physical pain that give suffering a bad name and conjure up the definitions that western society has saddled it with. Purely, it is in suffering that beauty is wrought, not the suffering of pain and fear, but the suffering of patience. The patience of listening and waiting, as long as it takes, for a creation to develop, working surgery when necessary to remove unwanted aspects and providing the necessary elements at the right times for growth. In Greek, "pathima".
Right now I'm:
Sitting in a public library at closing time
Getting ready to run the last few errands of the day, and
Wondering what to make for dinner.
Have a great day, Everyone!
Here's mine...
To publicize the latest issue of Studios magazine, Interweave, the publishers of Cloth Paper Scissors, Quilting Arts, FiberArts, and more, is hosting a virtual tour of studios across the internet, which I am fortunate to be a part of. You'll want to click HERE for the list of other open studios and links to their photos on the web.
After putting my family through years of artwork and supplies stashed in various rooms and closets all over the house, everyone was happier when my daughter and I decided to move our shared supplies into what was our family room, re-arrange everything into a working studio, and give the family their house back.
Aside from borrowing furniture from other parts of the house, most of the storage boxes which once housed toys when kids were little, were moved back in from the garage to store our "stuff", collected over the years, and shipped by vendors who have supported and sponsored my work in the past. The paper rack came from a local store. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They had just installed walls of shelves and needed a home for the rack. I happily offered to give it one, and we loaded it into the car!
The truth is, we didn't spend an extra dime on this room. Everything was pulled from other parts of the house. It isn't usually always this clean. A normal day will have you wading through a sea of paper, paint, brushes, pens, scissors, glue...but, these pics were taken the day we finished our room re-make, before the real work began. We are every bit as happy with it as we were on day one, and are thankful to have a spot where things can be left out overnight undisturbed for the next day.
Everything, including the sewing machine, is neatly stashed, tucked away in one of the larger cabinets, but can as easily be left on the table for days on end when needed.
I was so pleased to be able to participate in this tour. Interweave holds a huge soft spot in my heart, as FiberArts was the first place my work was published-- fiber valentine postcards, two years in a row. I've also had a full page in Quilting Arts, October/November 2007 issue, when my funky spacemen art quilt was chosen as part of the "doorway to the imagination" challenge. I am always truly amazed at the quality of all of their publications.
Have another look around, click to enlarge the photos, and peek inside the bins. In my opinion, studios are always a work in progress, so feel free to leave comments and suggestions! In the meantime, I'm off to take the tour myself!! Maybe I'll see your studio, next!
Have a great day, Everyone!
...Shedding a Light on My Subconscious
It All Began With Pointy Hats and Wings...
This week I received a surprise invitation from Nancy Baumiller to join her Flickr group, Pointy Hats and Wings. I was in the process of raiding my kids' stash of unused 3-ring binders and getting my stacks of collage sheets categorized and filed away in page protectors when the email came. The timing couldn't have been better. Having previously kept collage sheets in a box, then out of the box and all over the place, then back in the box, ad infinitum, I can't tell you how liberating it is to have them in binders that can be flipped through where you can actually see them! The bowl in this piece was right in front of me at the time I opened the email, and without any other thought, I decided to begin my collage with the bowl.
Evolution...
I auditioned several of my painted backgrounds to act as both underpinning and underpainting, and came up with a yellow one, positioned the bowl, and painted the border. The rest of the piece came together without a preconceived theme in mind. I made choices by deciding what worked with the composition, then let the theme evolve by itself. It took a few days to resolve because it needed lots of rest periods between elements, as so often happens when working with intense color and intense image at the same time. Don't ask me why I pulled the fish from my collection and used them here. I just did. The children and the bowl seemed to require them. The same with the fishbone letters. After I finished lettering, those lines and dots just seemed to be needed, so I played along with whatever the piece asked for and added them accordingly. Afterward, I realized they were fishbones.
A Journey Into The Psyche...
But what does it mean? OK, I play that game: Looking at artwork and trying to figure out what the artist is trying to say, both consciously and subconsciously, as well as looking to see what a piece has to offer for me personally. And the benefit of working with a theme as broad as "pointy hats and wings"--so broad as not to impose a theme at all--is that you don't know until you're finished just what the piece you're making says about you--or in this case, me! So I put it to bed, myself as well, and let it rest until morning.
Analyzing The Dream...
Looking back on surreal artwork and trying to fit the pieces is a lot like dream analysis. It's guess-work, but at the same time, it isn't.
So what did I learn about myself? Well, to begin with, it's true that lately I've been feeling a bit more exposed than fits my comfort range and have been dealing with keeping private things private, hence---the fishbowl. But it isn't a proper fishbowl, it's a colorful kitchen bowl...and it's opaque! And here's a quick lesson: If you find yourself unwittingly in a fishbowl, make the best of it. Choose colorful and opaque.
And the fish? Well, it was a piece of deceitful, stinking gossip that brought me into the fishbowl to begin with, under very "fishy" circumstances in which someone took a little bit of the truth and ran with it so far that it took on a very different spin and became a lie, and just like fish, sometimes life stinks! But you make the best of it, hang on to your umbrella for safety, listen carefully to wisdom offered by a trusted little bird, and wear your party hats and crowns as often as possible. Most importantly, you remember that love is always right there in the center of things. The heart at the heart. And no matter how tempting it may be to stoop to the levels of others, it's love that conquers in the end.
As for the clock, well, it's only a partial clock, and that's just the way it came. I didn't cut it; I just glued. What it says to me now as it sits there at the top, is that time looms large over us all. If only we could get a firm handle on time, everything would be possible. But we have to deal with what we're dealt, and don't have all the time in the world at our fingertips--hence, the partial clock, which represents the particular time-frame in which we work out our lives.
Is this what this really means? Who knows? But it's an adequate story, and it's mine, so I'm offering it to you as well, for whatever it's worth.
Kismet...
Sometimes when you're not looking to closely, things just work out right. Saturday Surprise has chosen "in the kitchen" as it's theme this week, just where I prefer my bowl of fish to be kept, and Inspire Me Thursday is open themed.
Now I'm...
Off to run the daily errands
Looking forward to the weekend and wishing it contained a bit more free time
Glad it's finally a little cooler
Appreciating true friends and family, and
Looking forward to an even brighter future!
Have a great day, Everyone!
...I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want to Ride It Where I Like!
When I look back on the things I did as a kid, two things stand out: Painting, and riding my bike. Not a day went by without art and a bike ride.
A Day In the Life...
Painting was the catch-all term for everything artistic. I could be lying on the floor of my room glueing and drawing, blending chalks and pastels, or constructing a shadow box, and if anyone asked where Barbara was, my mom would tell them, "She's painting". Probably because most of what I did ended up with at least a little bit of paint on it somewhere. I've always mixed my media.
In between times, there were dozens of other things I did, usually with friends, and unless it was happening at my house, I ended up riding my bike to it and back from it. I wasn't really conscious of it at the time, but all those short, solitary bike rides to and from friends' houses and meeting places add up to a lot of collective time spent in thought. Or maybe out of thought would be more accurate, because really, I didn't spend that time so much thinking, as noticing. I looked at things. Everything. Relevant or irrelevant, it didn't matter. It was all important. It was all there to be seen, heard, compared and contrasted, and I did this like breathing--without thought. The entire world was my source of information.
Patterns...
Not to say I never thought. I spent plenty of my other time thinking about the things I'd notice on bike rides, and everything else, too. For instance, have you ever noticed how related themes and patterns seem so often to occur simultaneously? When I was growing up I'd notice that in a given evening, the themes on TV shows would often follow the same basic thread. For instance, if the first sitcom I watched that evening dealt with a hit and run accident, the next one might have a patient in the hospital who had been hit by a car, and a third might revolve around a teenage son learning to drive and in the course of it, almost hitting someone in a crosswalk. Entirely coincidence that all of them aired on the same night; None of the studios cooperating with the others or planning a blitz .And while some of the more obvious patterns do occur by choice, often seasonally such as harvest themes in autumn, the patterns I've always been keen to notice are much more obscure. The more hidden patterns in life just seem to leap out at me and say, "Here I am"! I couldn't always connect the dots, but I knew that somehow, on some level, connections existed and could be found.
I didn't know it at the time, but pattern recognition is one of the great gifts of artistic participation. Because I created pattern, I recognized pattern. I could see it on the outside because it was what presented itself onto paper from inside myself.
They're Everywhere...
It was always fine until I mentioned this to friends, who'd roll their eyes and say, "So what?" But I found identifying patterns interesting enough to not let any of that bother me. Besides, I couldn't not notice what was so apparent to me, even if I tried. So I just kept painting and riding my bike.
In high school and college, this pattern recognition made learning languages, math, biology and chemistry much easier. Later, out of school and in the world, I noticed that in practice, medicine, psychology and forensics are all about identifying patterns, as are marketing, behavior research, and everything Wall Street. A government service job I applied for required an I-Q type test for placement. I wasn't told my score, but I was called in for interviews based on my knack for--you guessed it--identifying patterns and relationships. What they suggested to me was so far off from the job for which I'd applied that I scrapped the idea entirely and went to work somewhere else. Still painting, and for exercise and pleasure, riding my bike.
Connecting the Artistic Dots...
Back to my childhood, on Saturday mornings I'd ride my bike to the art museum for classes. I started there when I was four, and continued into my teens. The museum was my safest haven. It was a huge, echoing monument in stone to everything important. Even at 4, I knew that my artistic pleasures were also my most serious work. In the basement of the museum, I created with others side by side, most often silent to the ear, but loudly communicating our connectedness as we expressed our respective individualities in quiet.
Aside from the benefits of the classes themselves, which thankfully were nothing like some of the structured agendas presented in the school art programs, the building itself contained all things extant and all possibilities under its one, huge roof. Each work of art held it's own collection of infinite stories. More than the history of a period and a study of technique, each piece held and holds the biography of the artist as well as the biography of the beholder. The sum of these two contains the entire history of the universe.
But even more than history, art is communication, and each work of art is a conversation. On the way home from the museum, riding my bike, everything I noticed on the way over had been transformed through my experience with art. The ride home took the same streets and passed the same buildings, but it was new terrain. Without realizing it, I had discovered a great truth: Everything is new when you emerge from the deep sea inside yourself, the place where you dive to retrieve the pearls of art.
Connecting Challenges...
I still paint daily, although I spend more time now driving a car than riding a bike. I've spent the past week immersed in acrylics, creating various textured backgrounds to use in collage, and been having more fun than you can imagine making collage with the Crowabout group. With only a couple of exceptions, most of the images used in Bicycle Ride came from our Saturday morning collage sheet. When I began cutting and moving the pieces around, all the memories of bike rides past and a lot of the circumstances surrounding them came back like a flood. The next time I opened my in-box to check my mail, Creative Catalyst #80 was there. It said, "Tell us about something you cherished as a child. It can be a toy, or anything else". Nothing to think about here. Bike rides and art. In addition, Illustration Friday's theme is "pattern", and Created By Hand wants to see texture this week. Click to enlarge and the texture jumps out.
Today...
If I could get everyone where they needed to go strapped onto the back of my bicycle, I'd do it. But reality dictates that my kids need to be transported in a car, with air conditioning and seat belts. We're still experiencing 105 degree days, and when all is said and done, we travel about 60 miles each day on average, getting to and from the various places we need to go.
Along with other things, so far today I have been:
Wonderfully surprised by a phone call from the South Carolina wing of our An Affair With Art group
Thrilled by a package from another member containing more fabulous packages within
Catching up on email
Sipping tea, and
Preparing myself for the blast of heat when it comes time to open the door and go out into the hot afternoon
Have a great day, Everyone!
...patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper".
I love this quote from author Eden Phillpotts. Our senses cannot take in everything contained in their respective fields, so to make sense of stimuli, they must discriminate and rely on reason to narrow the choices and provide cohesion. But what if we look twice? Listen again? How easy is it on first glance to mistake a rope for a snake? To see a mirage of water in heat waves? To hear a baby's cry in a cat's call? Reason is necessary to organize information and establish patterns, but it is not truth in itself. The truth lies beyond; Is deeper.
Time...
This may have been the fastest week I've lived through, and for no apparent reason. A trick of time and space. I prefer the days to linger and the weeks to last as months. I'm not in a hurry. I'd like to be able to finish artwork quickly, but have a limitless expanse of hours and days in which to complete them, finding that when they're done, only a few short minutes have passed on the clock. TGIF's theme is "it's magic". I can think of no better magic than to stretch time infinitely for leisure and luxury, then pop it back into miniscule parcels when you need it to pass quickly. That would certainly get the upper hand on pleasure and pain.
The Weekend...
Nothing earthshaking planned for this weekend, but lots to do. It's going to be hot again, which must happen once more before it begins to cool off for the fall. Let's hope this is the last burst of heat. I need the energy that comes with cooler weather. In the meantime, I'm:
Listening to a rare moment of silence
Ready to lose myself in another collage and
Have a cup of tea,
But must tend to other things first.
Wishing I could bend time in my favor--
I'd take a nap,
Read a book,
Paint, cut, glue, and draw for days and hours,
And it would take only a moment.
Have a great day, Everyone!
For Illustration Friday , TGIF and Crowabout...
Time is in short supply today. The weekend is beginning early and I'm off to get people where they need to go.
Have a great day, Everyone!
Late mornings into the evening hours seem to be when I get the most done. Perhaps because the light is strongest during these hours, or maybe it's "just because". But those are the hours when things seem to come together for me with the most energy.
Why This Collage?
"Time of day" is the Mixed Media Monday theme this week. I'm not sure how to describe why this collage works in words because it's more of a feeling. But look at the strong contrasts, the alertness, the ripe fruit and deep green leaves--sun and chlorophyl. Bright, alert, productive, growth, ripeness. That speaks the "sunshine hours" to me.
And with only a few hours of sunshine left, I'm on my way out the door to enjoy what's left of the holiday with my family.
Have a great day, Everyone!
