Seamless Skin

Basketball, Art, and Breakthroughs

My weekends are anchored by little league basketball. Both of my grandsons, ages 3 and 5, are playing. Before it turned cold (although today it was 61 and sunny, reasons for it be damn, ya know I wasn't complaining!), I was taking the 5 year old to his bus stop in the mornings and after his bus arrived, I would keep on going (most days) to the studio.

I took much of December off and January's days were filled with more Nana duties in the day and evenings with the other 2 grand-delights.  As much as I love them, there is a very good reason for menopause...50something year old women should NOT have day in and night in care of small children.  But we now have daycare!!!!!!!! (and the crowd goes wild!!!!!!!!!!).  So now Nana and Papa just have the evenings with them. Ahhhh, much better.  

Last Friday was an art reception for Hope and Healing. Twenty-one artists donated work to a non-profit that serves women, men, and children who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.  I sent Urban Exodus (formerly Urban Egression) on "permanent loan".   (excuse the bad photography, it's the camera's fault ;D )

Carter and Anaya and my Mother went with me.  I could not have had two toddlers in tow without my Mama's help!!!  Here is Anaya saying "look look".  This is the only quilt she responded to...It is a Penny Sisto quilt.

Carter was going through the exhibit saying "wow, wow, wow".  It was mostly abstract work that he liked...the few he said he didn't like were realism in landscapes.  Here are snapshots of the two that "wowed" Carter the most.  

The work on top was created by Keith Kleespies and my apologies to not remembering or being able to find the artist who created the work on the bottom.  

Negotiating Territory is now hanging in the newest gallery at Mellwood, The Kore Gallery.  It will be there until the end of March or April.  

I'll be returning to some semblance of what passes for normal at the Studio.  I was there today for 6 hours...5 of which I hand embroidered 8 of the boats for a total of 13 completed...only 164 more to go.  I have to mentioned a breakthrough I had while stitching (Obama is going to beat the pants off of ANY republican candidate! okay, politics aside).  My breakthrough was this...I had been isolating embroidery thread colour within colour segments on the boats...and then I thought, why not use the thread across colour segments...use the thread to bridge the segments...here is my breakthrough in a picture: 

Tracy Pennington, Madcap Mosaics

 

photo by Deborah Stanley 2011

 

1. Share what you do and WHY?

Tracy Pennington:  I make mosaics. During a difficult time in my life, a counselor suggested I do something artistic as therapy. I wandered around Hobby Lobby looking for something to do. I walked out with a beginner's mosaic kit and some stained glass. I thoroughly enjoyed the making of that first mosaic, and felt a new awakening in my soul. I realized that not only did I like making art, but I MUST make art. I love the mosaic medium because it is a slow, reflective process. I can think and feel my way through the work.

2. Where was your studio located prior to coming to Mellwood? and how do you describe your studio at Mellwood? and what do you enjoy the most about it? (I know this is kinda 3 questions in 1)

Tracy:  I worked in the guest room at our house. The room was crammed with stuff I picked up off the curb that "I was going to do something with", and little shards of glass were flying everywhere while I worked. I also felt guilty when working at home, like I should have been doing housework or spending time with kids instead. My husband suggested I find someplace else to work, and we were thrilled to find Mellwood! My studio is MINE! (said by the mother of 6 children : )) It is my place to come and create, reflect, and listen to my soul.

3. So I take it that upcycling and refashioning are a big part of what you do. Do you look at a curb find and then create a design for it, or do you create a design first and then look for a curb find? How do you go about pulling it all together? (and you look wonderful and peaceful to be the mother of 6!)

Tracy:  It bothers me to see reusable materials going to the landfill, so if I see something I think I can use I pick it up. Sometimes I start with the material and design with it in mind, but more often the stuff just sits around waiting for inspiration to strike.

I have a sketchbook where I get everything off my chest. Some designs never become anything, while others nag me until I follow through. I find a base for the design, prime it, and sketch on it. Then I glue on tiles, glass or wherever else I'm working with. Sometimes I pry them off and rework it. Sometimes I let a half done piece sit around until I can figure out what is wrong with it. When I am happy with the piece, it gets grouted, cleaned up and hung up.

4. What do you want from your art? What would bring you the greatest joy?

Tracy:  My art helps me process hopes and disappointments, trials and triumphs. I want my art to mean something. It is my soul reaching out, asking for understanding..."Do you feel this way?"..."Am I alone in the world?". I feel the greatest joy when I see others connecting with my work...that is the greatest validation to me.

5. What question would you like me to ask the next artist?

Tracy:  I'd like you to ask the next artist....How do you define 'success' as an artist?  

Thanks Karen! Some difficult questions....

To view more of Tracy's artwork and workshop offerings, go here.

A Confession...

I am not an artist.  Surprised to hear me say that?  Let me tell you why I'm taking this stance...

Some people I've met, who like myself, have such a deep abiding love for the role of artists in our world that they speak to me as if I've arrived or as if I know intuitively the sacred magic that artists must have that they do not.  

My confession is that visual art is not something I was acclimated from birth...I didn't spend hours locked in my room drawing or looking at pictures as an adolescent, but reading and writing.  It was poetry that liberated my spirit.  My young adulthood was spent philosophizing around the written word and with others who knew the joy and pain of carving out a phrase into syllabic play that was larger than the words on paper.

It wasn't until 2004 that I began this visual journey, although my love of quilting goes back a couple of decades.  What I do is attempt to learn and experiment with the goal that the knowledge will become just as intuitive in my soul as the poetic drive once was.  So I continue to plug and forge ahead because I cannot not do so. This journey is impelling and I don't spend a lot of time asking why it is so because I know to trust the process.   The need to touch cloth and understand colour as a way to explore my personal limitations and sense of freedom drives me to keep trying to be "that artist" and to share and be open about what I've done and am doing with anyone who stands still long enough to listen.  Even if it takes me 'til I'm 99 for the light bulb to be rewired from over my head to in my heart, I will not regret one single day of this journey.

Meeting deadlines

okay, I have at least 3 coming up...one in October, one in November, and one in January.  I'm infamous for missing them because I can't work as fast as my head finishes a piece and secondly, because I don't hold to a strong dictate of what I'm going to do when in the studio.  Like last week, I had every intent of picking something back up when I arrived.  The world was feeling different for me the day after Davis' execution.   Also, I was in the middle of reading a enthralling travel book on a woman's journey to West Africa in search of Indigo and it's meaning, Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World by Catherine E. McKinley.   It was both of these I believe that came to bear on a change of plans.

Now what I had observed about myself that day was I was moving slower and quietly both physically and mentally. Shortly after I arrived at the studio a certain phrase came to me and held me spell bound and I chose to follow it in cloth and ended up starting a whole new piece, and thus far, I'm very pleased with it.  The size is large, for me, and I'm wondering if I can have it ready for one of the looming deadlines...maybe I should change deadline to lifeline...meeting it could mean a whole new life for a piece of art.  

This week I played around with video taping in the studio...I think I need one of those twisty style tripods.  So far my camera man (youngest son) hasn't been convinced of all the exciting things that I do while at Mellwood and hasn't jumped at the chance to film me.   I mean what 20 year man wouldn't want to party like this!?

 

 dye painted cloth wrapped in newspaper waiting to be steamed

Shake dem Bones!

Maybe this is preparing me to go through a Georgia O'Keefe phase.  These are the beautifully unique to me gifts that I was given by Penny Sisto, artist-sistah-friend that she is.  For this city girl, these are like WOW!  

Penny lives in a rural area and picks these up on her walks and people bring them to her as well so she has a growing collection.  Okay, if I was going to pick up items where I live I guess it would be soda and beer cans because that is what people do who live in cities, right?  So not as interesting to me as these beautifully shapped old decaying cow and deer bones.

Adrian, my oldest grandson, said "cool" when he first saw them and Carter, my youngest grandson, said "ewwww, thats nasty"  A studio neighbor asked me what I planned to do with them...honestly, do I have to have a plan?  I don't think so, but I'm thinking about drawing them for awhile...I think Penny said she used a small bone in one of her recent pieces now showing at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany, Ind in a solo exhibit...Carnegie is the place that hosts annually Form Not Function.

I did make it into the studio yesterday and although I was productive it wasn't with intent...i finished the discharge.  It was killing me to stamp so orderly so I loosened up...but looking at the outcome, I wish I had forced myself to continue on with the more controlled pattern...ummm, process (right hand) vs outcome (left hand)...which will have priority next time????

That orangish glow is from a back light bouncing off a painting by Aimee, studio mate.

and this is me attempting to sketch directly on fabric...off and on for about a year or so I've been sketching faces...the seed hasn't developed wildly enough yet that any but I'm getting there...

this is the start...sketching from the photo in the collage below.

Stuff!

We, as in all of us generally speaking, have just too much of it! STUFF!  We, as in all of us generally speaking, are a disposable culture.  Capitalism depends on it.  But our saving, hoarding, collecting, keeping, whatever word makes you comfortable, of stuff is leftover from our days when individuals were inventive out of neccessity and some great grandfather made stuff by hand and made it to last through 10 generations and we inherited and utilized items of our dead relatives stuff.  But in this day an age, too much is too much...and how long do we keep hauling around our ancestor's stuff while accumulating our own stuff??  

All that to say this...tomorrow is moving day for my 80plus years young mother.  It has been long hard tedious road filled with stress, anger, relief, tears, and tempers...but tomorrow, August 1st is an what I hope will be true emancipation day for all of us.  Her new space is light and airy and I hope she will feel less burdened in it.  My brother managed to come and salvage his cassette tapes from the 80s and his primitive literary journals, my sister managed to salvage her graduation gown, drill team uniform with the go-go boots, and a beloved niece I hope will become firmly grounded as she matures into the new changes and using a 60 year old dresser drawers she is getting from my mother.  All the stuff that didn't get sold, salvaged, or reused, is going into storage.  and me?  well, all my sewing "stuff" is boxed, bagged, and rolled ready to go into storage tomorrow.   Although, I wish I could have come up with a better alternative, surprisingly, at the moment, I'm in a good head space.  

This morning I rose and got out of here before 8 and headed to the solitude of my wet studio.  I spent the time weeding out "stuff" to take to the next grab bag giveaway at the LAFTA meeting and throwing out "stuff".  I also, straightened and cleaned off my print table and just had to snap a pic, because it has never looked like this:

looks inviting, doesn't it?

But after leaving my mother's tonight I dropped off 2 boxes of "stuff" that came out of The Basement Workshop, so it doesn't look like this anymore.  But come Tuesday, I'm going to find places for the relocated "stuff" and get to doing something to some fabric heah!

Out of the mouth of babes...

WHEW!  Let me tell you!!!!!  I was be-bopping and hip-hopping in the stu-dee-o to-day!  This morning while my two and half year old grandson was saying grace over his pancakes he also threw in a request to bless my strength.  We kinda chuckled as it seemed like an odd afterthought.  While in the studio I didn't even think about his prayer.  It wasn't until I was driving home that I remembered it and I got so tickled.  His request was granted because I just couldn't stop!  I amazed myself and couldn't explain the energy.  But her are peeks to give you some idea...

 

If you use dyes to paint, scrape, on fabric or do break down printing then you have some idea of the processes involved.  If this is foreign to you and you have questions about what the pictures represent, feel free to pose your questions in comments.  

I got there today around 2 and it wasn't until 7 that my body began to crash and it took me another hour to straighten up and I hobbled on out but I'm telling ya I feel great and I am looking forward to turning in soon and getting a good night's sleep!

 

WOW! will have to be sufficient.

This is the part where I'm suppose to write something coherent about my week with Claire and Leslie at The Crow Barn.  A very rare occasion that words seem insufficient.  

I have to acknowledge that all my fears and anxieties proved unnecessary!  I stayed well and am still well!  My stamina held until about Thursday when I began to slow down but still it was a full and amazing week for me! And every personal snafu that presented itself worked out smoothly for me which added to the joy and productivity.

I really don't even have adequate photos to convey the week I had because stopping to take photos was an inconvenience and using the camera rarely entered my mine but here are a few:

This is the beginning of a new cloth and a picture of my print table. The bottom photo on the right is me presenting my review to the rest of the group on closing day.  My 2 goals where to create a palette inspired by a painting of Barbara Earl Thomas and end the week with paper lamination.  I came very close to the palette and will continue to work with it here at home.  One of the paper laminations didn't turn out. I used too much medium and I think my print table was too soft...at least it was softer then my own.  The other is destined for greatness!  

I have to give a shout out to my girl Bev, who came to my rescue.  Over an hour from home and close to Cincy, Mo calls to tell me I left my silk screens.  Bev lives just east of Cincy so I called her to ask where I could pick up some screens...and Bev, being Bev, had a friend, etc.  She met me off the highway with 3 screens that she cleaned up for me!  Thank you for the blessing Bev!

Later in the week Bev, and Kel who lives 15 minutes from the Barn, came up Thursday after dinner and I gave them a quick tour of the Barn and then on Saturday Bev (an artist but not textiles (YET)) went to Athens to view Quilt National!  The treats within the treat was seeing Olga Norris' and Judy Martin's work in person.  I think Olga captures bodily gestures like nobody's business and Judy meshes hand work and philosophy so gracefully. I identify with it somewhat but moreso, am mesmerized by it.  However the one quilt that I would have taken home with me if I could was Vera Loves Her Gun by B. Michele Maynard.  The sole factor was it's ability to make me laugh out loud and the strong narrative it held.  I stood there in front of this quilt trying to concoct a story and laughing in between.

I've almost got everything put back in place in the studio but I'm also not waiting.  I've made up 8 quarts  of print paste,different recipes and varying thicknesses.  Soda soaked fabric was left on the line to dry yesterday and I'm going in later today to over-paint with thickened dyes.  My aha moment was being able to see where already dyed and over-dyed cloth still has room to take more dye.  It was most apparent to me while ironing the cloth.

In addition to painting, I'm hand stitching Primordial. The base is silk paper to felt.

 

Love a good storm...

Its storming here.  Pot of coffee.  Ice Cream.  House work.  Books and mags.  Sketchbook.  Sweetie snoring.  Computer.  Scrabble...describes my day.  

Mo left to take Carter to the barber and if I had had myself together I would have been dropped off at Mellwood while its storming.  I don't feel up to driving in this and then having to walk across the parking lot with my rolling pink book bag while juggling an umbrella overhead.  

The end of May I have a workshop with Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan at The Crow Barn.  I had already decided that this would be my last major workshop to travel to for a long while.  Since last summer I have had the overriding feeling that I really have everything and more to create the art work I want and that my focus should be concentrating on staying in the studio as much as I possible to even begin to make a dent on my ideas.  

The first of April, however, I decided to try and sell my spot.  So, if you're reading this and have an interest in taking an advanced workshop with 2 hard working instructors with incredible insight into the creative process, or know of someone who might be, email me at seamless_skin at yahoo dot com.  Go the www.nancycrow.com and check out the workshop, Working With Intent before emailing me.

Shortly after I made this decison I learned that Jane Dunnewold will be running a year long workshop based out of Louisville.  If I sell the spot at The Crow Barn, then I'll enroll.  If not then I plan to enroll with Jane the 2nd year.

If I haven't sold the spot by the end of April, then I'm going to forge ahead and plan to attend.  I have to set time frames for holding on and letting go of issues in order to move on.  

and in the vein of counting my blessings...I'm a recipient of a textile collage from Marion Coleman! I finally hung it a few days ago and when I turn my head left from my desk, this is what I see:

 

And this lovely inspirational card from Carol sits above my desk at The Chitlin' Circuit:

 

Here is what I left on Thursday:

 

There is a poem with a line...

"I'm not waving but drowning...." by Steve Smith.  (title is for dramatic re-entry to blogging)

My art making focus is being interrupted by bronchitis, yet again.  I haven't even had the physical energy to take up another creative diversion this time which accounts for me not having much to yak about here.   You may know how much I dislike winter.  I've not been well through most of this season.  It was just at the end of January that I had "a bout" (throwback term there).    And sometime in late Dec./early Jan. my pulmonologist called in antibiotic and I was hospitalized in mid-December w/ pnuemonia.   Its been a very sequestered winter indeed!  My log book of ideas for quilts is jammed and I just wish I could have a long, I mean really long time frame to focus  not on ideas but making the ideas manifest.  

The unspoken threads that weave through the above are realizations that I'll capsulize: one, death is not something one "gets over"...instead it sifts through you sometime slowly and gently, other times with more weigh.  two, now that my mother is a widow, her need for support in many things is growing.  three, it is very difficult to watch young adult children get "seasoned" into adulthood.  (Deb, I really think this is what your neighbor, (was her name Mrs. Sweatt?) meant when she would say "watch a monkey bump his head").  A friend said our generation is the panini generation; slap it on, turn up the heat and we get it from both sides at the same time.  If you been there or are here now, then you know what is going unsaid; and it is possible that the frequencies of illness have not been solely due to winter (ya think?) 

On the good days I've managed to get my studio ready to continue on Crowbonics (languishing) but actual work has been going back in to re-do what I wanted to be finished pieces but in my heart knew better.  This isn't a diversion as my goal is to have 10-15 small pieces to hang in a coffee shop where I'm on schedule this Fall, so I'm calling this my coffee house period (insert low snickering chuckle).  I think I selected October.  Here are some recent desk top snaps:

both still pieces still advancing toward completion

*************************

Annnndddddddddd, my really great news is I have a studio mate!  I started out in '09 with a mate, a sista-friend of over 30 years.  She mostly made her items at home and used the space for display, but since last summer when she moved out of state, I've been flying solo.  I had one serious contender but our combined needs didn't fit the space.  I looked at sharing larger space with 3-4 other artists there but then decided against it, looked at cheaper spaces there but the water source is too convenient and I have 2 entry doors which is a rarity for the price I pay, (I think 2 doors is a psychological comfort for people strolling through).  I gave up on the idea of moving or finding a art mate and then bam!  My new mate is Aimee.  She does daily paintings that are small enough to do on a table and wants to return to doing them now that she is close to graduating with a degree in history.  I felt very comfortable with her and she endeared herself when I didn't have to explain "Chitlin' Circuit".  Grant it, she didn't fall over herself telling me how brilliant a name it was,  but none of us are perfect, eh?  (a light snarky on my part)

Seems like there was more news I wanted to share....ummmmm, oh, the next Artist Interview is coming around the first week in April.

And now to close with an indulgence of being a Nana :) Here is the recent birthday girl!

 

Boogie Adventures

The soundtrack for this post is Boogie On Reggae Woman by Stevie Wonder.  

The weather began to turn over the weekend and I made use of Saturday and boogied over to the studio...spent a couple of hours with the help of Ade putting some semblance of order to the place and today I was there for 4 hours!  I ironed cloth, I stamped cloth, and I stitched cloth!  Yes I did!  In between, I spent time writing about the Crowbonics  Series and the beginnings of a poem fell out of my mouth too.  I read a few pages on the categories of design which helped me clarify what I'm trying to do with Crowbonics; and I also did a couple of exercises on texture from Finding Your Own Visual Language.  I am renewed!

Looking at this now, I'm thinking I'll restamp the light circles for more colour.  My first response was the uneven depth of colour kinda vibrated more.  This cloth is soooo unfinished so know this image is about process.

This piece was started over a year ago, maybe closer to 2 years.  It even has a binding on it.  But I knew it wasn't finished in spite of me.  The red thread marks were added last year and today I started the black thread mark.   

Today's boogie adventure was also spurred by seeing Etudes: A Daily Practice at the Hite Gallery yesterday with Mary J.  Jane Dunnewold created 48 wondrous Art Cloths for this exhibit.  It was my first time seeing her work in person and I could have stayed there all day and went back for more.  I only had 2 hours to go through the exhibit so I was rushed.  If it had not been for Lisa Austin telling me that yesterday was the last day for the exhibit to be up, I would not have had the 2 hours.

Can't hardly wait until the sun rises tomorrow!

I smoked and inhaled a long-arm machine and now I'm hooked!

Autumn for me is marked by time with Penny Sisto...a retreat, a revitalization, a re-centering in the art making as healing, yes.  The day was shared with Barbara, a watercolorist and dollmaker, and Gloria, a hand quilter and appliquer.  

Me on the long-arm and Penny looking intently

This time it was all about the long arm.  My first real chunk of time using one other than a five minute demo years ago at a quilt show.  Penny was aware of the Crowbonics series, thus she had us select from a variety of Crows she loosely had sketched in order for us to use to construct our birds in cloth.  I selected these Crows because they appeared to be praying to me and my next Crowbonics quilt is called The Hymnal.  

Deborah, my sister, not knowing about the next quilt, said the Praying Crows reminded her of Matthew 18: 19-20.

The Crows are fabric snippets which have been placed on wonder under, cut out, then sewed on a background using the long arm.  I don't know if a long arm is in my future but I'm now more motivated to use one to complete at least one quilt.  

We were all witnesses to the corruption of Gloria...who prior to this day, was a NO-RAW edges appliquer and hand quilter.

And here is Barbara, the dollmaker, at the long arm.

Penny currently has a joint show with Ann Lawson Adamek at the Huff Gallery at Spalding University. Penny described her work in this show as the most biographical series she has ever completed. The quilts center on the the myths and legends that abounded on the Orkney Islands where she was born.  

Chitlins', Art and Holiness

Yesterday I had to absolutely go into the studio...although I was there last Friday, it had been 3 whole days without being able to be there or in the basement workshop.  The longer I'm away, the more sullen and surly I become and then I am pressed to summon up energy in surpressing those feelings and behaviors in order to maintain some appearance of civility and sanity.  When ideas are calling me I see stitching, design, quilt possibilities EVERYWHERE...on buildings, dashboards, road construction, billboards, etc, and getting back into my space becomes a near obsessive CALLING.  After I left there yesterday to return back into the world, I felt like the best of me again and welcoming to interact with other human beings again. 

I worked on one of the studies I mentioned in a previous post.  A study that now has a specific vision.  A couple of years ago I was enamored with making silk paper.  Some time last year I started stiching on it just to see how it takes the needle and thread.  I've shown snippets of this particular piece before.  It keeps intriguing me but yesterday I knew the piece had found it's voice and I was listening.  This piece was talking to me..."order the stitches a little bit more Karen", "redo that line of stitches", "repeat the shape below", "take it down further"...and then from my own voice a phrase from one of my poems came to me while stitching and I knew it was the title of the piece...PRIMORDIAL WOMB.   When I picked this piece back up a few weeks ago I was working with the title of Amoeba and I thought the stitching would be a combination of hand and machine.  But yesterday Primordial Womb said all hand stitching and I chuckled at the idea of me doing "slow cloth".

While winding down I pondered what I was experiencing...a conversation, a dialogue, with something I was creating, something that many may view as an inanimate object.  From there I was led to how some cultures hold views that everything has spirit and everything is connected and when we, as artists, enter that realm and practice this belief, are we not entering Holy space?  Estella, my sisterfriend, wrote "poets mostly talk to God..."  I've read on blogs of visual artists and in conversations with artist-friends who speak of being in "the zone".  Personally, for myself, that zone is a communion with God and my time in the processes of creating art is an offering, an invitation for God to enter.  Even when I'm piddling (its a matter of showing up), even when things aren't working out (its an effort in maintaining belief), even when I'm doubting myself as an artist (its the questioning that leads to answers), even when my well seems dry and cracked (its the silence and space I need at that time for something fresh to enter). 

I was thinking of changing the name of my studio to "The Chitllin' Circuit" which I think is brilliant on lots of levels.  First, the space is housed in what use to be Mellwood Meat Packing, later Fischer's Meat Packing...the hogs where actually slaughtered there and the building is just a spit-throw's distance from the neighborhood known as Butchertown where historically, slaughter houses where located (they are all gone except for one).  When my children where younger and we would pull up behind a 18-wheeler of live cows (usually on Sunday evenings the trucks would begin lining up to unload) and the eyes of the cows could be seen peeking out from the holes, I would say to my children, you are looking at your hamburger.  I'm surprised not one of them are vegetarian but my point was to drive home the animal sacrifice that was made for them to enjoy their food.  I had a ceramics teacher in college who lived on a farm in Indiana and they raised the food they ate including meat.  He purposely wanted his children to participate in the slaughter of the animals so they would hold a deeper appreciation for what it took to get food to the table and not be ignorant to the facts.  Conceptually, this city girl thought that was kinda cool.

But I was talking about "The Chitllin' Circuit".   This was also the name that African American artists gave the route of venues mostly throughout the south that they could work in...months on end travelling from one spot to the next.  It was a difficult and hard way to make a living in the era of racial violence and segregation. As a cultural, historical, and geographical connection, I thought the name to be perfect.  But weighing my views on art and holiness, the current name will stay until a time, if ever, I can change it.

Grooving...

(The back ground music for this post is any song from Laura Izibor's Let the Truth Be Told cd)

The last couple of weeks have been great for being in the studio.  If I were to make a complaint it would be being there gets the pistons firing so fast with ideas and there is no way I can work fast enough to attempt them.

(auditioning threads) 

Crowbonics: The Scroll came home just as I was nearing completion of Crowbonics: The Hymnal which morphed into something that I had not intended due to being excited and getting carried away with the scissors.  After a couple of sleeps I'm okay with now having 2 new pieces instead of the 1 and I'm welcoming the opportunity to start over from scratch with The Hymnal.

(auditioning beads)

The past couple of weeks I've also been finishing up "studies" that have been hanging around, some for over a year.  Now they feel less like "studies" as I'm working with intentions towards a vision for them versus "let me see what this will do".

(stuff I do when I take a break)

  My stamina has been fueled by a new med I'm on for PH.  I started on it over a month ago and my ability to take stairs has improved and I attended the art car parade with my daughter and 3 grandchildren (it was a very short parade of about 20 cars) and was able to walk a couple of blocks and back to my car.  I'm still contending with mild to intense muscle inflammation caused by fibromyalgia but when I'm in the studio or the workshop I am successful at ignoring and working around the pain and making accomodations by pacing myself.  It helps that I'm good at tuning out distractions.

(Paula Cundiff's Art Van Go)

 The flip side of distractions is having interesting people visit in my studio.  Two watercolourists visited who are also in the building and I learned there is a life drawing class in the evenings and the price of admission is usually a bottle of wine (or diet coke if thats your flavor).  Michael, the artist behind me, brings his young daughter, prolly around 2yo, to his studio daily and she has the cutest voice and I love hearing what sounds like endless q & a.   Since Janet, a neighbor, has moved in, being at the studio has the added bonus of socializing...after conversations with her, I'm dizzy with fresh ideas.  She starts me down the path of brainstorming and I have to reel myself back (but its a super-fantastic issue to be faced with).  And yesterday, I had two seperate visits from old friends that I had not seen either of them in six years.  I was flooded with memories yesterday of things I had forgotten.  But with good friends it doesn't matter the time or the distance...the rhythm of the heart returns and re-connects.

Meet my youngest son

He is the spitting image of his father!

Ade, Mo, and Carter were in The Basement Workshop with me yesterday.  I worked on a design project and did the stitching and fusing on it today.  It will get a few seed beads and a stone (when I can find the ones I'm looking for).  This is the 2nd one...I'm calling it 2304:2...or thats what I'm calling it today.  If I stick with the title, then the previous one will have to be titled 2304:1  I could call it *therapy work.   

Ade took this picture of me working at The Beauty of Holiness Studio on Wednesday.  My art making time is regular sporadic snatches of time.  I walk in and look around and ask myself what can I do...I think I'm getting more done this way or at least if feels like it.  Today before I left the basement I soaked fabrics in bubble jet and another few pieces in Golden digital ground and hung them to dry...if I was actually working on "goals", taking the time to soak these fabrics or doing something like 2304:2 would have been pushed to "another day".

He signed up to enter into the Nature category in photography at the state fair.  You go man!  Okay, I'm off to dream land!  Go out and do something fun thhis weekend!

 

Feeling Good

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

 

Yesterday I returned to The Basement...it was like sugar in my bowl!  I started out by rearranging my sewing area since and returned my sewing machine to its resting spot.  It, too, had been in for a good cleaning and Valerie was right, I'm back in love and the machine is running smooth.  I took an journal size quilt I did years ago and cut it down into two 4"x6" postcards and edged them.  I was on such an incredible high after making them!!!  Just floating and smiling and feeling good!!!!  Can you believe me in such bright colours?!  Well it was made right after a workshop with Melody Johnson. The top one is my favorite...something about the

orange!  The bottom one makes me think of ocean waves.

 

 

These are for sale, 25 each, or both for 40.

 

Today I took the altered art area and rearranged it and on Monday or Tuesday I'll tackle the everything else area and then I'll return to my Learning Curves curriculum

. 

 

Sleep in peace when day is done
That's what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me

The answer to the question, "what are you writing these days?"

The paper is a heavy textured cotton like paper that I just love to close my eyes over rub. The writing is done using Faber-Castell Artist pens that glide beautifully over the dimpled paper.  The journal size is about 14x11 inches. The writing I started while in the hospital with pneumonia in both lungs.  I have at least 2 weeks to be house-bound, at which, gives me time to finish it.  I thought about adding colour but I love the stark contrast of the black and white.