Seamless Skin

I need to go see a man about a horse...

My mother says this when she is asked about her destination when she heads out and it is her way of kindly saying "none of your business".  Carter has picked this up from her and says it sometimes when he is getting his coat on to go out.  Carter is 2; my mother is 83.  

I'm a babysitting Nana...yes I am.  Its me and Carter these days.  Mo is looking for another child care center and in between time I'm filling in.  He is spending the night with us and Mo is here after classes each evening.  He has tons of toys here and I'm once again evaluating children's programming.  I find myself singing without reason "there is an animal in trouble..." and I think the Backyardigans Rock!

In the photo you can see one of my  "highly prized" cups that I showed as a sketch in the post below.  The set up above is my sequestered winter art spot on the kitchen table.  When I need to clear the table, I turn around in my chair and pile it in the corner behind me...

The winter has warmed up in the last few days but I think ice and snow are being predicted again this weekend.  I'm sketching and collaging away here.  Strathmore selected the collage, Finding Peace, (post below) to feature in their eNewsletter, blog, and FB page.  Only 4 were selected so I'm pretty happy about that.  Here is the one I started this morning...

It is keeping me half way sane to participate in the Sketchbook Challenge and the Visual Journal Workshop.  I find the collaging much more intuitive and didactic in process than sketching.  I mentioned this on Liz Plummer's blog and she shared that her reaction was opposite.  Anyone else care to weigh in on this?  I'm curious to know.   I'm also going to participate in this year's One World One Heart Event for Bloggers.  I've never participated before but have always enjoyed the blog h0pping in previous years...if you're curious, click on the logo in my sidebar under "Dig This".

Collage, a Retake; Sketch, a Debut

This is for the Strathmore Workshop by Pam Carriker.  After I did this one I thought it would be enhanced with stitching.  I'm working both sides of the paper in this journal.  If I decide to explore it with stitch embellishment, I'll make a copy and collage it down onto water colour paper and go for it.  You can see the way it looked prior to this stage by clicking here.

and from the other sketch book, here is another highly prized coffee cup...the ones up 'til this point were my tea cups.  

 

Collage Preoccupation

I dunno, but maybe its all this time inside that is making me preoccupied with collaging.  I'm back to working on the kitchen table with the family having to eat around me and me being territorial about them needing to make room for my supplies.   I love when Carter goes to get his crayons and his Handy Mandy colouring book and sits with me for all of 5 minutes (age multiplied by attention span equals 5 minutes, but he is great at putting up his supplies before moving on, and he actually gets quite a bit done in those 5 minutes all the while talking talking talking.  I wish I could do that).

The Strathmore workshop is only a month long and the journal is 44 pages, I'm trying to pace myself over time.  I don't want 44 pages reflecting the first week in January...I'm trying to think in terms of story and narrative.  Here are the beginnings of 3 more pages:

The last one is a picture of me and my hand as they appeared 20+ years ago.  I was in a poetic performance with Voices in the Wind, a local group of women poets that I belonged to when this photo was taken by Keith Williams, a now retired photo-journalist who has helped Ade, my youngest, hone his picture-taking skills.  But have you noticed that 4 out of 5 images display disembodied body parts?  Okay, okay, I will not go all psycho-analytical about it...I'm just noticing, thats all. 

Peace,

So, What Do You Do?

Have you ever gone back and randomly read your old blog post?  I did. The majorest (yeah I know its not a word) difference is I no longer share as much of my day to day thinking and doings and, also, I almost never discuss my family and friends unless we merge in some way on the art making trip.   I don't know from reading my blog that you would know I've been partnered to the same fine man for 25 years, that I have 3 grown ass adult children and 3 intelligent grand-children, or that I worked as a social worker for 21 years...you know, all that social-demographic identifiers that people use for introductions and getting to know one another.  Whenever I found myself at a social gathering of strangers and was asked the question, "so what do you do?", my standard response was "in relation to what?".  I believe that a better intro would be to ask someone what they think about something you care deeply about.  For example, "what do you think about mountain top removal?".  Even if I don't have a clue, I can say in honesty that I don't know enough about the issue and then here we have a teachable/learnable moment.  I tend to remember people who have taught me something more than by what profession they hold.  Before I got around to finding out what you did for a living, I would know how you spend your precious time in tending to the heart and soul of you...if that happens to coincide with what you do for a living, then I know its going to be a great conversation because you'd be one of the very fortunate employed people who happen to spend the majority of their time engaged in their passion.    I'd like to know first, what you dream about, what gifts are you holding on to until the "perfect" time comes for you to use them before I know about your job and what zip code you live in.   

I had no clue that the above was even on my mind until I started typing.  What I came here to write about was my participation in 2 online visual journal projects.  One is sponsored by Strathmore Journals and the other is The Sketchbook Challenge working alongside 16 groovy (I love it when I can use that word) artists.

Although both are about visual journaling, they are two different pieces of fruit in the same bowl.  Here are the 2 pages I started for the Strathmore workshop taught by Pam Carriker.

I plan to add more colour when I can get out to get my watercolours.  (Woke up yesterday with a soar sore throat and upper chest inflammation, on another antibiotic and back to staying in).  Pam's workshop is about recycling your own art work for journaling.  The woman's face I sketched some years ago and the red paper came out of a LAFTA workshop by Debbie Levine on making Paste Papers.

This is my 2nd one in process. This is all paper but the border was a remnant from Penny Sisto's  tepee that she replaced.  It had been painted and what not, but the actual fabric disappeared into thin air some years ago and all I have is the image I had scanned. 

The Sketchbook Challenge is assigned a monthly theme for participants to sketch as often as they wish for the entire month on the theme.  January's is HIGHLY PRIZED.  I spent a day thinking (really over thinking it) until I realized  I don't have to go all esoteric on the subject and just sketch something I place some value on.  When that light bulb came on I went to the kitchen cabinet and gathered my 4 favorite cups for drinking coffee, tea, and hot cocoa.  Here is the first one that came from Korea in a Ya-Ya exchange with a female solider close to 9 or 10 years ago.  I don't remember her name or her Ya-ya name but I adore the tea cup with the lid.

Here is my sketch...

My goal was to focus on lines.  Ade thought I should do the shadow so I added it for the 2nd sketch.  I bet you'd like to see the actual cup, uh?  I'm going to do all the 4 cups and then I'll get photos of the real cups up later.

Peace,