the Art Blog of Sharon Kennick

I'm Becoming Princess Christmas Joy! Oh Noooooooo! (There's Always Something)

  Okay, what's wrong with this picture? What could possibly be wrong with a photograph of a fully decorated Solstice/Christmas tree? There's nothing inherently wrong about having poinsettias and sunflowers on a holiday tree, especially one that celebrates the return of the sun. Some of the ornaments are slightly unorthodox, but they all have meaning, evoking memories and sometimes outright laughter, like my niece's handmade Christmas Bats. It's a fun and lovely tree. What's so totally wrong is that this picture was taken today. In my living room. May 24th, almost Memorial Day. It's been standing there since Thanksgiving of 2009; nearly six months. Aaaugh! That's just WRONG! I'm turning into my sister!!! Nooooo...(The story of Princess Christmas Joy and her tree can be read here)

  It's been up for so long that a ritual has evolved around it. "So, you wanna take the tree down this weekend?" Kris asks on Thursday evening. "Yes," says I. "It's been up so long we'll have to hose it off and let it dry in the sun before putting it away. Let's plan on it."

  So we set out off toward the weekend with the best of intentions, two women with a plan; but there's always something. It's become inevitable; we've come to expect it. Yesterday brought high winds gusting to 55 mph; a perfect scenario for chasing the dismembered limbs of an artificial tree, helter-skelter, through the neighborhood. And ain't THAT an ugly image?! Then just to make sure we got the message, it snowed. The weekend before, same thing, but with winds gusting to 65 mph. Other weekends have been occupied with classes, rain, snow, community events, yadda-yadda... It's a two-person job; otherwise, I'd pack it up solo on a calm, sunny weekday. 

  We had planned to take it down Saturday morning, but got word that GiGiMota (my 76 year old mother) had been taken to the hospital with stroke symptoms. She's okay. According to her CT scan, it wasn't a stroke, but they don't really know what's going on. So they medicated her symptoms and are doing more tests today. Based on her symptoms, though, including the fact that she hasn't had a period for quite some time, my sisters and I in our cronely-old-wives-womanly-wisdom have decided she's pregnant. We will be contacting both the National Enquirer and Weekly Star to determine who will pay more for an exclusive. "76 year old woman expecting sextuplets! Claims immaculate conception!" A bit of gallows humor. We are a twisted lot. Well, it got GiGi to laugh, which was a good thing.

  Maybe next weekend our tree packing karma will shift, meanwhile, the Solstice tree will continue to grace our living room, gathering cobwebs...a holy day relic of tinsel and dust.

  Sooo...Here's what we did yesterday in lieu of dismantling the tree.

   In a frenzy of acrylic paint and gel medium, we transformed a pile of "ho-hum" scrapbook papers into a whole slew of fun and funky art papers a la Kelly Kilmer. Wouldn't they make awesome envelopes for mail art? Hmmm, the yummy possibilities...

  Earlier, I made this mail art piece, using a Fred Mullett stamp and Ranger Distress ink.

Titled "The One that Got Away," it calls to mind the opening lyrics of an Indigo Girls song, Poseidon. "A fisherman comes, and sticks his two poles in the sand. He stares out at the sea, just exactly like me; but I've got a book in my hand. We will have caught on to something by the end of the day, but mostly we think of the one that got away..."

  Early in the day I designed a personal faux postage stamp titled "Femail Art," featuring a photo of me done in the style of an Obama campaign poster. Fun! I love playing with digital art!

   There were several other mail art pieces, too. I've decided to keep a bunch on hand, to avoid being overwhelmed by the need to send something out...

   And inspired by the candy bar somebody mailed to Kris last week, I decided to get wild and send Mom a box of candy: Boston Baked Beans. Yum! Hope she likes them...

   I managed to cut and fold most of the papers for the art book in last week's post, and will be sewing it together this week. I can't wait to see it finished, with all the beads along the spine...

  And finally... there's this seasonal goddess series I've had in mind for some time. Collage, paint, pen and ink and stabilo, finished with a layer of encaustic. Here's the first, titled, "The Summer Queen." It shows Her against the sky, with Altair, Deneb and Vega: the Summer Triangle, a trio of navigational stars - a timeless boon to travelers and shamans and sailors, used nowadays by orbiting satellites. 

  I think the Snow Queen is next. The substrate is wood, and Kris, who's much better with power tools than I, has recently cut the 8x10 pieces I need to get started. They need sanding and wood filler and gel medium, and then everything will need a few days to dry. Methinks the prep may be finished in time to start work this weekend.

  Instead of taking down the tree...

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

Weekend Playtime and the Arrival of Spring

  I think that spring may have finally arrived in Northern Arizona. In most parts of the country, the ones that have four seasons anyway, the arrival of spring loosely coincides with the vernal equinox. Up here at 7,000 feet the seasonal shifts and milestones are wildly at variance with the solar calendar. Snow showers are common through mid-May. We watch the nighttime lows, hoping and wondering if this is a year of apples and lilacs. My personal yardstick for determining that spring has truly sprung is this: nighttime lows above freezing for five nights in a row; and as of last night - IT'S SPRING! Equally exciting, it looks like the apples and lilacs made it. 

  Sooo...there is yard work to do, gardens to plant, native grasses to be sown, terracing to build; there's hiking and nature photography, biking and outdoor festivals. We enjoyed a very busy weekend just past, starting with an ethno-botanical hike out at Wupatki National Monument, wrapping up an excellent outing by climbing a cinder cone to watch sunset dance across the Painted Desert. Springtime bliss with a day pack. Sunday was for yard work and art play. Trimming periwinkles and and pulling cheat grass, I looked up to find a robin obligingly posed in  a ponderosa pine.

   Studio time last week centered on several projects, finishing a book cover, painting a large version of a mail art piece for Kris and, of course, a couple of mail art pieces. Here's a photo of the book cover:

  I haven't quite decided what to bind into it: plain watercolor paper, cardstock, pre-painted or collaged pages...it's definitely destined to become an art journal of some kind, possibly a gift, maybe for me. Parts of the binding will be exposed along the spine, and beaded in purple, turquoise, magenta and gold. 

  The bulk of my time, though, has been spent in creating this. The large scale reproduction of "Sunrise: Inner Gorge."

  Oh! Look at that! I haven't signed it yet! It's been relatively humid this week, and the glazing layers took much longer than usual to dry, so I put off signing the painting until it slipped my mind completely. Fancy that. And easily remedied. The signature will be made in warm yellow, probably quinacridone nickel azo gold, vertically up the right hand margin.

  This is a mail art piece from early in the week, made using 140 lb. watercolor paper, a Fred Mullett fish stamp, Ranger Distress Ink, a Sakura Jelly Roll Pen, and Ranger pigment ink pad.

  As soon as the photo went up on my Facebook account, my sister, the recovering "Queen Works Like a Dog," posted a plaintive and pitiful wish to receive it, so it's now on the way to Central Arkansas.Y'all keep it a secret, okay? I am such a soft touch...the siblings can talk me into or out of just about anything...

  Our busy weekend came to a close with Kris and me playing in the studio together. Kris had seen an "exploding box" in our first issue of Bound and Lettered , and wanted to try her hand at constructing one. The magazine had photos only, and no instructions, but how hard can it be, thinks I, so I worked up a prototype and then turned her loose. Here's what she's made so far:

  I love the palette she's working in and the vibrancy of color. Something that helped the box go together fast was a stock of pre-painted art papers we had lying around, accumulated over various classes with Kelly Kilmer, and just waiting to be used in a project like this. Cool beans! Thanks Kelly! The design for a lid to hold it all together is floating around in my brain; I'll probably test it out after lunch...

  Speaking of which, unlike yours truly (who can go for most of a day forgetting to eat), Kris requires regular feeding, and *yikes,* it's almost lunchtime! Not to embarrass anyone by telling tales or anything, Kris may be a heckuva rocket scientist, but the culinary arts remain a deep mystery for her, so... I'm off to commune with the kitchen Muse.

  Thanks for visiting; some again soon.

News Flash: This arrived in the mail for Kris while we were waiting for lunch to cook...

  Someone mailed her a candy bar! Just threw an address label, stamps, and a greeting on it and dropped it in the box. Doesn't that beat all? A candy bar...Kinda gives new meaning to the phrase, "a good mail day" ...*head-shaking and a bit o' disbelief* ... 

More Tales from the Valley of the Sun

  Goodness! It's been two weeks since we got back from Kelly's classes in Phoenix, and I haven't told the rest of the story yet! *forehead smacking* How time flies. Soooo...here's part 2 of our excellent adventure in the valley of the sun.

  We arrived at Frenzy Stamper early on Saturday to crawl through Debbie's amazing little shop, and to go "oooh aaah" over all the new stuff she'd brought in since the last time we made the trip down. "Oh! Hey, did you see this?" we call across the store at one another. There's so much to see that it takes a whole weekend of early arrivals, lunch breaks, and slipping out of class to thoroughly explore the shop.

  This is Debbie, the heart and soul of Frenzy Stamper, and one of my favorite people. Doesn't she just radiate fun? (You can check out her blog here.) We found loads of new tools and toys to bring home, as always...stamps and tape (Kris has a tape thing going on lately), cut and dry foam, perforated faux postage paper to use with the template we bought last time, color spritzers (one of MY newest shticks) and loads of other cool stuff.

  The night before, we had taken another Kelly class, Metamorphosis, and today was for Rejuvenations, her first two-day class ever,  an art journal we built from the ground up and then collaged. A busy two-day project.

  Moseying over to our table, Kris and I were tickled to see that our friend, Barbara, had found a spot with us. Isn't that one of the great things about classes: the opportunity to reconnect with people you know, and  to make new friends with people you haven't met? We had a fabulous group to play among, and while I didn't get photos of everyone, here's Barbara, mitering the corners of her cover:

   Most of Saturday was spent constructing the book itself: covering and decorating the bookboard,  joining  covers to the spine, laying in endpapers, and then sewing in cardstock signatures. Here's a new friend, Renee, striking a pose while sewing pages into her journal:

   Kelly, demonstrating how to sew pages into our covers:

    This is the inside of Kris' finished cover, ready to sew:

  This cover was made by Jane Eileen, who went slightly off the reservation to produce this lovely cloth spined book with button and ribbon embellishments.

And here's my funky cover at the end of the day. Needless to say, a fun time was had by all... 

   I'm going to confess to something many of you might think is a little silly. In addition to watching for the first/last saguaro on the way down the hill... I believe in fortune cookies. There, I said it. At lunch on Saturday, everyone went together for carryout Chinese to bring back to the store. Kris and I had brought lunch from Trader Joe's that morning and stashed it in the fridge, so we diligently ate our  yummy T.J.'s salad and sandwiches at our work stations. Not like we were sacrificing anything, but  I just couldn't help but to whine a little about not having a fortune cookie of my own. Renee immediately jumped up and brought one to me. The Chinese place had given us one too many fortune cookies! A divine intervention! Here's what it said:

   Pretty deep fortune cookie, eh? Not quite sure what it means just yet, but this one's definitely going on the refrigerator. Maybe I'll turn it into a stamp...

   Saturday's adventure in bookbinding came to a happy close. Dinner in, shopping at Trader Joe's, hot tub. Aaaah...Although Flagstaff's demographic would definitely support a Trader Joe's, for some reason all we ever hear about them building up here is rumor. Someday. Soon, I hope. Meanwhile, we stock up anytime we're remotely near a TJ's.

  Sunday morning had us up bright and early, packing, figuring out what to take into the store and out of the heat, loading the car, checking out of the hotel. While Kris was loading the car I wandered the grounds shooting pictures of the fabulous flora. These are just a few of the beautiful things I found:

   When we left Flagstaff on Friday afternoon it was snowing, and it was divinely rejuvenating to spend some time in the warm, among these lush trees and shrubs. I love taking pictures of the flowers...does it show?

  With everything packed up, photographed, checked out, and bought, and with nothing else to do, we headed on down to Frenzy Stamper arriving almost an hour early to class. Debbie was kind enough to let us in for more shopping. Soon everyone else arrived, and we settled down for a day of collage in the books we'd made the day before.

  Things started out, well, nice and quiet, almost subdued, really. We were all being very good students, paying attention, following directions, and collaging our papers then, I'm not sure how, but at some point the wheels fell off the cart and we went OUT of control! Wild puns flying everywhere, howling laughter, hooting and singing and hollering. Artists GONE WILD! Barbara describes a part of our afternoon here in a way I never could. Oh my! I'm very proud to say that we may have set a new standard for fun at an art class...

  Here are some of the pages that came out of our day. This fabulous little girl page was made by Jennifer, a fun gal from another table. (The photo below is linked from her blog; the one I took didn't come out well due to lighting issues. The rest of her wonderful pages may be seen at her blog.)

  And this is one of Barbara's pages which I just LOVED:

   My book quickly took on a theme: "I am not lost. There's this map." Not sure why, but that's where the Muse took me...

  This next page will say something about my friend Ursa Major pointing to the North Star, and having my bearings... 

   I have my sea legs...

  And so on...

   It seems to be a book of metaphors and assets...

   And only the Muse knows quite where it's going to end up...

But it feels deep and profound.

  Hoping you all had a great Mother's Day among people you love. Kris and I went down to Sedona for an awesome hike and some photos.

  Studio time the last few days has been spent reproducing the canyon mail art piece in large format for Kris; all that remains is a second layer of black and the river, a couple of layers of glazing: it should be finished soon. The first few layers of paint have been applied to that book cover I'm working on, and I expect to wrap that up and start binding watercolor paper into it in the next day or so. Will post a heads up when they're done - I can't wait to show them to you!

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming...

  Today marks the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State, when National Guardsmen opened fire on student demonstrators protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four students and wounding nine others...a moment of silence.

  The prevailing political climate doesn't seem to have changed much since then. There is still a culture of extreme partisanship, paranoia, and the categorical demonization of those who disagree with us. Politicians work not so much for the people as to gain political advantage over the opposition. Ill-informed and inflammatory rhetoric issues from all sides of any political debate, lately centered on Arizona's SB1070. Informed, civil, political discourse seems to have died sometime in the fifties. Initially peaceful demonstrations erupted in (largely unreported) senseless and irrational violence on Saturday, while illegal aliens continue to die in the desert along our border. A small event occurred here in Flagstaff while history repeats itself: inflamed by the media, a Latina acted out vicious racial hostility on me yesterday at the market. I elected to walk away while I could, without engaging. Bad precedent to set, but I just didn't want to fight yesterday, especially with an irrationally enraged person.

  I'm devoutly hoping, on this day of remembrance, that we will learn from history in order that history not repeat itself. Another moment of silence...

  That said, this is a small abstract mail art piece I worked up yesterday morning. It's titled, "Sunrise, Inner Gorge," representing a dawn view of the Colorado River, from the peaceful depths of the Grand Canyon.

   Destined for my friend in Greece, Katerina, it's made with Golden acrylic paint on untreated 300 lb. watercolor paper, overlaid with a wash of quinaquidrone nickel azo gold. Kris has asked me to paint another one, but much larger, to hang in the house, so yesterday's shopping trip included a stop at the artist supply to buy a big canvas and a large supply of Golden's Titan Buff, which is, I think, maybe, the source of the translucent light I'm seeing. Upon lightening the value of my palette, the Muse hollered, "Titanium white?! For Pete's sake, no! Titan buff, titan buff!" Yes, ma'am, says I...I think the magic worked.

  Let me leave you today with these words from Desiderata:

  "Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

  "Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

  "Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But don't distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

  "Therefore, be at peace with the Divine, whatever you conceive that to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."

  Blessed be, blog friends.

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon!

A Work in Progress

  Inspired by a project in the latest issue of Bound and Lettered, I started work on a new journal cover yesterday afternoon.

   Although the magazine contains very clear and precise instructions for making a clone of the featured project - you know me - I just couldn't resist the impulse to take the methods and techniques described and put my own creative spin on them. The Muse is having loads of fun.

  The foundation for this book is an old Readers Digest Condensed, deconstructed leaving the soft spine intact. The instructions call for a hard spine. As I will later be piercing the spine to bind pages into it, we will see how well that works...fingers crossed. I can always go back and insert a hard spine if it doesn't. Crumpled tissue paper adhered with watered down gesso forms the first two layers of texture, followed by a layer of cheesecloth, also adhered with gesso.

  I've never thought of using gesso as an adhesive before, and needless to say, it's a very wet process. As my next deviation from the instructions required slightly a dryer surface, I set the piece aside for a couple of hours before applying light molding paste (and then caulk when I exhausted my meager supply of molding paste...) through a stencil. The original instructions would have had me create an embossed area on the cover by adhering a Tim Holtz grungeboard cutout on top of the cheesecloth, and then proceed to immediately apply a final layer of crumpled tissue. The molding paste and caulk requiring time to set up, I set the cover aside overnight to dry, and will apply that final layer of texture later today. I can't wait to post photos of the finished piece.

  I'm very pleased with the way it's turning out, and can almost see the finished book, graced with layers of purple, magenta, red and metallic gold. And although it's built upon the ideas and the inspiration of another artist (to a point), I still feel that I can proudly claim the piece as my own, as an original. As artists we all stand on the shoulders of our teachers, of the artists who came before us. If we didn't, everyone's art would look the same, and there would have been no evolution in the arts whatsoever.  I love the inspiring words Michael DeMeng has to say on the subject.

  I haven't forgotten about posting the rest of our excellent adventure in the Valley of the Sun, y'all; I just went on a little excursion with the Muse, and will post again in the next couple of days.

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.