the Art Blog of Sharon Kennick

Work/Play/Art in the Garden of Life

  Summer is so very lush. Filled with work and play and art, it's often hard to tell where one begins and another leaves off. Not that we'd necessarily want to determine precisely where any boundaries set them apart. If one exists at all...ideally, perhaps, they mingle and muddle and integrate into the cohesive flow of now. 

  Harvesting beans comes to mind. Bending over the plants (at my age) is work, and there's frequently a little back pain these days, but I'm full and happy that my gardening project, nurtured no less than any other artwork, has come to fruition, and I enjoy playing "hide-and-seek" with the often elusive pods. Later, more work/play/art happens as they're transformed - cooked and chopped and changed into a soul satisfying bean salad lunch. And in that happy zen gestalt of work/play/art, I seem to find the greatest joy in living, and the very heart of creativity. Does that make sense?

  Speaking of creativity, an artist friend, Judy Wood, has posed a question on her blog, "Why do you create?" inviting everyone to share their thoughts, inspirations, and musings. And it's interesting reading. Pop over and check it out! I'd love to see your thoughts.

  Noodling around in the studio the other day, I stumbled on a fun new application for those painted papers we made in a Kelly Kilmer class last spring. Remember these?

  Taking a cue from my "With One Sheet of Paper" class, I began by accordion folding the 12"X12" page into sixteen 3"X3" squares. Then, using a ruler and sharp exacto knife, I carefully cut the paper into accordioned pages along the fold lines, leaving a "plough" fold at the end of each cut. I especially like this bookmaking technique because none of the paper is wasted or hidden in the folds.

  I love the way the pages have turned out.

  I think I'll take a black pen and outline some of the forms I see in the paint splashings, then build a story around them. Do you see the mountains and amazing Arizona sunset skies in the page below?

  I decided to use origami paper for the end papers.

  A little glue, some paint, some cardboard, and suddenly there's a little book! What fun! I'll definitely be making more of these. The possibilities are endless.

  Not long ago, I started playing with watercolor for the first time. Small pieces, ones that I could work on and maybe finish while breaking from yardwork during the heat of the day. It's an entirely new medium for me and, I must say, somewhat challenging, but I'm loving it. This is a landscape in the Painted Desert, near Wupatki National Monument, with the sun low in the western sky.

Sunrise from "a sky island" in the Huachuca Mountains.

  This piece started as a "plein air" painting out at Wupatki, near sunset on a stormy evening. I love how, looking across the vast spaces in the desert, you can see brilliant patches of sunlit landscape among the shadowed patches of rain.

   I'm strongly considering taking a w/c class at the community college this fall...it's a fascinating and challenging medium, and lush with potential.

  Deep into the monsoon season, the gardens are thriving. These are a few photos from my morning rounds...

  Egyptian onions blooming, tucked up under a viney mass of runner beans.

  Two mystery vines appeared this year, volunteers sprouting out of the compost. We scratched our heads and wondered...watermelon? Cantaloupe? Too big to be cucumbers...A mystery no more, they set fruit, and turn out to be hubbard squash, one of my favorites. Yum. A happy surprise in the garden.

  Sunlight on the first bell peppers...

  The yellow crookneck squash have taken over. This happens every year. At the height of production they make way more squash than we can consume. Some mornings when I go out, there are five huge squash, ready to harvest. We manage to give quite a bit of it away, that and swiss chard. I tell myself, next year I'll plant just one instead of two. Then when spring comes 'round again, knowing that two will be one too many, I go ahead and plant two anyway, and laugh at myself.   This photo is of our final work/play/art landscaping project of the summer. It's a small three circuit labyrinth in the backyard. First, we're laying out the flagstone walkway, then we set the stone into the earth. Last, we'll plant sheep fescue, a short, green, native grass which won't need much water (a plus in high desert country), and that will probably never grow tall enough to mow (a bigger plus?). The labyrinth has deep spiritual meaning for me, and I've wanted to build one since we moved in - seven years ago. I'm so very, very happy to finally be creating it!

  Remember: Work/play/art; repeat! Hope you're having a great summer!

   Thanks for visiting! Come again soon!

   

 

 

 

 

The Rites of Spring

  The phrase elicits visions of firelit dance in shadowed groves, or pagan rituals graced with devas and dervishes and garlanded maidens, doesn't it? Not so much in the real world, I suppose, although Kris and I do occasionally light candles upon an impromptu altar amid a celebratory circle of sacred friends. In spring, we "bless the fields" in the old way,  planting red-dyed eggs in the vegetable garden after meditation and song, followed always by a symbolic feast of moon-shaped shortbreads. In a neo-pagan twist on the old "chicken-or-the-egg" question, our celebration inevitably concludes with ritual debate over whether we'll reap chickpeas or eggplant from our vernal observance. To date, however, we've seen neither...

  It's been a busy week for spring rituals of a more mundane sort. The reseeding of grass, planting vegetable gardens, watering, flowers to transplant, weeding, pruning, more watering, long term landscaping projects, and watering again. There've been rituals of "the firsts" this week, too: the first sunburn, the first potato plant, the first bean plant, the first penstemon blooms, the first hummingbird.

  As much as I enjoy them, the rites of spring haven't left much time for studio play. That will change with the summer monsoon rains, when undone yard work and gardening projects are set aside for the rituals of another season.

  I DID manage to finish that book I've been working at in an off-again/on-again way over the last few weeks, binding it with plain watercolor paper and an assortment of colorful beads. Oh - while trying not to bleed on the pages after inevitably poking myself with the needle. Happens every time...

  Earlier this week, I took a wild hair and became intrigued with the idea of interpreting my slot canyon photos in collage. Here's what came of it...                  

It's made from odds and ends of scrapbook papers and matte medium on a base of 140 lb. watercolor paper. Once the glue dried, I gave it some shading and shaping using Ranger Distress Ink dabbed on a Cut 'n' Dry nib tucked into the shaft of an automatic pencil, and then applied another couple layers of gel medium. I'm slowly working up the nerve to wash a little acrylic paint on it here and there. Don't know why I have such apprehension about it. An overcoat of gel medium ensures that the paint doesn't automatically become a permanent layer unless I want it to. Go figure... Oh - as the piece was drying it curled up pretty heavily at the edges. Quick fix: once everything has dried, spritz the back with water and set it under a dictionary for a few hours. Flat again! Woo-hoo! 

  It seems a little cosmic that, once I began playing with collage interpretation of photography, this book turned up. Although I haven't had the time to read it thoroughly, I'm definitely impressed with what I've seen. It's a comprehensive and clear guide to both collage technique and fundamental artistic principles as applied to collage. These are a few chapter headings: "Texture," "Gesso," "Line and Form," "Paper Play," "Imagery," "Unification and Composition." Collage Lab, by Bee Shay. I give it a solid thumbs up! You might also want to take a peek at Bee Shay's blog here.

  Studio play has been pretty limited lately. Early mornings, before I head out to play in the dirt, I've been working up arty envelopes using some of the "metamorphosed" papers Kelly showed us how to make.

  Fun, attractive, and durable, the gel medium surface will grab just about any of the inks we have. Can't wait to use them!  

  One of my favorite "rites of spring" is hiking. Every year, about this time, Kris and I commit to hiking at for least one day every weekend. Some years we do better than others; this year we've managed to keep that promise to ourselves pretty well. Here are some photos of Sunday's hike out to Keyhole Sink, about 25 miles west of Flagstaff.

  Keyhole Sink is a box canyon eroded into an old lava flow. An anomaly in the high desert ponderosa forest, it home to a year-round spring-fed pool, a riparian habitat in the middle of nowhere.

  The path in is only about a mile long over easy terrain, lined with fascinating reminders of ancient inhabitation. This is the remains of an unexcavated pit house near the trail, abandoned about a thousand years ago. A circular depression covered with stones is a dead giveaway. Nature doesn't generally make circular arrangements of stones by herself...

   The area is home to some pretty interesting plant species, too. This one isn't in any of my books! It looks almost exactly like a daisy without a stem. The flowers bloom directly out of a basal rosette! I must remember to take the photo with, next time we're out at Wupatki, to show the volunteer botanist.
   Recent excursions into the wild have always presented us with a lizard photo-op, and Sunday was no different. This fellow performed defensive push-ups on his log for awhile, before settling down for a portrait. Will have to look up his (actually, probably a her) species.

   One of the coolest things about Keyhole Sink is the petroglyphs. There's evidence that people inhabited the area just above the bluffs, herding deer and other wildlife into the box canyon and leaving records on the rocks. No one really knows what any of the petroglyphs symbolize, but this one reminds me of a frog...

  The squiggly arrow is thought to represent a journey (either corporeal or spiritual) or perhaps a stream...

  I am captivated by the rock formations, the erosion patterns, the striations and layers that make up the stone beneath the lava. It's amazing, too, what will take root in the most barren places. Is this a metaphor I see before me? (Apologies for the Shakespearean malaprop...) 

  One of the lesser pertoglyph panels, below, shows what seem to be highly anthropomorphic figures, almost ghostly in appearance, and the suggestion of another squiggly arrow. What can it mean?  
   And the main panel, crowded and layered with symbols and figures...
   Once the light faded, and we'd thouroghly explored the little canyon, Kris and I climbed the bluff to see what could be seen, and discovered brilliant cacti in bloom, three of them, hugging the rim of the canyon. The flower looks like a claret cup, but the structure of the body is very different, multi lobed, and not as squat as the claret cup...          

  As I was shooting the final photo of the evening, a little miracle occurred. At the moment I snapped the shutter, a swift little hummingbird flew into the frame, hoping to feed on the cactus bloom. The camera was set on auto-focus, and he was frightened away by the "whir-beep" sound, but the camera managed to catch him before he flew off. On auto-focus, the shutter speed isn't high enough to freeze his wings, but I'm for sure not complaining...               

  The first hummingbird, among the many rites of spring.

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

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.

The Rite of the First Saguaro: A Weekend in the Valley of the Sun - Day 1

  We're back from an inspirational and rejuvenating hegira into the Valley of the Sun. I wouldn't want to live there by any stretch of the imagination; I'm more a "small town girl" at heart. But you know, toward the end of a long cold winter it's soooo nice to take a break, to get a taste of what's moving slowly up the hill: warm summer days and nighttime lows above freezing. Stocking up at Trader Joe's and shopping for new tools and toys at Frenzy Stamper only sweetens the pot. 

  The REAL action takes place when we drop our art supplies on the table to play with Kelly. Kelly Kilmer is my favorite art instructor of all time. Seriously. Take classes with her whenever you have the opportunity. They're both fun and full of innovative ideas and techniques, and Kelly is a fun-loving, laid-back, fabulously talented and enthusiastic teacher.

  On Friday evening we took her "Metamorphosis" class, and with gesso, gel medium and a little paint, learned to transform ordinary, everyday scrapbook paper into fabulous background paper. How cool is that? And who doesn't have a pile of ho-hum paper lying around just waiting to be transformed?

  Here's a small sampling of the papers we came home with:

Can you see how the original printed design just b-a-r-e-l-y shows through the layers of paint (above)? Such richness of color and texture!

There's not so much of the original paper to be seen at first glance in this next piece, but if you look closely at the edges you can see how the original color contributes overall to the finished paper.

The above piece is what we like to call a "happy accident." Unplanned and entirely spontaneous, it was painted by fiat. I used it to clean off stencils and brushes, to sop up excess paint on other papers, and clean my palette at the end of the evening. 

I love the depth in this piece. Can you see the original text?

  This last piece is one of Kris' creations. Although I couldn't say why, it speaks to me at some deep level;  I love the layers of color, and how she used her fingers to move paint around in the top layer. A bold and beautiful transformation. Gel medium, gesso and acrylic paint. Fabulous class!

  At some point between classes I mentioned to Kelly that I couldn't find deli wrap in Flagstaff. We'd used it as substrate material in a prior class, and I had been trying in vain ever since to secure a supply. And you know, I was really just thinking she could point me to a website or someplace I could find it online, but we went straight out to her car, and she gave me an entire box that just happened to be in the trunk. How generous is that? This is just one of the many things I appreciate about her so... Thanks Kelly!

  Kris and I have this little ritual we do on the way to and from Phoenix. Maybe it seems a little, well, childish, but it gives us much pleasure and anticipation. To Phoenix from home is a two-and-a-half hour drive, and we know we're halfway there, either coming or going, when we sight the first/last saguaro. It sits just past the Sunset Point rest stop on I-17, visible from either direction at the top of the mesa, just as it descends into Black Canyon City and the Sonora Desert. Ordinarily it's starkly visible, standing tall and green against the varied browns, pinks, reds, muted yellows, and greys of the Arizona landscape. This time, though, we almost missed it. You see, we've never driven down the hill during April when everything is green and the wildflowers are in full bloom. It was pleasantly disorienting to see lush waysides and the normally dry stream beds and washes full to brimming. A very different sort of beauty which, within a month or so, will revert to the beauty we are used to seeing along that stretch of highway. We almost missed the first saguaro among the greenery...

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon!

Catching Up and Happy Earth Day 2010!

  It's been a pleasant week here in Northern Arizona, sunny with daytime highs hovering in the mid-sixties, not too windy. It's been a week for yard work, pruning, transplanting hollyhocks, mulching, prepping the vegetable garden, pondering what to put where. With an eye to the oncoming dry season we spent a couple of afternoons raking nearly a foot of accumulated needles and debris out from beneath a huge old ponderosa pine in the side yard. Fire season will be on us soon, but for today there's a welcome unseasonable rain, a little thunder, hail off and on. Chilly and wet. I'm grateful we crossed off much of our outdoor "to do" list earlier in the week.

  Studio play this week has revolved around projects for Kris and a box of photos she brought home from a recent trip back East. Old family photos - priceless! One of her grandfathers was a photographer, so many of them were not only taken by him, but processed  with a grandfather's loving hands. This is one of my favorites:

  It's a photo of Kris, taken by her grandfather. Don't you just love those red shoes? I'll confess to manipulating this one a bit. The original photo was somewhat faded by time, but I wanted to make it seem even older while at the same time emphasizing those precious red shoes.

  Here's the process I used. Opening the scanned original photo in my image editing software (PaintShop Pro9), I duplicated and then pasted it as a new image, twice, so there were now two copies of the original photograph open in the window, then closed the original. (A lesson learned the hard way, closing the original keeps me from inadvertently making irreversible changes to it.) One copy was saved in its original form and set aside for a bit. The other copy was digitally greyscaled and then colorized with an old newspaper-ish sepia tone. Next, I copied and pasted it onto the set aside photo as a new layer. Reducing the opacity of the pasted layer to 85% allowed just a touch of the color in the original bottom layer to bleed through. Finally, I erased the shoes in the sepia-toned top layer, so that the red shoes in the bottom layer could shine and go "bam!" Merged the two layers into a single image and saved it. Wah-lah! I SO enjoy playing with digital imagery.

  To the left is a digital project I made for Kris. She loved the three Earth Day stamps I'd already produced, and asked for one of her own. The original photo was shot last year out at Wupatki National Monument, at dusk, looking toward the east, out across the Painted Desert. They're hard to see in this tiny version of the photo, but if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you should be able to make out "anti-solar rays" emanating from the center point of the horizon. A beautiful and fleeting phenomenon.

  Kris also asked me to produce a stamp featuring a special photograph of her grandparents, taken when they were young, and I was more than happy to oblige. This is an extreme crop of the original picture, with a gamma correction applied to increase the brightness and bring more light into it. The photo had a fabulous border that I cut and pasted onto the crop. I thought it would be a sweet touch to make this a "forever" stamp...

(Untimely interrupted and resumed on 5/22) 

  As sometimes happens, the snow, hail, and rain knocked out our internet access for the rest of yesterday, right in the middle of writing a post! So, I'm finishing this up on Earth Day, 2010, the 40th anniversary. A blessed celebration to you all! Do you remember the first Earth Day? Are you doing anything special in observance? Drop me a line! I'd love to hear what you're doing to honor the mother of us all today!

  Me, I'm not doing much at all, sad to say. I've been struggling with severe allergies this week, taking the maximum safe dose of benadryl, mentally out of it and pretty dopey, a little slow and physically clumsy. It's definitely not a good idea to drive, and yesterday's journal page reflects my frustration with this annual intrusion on my routines.

  I want to find some kind of harmony with this seasonal rhythm, make peace with myself for having allergies and the physical dibility associated with medication. I should actually be grateful for the meds, side effects and all! The alternative ain't pretty! 

  We're headed down the hill tomorrow, into the Valley of the Sun, for a weekend of R&R: outdoor hot tubbing, swimming, socializing, dining, and classes with Kelly Kilmer at Frenzy Stamper, in Phoenix. Kelly and Debbie (the owner of FS) are two of my favorite people in the whole world, and Kelly's classes are always loads of fun, so we're looking forward to an awesome, creative weekend. In a place where allergy season is over, no less! (Phoenix is about a mile lower in elevation than Flagstaff and, consequently, way ahead of us seasonally.) Where they have Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods! Woo-hoo! I look forward to reporting that a fun time was had by all...

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

The Muse Delivers

  Y'all are familiar with The Muse, right? The bringer of those divinely inspired little flashes of inspiration and artful insight? I have yet to discover the formula, the magic spell that will conjure her up; she comes and goes at will, airily regardless of the prayers and pleas of this lowly artist...

  I've had a piece on my mind, a piece of mail art owed to a lady in Greece who sent me a lovely hand made card painted with Greek blue grass. And I've wanted to send her something uniquely Arizona in return. So I scratch my head, mentally calling out to The Muse for ideas. I putz around in the studio, scratch my head some more, waving psychic arms, calling - Hello? He-llo-o? Are you there? Yo! I need some help down here...Hello? Aloof as always, she peeks into the studio, snorts under her breath, and promptly leaves again, trailing clouds of fantasy film, collage papers and artsy fiber. Fickle wench. Durn.

  But this morning I figured out a piece of her puzzle. She can't give me any help as long as I'm standing around scratching my head. Nor will she do something for me that I can figure out on my own. She shows her face and participates only once I've put paint to paper, once I've actively engaged the creative process and started working. Duh (visualize forehead smacking here).

  Here's the piece I finally made for Katerina. It's an Arizona sunset with blooming agaves, paddle cactus, and Venus in the evening sky.

   Scanning the painting muted the colors somewhat; they're actually quite vibrant - paynes gray, cadmium yellow and primary magenta on a 4"x6" substrate of 300 lb. watercolor paper. I tried something new and applied the acrylics with a dead credit card. The Muse hollered, Yes! so I guess she had as much fun as I did. I like the technique. Alot. The detail work was done with a deep blue copic marker (brush tip). Ordinarily, watercolor paper would absorb a copic marker - it will run and get all fuzzy looking (bad fuzzy looking) but, with a layer of acrylic paint under it, the marker worked out fine. I wanted to try painting detail with the card, but played it safe instead. Next time. Venus against the night sky is a teensy dot done with a Krylon silver paint pen. 

  This is the envelope it's traveling to Greece in, made from the cover of an old Arizona Highways magazine. I think she'll be pleased.

   So that's the key. Conversations with The Muse occur only, I mean, ONLY when I quit hollering for help and scratching my head. She comes out to play when I do, where paint meets paper and where creativity flows, unhurried, without coercion or force. I need to make a placard for the studio to remind me of that little piece of insight. Something like "Just Paint!" or maybe "Put the Paint on the Paper! Best Regards, The Muse."

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.