the Art Blog of Sharon Kennick

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch: Catching Up

  Hello blog friends! After blogging about the big fire it must seem like I dropped off the face of the earth. I haven't, really. I've just been preoccupied with projects that require completion  before the monsoon rains come. So, I've spent most of the last couple of weeks outside, working in the sun...

 
...and covered in dirt from head to toe, literally. Kris would laugh when she saw my dirty face at the end of the day. I've been too pooped to post.

 One of the projects that's not quite done yet is resetting the flagstone next to our driveway. It has settled at least an inch, over the years, to become an area where water and snowmelt accumulate. It doesn't drain well at all, making a trip to the curb with trash and recycle bins bumpy and a hazardous. While taking up the stone, I turned one of them over to find this...

...a heart eroded into the underside of the stone. I know there's a metaphor here, somewhere.

  The biggest undertaking this summer, however (and the cause of my absence in blog-world), has been landscaping the front and side yards. Our front yard has a steep east-facing slope, steep enough that, by 9 a.m., the angle of the sun would make it high noon on the slope. Nothing but weeds would grow there, and we had almost given up hope until I had the idea of terracing it. Shortly after the fire, we knuckled down and dug in.

   With the terracing finished, we planted a native grass, blue gramma, which will not need to be watered once it's well established - which is a major plus in the high desert. Since the gramma is sensitive to traffic, we made a flagstone walkway, across the front of the house, to the terraced rock garden on the south slope. If we'd had our thinking caps on, we'd have laid a path from the sidewalk to the front door before putting the grass seed in. It will just have to wait...

   Then we applied our labors to the south side yard, laying another flagstone path alongside the house, to the back yard gate.

  That flower bed up against the house used to contain a mass of sickly iris that never bloomed. Up under the eaves and in the shadow of our ponderosa pine, it doesn't see much of what little rain we do get. I love iris, but they need quite a bit of water, and I since I'm all about native/adapted plants and low maintainence landscaping, I'm replacing them with penstemons, cosmos, spirea, mallows, and yarrow. It's become the temporary home for wayward flowering weeds...

 About ten days after the grass seed went in, and about 3 hours a day spent watering (to get the grass up and established before the monsoon rains could wash it all away...), this is how it's all morphed.

  I love how it's turning out. Since this is the first successful planting, we're seeing alot of weed seedlings, so I'm out for a couple of hours every morning on weed patrol. Monsoon has begun and twice daily waterings are over; next year we should be able to skip watering altogether. The neighbors are in shock, and wondering what those two crazy girls are going to do next...

  Here are some photos of the rest of our gardens. First are the white yarrows. There are also red and pink ones in other parts of the yard:

The first squash...it bloomed this morning.

Skyrockets are in the foreground. A hummingbird came to breakfast among them this morning. Indian paintbrush and desert four o'clocks grace the midground.

The first bell pepper:

I love hollyhocks. My maternal grandmother, an avid gardener like me, had them when I was a child.

This is a fairly new bed, with chives, mallows, cosmos, tarragon, and Apache plume.

The pole beans, I believe, are going to outgrow these tomato cages. Vegetable gardening is done in raised beds, 3' by  6', filled with 12" of carefully composted soil. A must in volcanic cinder land.

This is one of my favorite flowers of the desert southwest. It's called by several names, most commonly indian blanket, or blanket flower. It reminds me of an Arizona sunset.

  Art play has been pretty limited, snatched when I've had too much sun, or while waiting for lunch to settle. And it's all been little projects that I could finish quickly. I started playing with the book, "Collage Lab," mentioned in a prior post, and got through the chapter on texture. I'm finding it really nice to go back to basics and be reminded of fun techniques I'd forgotten, and a few new things I never learned. These are a few of the sample exercises and experiments in texture I played with:

  They'll probably be bound together in a book as sort of a visual primer on texture.

  There's been quite a bit of mail art, too. Some of these are not quite finished yet, needing text of some kind before being sent off.

   All this heavy labor in the yard has left me feeling my age, bum knee, back problems, post-dislocated shoulders. My chiropractor shakes her head every week when I tell her what I've been up to. I looked in the mirror a couple of days ago, and received a huge shock. I didn't recognize myself. Who is that old woman? I wondered. What did they do with Sharon, and when will they bring her back? Last time I noticed, I was just a girl, middle aged, maybe forty-two-ish, and on the inside, I'm really just a wise fifteen-year-old. How disorienting to see myself growing...old.

  Kris brought me this one day, a cupcake, from the local cupcake lady, "Katy's Cupcakes," who operates out of a lunch truck parked in front of the old Furniture Barn on Milton...   

...and suddenly, I was five years old again.

  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* ... 

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!

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.

Springtime Noodlings, and a Postcard for the Recovering "Queen Works-Like-a-Dog"

  Spring has finally come to northern Arizona. The sky is the most incredible blue I have ever seen. Penstemons are bursting from their winter beds, purple asters (a favorite wildflower of mine) are pushing up through the dry soil, and apple blossoms swell on the tip of every twig. Any day will bring horned toads and banded lizards sunning on the rocks in the flower beds. We spread a fresh layer of mulch on the pathways through our yard. I love springtime, and that's what today's journal page is all about.

  Noodling in the studio these days almost always involves mail art. Post cards and stamps, envelopes and greeting cards - I love them all! With the 40th anniversary of Earth Day in mind, I've designed two commemorative faux postage stamps. The one on the left, below, is from a favorite photo of mine, titled "Life on the Edge," taken at Hermit's Rest in Grand Canyon N.P. last winter. The other, "Whodat!" is a male banded lizard, shot on a hike through Wupatki National Monument last summer.

  More noodling around produced this little collaged piece, with a lovely monument valley envelope, and another stamp, featuring a digitally manipulated photograph of our dog Chamois, with a powdering of snow on her face from chasing a ball with reckless abandon headlong into a snowbank.

    

 

 

   One of my sisters, "Queen Works-Like-A-Dog," is recovering from spinal surgery this week, so today's musings and noodlings included a get well post card to cheer her highness' journey.

   The text reads, "I crawled across the desert on hands and knees, and fought Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death to steal these healing amulets for you. I hope they work." And I hope she laughs, but not too hard.

Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

All's Right with the World...

  Kris made the long journey home yesterday, leaving BWI at some god awful hour in the morning to arrive home in Flagstaff shortly before noon. Homecoming is sweet for all of us, but no more so than for the dogs, I think. They greet her at the door full of wiggles and wags, squealing dog-joy and relief. The pack is whole again! Pet-me-pet-me-pet-me! After a homecoming lunch of noodle soup and wild blueberry pie, we decompress in the studio with art journaling and play time. Molly and Chamois stay as close to Kris as they can get, lying their heads in her lap while she works.

  I've read that dogs have the developmental personality of a 2-3 year old, so we occasionally have them treated by a doggy acupuncturist for separation anxiety before and during these long trips of Kris'. I thought they were doing okay; it seems they were missing their "other mommy" more than I knew.

  Owing mail art to several people (my mailbox runneth over, so to speak), I decided to chip away at the backlog while catching up with Kris across the countertop.

 

 

 

    Life is back to normal. Two mommies play in the studio on this sunny Arizona afternoon where  creativity and dog-love abound. The pack is reunited; all's right with the world.

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.

 

From Kris

  This hilarious mail art piece arrived from Kris with yesterday's mail. You'd hardly know she hails from West Virginia...

   What a funny person! We make that face at each other all the time. It's our version of the blinking contest that guys do; we make the face and see who busts up laughing first. Unable to resist the opportunity for a good belly laugh, I generally lose this game. And I'm fine with that, so long as I can still whup her at cards!

  Kris has developed this clandestine operations thing into an art form; she's very good at it. I stood and watched, and even helped her assemble a little traveling art kit, thinking, oh good, kris is taking her art journal along and will get to play with art while she's away...She claims that I even stood there watching while she was printing off the photo for this post card! LOL! And the creativity in this piece! She's repurposed parts of her boarding pass, the tape they attached the destination tag to her luggage with, even the little "screened" decal they put on a suitcase TSA has gone through by hand. She's a clever one! I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time!

  Oh, in case you're wondering, "Spike" is her nickname for me, after the incorrigible roomie in the movie, "Notting Hill." Long story for another time; let's just say for now that it's my own fault...

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon!