the Art Blog of Sharon Kennick

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.

 

Halfway Down the Hill

  Today was for a spontaneous trip halfway "down the hill" (as we say) for a visit with my friend Emily and her co-workers at Art Glitter in Cottonwood. Being one who hates to show up empty handed,  I carted along some hand made paper beads and a 60's vintage Sunset magazine for Em, and vintage book with red marbled covers for Nancy. Doesn't it feel good to know what people like, and then surprise them with little presents? One of my favorite pastimes.

  Emily was teaching the premiere offering of a class she developed, and managed to squeeze me in at the last minute. Which was very nice of her...Anyhow, she taught us to make those lovely fantasy film butterflies she'd included in my artist's care package. Here's a closer look:

   Isn't it beautiful? They ALL came out looking gorgeous! It's made of many layers of fantasy film fused over a rubber stamp, then melted gently over a candle (sometimes they caught fire - and that was good!). Holes melted into the wings, then wire and beads strategically and artfully attached. Wah-la! Fun and easy! And Emily's a great teacher!

  I may make several more  and decorate Kris' computer monitor with them. Wouldn't that be a hoot for her to come home to?

  The trip to Cottonwood from Flagstaff is always lovely. Eschewing the freeway, I traveled highway 89A through Oak Creek Canyon and the Sedona red rock country, on down into the Verde Valley. You can tell where the streams and rivers are by patches of green lining the banks.

  Homeward bound, starting the climb toward Sedona, a tumbleweed blew onto the road. It happens all the time; usually they're thrown into the air and blown off onto the shoulder by the winds whorling around the car. This time was different - I don't know how it happened, but the tumbleweed pasted itself to the front of the car. I'm blowing down the highway at 70 mph with a tumbleweed hood ornament. It stayed put to the Sedona city limits, then blew away in the direction of Cathedral Rock. I imagine it saying, Thanks for the lift...

  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!

 

A Red Letter Day

  Reminded by Kris to check the mail  yesterday evening (I guess my hold on realtime has slipped a little...), I was met with not one, not two, but three wonderful surprises. A huge mysterious box, and two pieces of mail art!

   With much anticipation and excitement I opened the box to find an artist's Care Package, chock full of wondrous stuff, sent by my artist friend, Emily , in Cottonwood. This is totally awesome! I'm nearly speechless...To start with, she mailed it in a shoebox. How cool is that? And on the inside, treasures galore! There are fantasy film butterflies and medallions, baby food jars packed with shells and little bits and pieces and jewelry findings and embellishments, a tiny real birds nest, game pieces and seed pods, buttons and bottlecaps and printed voile, a frog placard made of fabric and glitter (frogs are a favorite of mine), a "Cookie Bear" tin, seed casings from an Arizona Cypress (I love Arizona Cypress), and...ohmygosh...the transparent and fragile wings of a scorpion wasp!

 

I'm still breathless! Oh, thank you Emily! What a splendid surprise! Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!
 

Mara Thompson, the gal who's running the "Note to Self" mail art call that I participated in, sent me this darling little ATC, with these "notes" inscribed on the reverse: focus, duck, keep an ace, and breathe. I really like the subtle effect of the double exposed vintage image. (For a closer look at the detail in any of the photos, you can click on the image.)

This lovely digital piece comes from Parys St.Martin, another of my new friends at IUOMA. It's titled "Arrival of the Future Flow." Isn't it mysterious and beautiful? I love it. 

  What an exciting evening! Today I get to go play in the studio, making return mail and "thank you's" equal to the many lovely gifts of yesterday! Thanks again all! Hugs. See you in the mail!

Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

April Fools!

 
  Mother Nature has pulled a classic April Fool's joke on Northern Arizona today. Following about a week of balmy weather and highs in the low 60's, I awoke this morning to 3" of white powder on the ground. How do you like them apples?

  Kris has been gone for four days now, and I'm doing fairly well; I haven't missed any meals or appointments, and I still remember what day it is. We'll see how I fare once I knuckle down in the studio and start getting creative...

  For now I'm taking care of a couple of major cleaning projects, the laundry room/pantry yesterday (omg! it sparkles!), and today is for a terminal clean on the kitchen, then tidying up the studio, putting everything in its place so I can work without distractions. I think I'll  start on a new assemblage piece, and finish painting an old one.

  While tidying up the studio,
I deconstructed some beautiful old Reader's Digest Condensed books that Mom sent home with us from Arkansas. I love the old RDC's! Remember how they had the most beautiful covers? This one's my favorite of the bunch. Wouldn't it make a gorgeous art journal cover?

  Earlier in the week I made a couple of mail art pieces to send out. One is for a mail art call titled "Virgin Mary Rocks!" (front and back) and the second is in response to a mail art post card welcome I received from on of the IUOMA folk (front only).

 

  The "Virgin Mary Rocks" piece is collaged on an acrylic painted piece of scrap matboard, outlined with black stabilo pencil; the "Ave Maria" is written in Latin using a deep blue gel pen. The "Greetings from..." postcard is an old image  from my "Reflections in Red Rock" collection, titled "Cathedral of the Ancestors." The "Reflections" were alot of fun to produce, demanding and exacting, but fun!

  And here are the two pieces I've received, so far. The one on the left is from a woman in Greece, and the other is from Washington state.

                          
i have yet to design a return postcard for the lady from Greece; I think I'll do a small watercolor and pen piece of an Arizona sunset, and tuck in some of the slot canyon stamps from a prior post. What fun!

  Well, I'd surely love to stay in here and visit with you awhile longer, but lunch beckons, as do the dirty dishes, and unfinished laundry, and all the things I'm anchoring myself to realtime with, so...

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon. Don't take any wooden nickels!

Happy Trails...

  Up before the crack of dawn this morning, driving Kris to the airport for two weeks of face-to-face meetings back East, just outside of Washington, D.C., in "the belly of the beast," as we say. This happens infrequently; Kris flies back three or four times annually, and it's an oddly discombobulating period of time.

  We both work from our home in Northern Arizona, a high country paradise, spending our days in easy companionship here in the studio, she at the computer and I at the island we installed a couple of years ago. Between teleconferences, "Look at this," I'll say."What do you think?" "You suck," she replies (this is a compliment). Conversation during lunch. I set tea plates of fresh cookies and snacks at her elbow during long meetings.

  Unaccustomed to living alone, I become disoriented when Kris is away on business. It's a marvelously creative period, don't get me wrong, but I become focused and lose track of time, often forgetting everything but the piece I'm working on. Lists help, but Kris will frequently call in the afternoon to inquire if I have eaten yet. Bless her. I often haven't...maybe if I kept something going in the crock pot...

  Driving home from the airport is sublime. Alpen-glow off the snow up on the mountain. Ribbons of empty highway. Pink and yellow dawn shows along a big horizon, subtly coloring chilly aspens and ponderosa pines. It's a beautiful time of day, and I am thralled.

  I arrive home alone, and Chamois, the older of our dogs, waits for Kris to follow me in. Knowing with all her heart that if she stares at the closed front door long enough the "other mommy" will appear, she stands fixed, expectant and hopeful, then confused. Soon, off in the distance a little prop jet puddle-jumper vectors over the forest toward Phoenix. Happy trails...

A Class Takes Shape...

  The mail art genre is so fascinating and versatile. To start with, the envelopes can be made of so many different materials. You can start out with a pre-made envelope and decorate it, or you can use any number of substrates to build an envelope from the ground up. 

  And there are so many different media to decorate an envelope with. Collage, paint, spritzers, stamps, artistamps, tape, watercolor, pen and ink - the possibilities are endless.

  Then I haven't even begun to talk about what goes inside! Postcards, little works of art, cards made from the leftovers of cutting out the envelopes, letters written on the remnant of a magazine page. The letter could be the envelope, itself, opened out all the way. Can you imagine a set of holiday greetings made from the holiday issue of a magazine, with envelopes from whole pages, and greeting cards or notes made with clipped-out ephemera, stamped and hand written? Holy smoke...Or smoley hokes, as my sisters would say.
 

  Sooo...As I was noodling around in the studio today trying out different media and techniques for dressing up envelopes, a thought began to take shape, which turned into an idea and then morphed into something a little more real. A class. A mail art class where we play with the media and  the substrates, where we paint and spritz and cut and fold and stamp our hearts out, where we learn how to make little works of art to send to everyone we know. Where we make faux postage and play outside the box. We could start a network of mail artists, with everyone in the class participating in a mail art swap! What do you think?

  Rules # 1 and #2 for anyone teaching art are to share your passion and to teach what you're passionate about, and I seem to have developed a quite the passion for mail art, so with nothing to lose, I'll think I'll start working up lesson plans. Toss them up and see where they land. I'm intrigued and excited by the possibilities.

  In between noodling with mail art I've been playing with a new "upcycle" themed book titled Craftcycle: 100+ Eco-Friendly Projects and Ideas for Everyday Living, by Heidi Boyd. Filled with  fabric, plastic bag, paper, cardboard, snack bag, and aluminum can projects, it more than fulfills the promise of the title, and provides a great jumping off point for personal interpretation and creativity. Having tried a couple of the paper projects, I find that the step-outs are somewhat lacking in detail, but if you're willing to wing it a bit it IS possible to muddle through on your own. And what is there to lose, really? A magazine or two that can still be recycled? So, despite that one shortcoming, I'd still recommend it to anyone interested in playing with upcycled crafts. Before buying, why not check your local library?

  It's day #14 of that yucky bug I picked up during the trip to Arkansas, and it feels like I'm almost done with it. Yay! Kris is a couple of days behind me in her process, and we're devoutly hoping she's feeling better by Sunday morning when she leaves to go work back east for a couple of weeks. Nutriceuticals and chicken soup; fingers and toes crossed!

  Preparing food for her journey (chocolate chip cookies), then I'm off to the post office for - what else? To send out mail art! If you'd like to receive a piece of mail art, or participate in a mail art swap, just send me your mailing address here. Fun!

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.