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!

   

 

 

 

 

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.

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* ... 

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.

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.

Recycled Art Show, IUOMA, and More Fun with Faux Real Stamps

  Hello again, blog friends! I got a phone call last night from a lady named Colleen, on behalf of the Flagstaff Recycled Art Exhibition. I'm sure I wasn't very coherent, because I've come down with whatever respiratory bug Mom had while we were visiting, but I do remember that she confirmed the date and time for my demo - I'll be showing people how to make those folded German Star ornaments. It should be fun! I'm looking forward to it!

  The Recycled Art Exhibition is an annual event sponsored jointly by Flagstaff Cultural Partners and the Flagstaff Artist's Coalition. Open entry, with a limit of two pieces, the main requirement is that each piece be at least 80% recycled material. It's an amazing show! There are hundreds of entries, an opening reception, and weekend artists' demonstrations. This year, I've entered two new pieces, "Karmalia" and "The Secret Life of Brushes." I thought seriously about entering an assemblage piece I'm working on, "Lord of the Dance," an anthropomorphic assembly of
dead computer parts and, well, lots of other stuff. Kris suggested that I save it for next year, instead of pushing and rushing myself to finish it. I'm sure she's right...Anyhow, there's loads of publicity and several different awards given, including a People's Choice award, but I tend to not pay much attention to that aspect of the show. I attend to see the cool work people are doing; and there's plenty of that! The Exhibition runs from April 3rd through May 15th, and I hope to see you there! My demo is on the afternoon of the 8th, if you'd like to swing through. Love to see you!

  While checking out the links in the book from my last post, "Good Mail Day," I stumbled onto the website of the International Union of Mail Artists (IUOMA). Holy Smoke! Hundreds of mail art freaks from all over the world, dozens of special interest groups, including an artistamp group (which I intend to join...), calls for entries, a forum, and pages on pages of mail art. So I applied for membership late last night, and by 7 a.m. Arizona time, five people (two from the U.S., one from Italy, one from Greece, and one from, I think, Chile) had dropped by my IUOMA page to leave a welcome, and most of them came by the blog, as well. I feel truly welcomed. Next task, flesh out my IUOMA home page...and start sending out art!

  I'm having way too much fun, still, with the faux postage stamps, and am working at them obsessively. I forget to eat, and have to be reminded to take my nutriceuticals, cook, feed Kris, feed the dogs...I've got the mail art bug BAD. Not complaining...here are three of the designs I came up with yesterday, before I got sick enough that I had to curl up on the couch with hot rice socks.

  All three of these faux stamps are 100% digital. The first is a "Pioneer Heritage" commemorative stamp for the Fauxreal Republic. It uses an
image of my maternal grandmother, Virginia Grace, when she was still in school. The second is one I made for Kris (she may be a rocket scientist, but doesn't do digital graphics, and doesn't particularly want to...) and her "Big Sky Republic." "Yote" (short for "coyote") is her nickname, and she wanted a stamp with that on it. It's a commemorative stamp of the poster for an exhibit at the "Tycho Brahe Museum of Art." Tycho Brahe is not just a person, it's a big crater on the moon...which is where the museum is...The third is another exhibition poster, this one from the Capitol Museum of Modern Art's "Digital Expo ~ 2009," with the motto of the Fauxreal Republic up the left side, "Believing is seeing." 

  What's a hot rice sock? It's our version of a moist heat pack. You take a clean dead tube sock without any holes in it, pour about a pound of rice (any grain will do) into the toe, then tie it off with a rubber band. To use it, simply microwave it on high for 2 minutes or so. Pull it out and put it where it'll do the most good. It's a little piece of heaven on earth. I will occasionally warm my cold bed with them in the wintertime. 

  You know, that sounds pretty good right about now...I think I feel a nap coming on.

  Thanks for visiting. Come again soon!

Preparing for the Journey Home

The annual holiday journey home to Central Arkansas is the highlight of every holiday season for us. Since the flight would be long and convoluted with three layovers: Phoenix, Houston and then Memphis,  we opt to travel in comfort by car, leisurely making our way halfway across the country, taking time to enjoy the Christmas scenery, stop at all the interesting little waysides, and rehearse Christmas roundelays. A family favorite is Christine Lavin's "Heigh-Ho Cry Santa's Elves," with "Tacobel Cannon" a close second. (To listen to "Tacobel Canon" click here: Lavin Link, then click on Tacobel Canon in the playlist. It's  side-splitting hilarious!) We take two days to make the trip, stopping overnight in Amarillo at a favorite and familiar hotel. Swimming pool for exercise, chilling out in the hot tub, a home cooked meal from the cooler to reheat in the room...up early to grab fruit and peanut butter from the breakfast bar and we're away in the morning, refreshed and relaxed. A blissful way to travel. This year, weather permitting, we're detouring up to Santa Fe on the way home, to check out the Georgia O'Keefe museum. How exciting is that?

The trip entails alot of preparation; I make our meals and travel snacks ahead of time so we have yummy healthy eats along the way. Granola bars, jerky, crudites, tamari almonds,veggie wraps, homemade sausages, soups and stews. Yum...Can you tell I love to cook? LOL!

It's also a part of the tradition that I arrive in Arkansas with fun crafty things to do with Princess Christmas Joy's children, and this year it will be paper stars made (mostly) from advertising inserts. Aunt Sharon cannot arrive empty handed...so I've spent a couple of days in the studio playing with things to do with the kids, and here's what I've come up with:

This first photo is a folded German Star made of paper strips cut from sales flyers. If you'd like to try making a few of your own, here's a link to an excellent video tutorial: German Paper Stars. Once you get the hang of them they go together quick and easy, and since I use sales flyers instead of color coordinated papers each one is delightfully different from the others. They're such fun to make. I love watching each one take shape, step by step, fold by fold. Once I start making these it's very hard to stop...

This next piece is called a Finnish Star. Sweet and simple, and oh-so-elegant, it's made of 18 half inch strips of paper which are woven together, twisted, and then glued. This one is made from art paper scraps from my scrap bin...Isn't it beautiful? I think the kids will like this one best. Here's a link to a good tutorial: Finnish Star. I was having so much fun making the German Stars that I ran out of sales flyers and haven't had a chance to try these ala upcycle...art paper scraps count, don't they?

These last two are from the coffee club I attended on Tuesday at About Memories and More, our local scrapbook store, and Kirsten didn't really
give us a name for it, so I'll call it the Art Star. The first one measures about 16" from tip to tip and uses two sheets of double sided paper. The second measures about 10" across, and used just one sheet. I suspect that paper from the sales flyers will not have enough body to support the weight of these, but as soon as the Sunday paper replenishes

my stock of advertising inserts, I'll give it whirl, but on a smaller scale, say with 3" square base units.These look complicated, but they're deceptively simple. Here's a link: Art Stars. The larger of the two pictured is constructed of 6" square double sided art paper made with 7 half inch wide cuts in the base triangle for a total of eight segments (a deviation from the pattern link...), and the smaller is of 4" squares. They're so elegant and easy-to-make we just might run out of space to hang them! I SO look forward to making these decorations with my nieces and nephews! And I know the Princess will have fun too, playing along with the rest of us kids...AND do we know what will be dangling from every square inch of her ceiling next year? And Granny's ceiling, too? :)

If you have a fun holiday paper craft you'd like to share, I'd LOVE to post a link to it on the blog. just drop me an email, or leave a comment, and I'll pass it on...

I'm off to find places to hang these beauties! Thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Offerings and the Hazards of Being Too Focused...

  Rule Numero Uno: don't bleed on the art. It's okay to bleed a little, it happens sometimes, but DON'T, repeat, don't bleed on the art. Working on the new stuff today I managed to cut
myself somehow. It happens once in awhile. I get really, really focused and don't even notice until I see it, and refer to Rule #1. <*sigh*> Just a nick, but in a really bad place, right in the web between my thumb and forefinger. One of the worst places to have a nick, too. Durn! Cleaned it up and put a band-aid on it...It would seem that occasionally "The Muse" requires a small blood sacrifice. So. That ritual is taken care of for a few weeks...

  First aid tended to, I thought I'd give y'all a peek at some of the new stuff I'm working on for the show Saturday. The larger of these two
books is a journal made from a recycled book with 26 lb. (recycled) pages; the smaller is an art journal with 140 lb watercolor paper and tag inserts. Ordinarily, I'd prefer to bind journals by hand with an exposed spine and decorative stitching, but for this particular show I'm trying to keep the cost down (given the economy) and have bound these instead with the Zutter Bind-It-All. Effective and attractive...and it let's me price them in a more affordable range.

  Hey, did y'all catch the "y'all" in that last paragraph? Not my usual writing style, but I'm boning up on "southern-speak" for a trip to the ancestral home in Central Arkansas over the holidays. Princess Christmas Joy will be there, and Gigi Mota, and most of the sibs and dozens of nieces and nephews,  altogether and collectively known as "The Clan of the Sucking Toad." (Mom has a place on the Arkansas River, just upstream of Toad Suck Ferry - I kid you not...) We're "fixin' tuh" have a jolly old time. 

Back to work! Thanks for visiting! Come again soon.

Playing with the Muse

I've been noodling around in the studio today, playing with modular origami forms. And of course there's a story...

Just as I was drifting off to sleep a couple of nights ago a very specific origami-folded shape popped into my head, one I hadn't made before, with step-by-step images for folding it. Hmmm...says I, that has some interesting potential, and promising to remember it in totality promptly fell asleep.

I am far too casual, sometimes, with the promptings of the Muse.

At any rate, I managed to remember quite a bit of it today,
fiddled around with the shape until I had it right, then started playing with the possibilities and here's what I have to share. First off, the basic shape is a napkin fold - you know, that triangular shape your cloth napkin is folded into at the nicer restaurants? Here's a photo. Now, does that look familiar, or what?

Once the basic shape was perfected it became obvious that they could be fitted together to form a modular piece, like this. So I made a whole slew of the basic modules and started arranging them this way and that, fiddling here and there until I came up with this, a medallion form. Fiddling around a bit more, I applied a couple of layers of paint, pearl gold and quinacridone nickel azo gold. I was worried about painting on the text weight paper I'd used for the mock-up, but it held up just fine. 

Not being sure what I'd do with the medallion, I started playing around some more...it looks really nice against the texture of stripped cardboard, I think. I could also give it a cameo/eyeball center...hmmm. And it would probably look very cool made from magazines and newspaper inserts...will have to ponder the possibilities.

I'm still not sure what I'll be doing with this fun little piece, but will definitely keep playing with it off and on until I do. You'll be the first to know!

Anyhow...thanks Muse! And thank you for visiting. Come again soon.