class work

I completed my second Creative Journal class last Tuesday (two more to go) and one of the idea generators was 'things you can do with buttons'. I'm the teacher. I know what the prompts will be before the class. I started deciding on this one days before the class actually met.

I told them I must have 'voice' issues... because immediately when I thought of buttons I thought of having your lips buttoned shut... but she doesn't seem too disturbed by it.
And she has these cheery looking red flowers near her and a ridiculous chicken coming in off the page.
She is not looking at the flowers though, she is staring off into space. She is somewhere else. And for right now she is keeping her own council... her lips are buttoned closed... but I think it is by choice.

I have written 3-4 sample sentences on scrap paper, trying to decide what the message is here. I think I will ask my class what they think and then finish this one up.

7/19

New book. I have lot's of my art supplies packed up and at the door, ready to shlep back and forth to my Tuesday night class....so I am making other things, like this. The cover is a bit much. I think I like it that way... snakeskin and flowers, ribbon and a splash of pink.
Inside cover is a deep reddish pink with watermarks... matches the flowers perfectly...
At first I thought I'd have a closed spine, but in the end chose this open stitch....

Inside there are pages and pages of 80 lb. drawing paper that will stand up nicely to pencil or paint....

I went to knitting today and heard a funny story about a women who couldn't find her cell phone and whose toilet was also plugged up....

yes, I gather it is getting to be a common problem... so word to wise, don't take your cell in there... not in your hand, not in you pocket...

felting in July

Nuno felting... wet felting... hand felting... whatever you want to call it. That's what I have been working on the last couple days...
It has been my stay-out-of-the-sun strategy... and it keeps my mind from stressing over the adult art journal class I am teaching.
I just place the fibers, layer the fibers, add this'n'that from my scrap bag, swirl in some contrast color, place a bit of yarn and wet, soap, rub, roll, rinse, squeeze and hang to dry....
This particular wool roving really worked well. So well I am going to go buy some more. It felted easily and yet is super soft to the feel.... not merino, but with the softness of merino.
and then this... the wool is a bit scratchier... but I love the colors. I tore up some burn-out silk panels in between the layers of roving... and then tossed in handfuls from my scrap bag, added swirls of color and some yarn bits for accent... same method as above
wet, soap, rub, roll, squeeze and toss over a door to dry....
sounds so easy doesn't it?... and it is in some respects... but I am improving, so there must be a skill set involved....

I'm thinking of using my Joanne's 50% coupon in the next couple days to get a free-form stitch attachment (not what it is called exactly) and then I will try machine stitching on some of the design.

plus it is a bit aerobic and I notice when I do a week of this my arms become toned.... reason enough, don't you think?

Wet!

It rained last night. I woke when it began... rolls of thunder, but no wind... and then the rainfall... slow and steady on my roof... around 4:30 I woke and pulled my baby corn under the eves, and fell back into bed. I have missed rain.

This morning, around 7, I checked the corn again. Yesterday it had just begun to sprout... but today it seems to have an agenda, and will be placed in the garden, with a prayer that the doggone birds leave it be to grow and grow.

The nursery did not have the little peat-moss pots for seedlings, but think these paper egg cartons will work just the same. I cut the bottoms before I seeded so the little roots can escape with ease.

Yesterday, the sermon at church was about the sower and the seed, and as I listened I thought of my garden and the birds that got my first corn seeds and thought not only does the sower throw the seed everywhere, he seeds again and again and again. Farmers are dreamers and gamblers... much like God.
But back to wet... don't you love it? The sidewalk by my gate is still glossy with rainwater
There are even little foamy bubbles where the rain ran off the roof and puddles near the hose...
Everything is so green and lush with this couple hours of rain... the thirsty desert quickly takes advantage of the gifts it is given...
and my corn! I was told once when I still lived in Illinois, that in July you could hear the corn grow if you listened... look at these guys.. they need deeper dirt soon.

High today supposed to be 98. It will be miserably humid... but 98. In July. In Phoenix,AZ. Something is up with the climate.

6/30

This one is a bit better... or I like it better, anyway. Started with a striped piece of tissue paper saved from the garbage at someone's b'day party... then I used a new pebbled stencil I bought the other day at Creative Quest, then matte medium, three shades of blue and a dollop of forest green and I filled the sea and then the sky with deep blues and gray.
I used some of that painted paper for the planets and the scary fish, painted the little boat bright red with bright orange flashes...

I was thinking about all the things that lie under the surface of every single person... things that hang about ready to snap your legs off. They are there... But then there are planets and stars, whole worlds and endless space. And there is silence, too. So often I am in that boat, not moving... and I sense the danger... but I know I have one or two meager resources.

A friend of mine sent a YouTube video to my Facebook acct. It was political in nature and spoke of the growing chasm between the 1% of have's in this country and all the rest... one of the comments was we were powerless in this... and I do not accept that. We have our meager resources. We can love our neighbor as ourselves. We can plant a garden. We can say quietly, but with conviction what we believe. We can inform others. If we would just quit all the belly-aching and finger-pointing and become agents of positive change...

and we can do it from our boats, with just an oar and a destination in mind. Yes, the bad things are there. Evil is real... but we have power.

6/28

3 flowers, lots of texture... thank heaven it is just practice.

getting messy in the kitchen

bet you thought I was going to do a cooking blog... but no... the paint and paper crept into the kitchen today. the kitchen counter more specifically. I prefer to work standing up, feel like I can see and move better, and this counter is the only place I have to do this. Thank heaven all my paints now fit on this rolling cart (foreground) so what went out was put back just as quickly.
I painted paper... mostly pages from the New Times, but a couple of pages from an old Wall Street Journal and a cool art and culture of Japan magazine I have. I started with a creamy white mixed with gloss medium to begin to take the sharp edges off the design below, yet let some things come through.
After the first layer dried, I began mixing paint and matte medium and put on the second layer, playing with texture... putting in lines
taking some of them away... then letting the paper dry again...
last I went into the paper with a third color, using, in this case, an old credit card to scrape most of the lighter paint off bringing the texture out...
I have 13 pages total, ranging from blue to purple, to red, orange, yellow and green as I did not rinse my paintbrush or pan and just moved around the color wheel... the colors that went on top were often complementary and and scraped on so much of what was under came through...

I will use these painted papers in collage, they will be torn, cut and re-used in my art journal and paintings...

This was a fun and freeing exercise. I've wanted to use paint paper before but always put it off thinking I did not have all the stuff I needed to really do it right. But really what is RIGHT? Now that I realize I can paint on anything nothing is safe...

and this is my new tip... for years I have saved cereal boxes - it is the elementary art teacher in me - but lately I have realized the bags that hold the cereal are this tough plastic stuff. When I finish a box of cereal, I save the box(okay it is a problem) and now I also save the bag by cutting the top and bottom off each end and splitting it. I then have a water proof, washable sheet that next to nothing sticks to. It is perfect for under my projects and I have even used it to make collaged paper, because the paper, if thick enough, will peel right off...

6/25

This one started with me accidentally ripping off the picture part of the May calendar. I looked at it for a minute after it ripped from the larger calendar and then walked the piece into my workroom and pasted it onto the left edge of my journal... this morning while hanging laundry I watched the predators of my yard vying for the same insect... a lizard and a finch alternately watched the bug and each other and I began to think about how we see things, feel things... how important our senses are. So, after my chores were done I painted in a rough foreground, middle ground and background and then this woman bending to smell a flower...
One of the things that seem difficult for me is getting enough texture and layering into my pictures... so I used patterned papers for her clothing,,, added a row of flowers growing right behind her. In the foreground I laid in dots and dots...
Then clouds, a couple chickens and a fence...

this one does not please me as much as the red pages I did a day ago, or the portrait I did for the cover... and I have already sketched in the next set of pages... one of my problems, I think is that things are drying too fast for the kind of blending I like... another issue is I did not spend adequate time building layers of color and texture for the background. I'll try to remedy some of that as I begin to work on the next pages...

And while doing all this I watched this video Who Does She Think She Is on PBS World today.
Just an amazing video to watch.

Mission Bell Community Garden

Okay, it doesn't look like much just yet... but the Mission Bell Community Garden is now officially underway... six raised beds in one degree of done-ness or another and room for about 25 more.
My grandson, W. looked at the garden today and was totally unimpressed, but thought the Boy Scout garden (the one with the plants) was pretty good...
This one is mine... I got the layering a bit wrong and will probably need to add more fertilizer when fall planting begins... but I've done all I need to do for the time being.
These two have the first two layers in.

I'm glad mine is done. The temps have shifted and we are now seeing 110 here in the valley and the mornings are no longer refreshingly cool. I talked to a lady the other day who is planning on putting in a second crop of corn in mid July... I have thought about that, thinking the late summer thunder storms might water if while I am out of town...

this thing for chickens

I've been thinking about this for a while... heads on chickens... actually I thought about cut-n-paste beautiful model faces on chickens... and I looked through my stash of magazines and no... no face that was the right face... and this face... Maude, I think... is the right one.

She's kind of a plain Jane face, with nondescript hair... but on a beautiful body, I think.
And she lives in a world that is full of color.

I was playing with some ideas from the Jane LaFazio workshop in Costa Mesa... color and collage... don't think too much just fill the background.
I gave her some flowers and added some more little pattern and texture... and wrote, 'in this big, beautiful and bright world, she is still a bit chicken.'

Yes, another self-portrait.



And here are the stars of my show... the two eldest anyway. Taken through the kitchen window, so a bit blurry.
I tried to catch them but they were on to me... above P. is just holding still while W., below, has decided to do his best impression of scarey monster...
Really, most of the time they are the most beautiful boys you would ever want to meet... but when the camera comes out they lose all self-control.

June 20

I learned a new stamping method... making my own stamp pad with cut felt and acrylic paint... then played with what would make a line.... a piece of cardboard, an old credit card, bits of Popsicle stick...
but after the lines it needed more texture, so first I wrote about what I was doing all over the bottom in pencil.... and then cut up a page of an old book and put some in the trees and some going horizontally along the bottom. It is not done, but as yet it has not told me what else it wants to say.
Then I tackled the book cover... just the front so far... with this self-portrait (they are ALL self-portraits aren't they?) which does not look at all like me. But it is a bit how I feel right now... a little fragile... and my eyes are not seeing the world correctly, I don't think...
I keep adding color and playing at the hair... yellowish gray hair is the dickens to get right.
but here, this one is getter... finally have gotten some nice green-purple tones in and the hair color almost spot-on. Should it say something... does it need a word or words. I don't know.
And then this project from last week. Yes a mailbox. By golly I will paint anything... and this one was so dreary I could no longer bear it...
so hauled out all the left over paint I've been storing in the closet and gave it a bit of a facelift.
Sunflowers are cheery... though mine look more like large daisies ...
I had thought originally that I would paint a blue background and make the numbers black... but I quite liked it with the brown, plus the sun was burning holes into my no-sunscreen toes and making the paint dry just about the same time it hit the mailbox...

So there you go... I am keeping occupied... and I have not taken any pictures of the community garden which is coming along nicely. I have completed my raised bed and no-dig garden area and can relax until it is time to plant which will not be until cooler weather makes it's way back into the valley...

Oh! and my class at PVCC is a definite go... there is still time to register if you know anyone who is interested. Tah da, Tah da Tah da!

June 14

I completed the mosaic house number plaques yesterday... feeling done with the glass, glue, grout routine and thinking about books and painting... above is Judy's, below is mine...I ran out of square pieces of glass and used the scrap that was in the boxes or glass... I don't know which I like better.

Now that these are done I can turn my attention to the two other things I have planned for this week... getting my garden completely ready for fall planting and painting K's mail box while she is out of town.

Here are a couple shots of the boys... two of them anyway...
making birthday cards for their mom... and doing some creative writing.... inside
outside....
and P's underwater scene... he must of been thinking about going to the beach...
and here is how we keep our cool in AZ... water + dry air mean rapid evaporation which results in a quick cooling... too bad it is short lived.
the best part of this one is he had some trouble getting out of the bucket.... : )