Yellow

Homing Instinct

I'm drawn to yellow of late, that is, the color yellow. Perhaps it has to do with how my world turns to yellow in the autumn. In many locales, with the change of seasons, there is a predominance of red in the colors of the land, but where I live in South Dakota....it feels mostly yellow. And so many yellows....soft yellows, like the grasses, to the deep rich saffron yellows that cover the soybean fields for a brief period in the early fall.

The cottonwoods and other trees across the river are on their way to a luscious yellow. When I bought flowers at the store the other day, I chose yellow to boost my spirits. These little stems below were left behind on the counter so they got their own tiny vase!

When I sit down to make the daily drawings lately, I find that I reach for that rich yellow ochre ink so it can play a role. I do love the way yellow mingles so beautifully with grays and all the various "shades" of white!

October 14, 2016

October 15, 2016

These recent daily drawings haven't been listed in my shop yet....they need to live in their little pile on my desk for awhile before I am ready to send them out into the world. For now, I delight in the warmth of their yellows!

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead....cheers!

Autumn Suite: Sumac

Those rich, red sumacs! One of my favorite things about fall here on the Missouri River....they line the banks of the river in our back yard. While most of the year the sumacs are not all that interesting, not to mention highly invasive, it is in the height of autumn that I fall in love with them all over again. I forgive them all previous annoyances!

Autumn Suite: October no.2 / Sumac

This is the latest in the Autumn Suite series, inspired by those beautiful sumacs. If you want to see the drawing in closer detail, follow the link above, which will take you to my Etsy shop where there are some closer shots. The leaves are made with many, many tiny dots in various colors....mostly red, of course, but also green, orange and brown. The beeswax only makes it richer.

I'll leave you with another little surprise....a few weeks ago, I started combining some of the little bits from the artworks (unfinished and/or cast aside) laying about the studio. I guess I was inspired by all the prints laying in piles all over the ping pong table in the large open area my husband and I share. He had been cleaning out the flat files and I laid claim to a pile that was going to be thrown away. My husband, Johntimothy, is a printmaker and this pile contained all sorts of yummy printed paper....woodcut, silkscreen, intaglio....it's a goldmine! I made a couple of tiny collage/mixed media pieces....this is one below. It measures probably 3" tall and is practically dominated by that big round button at the bottom that feels to me like a kind of wheel. I can see a whole installation of tiny 3-d collage pieces pinned randomly on a large gallery wall.....I'll continue to make these little items as the spirit strikes!

Temperatures are dropping here....tonight we have our first freeze warning....really???? This autumn business is getting serious and sounding suspiciously like winter is on its way soon. Enjoy the rest of your week! Cheers!

SaveSave

Welcome Autumn!

Autumn Suite: September Recollection no.5

This morning, here in the United States, we officially ushered in autumn and I'm happy that it's here!

The last few days have been unseasonably warm....too hot and muggy to even have a nice walk. I hope that will soon change, as I'm ready for those crisp temperatures to return. 

The leaves are turning more quickly now and after last night's rain, I was happy to see the accumulation of color and texture on the back deck.

This morning remained dark and gloomy, but so beautiful! I love it when the clouds hang low and the hills of Nebraska across the river are shrouded in mist. I thought sure there was some weather brewing out there, but by noon it had cleared up. Still....autumn is here and I welcome it!

Buttons, Relics and Memory

Last night my husband, Johntimothy, came home from teaching his printmaking classes at the University with this nice handful of old buttons. Some weeks before, he'd taken in some old shirts to turn into rags and he and his students had spent part of the afternoon cutting them up for use in the shop. "Save the buttons!" he called out to them, thinking of the collection of old buttons I keep in a jar in the studio. After he unloaded them on the counter, he started to work the bits of thread and clinging cloth left on them, but I stopped him. No, save the bits left on, I told him....they are part of the memory, part of the trace and the history of those buttons, of the clothing and of you.

My sudden pronouncement to save the vestiges left on the buttons reminded me of a tiny book I made decades ago. Relics featured buttons from my collection with tiny fragments of stories of the people who had worn the garment that once held the button. The book is housed in a plexiglas box filled 

with buttons of various sizes in all shades that might be known as white. 

Oh wait....I detect some random color in there!!!

Each tiny page of the book had a fragment of a story from a day in the life of someone who was wearing a garment that once held that button. I typed them up on an old typewriter and slipped the little story, along with the button, into a tiny plastic bag. They were held in the accordion folds of the cover, which was a piece of primed canvas with an image transfer of buttons on it. I've never made anything else like it and I'm not sure what possessed me to make that, nor how I would have even known how to go about it back then....except that the book  fairly well made itself, even as those fictional stories tumbled from my imagination, sad and bittersweet.

I'm a believer that the material world, the objects that surround us, even the humble buttons that adorn our garments, tell stories and serve as touchstones of our history. Like a cairn, this little pile of buttons Johntimothy poured out onto the kitchen counter serves as a kind of marker on the path, a simple reminder of a life lived.

Autumn Suite, no.2

I will leave you with the second piece in the Autumn Suite Series...a floating memory of falling leaves as they tumble down from the trees in a cascade of color. I do love autumn....it's still pretty green and fairly warm here, but the colors are definitely changing and I'm refreshed by the cool, crisp mornings.

Enjoy your weekend!

Autumn Suite....Recollections of the Season

Autumn Suite: Recollection no.1

Now in early September, I can feel the change of seasons. I find myself reenergized, ready to be back in the studio in order to capture the feeling of fall. As much as I enjoy the bounty and rich color of summer, my color palette is that of autumn, with the subtle tones shifting in the fading light. I'm now returning to work I did more frequently some time ago...spare pieces that I think of as meditation drawings, with the intent of capturing the essence of the thing...whatever it is.

detail

As longtime readers of this blog know well, while I love the natural world, I am not one to draw or paint directly from life. I prefer to let the beauty of nature come onto the page not from direct observation, but filtered through lived experience. The memory of fleeting views comes through my hand onto the page in a way that surprises and delights me.

detail

As always, there are those tiny marks and those dots....for me they are a language I use to express the ineffable. Time moves on....summer gives way to fall...once again. Hope you are enjoying the change of seasons wherever you are!

Navigating the River

Navigating the River

I am in the middle of a strong current of late, as I move into the last stages of graduate school. I'm not sure where my degree in Adult and Higher Education will take me, but for now there is a very strong pull to be back in the studio. I realize that spending time in engaged in creating....drawing, sewing on paper, keeping my hands moving....has moved into the priority position. My classes this semester are online, which allows me to let them more easily slip to the side. It's interesting to watch this process unfold, as I've been such a very diligent student until now. I still am dedicated, but now it's more of a struggle.

What's next? Well, I sure wish I had a crystal ball! I know that the next couple of months after graduation will be spent making new work for an exhibition at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City. I'm so glad to have that opportunity, as it will give me a focus and the impetus to create a whole new body of work!

My practice of making daily drawings is now entering the third month and it seems firmly in place as a daily activity. I make the drawings at the beginning of each day. Here are the drawing for the first of November. 

I spent a fair amount of the morning finishing the stitching on this autumn mediation drawing below, which was just so relaxing and well....meditative! Navigating the River and the meditation drawing below, November Afternoon, are now listed in my Etsy shop. 

November Afternoon

It's incredibly warm here in South Dakota for November. Plants on the porch are still blooming and full of color....I feel as if I were back in Florida! This will no doubt change and winter will take us all by surprise, but for now we are enjoying a beautiful autumn.

I'll be back with periodic updates soon. For now, I'm counting the weeks till graduation! Cheers.

Subtleties

Now that we're into October, the autumn season is really in full swing....colors are changing daily in the most beautiful and often subtle ways. There are moments of bright, warm yellow set against deep, rich red, but as I drive along the back roads, I am also quite taken by the subtle shifts of color in the fields and the grasses on the side of the road...colors that shift from a pale gray-green to the color of straw and then to a soft peach and onto deep red and then crimson. I do love each season for it's own beauty, but there is something about autumn that makes me more aware of color than the other seasons. I know that spring and summer are full of the rich, bright colors of gardens in bloom, but I am more deeply drawn to subtle palettes and the colors of autumn make me swoon. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera when these thoughts came to me today in the car, but I did snap a few shots in the backyard just a bit ago. The river is beautiful no matter what the season!

Still keeping up the daily drawing practice and with the recent big deadlines looming over us now past, I find that I am able to post them more often. I'll start off October with today's drawing, but do have a peek at the others in my shop here. I do have sale going on in the shop, so if you are interested in any of the daily drawings, now is the time to have a more serious look around...there is 15% off everything in the shop, but be sure to use the coupon code at checkout: AUTUMNSALE

October 1, 2012

There's a newly finished drawing in the Notes From The Ancestors series, now posted on my website

I'm still loving the interior space I can roam through as I make these pieces...an open-ended conversation with time and memory.

Notes From The Ancestors no.11

Hope you have a great week....savor the day and the subtle details so easily overlooked! See you soon!

Following Instincts

I'm so thankful for the things I learn while I'm not looking with my eyes open...that's when I seem to see things the most clearly...in some sort of state of dreaming.  I'd been coming to terms with justifying this new work that I'm drawn to make...this simple stitching on teabags, or mending and patching holes in paper and allowing myself to follow these instincts, even as I chastised myself for not making the work I felt I should be making.  I'd started those Season Cycles pieces in the spring and intended to follow it through the year, with the four seasons providing the thread that would carry the work through.  I made twenty-five in the spring and not even half that in the summer, as I explored a myriad of other things in the studio.  Here, autumn is upon us and I kept feeling as if I should get some 5 x 5" pieces of paper going with layers of paint...and yet, I kept stitching on teabags and delicate Japanese paper.  But in my sleep, when I'd let go, I understood that these things don't have to be different at all.  Why would I insist on treating them separately...it's all one thing and the next day I went into the studio and stitched delicate lines in the colors of autumn, arranged awkwardly, like the trace of falling leaves.  Today, the teabags are mounted on 5 x 5" Japanese paper and here is the first Season Cycles, Autumn no.1.  

I think that we have to follow our instincts, one foot in front of the other....there is work that's asking to be made that only we can create.   

New Feature Launching!

Hope you've had a fine weekend!  I've still been working with those delicious old teabags, as you can see from this little drawing/embroidery I listed this morning...details here.  I may have mentioned (or not??) that I've been mulling over ideas to add a weekly feature to this blog to make it more expansive and enlightening.  I so appreciate all the efforts of the other bloggers I'm following and rather than just adopting something someone else is currently doing, I wanted to think of something new, a post that would allow us all to learn and perhaps encounter the unexpected.  And now, it seems to be coming together, so I'll tell you about it before I do the first post of this new feature that I'll call (at least for now) A Walk In The Universe.  Hoping to do the first post later today and have it be a Monday feature each week.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of the "journey" as an actual experience of travel across time and space, but also as a metaphor.  That came into play as I contemplated what this new "something" for the blog would be...so whatever the feature ended up being, it would need to be open ended, and allow for surprise, discovery and fresh insights...like the best journeys.  I like to think that we end up somehow larger in our outlook at the end of a journey.  What if each week the information revealed through the feature post provided a natural link to another subject that might not, at first, seem to be related?  Like following a trail...like a walk in the woods, only these links could be anything at all....more like a walk in the universe!  As the anticipation and excitement of this possibility began to gel into a real idea, I knew exactly where I would begin the journey and just, as I had hoped for, it worked....the first post I began to research quite naturally told me exactly what the topic of next week's post would be.

So, I hope I have your curiousity piqued!  My real desire for this new feature, A Walk in the Universe, is for it to help build an expanding community and conversation with the followers of this blog!  Let's see where it takes us...check back later today!