Change Is In The Air

July 28, 2012

The weekend dailies are here and already a new week has begun. The Monday drawing on black paper is up on the board in my studio waiting for the drawings for the rest of the week to join up in turn (better get moving on Tuesday!)....but I'm feeling itchy and think it may be time to change it up again. The problem is that I'm not sure what direction these dailies will take....haven't gotten the signals loud and clear yet, just the initial rumblings of change on the way. I thought I'd give you a heads up that there may be yet another new direction.

July 29, 2012

When I first acknowledged this bit of edginess lurking in the doorway of the studio yesterday as I worked on the Monday drawing, I tried to send it away....I can't change the format now, these are part of my Etsy shop. But! I also realized in the same moment that perhaps therein lies the difference between making a product and making art. I believe that in order to be true, the work has to flow according to its own impulse and not because it is a bit of inventory or that there is an expectation that the "product" will always be the same. I already have to remind myself that the intent with this daily project was not necessarily to make "art", but to honor the day and its passing. The "art" would be a kind of result rather than the goal. Sometimes I am caught between the struggle to let them be what they want to be and my own need for structure and a rhythm which calls for the dailies to have a certain uniformity. I'm quite sure the many factions working this out in the various secret rooms of my subconscious will come to some solution that is agreeable to all and I will be excited and energized by the prospects all over again. You'll be the first to know!

Have a great week!

2 Daily Drawings, 1 Meditation and a Book Page!

July 7, 2012

July 8, 2012

The dailies from the weekend are on teabags, which is the new rhythm....black paper drawings during the week (6x6") and teabag drawings for Saturday and Sunday (mounted on 12"x9" bristol)....I'm into the flow of it now. By the end of the week, I'm ready to meet those teabags again, as they lend themselves to different processes than the drawings on black paper. Of course, during the week, it's experimentation time and pushing the envelope with the black paper. It is somewhat limited, as the drawing paper is really not made to get wet, but I can get away with a little here and there for the water soluble crayons.

Now that I've had a full day in the studio, I've had time to finish up a couple of other pieces that have been in the works. There's been some beeswax action in the studio today as I dipped these pieces and another dozen small pieces very much like Wisdom of the Ancients. I have a "book work" in process, so if you like Wisdom of the Ancients (listed as a solo piece as MissouriBendStudio) stay tuned for a much fuller version. I guess I'd say that Wisdom of the Ancients was the prototype, and now I'm finishing up a spin off, yet to be named! It's been some time since I made one of the meditation drawings and that was fun....that aqua color takes me back to my Florida days and the Gulf of Mexico along the west coast. The summer meditation piece will be listed at MissouriBendStudio tomorrow or the next day.

Summer Meditation no.4 

Wisdom of the Ancients

My weekend is now over and I'll go back to work tomorrow....the days and weeks do fly by, don't they? Our heat wave is over and the temperatures are quite pleasant....we sure could use some rain though....mighty dry around these parts! Hope your week has started off on a positive foot! See you in a few days....

On Top Of It....For Now

Happy Monday....I am totally feeling on top of things! Of course, it is just Monday, so perhaps I shouldn't be shouting that from the mountain tops, as I seem to be. I'm just speaking in general, I suppose. You know how you feel when you've gotten everything scratched off on your list and THEN SOME....things that didn't make it to the list have gotten done, as well. Of course, for the list-makers of the world, there is not nearly as much satisfaction in getting something done that wasn't on the list, but I won't take the time to go put it on there just to be able to cross it off.  I'm also excited because I've  started an online class for the library where I work, so I can redesign the website in WordPress. It just started today...so far, so good! The weather is hot, but I won't say beastly hot, as many, many parts of the country are beastly hot! It's going to be 100 degrees here for several days, but no matter what anyone around here says, that's not nearly as bad as the 90s in the muggy south and I feel for those folks with their 100+ temperatures. I've lived there and know they are miserable....hope cooler temps are on the way for everyone suffering with the heat.

Meanwhile, before I head out to the deck with a little unwinding hard cider and cheese, thought I'd share the weekend dailies with you. It felt good to be back with my old teabag friends and liked what happened with these. The drawing for Saturday has inspired a whole new "book" project, which will actually be loose pages wrapped in a paper wrapping....I'm working on the pages now and dipping them in beeswax. Can't wait to show you....maybe by the end of the week, but that could be pushing it.

June 30, 2012

July 1, 2012

For those in the United States, hope you enjoy a happy and safe 4th of July holiday and hope all of you have a good week. Thanks for being part of my world....it's wonderful to feel connected to people at so many points across the globe!

Moments of Transcendence

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

I've been listening again to one of my favorite pieces of music, Monsters of Grace, by Philip Glass. Beautiful, ethereal and otherworldly, the text is based on the poems of Rumi. These fields of dots take me to such places and that's why I love making them....I am transported to that opening where the two worlds (any two worlds....infinite worlds) touch....where an unnamed presence is able to move unseen. I cannot find ways to speak of it, except by laying one dot, one small particle, next to another. 

I've been trying to think of the name of this series (more are in progress), but it occurred to me that these are also nocturnes like the ones I began last fall at the residency in Wyoming. For those of you that haven't seen any of these, here is one from the series and the rest can be seen on my website. For now, the series is called The Second Nocturnes.

Earlier in the week, as I was making dots, I began to realize that the world these dots evoke could be superimposed on something more concrete, an image more tangible. I immediately found some of the old photographs my mother took from her youth and made some photocopies to see what happened.

This field of dots is layered on a copy of a photograph of my own mother and father in their happy youth while my father was in the Navy during World War II. They are both gone now, my mother's an unhappy ending with alcohol, my father's a long life lived even with a weak heart. I know how those lives unfolded....in their innocence at the moment of this photograph, how could they know where their life would take them. Maybe that's the reason I find it so compelling and I'm curious for your reaction. Does this layer of dots perhaps evoke something unnameable and does it hold possibilities for creating a new layer of meaning, for moving an ordinary snapshot closer to the threshold where the things move easily back and forth. Perhaps for you it is just an old photograph with a pattern of dots. And that brings me to another big question....what is it that makes something transcendent? And what does it mean to be transcendent? That's what I'm after in the work. I am so happy when there are even momentary glimpses.

If we can make our daily lives more transcendent....wouldn't we be floating through life? I don't feel as if I'm floating, but as long as I have glimpses through art, music and literature, my life feels connected to something much larger and I am lifted ever so slightly from my plodding. I'll leave you with the latest dailies from MissouriBendMusings. Have a great weekend!

May 29, 2012

May 30, 2012

May 31, 2012

June 1, 2012

Endless Repetition

Monday greetings! Hope you had a great weekend. A few things to share with you at the beginning of this new week! May as well start with the dailies....as I didn't make it back here on Friday as planned, there will be quite a few.

May 15, 2012

May 16, 2012

May 17, 2012

May 18, 2012

May 19, 2012

May 20, 2012

May 21, 2012

Today's daily brings me to the ultimate topic of this post.....repetition of a single unit....in this case, the humble dot. I've recently been finding myself longing for a new direction of sorts....maybe not a new direction, but a new voyage of exploration. I'd also been hearing the little voice in my head reminding me of my desire to get to the essence....often it comes to me as the notion of "the one thing" and the search for the "one thing" that will let me express the unsayable. At some point over the weekend there was a convergence of those desires and I realized that what I wanted was to find the "mark" that I would make....the single mark that would be repeated to see where it led. This sounds rather mundane as I describe it here, but I thought that it would help me move away from dependence on the recognizable image, so that I could get to some new landscape of mark making that might let me talk about the layers underneath....the longings and yearnings we might never be able to put in words. As you all probably know, especially from the Nocturne series, I am often most happy when making repeated dots. The dot would be "the mark" and I would set off to sea making random dots to find out where they led. There are endless possibilities, it seems, with just one mark. I'll explore this and see what happens. I did it with today's daily and then this afternoon I started another piece....multiple dots of white ink on a very delicate, almost translucent handmade paper made with cornhusks....hard to see, but here is a section of it. It will probably get dipped in beeswax at the end, but not sure yet.

And one last bit of good news to share! If you have a chance to see the upcoming issue of Sew Somerset, I'm one of the featured artists! I got my issue on Saturday before it hits the news stands...very exciting to see your words and work in print.

It's back to work-work for me tomorrow, but life will continue developing along other fronts as well. Thanks for reading....enjoy your week....may you be inspired and find joy in the simple pleasures.

Time to head on the deck for a glass of wine and the last few chapters of my latest book!

Spring Dreaming

What happened to Monday!? Oh, that's right, since it was a holiday, my husband was home and we actually had a weekend. So, today feels like Monday, although it is now clearly Tuesday evening! My trip to the big city (Omaha) went off without a hitch and I was home before dark, with a small bundle of groceries that included fresh fennel (impossible to get in this town) and 2 loaves of bakery bread (cranberry walnut and asiago-garlic), along with one new book from the used bookstore and a new supply of paintbrushes!

This has been the strangest winter...the snow falls rarely and when the ground is blanketed even with a few inches, it's all gone within days as the temperatures rise again into the 40s. It was in the mid-40s today and it will be over 50 degrees tomorrow....craziness! By the end of February, even in the worst of winters, one is itching to see signs of spring, but when one is perpetually on the verge of spring....well, every day is like a tease. I'm really starting to think about that perennial bed in the back of the house on the edge overlooking the river.....this one....

What a mess!!  I'm determined that this year we'll use it to grow "crops"....obviously, I use that term quite loosely, since it's quite a tiny space and we're not farmers. We've had good luck with squash and pumpkins, some luck with tomatoes and blue potatoes and little luck with leeks.  Oh, and absolutely no luck with watermelons.  Each year we learn a little more and want to expand our edibles to include peppers, carrots, chard and any number of other possibilities.  We were going to take over this bed last summer for this purpose, but as anyone who has followed this blog since then knows...last summer took us by surprise with a tense time of watching the Missouri River waters rise way beyond flood stage.  This summer should be quite a bit calmer, so I'm eagerly anticipating getting out there to move all those perennials and give them a new start in other beds around the house. But, it's still February....I have to wait.....winter could still arrive with a big wall of snow!

The reminders of last summer's flood are ever present. There is an incredible sandbar in front of our property that goes on for probably half a mile up the river....massive.  There used to be small sandbars scattered here and there in the river and they changed almost daily, but this thing is so huge it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. And just down the river, there is that big tree limb visible, no doubt stuck in a big pile of sand lurking underneath. When I photographed the bed in the back this evening just as the sun was setting, I peeked over the edge of the neighbor's property and was once again reminded of the huge sand deposits that seem to be everywhere, this one complete with overturned plastic red lawn chair!

And the dailies continue....details and other views of these pieces at MissouriBendMusings....or click on the links to each day's drawing...

2-18-12

2-19-12

2-20-12

2-21-12

Enjoy the rest of your week....spring is just around the corner!!

A Little Adventure In The Big City

Tomorrow I'm going on a field trip....to the big city of Omaha!  Remember that all things are relative and when you live on the outskirts of a town of 10,000, Omaha, with a population in the hundreds of thousands, is the big city!  I'm delivering the two Nocturne pieces, now beautifully framed, to the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts for the Regional Juried Exhibition, which means that a visit to my favorite used bookstore, Jackson Street Books is an absolute must. I'm going solo because my husband has a commitment up at the University, so I will go with my own flow and peruse the books until I am quite delirious. Then on to Whole Foods where grocery shopping is a delight rather than another chore to get through. Two hours of driving down and two hours of driving back, I'll have to make the most of it....oh, almost forgot to include a stop at Dick Blick for a few art supplies on my  list....a busy day for me tomorrow, but I am sorely in need of a break and am looking forward to a change of scene. I don't know when I'm going to fit the daily drawing in, but somewhere, somehow it will get done!

Here are the latest from MissouriBendMusings

2-17-12

2-16-12

2-15-12

2-14-12

Hope you have something interesting planned for the weekend....see you in a couple of days!