Alchemy

Alchemy

This is the weekly found text piece that I usually try to post on Wednesday, but almost never make it, since I'm working on it Wednesday evening!  It's now posted in my shop here if you'd like to see more views and details.  

As you can tell, we're back from our fun-filled jaunt to Chicago and I'm still trying to get caught up on everything.  Tomorrow I hope to have some new pieces finished to show you and will fill you in on the highlights of our trip!  

We're enjoying a gorgeous, although quite cool, day with the sun shining....this, sandwiched between days of heavy rains, gray skies and chilly temperatures.  Those zinnia seeds I planted before we left appear to be sprouting....along with all the weeds, alas. Yard work later today...one must take advantage of these windows of opportunity....more rain tomorrow!! See you then.

Time and Place, A New Found Text Piece

This found text piece is supposed to be posted on Wednesday, but it was finished too late last night for me to photograph and post it, so here you have it on Thursday! Normally, Wednesday will be a posting a found text piece....what I was doing on my other blog, Missouri Bend Paper Works, will now happen here.  For the most part, I don't include any commentary, but will just post the piece and the text itself, so you can read it.  Enjoy!

so it goes

time and place

carried somewhere

far away,

a faint 

bluish light

Two Blogs Become One

Happy Friday everyone!  Here's the latest piece, which has just been listed here in my Etsy shop.  I posted it the other day in its unfinished state over on my other blog Missouri Bend Paper Works, and realized as I was about to do so, that the day had dawned when the two separate blogs would become one.  I'd been thinking of it for some time in a roundabout way, but I figured the right time would announce itself, which it did quite clearly.  As I mentioned there, I started that blog in January 2010 as a daily posting of found text poems which I created with cut words and phrases from old books in my studio.  It was a way to have a daily practice and it allowed me to jump into the online world in anticipation of opening my Etsy shop, which I did the following month. It was much later that I started this blog that centered more on my other artwork, studio practice, inspiration and frustrations.  After the one year anniversary, the found text poems on the other blog became weekly postings, rather than daily....as you can imagine, that was a lot to keep up with...and slowly they transitioned from being words and phrases of a poem laid out and photographed on a painted up desk to works available for sale in my shop.  With this piece, it seemed pretty clear to me, that there is no longer any difference between that work and my regular art making practice.  The line, slowly fading, has now disappeared, so I'll no longer post on that blog, but will continue to create found text pieces, hopefully weekly, and will show them here.  I've invited any followers from Missouri Bend Paper Works that aren't already readers of this blog to join us here.

All that being said, this little piece had its beginning with the idea to make the poem on an origami folded text page house that I'd seen in a book.  I thought the instructions looked like something I could follow and I was excited about making a three dimensional house form...I imagined making them by the hundreds...that is, until I tried to make just one.  I know that I suffer from certain disabilities because I don't really have a great three-dimensional space thinking cap in my studio....I'm very, very 2-d oriented. Let me just say, I did really well, cutting the 21 text pages into 2 1/2" x 4" rectangles.  I even got them folded as instructed.....but once that little house was ready to turn itself into something in space...well, it was nothing but frustration...I couldn't envision quite how those instructions were supposed to be followed, much less hold the thing together as this bit tucked into that space, etc. etc. I gave up in frustration, realizing that my village of tiny paper houses would never get off the drawing board...oh, if only it had just been on the drawing board!!  After I walked away and had a few sips of tea, I came back and picked up some of those folded bits and ended up making a 2-d little altarpiece, doing a little tucking of folded pages into slots here and there...I was delighted when I realized I could just fold those outer leaves a bit and the thing would indeed function in a three-dimensional world!  The text announced itself  little by little, as these poems often seem to come together, and once it was pasted on the center panel, I painted out everything else with white.  A few rubber stamps and the beeswax to enrich the surfaces and my little 2D/3D structure lives!  

I've spent a fair amount of time outside this week, pulling an amazing number of weeds...mostly daisies.  My friend gave me some daisies from her garden a couple of years ago, when we first moved in and needed things to fill the beds...she did warn me though, making sure I knew what I was getting into...but, innocence is bliss.  Naturally, I've got daisies coming out my ears, forming carpets in the mulch where the walking path is supposed to be, not to mention taking over every inch of space and crowding out all the other delightful plants.  She did warn me, I remind myself, as I yank yet another monstrous daisy out.  It's still pretty cool here, it seems to me, and every other day seems to be too windy to be outside...we'll be in the thick of summer before spring even has a chance to get off the ground!!  Who's complaining, at least the sun is shining and the snow is fading from memory.

Hope you have a great weekend.  I have to finish up my new website and hope to have a live link for you at the beginning of the week.  By the way, if you are an artist in need of a website, I highly recommend Other People's Pixels  as a site to work with.  They have a great number of customizable templates and it's all geared toward making it possible for artists, even non-tech savvy ones like me, to have a website that they can manage themselves.  If you can do a blog, you can build a website through them....I'm a living example!  Very user-friendly!!!  

See you Monday...hope you have a great weekend everyone!

Found Text Poetry Card

Another of the "found" found text poetry cards....I'm still trying to figure out if these seven cards were meant to be read together or not...it's been quite a number of years since I made them.  I think they'll probably tell me eventually...

found text reads:

enormous change

time among the gifts

as if scanning

other languages

the daily concerns of casualties

much envy and resentment

curious

Wednesday Words: A Found Found Poem

I don't know what it is, but all these bits and pieces of things I've made in years past keep jumping out at me. I found this little group of what were going to be book pages...little found text poems made many moons ago.  I have about six of these little pages and now I can't tell, nor can I remember, if they were meant to be read together as one long piece or individually.  So, let's try this one on for size....here's one out the group.

As for those new pieces I showed you on Monday....oh boy....I'm onto something...can't wait to tell you about it Friday and hopefully have something more to show!  Have a great evening...or day...depending on where you are and what time it is!

A Grounding

I realized today that this little embroidery hoop that's been hanging so quietly on the wall of my studio had never been posted in MissouriBendStudio, my etsy shop...don't know how it got missed, but I posted it this afternoon.  Seeing it anew, this afternoon, was a gentle reminder for me...a kind of reining back in, as I've been a bit frantic of late, exploring so many avenues in the studio that I found myself getting frazzled.  I think it's so important to remember that we need to make the work that is inside us...because that's our job...no one else on the planet can make the work that we are called to make.  It's just another way of saying, be true to yourself and not what you think others would have you do and be. It's the way to stay grounded.

This little found text poem on the right is accompanied by cropped circles from photographs my mother took when she was a young woman in the 30's and 40's.  The poem reads:

this time
around still
many questions
but what of golden
spinning bees glistening
in the sunlight
by and by
open the glass door
into a reluctant
farewell