Finding Home; or A Sense of Color

April 27, 2017

This post has a rather odd title, mostly due to the fact that I couldn't quite land on exactly the right words....but I'd like to share some recent thoughts with you about my color palette. Actually, its about more than that, as these are larger thoughts that relate to coming to terms with who we are and finding a balance and a trust in ourselves. Maybe these insights will strike home with you, as well.

In the studio and in life, sometimes we just need to shake things up a bit! Feeling trapped, we might feel the desire to break loose and do something radical....or even slightly radical....which, for me last week in the studio, meant pulling out the watercolors to change up the daily drawing practice. I'm swimming in daily drawings around here....only a small number of them are listed in my Etsy shop and I was beginning to feel like the process was becoming a little rote. So I thought I'd make a shift in materials and scale them up a bit. For some time now, they have been done with pencil and ink on small sheets of rice paper 6"x4" and then dipped in beeswax. So...I pulled out the watercolors, found some watercolor paper and made the size 7"x5" instead. That was on April 27th and you can see the drawing I made that day. More time was spent with details and I liked the drawing pretty well, but something didn't seem quite right. That color, while lovely and bright, felt a bit strange and foreign.

May 1, 2017

A couple of days went by and I didn't make a drawing. When I did return to the daily drawing practice on the first of May, I found myself almost back where I'd been....on small sheets of 6"x4" rice paper. I still had the paint to add color, but it was much more muted....more the subtle color palette that I know expresses my sensibilities. I recognized it immediately when that deep blue green hit the paper....a sense of coming home. I suddenly felt at home again.....like when you've gone on a little journey and come back, slightly larger from the experience and more in tune with the place you call home.

May 2, 2017

I realized that I had felt the compulsion to change things up and the need to step outside of my usual routine in order to remind me to trust my own being as a maker. I love color and often bright color, but the work I make with my own hands, the things I want to express, are best said with subtle tones. The watercolor paper is made to take watercolor, but it felt cold and unyielding to me...and lacked the tactile qualities that the Japanese paper has....and so shockingly white! I was happy to be back to my tiny sheets of rice paper. And well, the beeswax, what can I say? It creates a layer of richness....deepening the tones, even of pencil marks, and adds a surface quality that I just love. 

May 3, 2017

So, all this is to say, sometimes we need to learn the same lessons over again and again. I've spent decades as an artist, learning to trust myself and find the place inside me that is true. Sometimes the voices outside of us and our perceptions of what we should do lead us in new directions, but the truth is in each one of us. We each have our own marks to make, we each have our own sense of color and our own voice. If our work is going to be honest, it has to come from a place deep inside of us.....and we must remain true to that and trust it. That alone is a lifetime of work.

Happy New Year Greetings

Greetings to all in the new year! I've been away on holiday travels, with family near and far and am finally getting settled in back at home. As you can see from the photo above, we have no snow to speak of, but that doesn't mean the temperatures aren't frigid! It's mighty cold out there, as evidenced by the ice chunks gliding down the river. They remind me somehow of white clouds floating across the blue of a summer sky. 

Today was the first day spending any time in the studio. Above is a brief snapshot of the start of a drawing that is now underway. I'm easing my way into a new body of work and feeling a bit pressured, as I've been invited into a group show of women artists at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings in the early spring. I'd like to create another grouping of pieces similar to the Art of Wonder series which I began last year at this time. As those of you who have followed my work and/or this blog know, I have to draw my way into an understanding of just what this new work will be. And so, I just begin with play and letting my hand draw what comes naturally. I know this much....the series will be made on 8"x 8" Japanese paper that will be dipped in beeswax. The more I draw, the more I'll understand when I've "got" it. After an hour or more on this drawing, I know I'm not there yet, so we'll see where this one goes....if anywhere!

Still getting over a nasty cold, so it's slow going, but I know I'll soon find the groove, so to speak. Sorry for the long absence, but as everyone know the holiday season makes for busy days. I'm glad to have had time with family and friends, but I'm now more than ready to have my days spent in the cozy studio. Hope you've had a fine start to 2017!

Fleeting Moments

Missouri River  view October 20, 2016

There is a morning glow of magical light on the river that happens just after the sun appears over the trees in the east. It's a regular occurrence, but so easy to miss, as it is fleeting....as so many magical moments are. Yesterday morning, I turned around in the midst of the mundane morning activity of clearing the table or maybe I was refilling my tea....but I looked up and there it was, that magical light, the golden glow along the water and distant shores. I reached for my phone and was out the door into the chilly morning before I knew it. 

I captured it, but of course, not really. All moments are fleeting and perhaps it's good to keep that in mind, so we can fully be there when they happen. We try desperately to hold on to time, to memory, and we take photos to capture the special ones, but no matter....it all slips through our hands. And yet, we are compelled to record, to capture and these photos serve as reminders, place cards and souvenirs of the journey. Those magical fleeting moments of glow on the river that I glimpse on many a morning remind me of what a special place I have here on the Missouri.

And in my further attempts to capture and to hold, to record the passage of time, here are a couple of drawings from my recent dailies. Hope you have a lovely weekend, full of inspiration and insight!

October 15, 2016

October 14, 2016

Explorations (In Progress)

Something I saw recently reminded me of my fascination with dots and that sparked an idea for a new venture in the studio. Regarding dots...the question in the back of my mind is, "what can you say with the dot, a simple and elemental form?" A dot is a like a single unit and, in a sense, becomes a metaphor for the beginning point of all things....the first single-celled creature, the Big Bang, life on earth, perhaps. If nothing else, the dot is a building block and I'm interested in exploring how it can be used to create pattern, surface, texture and meaning. 

I am used to working with smaller tools....things like pencils and pens, and I can mesmerize myself for quite some time making all manner of dots with such utensils. But I suddenly saw myself returning to paint and turning that pencil on its end, quite literally, by using the eraser as a tool to make dots. It became a way to scale the process up!

Since I didn't have any panels that weren't already "finished", I looked over to the shelf and decided to sacrifice this little trio of 6"x6" cradled panels. They were pieces I'd made a couple of years ago that I was never to happy with. Well, they are long gone now, buried under so many eraser-painted dots! These are still very much works in progress and may even turn out to be a single work in the form of a triptych. 

I don't know where this is going, but isn't that the point of an exploration....heading off into the unknown? For now, I'm pausing to get my bearings, but will continue the voyage over the coming days.

Hope you enjoy your weekend!

Blessings and Curses (of the Internet)

Notes From The Ancestors no.20

Many contented hours were spent stitching on this latest piece in the Notes From the Ancestors series. I'd lost count, but when I went back to the files, I see that this is no. 20! That's a nice round number and I think this will be the final piece in this ongoing series. Something else will emerge, I'm sure. 

I thought I'd devote a portion of this post to sending out an alert to all my artists friends in the blogging world. As we all know, the internet has made possible the amazing connections between people across the world whose paths would never otherwise cross. It is such a positive vehicle for connection and for broadening horizons in so many ways. But, as with everything, there is always at least another side that is unleashed, which is not so positive. The internet also paves the way for all manner of interesting ways to scam people and now I've had a chance to experience it first hand. Scammers prey on all sorts of folks, through a variety of means and making a query to purchase art is just one of them. 

I was the victim of what is known as the Distant Buyer scam....well, almost a victim, in that I caught it in time. I was contacted by someone to purchase two pieces from the Art of Wonder series that they had seen on my website. The correspondence went back and forth for a couple of weeks and rather than purchase the pieces through Etsy, which was what I suggested, this buyer wanted to send a check. Here's the crux of the scam, in case you are unfamiliar with how it works. You come to some agreement with this distant buyer (they are basically smooth operators, but there are tiny red flags along the way, alas) and when the "check" arrives it is for an amount far beyond the agreed upon price. They then direct you to go ahead and deposit the check and just send a check to refund them for the difference. When this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, the buyer (who was supposedly in Miami) sent a check that had a return address of North Carolina, drawn on a bank in Minnesota. In this scam, the check is bogus of course, and if you are caught in the snare, you will deposit it and send back the balance before it comes to light that the check is no good. Apparently, this happens fairly often in the buying and selling of all manner of things on the internet. As I don't engage in anything but selling my artwork, I never thought I'd be entangled in such a scam. So, all is well, as I learned quickly enough what was happening and didn't fall for it, but I just want to remind folks to pay attention to those little internal red flags that go up when something doesn't seem right. We all know the old saying, "buyer beware", but in this case and in these times, "seller beware".

On a ligher note....another little book has come together....The Book of Endless Time. It's a theme I often return to...the magic of the written word, which I describe through lines of dots and a kind of handwritten pseudo text. On top of the text that alternates the dots with the looping writing, a series of little spirals forms scatter across the pages. The pages are made with pencil and white ink on Japanese paper that is then dipped in beeswax. I love the translucency and how wonderful the beeswaxed paper feels in your hands. Time seems to flow in a linear fashion, but there are moments when it does feel circular and indeed endless, which is hard to quite fathom.

Just the other day, I had the desk all cleared and ready to work. It doesn't take long to turn into a little whirlwind of chaos....now that the Notes From the Ancestors is finished, time to head back downstairs, regroup and put things back in order.

Hope your week is going well! It's a beautiful autumn day here in my corner of South Dakota. I know it is not calm many places and my heart goes out to the victims of the hurricane Matthew....hope it will skirt the U.S. and cause no further damage.

Cheers!

Reflections and Notes from the Commonplace Book

The Book of Disappearing Wisdom

I do a lot of reading and this morning noted the following quote in my commonplace book. It is taken from Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, and reflects some of the sentiment behind my penchant for documenting (see Discovering Logbooks). Jahren is reflecting back on the memory of a spruce tree that grew just outside her bedroom window throughout her childhood and adolescent years. She's just learned the tree has died and has had to be taken down.

"Time has also changed me, my perception of my tree, and my perception of my tree's perception of itself. Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life. It has also convinced me that carefully writing everything down is the only real defense we have against forgetting something important that once was and is no more, including the spruce tree that should have outlived me but did not."

It's the taking note, the paying attention to the small things, which may seem insignificant now or in the whirl of the events of everyday life. But we can't know, can we, what will come to be important....either to ourselves in later years, or to historians or the next generation looking back? I think about the huge gaps we are creating in the record of our collective days, as so much of our lives is lived online. We no longer write letters to one another on paper, diaries seem to be a quaint relic of a bygone are and the very busy lives we live result in little documentation that is tangible. 

The little book above, The Book of Disappearing Wisdom, is new to my shop and is a reflection of these thoughts....tiny dots that resemble writing line the pages and clusters of colored dots seem to move across and through and then disappear. We think we are wise, but I suspect generation after generation spends much of its time learning the lessons of their ancestors. Much is gained by the progress we make, but much is lost and there is a certain ambiguity that fills our days.

Thanks for taking the time to slow down and read these posts! Enjoy your weekend....cheers!

Studio Update: Paper Quilt

So....I've been absent for awhile. I guess it's that time of year....when the mind wanders and the attention strays. Frankly, I've been feeling lazy and somewhat uninspired, but I kicked myself in the seat the other day and got back in the studio. I think what I need is a way to shift and change things up....take what I'm doing to a new place. 

I've long had in the back of my mind this idea to make a paper "quilt" that would allow me to work larger by building it in modules. This way I can maintain the intimate scale that I crave when working, but create a larger statement. But, the problem in my mind has been attaching the beeswaxed sheets in a way that is functional but also is incorporated into the overall work. I think I've got it envisioned, loosely anyway, and that's all I needed to move forward. So here we are....the work in progress. My beloved lines and dots on alternating vertical and horizontal 4x4" squares as a base. These are obviously not attached, nor are they dipped in beeswax, but that will come. Each square takes around a half an hour so I need to get a few more finished before I start playing with the contrasting drawing bits that will serve as attachments. I've actually no idea what they will be yet....but that's the fun of it!

Oh, I do love the meditative practice of making dots, next to dots, next to dots in an endless pattern of lines.

During my time of being AWOL from the studio I was much more haphazard about making the daily drawings, but I've begun those again. There will be gaps in the record, but I think we must forgive ourselves for our lapses and think of them as incubation periods, perhaps. 

Much of my time lately has been spent in one of those rockers on our front porch. Feels wonderful to read, enjoying the fresh air, watching the birds and listening to the rustle of the cottonwood trees. It's always a thrill to see the irises in bloom as well. These are the last to bloom....I think they are Siberian irises...someone correct me if I'm wrong! Next up, daylilies!

Today is the first day that it has felt really hot outside. This morning it was so cool I had to come inside to have my tea, but now, in the early evening, it feels sweltering.  Now that the real warmth of summer is upon us, I do believe the fireflies should be appearing any day now....that is one of the highlights of summer for me! 

Until next time....cheers!

The Decisive Moment

Most of my time these days is spent in the studio, but I am trying to carve out some time for reading as well, as that often feeds the work. I'm currently immersed in H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. The book is beautifully written and spans a range of genres--part memoir and part nature writing, as well as an exploration of the ways that life and death play out in our lives. I love books like this, that weave a kind of tapestry of ideas. One passage I read the other day about photography and capturing the moment has captivated my thoughts.   Henri Cartier-Bresson, a world renowned photographer talked about the "decisive moment." Macdonald quotes him here: 

"Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera....The moment! Once you miss it, it is gone for ever."

I appreciate this idea, especially as it relates to making photographs, but in meeting up with Cartier-Bresson again, I am reminded that the notion of the "decisive moment" resonates in a much larger way for me. The other morning, as I sat down to make the daily drawing, holding pen to a spare sheet of 6 x 4" Japanese paper, I was caught in that decisive moment when my arm and hand began to move, making the first mark with the pen. That split second....that decisive moment charts the course of the drawing. It seems the stage is set with that first mark....is it halting or flowing, a moving line or a closed shape, does the drawing begin in the middle or hover in a corner? It seems so inconsequential, as the drawing unfolds in mere moments, completely intuitively, but it does so in response to that decisive moment of the first mark. I see this as a kind of metaphor for many larger things in life.

As I have reflected on the expanded passage in H is for Hawk, in which she talks about the photographs her father took, capturing particular moments on film, I've thought about this. Those moments captured by photographs are just the ones we see, the few rare moments that are actually caught, stilled for the ages. But those moments are happening everywhere, at all times, and almost none of them are captured, at least by cameras, digital or otherwise. If we are paying attention, they are captured by our senses and stored in our memory, fading (or not) like old Polaroids. But think of this...those moments, those decisive moments, are happening all around us, every day, and we miss most of them. But they are part of the history of time, because they happened, even if no one noticed. It's the way I like to envision all the words spoken, hovering in the air, the sincere and heartfelt ones mingling with the thoughtlessly uttered and the cruelly spoken. In those moments when that image comes to me, I want to limit my words to ones that count, that can add something meaningful, rather than clutter the void with ever more prattle.

During these reflections on the decisive moment,  I came back to something I like to remind myself, which is that every moment is a moment of choice. The decisive moment implies making a choice. But those moments are, in effect, every moment. We can choose to respond or react in a given situation, we can focus our attention or avoid noticing, we making countless choices...without even paying attention to the fact that we've done so. 

So for me, this short passage, related in less than a page in my book, has expanded in numerous directions. I am reminded that each moment is a moment of decision, that those "decisive moments" we have recorded in our collective memories through still photographs and are happening all around us, all the time. They'll remain with the ages, just beyond the reach of our awareness, or if we slow down, use our senses more mindfully, we can record them through our own engagement. And the decisive moment is very much with me during my time in the studio, creating new work that is made through the result of an endless accumulation of decisive moments.

Nothing like hours at the desk in the studio to fuel the wondering mind! Glimpses above of works in progress and a slowly expanded lineup of new pieces for my show. The plan is to have 27 of these in 3 groups of 9. That will mean roughly one piece a day....not much time for reading, but plenty of time for reflection!!

See you again soon. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Fits & Starts

Greetings! Spring is here, at least on the calendar. The reality is that it feels like spring only in fits & starts, as the temperatures fluctuate and we cast our eyes on the forecast, waiting for the steady upswing in temperatures. There are some days pushing 80 degrees, with the ones in between sometimes in the upper 30s or 40s. And, with so little snow (the big secret from this tiny southeast corner of South Dakota is out!) this year, we are desperately in need of moisture. I'm anxious to get moving outdoors, working in the garden beds and shedding the winter weight gain. Soon....

In the meantime, life in the studio has also come in fits and starts. As I've probably mentioned, my husband, Johntimothy, and I have a show together here at the university that will open in just a few weeks. We've based the exhibition on the notion of a daily practice and have both been making new works each day. His is based in printmaking and the process of taking a plate through an amazing array of changes, so there are over 100 prints based on the same two plates. I have been making daily drawings in the same format, so whatever time I can muster in the studio is dedicated to making sure I get my drawing finished. The pieces are all based on a 4" square or a 4" circle diameter format on 10x10" paper. Mine will be shown in a grid, like a calendar and his will be shown in a linear format, reflecting the sometimes subtle changes in his engraved plates, day after day. We are also collaborating on some works that will be in the exhibition, so that process is becoming more intense, the closer we move to the installation. All this is to explain my absence....well, my presence here in the blog world only in fits and starts. My library job takes up a lot of my energy and I find that I want to spend more time reading than ever before....as we all know,  there are not enough hours in the day, that is, if you value sleep as much as I do. If anyone unlocks the secret of being able to do it all, please pass it on!

Once the exhibition goes up, I will have extra pieces that I will share here and in my Etsy shop for sale. But for now, everything is still under wraps! However, as I look around the studio, I see so many pieces....a lifetime of work, much of it from the recent past, staring me in the face. I've just listed the framed piece below in my Etsy shop, Missouri Bend Studio. This is no. 6 from the Nocturne series, made a couple of years ago. The piece has been in a few exhibitions, but here it is, needing to find a loving home. The work is fabulously framed by Mary Selvig in Sioux Falls....when it was shown at the Bemis Center in Omaha, I swear as many people commented on the framing as they did on the drawing itself. I've listed it with the shipping included (the trusted folks at FedEx do a fine job of packing and shipping) within in the US. If you are interested and overseas, please let me know and I will get an exact shipping cost to a particular location and adjust the price accordingly.

Well, hope you are enjoying a lovely spring where you are....or autumn, as the case may be. Here, we are just seeing signs of leaves on the trees....flowers, not yet. Soon.....

Nocturne no.6

Settling Into Summer

Greetings, friends! I hope I don't sound like a broken record when I say that I feel like I'm finally getting on top of things. I am more relaxed now in the studio and some looming deadlines for other things have now come and gone, so I'm feeling good. I am settling into a rhythm with the new daily format....black and white 6 x 6" pieces for the weekdays and the teabags mounted on bristol for the weekends. I've also found some time in the last day or so to finish up a couple new pieces for MissouriBendStudio, along with adding more dots to a Transcendence piece in the works. I meant to do a blogpost at the end of the week, but better late than never....I can still try for two a week, although it may not always work out. I still haven't had a chance to get caught up on blog reading, which I miss, but that's the next step. The weather has, for the most part, been delightful and we're outside enjoying the fresh air or working in the garden beds when we can....might as well enjoy the summer weather before it becomes beastly hot! I am always grateful for the faithful support I have here....you all are wonderful readers and fans and I thank you for the patience and messages of good cheer! Now, it looks like we've got some catching up to do...nearly a week of dailies since I was last here!

June 20, 2012

June 21, 2012

June 22, 2012

June 23, 2012

June 24, 2012

I made a couple of little books with some of the collage pieces I started last fall....both have pages that are dipped in beeswax....creates a delicious translucency! They are just a few pages, held together with a pamphlet stitch. I've just listed this one in the MissouriBendStudio shop, where you can find some detail views of the pages.

Mysterious Panoramas Transforming

The second book, Book of Civilizations Lost and Found will be listed there tomorrow....hope you'll check it out!

Okay....there's still some time left in the afternoon to get back in the studio before Johntimothy comes home and we head out to Sioux City on an errand run!  Hope you have a fantastic week!