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Monthly Archives: February 2014

This Is Your Captain Speaking…

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I think I’m losing my mind. The blowers to dry out the ceiling and floor were supposed to be turned off this morning, but guess what? They will be on until Monday. The title of my blog tonight is an effort to explain what we are living with. Dan described it best. You know when you’re in an airplane and there is that constant droning noise from the engines? That’s it, now multiply it by a thousand. Non-stop noise, twenty-four hours a day since Thursday morning. Our cats are completely freaked out and skittish, I have had a headache, and Dan doesn’t want to be in the house. We managed to spend a good part of today out of here, but we’ve been home for a couple of hours and I am nearing the edge. I am rushing to type this post so that we can go upstairs and shut the door, and pretend we are flying to Paris.

Yesterday I had some inspiration. I was looking at a beautiful cloudy sky and thought I’d like to paint it, but not in color, in shades of gray. I chose acrylics as my medium. I looked through the multitude of cloud photos I have, but instead of settling on one in particular I just let the brush and paint flow. I went back and added some highlights in a few of the white spaces. I really like the painting, although I wouldn’t mind a little more texture. I am particularly happy with the hills. The area around here in Temecula is full of granite, and I think I really captured the way they look. I’ve done a few watercolor figures in shades of gray and I’d like to explore it a little more but with oils. It’s a wonder I could paint at all with the noise. I long for Monday, and silence.2 8 14

Life Changes

We had big changes here today, our son Brian has moved out.  We are now officially Empty Nesters. It’s a strange feeling knowing that he won’t live here anymore, it will definitely take some time to adjust. I’ve spent twenty-three years seeing him daily, and worrying about him continually. Of course the worry won’t ever go away, I am of course a mother, but I will miss him terribly. I did request an occasional text message so that I know he is OK. It seems silly since he will only be living fifteen minutes away, but he is still my baby. It does of course mean that I might be able to steal some storage space for my supplies.

We spent most of today trying to escape our noisy house, hopefully by tomorrow the bathroom floor and dining room ceiling will have dried. We spent time at Starbucks, the library the grocery store, and the home improvement store, basically anywhere that was less noisy than here. As for tonight, we are holed up in our bedroom with the door closed. It is the quietest spot in the house. It’s been a rough week, I’m more than happy for it to be coming to an end.

After days of not feeling so creative today was a good day. I pulled out my Sculpey and ended up creating some really nice pieces. I’m working on another of my small art boxes and came up with an idea for the cover. In keeping with my romantic themed art boxes, I created a piece to glue to the top of the box. I used a cookie cutter to cut out a Sculpey heart that I attached to a flat piece of the same clay. Once those were secured together I added a metal keyhole, and then I embellished it with very small handcrafted details. After the piece was baked I used my favorite paints for crafts, the Martha Stewart line, this time in metallic. I used the same paints to paint the cardboard box. The piece is really coming out nice. I needed to create another piece to cover the inside of the hole in the box cover. I’m not sure which yet I’ll use, but I created two pieces to choose from. I really love how these pieces came out, as did Dan. Its nice when he has a reaction to something I’ve done. He’s used to me messing around with stuff and showing him what I’ve come up with. He always likes what I do, but every now and then I get a really great reaction and it means a lot.2 7 14

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It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…

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” Into every life some rain must fall.” I don’t know who said that, and I really don’t care at the moment, other than to say that it’s been torrential here, and I don’t think that rain was meant to come from my dining room ceiling. Things were slightly better today, and all that means is that the guys that are repairing my house don’t have to cut out a piece of my ceiling, or a hole in my studio wall in order to get to the damage in the bathroom. Meanwhile we are suffering through noise I haven’t lived with since I lived eight minutes from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. We have in our dining room four contraptions meant to dry out the ceiling, and a few more upstairs running to dry out the floor. Non stop noise since seven this morning, and they won’t be off for three days. To say our nerves are just a little frayed is an understatement. Nothing like feeling like you live inside an airplane hangar to ease our stress levels. I spent much of the day listing on etsy, fairies for the most part. I am aiming to get prints up as soon as possible, but I am still in the process of figuring out watermarks. I think much like yesterday my work today is inspired by what I’m feeling. I want and need serenity, quiet, and peace. I am a person who enjoys solitude, who loves quiet, who hates noise. I don’t know how we’re going to make it through the next two days, but I guess after the last ten months we can do anything. So here is my imaginary place of quiet in watercolor.2 6 14

Stormy Skies

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Ever have one of those days that really just suck? I mean just when you think things can’t possibly get any worse they do. Last night I wrote about our troubled days. Well lets add one more. Monday we got some not great news. Tuesday morning we woke with purpose and sort of figured things out. We were semi-happy. Tuesday afternoon we did our taxes (no need to explain I’m sure) and we were very, very unhappy. Monday plus Tuesday equaled abject misery, oh but wait there’s more! It was now Wednesday morning, overcast and gloomy (just like me), tired from bad restless sleep, but still trying to come up with a plan. We decided to go for a walk, stress relief, good exercise, etc…I sit in our living room in a spot I don’t normally sit in and look up. (I never look up) “Dan, what’s that on the ceiling?” A giant wet spot, no two, no wait, three giant wet spots. Brian’s bathroom is above the dining room. Crap!…Crap, crap, crap!!! (or for my older audience F%#K!) Are you kidding me? What else can happen to us? I predicted today that we will have a major earthquake soon. Why? Because it’s the only thing left. Happy New Year to us. Since January…still no job, brakes go out in the car, car needs new tires, car needs new plate sticker, I need new glasses, my dental implant loosens, my truck needs smog testing, oil change, plate sticker, and new tires, iffy news on possible job, tax bill is monumental, and toilet in upstairs bath has a leak and ruins the floor in the bathroom and the ceiling in the dining room. Earthquake anyone? I’m done, I can’t and don’t understand. Bad juju, bad karma, we were shitty people in past lives, someone please tell me. Tonight I unleashed my mood on canvas in acrylic, Stormy Skies. I can’t write anymore. I am going now to pull the covers over my head and I’m not coming out until this all goes away, either that or the floor starts to shake.

One more thing…trying a new look for the blog. Hope you like it.2 5 14

Holding On Tight

If you are someone who has followed along my journey since the inception of this blog, you know that within weeks of my taking the steps to finally find something for myself, my life took a drastic change. My husband lost his job. As I have been spending these past ten months searching for my artistic self, my incredible husband has been on a search of his own. My obstacles are self-imposed and personal, Dan’s obstacles are imposed by the world and its prejudices. Somehow in this society who we are and what we have to offer becomes minuscule in comparison to our age. He has a fountain of knowledge, incredible skills, intelligence, and is hardworking and loyal to the core, yet here we are nearly a year later. We got more bad news yesterday, and then again today. I find myself feeling a little hopeless today, and worse yet I see it in Dan as well. It has been a roller coaster of emotion for months, more so for me because as always, Dan protects me and denies his own worry as to not upset me. We try to hold each other up, we try to assure each other that all will be well. To be honest I was in no mood to create today. My heart and mind are heavy. I have not given up on prayer, but maybe a little on hope. So many times in the last ten months we have had a glimmer of hope only to have it snatched away. The one consistent throughout is our love for each other, we are in this together no matter what the outcome. Tonight I drew a small sketch in an effort to express what I’m feeling. We are two broken hearts, each holding on to and supporting the other as the chaos of the world swirls around us.2 4 14

Creating Stories

When I was in college I took a three-dimensional design class. It’s been quite a few years since then so I barely remember the teacher, much less his name, but what I do remember was thinking that he was odd. One afternoon he began to explain as he called it his”glove fetish”. He had the opportunity to design one of the school windows in way of showing what the school was about. He used his glove collection. By way of explanation he told us a story about finding a glove on the street. It was apparently a very elegant glove. He spoke of his fantasy about the owner of the glove, wondering what kind of woman she was, and proceeded to tell us of the imaginary woman he had created in his mind, all from a single glove. I was twenty at the time and came home to tell my family that my teacher was, in my young words, “a major league weirdo”. As time went on he only cemented my opinion. In grading my work he spoke of my “cosmic” design sense, or would fixate on one particular element and in his own mind decide it was something that I had never envisioned. Of course I never argued, I agreed, I wanted the grade. On one project in particular we had to create in clay. I’m allergic, so in rummaging around the storage in the art department I found a leaf-shaped cookie cutter, I used it to cut out as many leaves as I could in the time allotted. I was jokingly referring to it as “Gilligan’s Hut” (if you are too young…Google it). When it came time for grading this teacher was gushing with praise for my “organic” creation. I of course played along, telling him that I too loved the “organic” creation I came up with.

I guess now that I am older I understand just a little bit of that teacher’s way of thinking. Unlike him I’m not drawn by single objects, but I am drawn to singular figures. I look at these people and in my mind I imagine who they are, wonder why they are alone, and hope that they have someone in their life. My Dad always says that there is no disease as bad as loneliness, wise words that I agree with. A few months ago it was the man with the umbrella at a bus stop in Chicago who grabbed my attention in a fleeting moment at a red light, just weeks ago the portrait of a lonely woman, and the oil painting still in progress of the young woman whose back was turned to me at Starbucks.  Last week there was a photo in the New York Times that really drew me in. It is of a woman with her back to the camera. I can’t really put my finger on why these individuals appeal to me. Sometimes I think it is a reflection of myself. I can still be quite shy, and have many times in my life felt alone or lonely. I wonder if maybe its the empathy I feel for singular lonely souls. The watercolor I did tonight is loosely based on the photo. There was a profile of a man to the left of this woman, he could have been with her, I can’t be sure, but he wasn’t important in the feeling I had about her. You will also see to the right just the silhouette of a man. The man on the right was engaged in conversation with someone else not relating to the woman, but I wanted to add his silhouette as a way of making her even more singular, but it was the woman I was interested in. In my imagination she is quietly listening. She is hesitant, she is older in how the world perceives her, but inside she is young and full of life. She is in my mind someone who lives alone, she is successful, she has friends, but none that know her as well as they think, and maybe, just maybe, she is holding an elegant pair of gloves in her hands.2 3 14

The Death Of Imagination

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A little bit of a somber post tonight, and for me out of the ordinary social commentary. Dan and I had a discussion this morning while walking, it was about imagination. The topic was inspired by my search for supplies provided by Mother Nature to add to my ever-growing ideas for the fairies I make. Not long ago I was asked by a friend how I get my ideas, and what inspires me. I touched on it a bit here in the blog. Then the other night a new friend asked why I make fairies, again I said that I’m not really sure. This morning as we walked along and I treasure hunted, I think I figured some of those answers out. I honestly don’t have any idea where much of what I do, or the inspiration for the projects come from except to say that they are from my imagination, and I believe that much of that comes from my childhood. We spent several years living next to the elevated train tracks in Chicago. Under the tracks there was nothing but empty space, weeds and occasionally trash.There was also an empty lot directly across the street. We played under those tracks and in that empty lot. We played house and pioneers amongst other things. We gathered sticks and rocks, and anything we “imagined” to be something else. We came home from school and played “school”. We read books voraciously, and added color to the black and white line drawings of coloring books. All of that activity spurred the growth of more imagination, and if you were like me and born with the drive to create it was fuel for the future. Several years ago my son commented that Dan and I must have been really bored growing up because we had no video games. I said, “We used our imagination.”  No there were no video games, no DVDs, and television was limited to the three major networks and a local channel. No one was telling us how to play, no one was putting the ideas in our heads. Violence on television wasn’t the realistic gore of today, unless of course we had on the evening news in which case we watched the war in Vietnam in our living rooms. There is so much trash filling our kids heads, so much “celebrity”, it isn’t reality. Sometimes I am shocked at how little class people show, how they debase themselves for their fifteen minutes of fame, it sends out the wrong message to everyone who watches it. My childish brain was full of scenarios of my own creation, and I didn’t have to grow up before I was ready. So much of what I do is born of the kind of childhood I had. Fairies? “The Fairy Who Didn’t Believe In Children” by Marjorie Barrows, a story I loved. I wonder how much time kids these days get to pretend to be something other than who they are, if they even know how. How much time is being spent with a good book in hand instead of an I Pad, or a video game controller? Who will write the next great fairy tale, the one that will last for generations?  We hear so much talk about what skills kids need to learn in school to be competitive in the future, I think maybe we need to add to the curriculum, a class titled “Imagination”, no books, no video, a room full of sticks and empty boxes, and inventiveness. Just imagine what could happen.

Last night I was juggling three projects. Tonight I’m down to one. I’ve put my suitcase box idea off for a day in order to cook something special for Dan for Superbowl Sunday. I focused on finishing the keyhole box, and I am again very pleased with my results. Instead of painting over the metal finish I added a scan of one of my vintage French postcards, and then on the other side I decoupaged a beautiful photo I took a few years ago. It is of a bouquet of dried roses and hydrangea. The photos are just beautiful and I’ve used them on several projects. One more vintage postcard, and the glue and burning metal technique for the back.

Just to make your mouths water “imagine” this: Korean Barbeque Short-rib Tacos, creamy homemade guacamole, a chipolte mayo coleslaw, and a lemon Sriracha aioli, and sesame seed, on small appetizer size corn tortillas. Amazing. Probably the best thing I’ve ever cooked. I think great cooks have a gift for inventiveness too.

A reminder of the front that I posted last night…IMG_5328

…The interior of the finished box.IMG_5343

A side viewIMG_5342

Just one more to add a picture to your imagination…my tacosIMG_5334

The Art Of Juggling

 

Today was one of those days where I barely functioned. I had less than four hours of sleep. I spent most of the day in a zombie like state only to find myself with a burst of energy at about eight p.m., that’s when I suddenly found myself wanting to start all kinds of projects.Tonight I am actually working on three projects at once. Playing a little catch up after a lost day yesterday. I have finished the tin box with my grandmother’s gypsy photo, but have realized as I photographed it tonight that I would like to add a piece of old chain that I have to hang it from. I posted a photo on the night before last of another cigar box project. I managed to glue the vintage keyhole in, but that left the interior of the lid a mess. The backside of the keyhole poking through my rough cut did not look good. I tried covering it with an additional piece of wallpaper but it was awful. I turned to my old standby, the burnt glue technique. I grabbed the back off an old pad of paper (which by the way I always save), as always terrific results. I will be making some additions to that lid tomorrow including a color change. I also have a small wooden box that served at one time as a child’s school box. There is still a name written on the outside corner. To me it looks like a small suitcase, and I believe that’s where I’m headed with it. I have pulled out a stack of vintage French postcards that I own to use on both pieces. I also made the addition of some small metal pieces on the corners of the cigar box. It gives the cover a nice finished look. As you can see I’ve put a lot on my artistic plate at the moment, juggling the three projects at once, but very happy and feeling inspired which is always a good thing. I am hoping after a good nights sleep to knock these out tomorrow.IMG_5324

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The school boxIMG_5325

Possible idea???????

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Last Minute Musings

 

The stroke of midnight, under the wire tonight. A day where I struggled with feeling like impending flu, and then preparing dinner for friends. Hopefully I have kept the plague at bay for another day although this headache is making me wonder. A small acrylic for today, and unfortunately not much else.1 31