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.
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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.
The Death Of Imagination
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…
…The interior of the finished box.
A side view
Just one more to add a picture to your imagination…my tacos
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.
The school box
Possible idea???????
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.
Under Lock And Key
Onto more of art of a different kind. As I near the final stretch of this three hundred sixty-five day project I haven’t used nearly enough of the supplies in my studio, which as I pointed out a few weeks ago was the inspiration for this project. I have several cigar boxes that I bought without having a project in mind. I also have quite a bit of hardware. Old drawer handles, knobs, light switch plates, etc. I seem to be on a roll with the lock and key designs. I have a fascination with vintage locks and keys. It makes me wonder if it has anything to do with that love of hiding as a kid, or the more likely cause, my horrific claustrophobia. I got locked in a bathroom when I was five, big old wooden door with old-fashioned key lock. It seemed like an eternity before my Uncle Johnny climbed through a second floor window to rescue me. I think it may have contributed to some control issues as well. I’m OK as long as I have the control, or the key. It’s funny how you can have these moments when you remember something in your life that takes you back, and you can realize as an adult how it contributed to the person you have become. I would consider myself a very introspective person, I like to analyze the who’s and why’s of myself and other people.
The cigar box I used today is wood, I managed through a lot of trial and error to cut a hole big enough to set a vintage keyhole into. Once I had managed to get the hole into the box I covered the front in some vintage wallpaper and added a little bit of copper leaf. The inside of the lid is a quandary for me at the moment, how to cover the hole in the inside of the lid but allow the keyhole to remain open. As for what else will occur with the box remains to be seen. I’m just not sure where I want to go with this one. As for last night’s project, my altered art piece, I have a piece I want to add to it that I can’t find at the moment, hopefully tomorrow. I’ll post photo of the finished project when I have it completed.
Learning To Let Go Of What’s Right
Tonight an exercise in thinking outside the box. I am someone who has spent their entire life trying to do things the “right” way, for the most part I have been successful. I’ve touched on this subject once before, many, many blogs ago. That need to be right and do right interferes with my creative process. When you are a person who is compelled to follow the rules, creativity, which by nature has no rules, can be difficult. Obviously I have skills in traditional art, I can draw, I can paint, but what I can’t do is get past my own limitations on the “right” way. It is an issue that I struggle with on a continuing basis. Paintings that get ruined because I think they aren’t “right” or “perfect” enough, so I change something organic and beautiful into a muddied mess. I’ve completed only a few other altered art projects along the way in this blog, and tonight decided it was time to face my demons once again. I look at the altered art pieces of other artists and absolutely love them, in fact I think the more nonsensical the piece the more I love it. There’s a childlike freedom in altered art. I would define it as art before you were told what art was “supposed to be”. Composition is of course as always important, but other than that there is freedom of expression, sort of “everything including the kitchen sink” art. I have several photographs of my grandmother Florence, that I love. The one in this project is from a costume party when she was seventeen. The original is in sepia tones so I colorized it in Photo shop. An old tin box from some postcards (recycling once again!), a photo of the window that faced our apartment in Paris, a couple of my multitude of sky photos, and butterflies, lots of butterflies. I’m not finished, a day that found me with a bad headache once again, so the components are here, the pieces will come together in the morning. It’s coming along nicely, very different for me, and something I think I need to force myself to do more often to loosen me up a bit creatively speaking.
A Life Reflected
Something I wrote last night sparked some interesting thoughts in my head today. Last night I made reference to my half painted canvas, which upon a coat of paint, was fully clothed. I thought a lot about that today. Sexuality is a subject that makes many people uncomfortable, not me. (Just ask my horrified children.) To be human is to be a sexual being. To give birth is a sexual experience. When I look at that “virginal” white canvas that I started with yesterday I cannot help but think how much life it gains when paint is laid upon it. I give birth to my art. It becomes vibrant and alive. Think about it. How much great art has been produced through the ages due to love, to lust, or because of frustration? The human condition immortalized in paint, in charcoal, in photograph. The Mona Lisa’s smile, the lusty vivacious work of Georgia O’Keefe, even the loneliness of strangers in a diner in Hopper’s “Nighthawks”. The virginal blank surface that has yet to experience life, it is the artist who is tasked to recreate emotion through color and image. The connection between the work and the artist as a human is singular. As I thought about these things today I realized that my own hesitancy, my own cautious approach to laying the paint upon a surface as a young artist has been replaced with a love for richness, for texture, for color. All reflective of the life already lived. I was timid in my younger self, afraid to put too much paint on the surface, afraid of revealing too much of myself. There is a confidence in aging, a wisdom that the young artist can never have. Even the most skilled artist as a youth will find that the work will grow as the life experience grows as well. Love, heartbreak, loneliness, regret, laughter, joy; the list of emotion is endless, the effect on the artist is immeasurable. I need to respect my own process, my own growth and life experience, to leave more of myself on the canvas.
Tonight a face. I love faces. I didn’t want to sketch a recognizable face, but to draw for practice, for the enjoyment. This is a woman who doesn’t exist, created by my hand.
“As The Brush Speaks”
I did it, well half-assed did it. I put two things up on my etsy site, neither of which was my “fine art”, by which I mean paintings, drawings, or prints of those. I do intend to follow-up on those, but am still in the “how do I do it?” phase. I need to find a print shop to get prints made, and I need to find an inexpensive place to order mats from. As for other work that I was going to put up, it’s the shipping that is delaying me. Just when I think I have it all figured out I go to the post office and find out I charged too much for shipping and need to issue a refund. It happened to me several times over Christmas. I don’t care if it’s a dollar less than I posted, I issue a refund. I have too much Catholic guilt to hang onto money that belongs to someone else. Flat rate shipping sounds fabulous in theory, but I found it was cheaper to send things first class. I also need to find boxes to fit things that I want to ship in. Basically my life is a postal nightmare. I wish everyone who liked my stuff lived down the street and I could just drop it off. Just one more problem to solve.
I feel like I had a decent artistic day. I started to work on one of the orphans from this project, feeling all guilty that this little painting was sitting upstairs half painted, like some half-clothed Dickensian character. I sat and began to finish the piece, hating every minute of it. Why? Because I never really liked it in the first place. So I changed my mind, painted over the whole damn thing, and I didn’t feel a bit guilty. (after all fully covered in paint is fully clothed right?) I prepped the canvas to do an entirely different project tomorrow. Meanwhile I grabbed a new canvas, and just painted. Another episode of “As The Brush Speaks”. I didn’t think about it, I just worked. Eventually something began to appear as though out of a dream. I am a great lover of fog. Yes, fog, always have been. I think it is because I always liked hiding. Hiding is good when you are shy. I read a book when I was a kid called, “Fog Magic”. It was about a little girl in New England who could step back in time through the fog to Colonial Days. There were times as a kid that I wanted to disappear. Fog envelops everything around it like a cloak of secrecy, it appeals to me. On the canvas a secret forest of fog and color began to appear, I began to think of fireflies, and bright spots through the haze. A place of peace and tranquility. Once it began to take shape I continued the path. I think I came up with a place I would like to be.
Mission Accomplished!
Three days in and I’m finally finished with this project. As I said last night I will never be able to charge enough to cover the amount of time I’ve spent on this project, but I had a few mishaps along the way, as well as some areas where I rethought the way I was doing things. I’m pleased with the finished project. In all there are thirteen pages in this miniature accordion folded book. Each about the size of a business card. It has a velvet ribbon inside to keep the accordion in place, and the same ribbon to tie it shut. I’d really like to expand on this idea. The one I created for Dan has photos of us, and more personal notes and quotes. As I thought about the piece today I thought it would make the perfect vehicle for a romantic proposal. I may offer them with blank pages for personalization, places for photos, song lyrics, anything that someone might want to add to make it a really special gift.
I admittedly have still not really bitten the bullet and put any of my art up for sale. Dan and I talked about my artistic insecurities again this morning. I really don’t understand what’s fueling these feelings at this point. I’ve produced a lot of work I love including what I did tonight, but I can’t seem to shake the insecurity. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a good cook, actually a really good one. Last night we had dinner at the winery. My food was good, not great, but considering how fussy I can be it was really good. I got up this morning determined to recreate last nights meal, only better. I didn’t hesitate, it never once occurred to me that I couldn’t do it, I recreated that dish and it was better. I am completely fearless in the kitchen. I want that fearlessness when I pick up a brush as well as a spatula. I’m going to put at least five pieces up tomorrow. I need to force myself to get over the hump. I know that as I move forward there will be judgement and rejection, it’s part of the game. I just need to find that belief in myself so that what anyone else thinks won’t matter so much.
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