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One Man’s Trash

Some time ago on this blog I wrote about my Dad and myself and how we “saved” things. I referred to us by the name my Mom gave us which was Sanford and Daughter. This morning I was watching CBS Sunday Morning, the news and human interest story program. On one of the segments there was a piece about hoarders, it is now a diagnosed mental disorder. I didn’t even have to turn my head, I knew Dan was smiling behind the newspaper, particularly when it came to the woman who saves the metal holder off the top of Chinese takeout containers because, “You’ll never know what you can use them for.” Famous last words. Words I have spoken so much, much more than you can imagine. My “Artistic Fridge” that I am in the process of cleaning out is filled with lots and lots of  “I can use this for something” fragments. In my defense I actually do use some of these pieces from time to time, but I will admit there are probably more pieces than I will ever get to. People with this disorder have anxiety when separating from their things. It apparently runs in families. Funny since I referred to my daughter as “Sanford and Granddaughter”only yesterday . It made me sad to see how difficult it was for some of the people on the show, but also made me realize that maybe I really need to look at all the stuff, the fragments, the pieces of things I have kept. I certainly think I may have just a touch of this disorder, or harkening back to another post about Myra and Emma (the ladies who rewarded us neighborhood children with candy for picking up trash), it may just be that I can’t stand to see waste, or see something perfectly usable end up in a landfill. Could it possibly be The Boxcar Children? The books by Gertrude Chandler Warner that so enthralled me as a child? All that said, I’m ninety percent finished with the first of my window projects. An old window, scrap plywood, left over fabric, and vintage hooks. In other words, garbage. Bits and pieces given new life in something quite useful and pretty.

I’ve again leaned the window against a mirror for the center. There are three small hooks on the bottom for hanging jewelry or keys, and one larger hook on the side.Tomorrow we attempt to cut the mirror once again.2 23 14 (2)

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Just Ask Me

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The window saga continues. I won’t bore you with the details…until tomorrow.

My work of art tonight is a gift for a friend, and while the subject of my blog tonight is about asking, my friend didn’t ask for this gift. I love to do things for people. I truly enjoy giving of my talents to others. As I told Dan earlier this evening, if I weren’t me, but knew me, I’d ask me to do things for me. Got that? I have many talents and am more than happy to make, or paint, or draw, anything for those I care about. Several months ago I created a piece of altered art that I recently brought out to hang in my hallway. Theresa was here and saw it, and admired it greatly. I had made this particular piece on a board that we had left over from a project years ago. I had another nearly identical piece of the same wood. I sent her a message today asking which bible verse it was that she liked. Proverbs 3:5-6. Using a photograph of a small statue I have in my bedroom as my angel, and some photos of Calla Lilies taken in a graveyard in Richmond, I created “Deum benedicite”, “God bless” in Latin. In several areas I secured the pieces so that it is three-dimensional. There are stenciled areas in copper, silver, and gold. The proverb is printed on vellum, which when sprayed with polyurethane becomes almost translucent.

In these last trying months of our life, Dan and I have been blessed to have much love and support from our friends and family. In time I plan to do a little something for all to show our appreciation. Theresa has been the sister that I don’t have here in California, as mine are in Chicago. Her family is like my family. Just the first of many, many gifts to say, “Thank you.”2 19 14

My Constant Companion

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Still in the process on the window projects. They are both turning into another of those pieces that I put far too much into with no hope of ever selling them and paying myself anything for my time.

I decided tonight to return to doing a little fine art for a project to post. A solitary figure in watercolor based on a rather out of focus photo of my son Brian’s performance as the town drunk in a high school production of “Our Time”. I think I was inspired by a conversation that Dan and I had earlier this evening. We talked about ourselves now that we are officially “empty nesters”, and are now alone. I had been talking to my Dad. He is eighty-one and living in an independent living home. It has been nearly seven years since my Mom died, and in those seven years my Dad has been desperately lonely. He made a few half-hearted attempts at seeing other women, but it never felt right to him. I call him every night, and have done so for the last seven years. I hate the idea of his loneliness. He is in Chicago and I am in California, the phone calls are the best way I can help him. He has often said that for him loneliness is the worst disease a person can have. I have to agree. I have spent a great deal of time alone in my life. The difference in my Dad and myself is that while he is a very social person, I am the opposite. I am a very solitary person, someone who enjoys quiet, and doesn’t mind being alone. I have always said that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. The truth is that I’m never really alone, I always have one companion, my art. I quit work twenty-four years ago to stay home and raise my children, and yes there have been times when I’ve been very, very lonely, but my salvation has always been my creativity. Without art, without creative expression, I think I might have lost my mind. I never really worked on my art, on the kind of art I wanted to do, but I used the gifts I have to do things for my children, to design my home, and to do the occasional craft show to contribute to our holiday spending. I’ll never regret spending the time with my kids (who are by the way, two pretty spectacular human beings), I do regret not giving myself a little love and attention along the way. I will always be grateful for the lifeline that kept me sane, gave me personal moments of joy, and I think gave my kids a rather special childhood. Art and creativity is so much a part of who I am, it’s been my place to hide, my place to express happiness, and my best friend when I had no friends. Now as I near the end of this year-long project I realize that I need to work a little harder to honor my companion, my talent, and continue to push myself to go far beyond this year, to realize my potential while I still can.2 17 14

Alone Again, Naturally

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I’m a little out of sorts this evening. Jessica and her husband, John came for dinner tonight. I wanted to have a nice “moving out” celebration for Brian. It’s a big move for him, and as excited as he is, it is equally hard for me. When you have your babies you don’t really think about the day they will leave, and they will, it’s the way it is, as it should be. When he came over tonight he was really tired, he and his roommates had their first gathering last night, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t sleep. Dan told me that Brian was going to spend the night here, that he was too tired to go to his new place. I didn’t say anything, but I was thrilled. In the end he went back to his place taking just a little piece of my heart with him. I’ll adjust, it will take time as it did when Jessica moved out. Your kids are your everything. It comes to a point when you don’t remember life without them, and then suddenly they are grown and moving out. Now begins the true rediscovery of self, still a mother, always a worrier, but now mothering and worrying from afar, and figuring out my place in the world once again. I think thanks to this blog/project I have a good head start.

I have a not quite finished project for tonight. I started working on old piece I had, a long narrow vanity mirror. I bought it several years ago at an antique store. It was painted red when I bought it, a dull flat paint, but I loved the floral detail at the ends. I’ve been meaning to do something with it for years. I painted it cream earlier today, and then I went back with a little distressing. Tomorrow I want to add a little antique glaze and silver leaf. As for the mirror, I discovered a process a few years ago in distressing mirror. Through a happy accident I ended up removing all of the mirror in one section. I added a photo from France behind it and loved how it looked. I wanted to do something similar here. I removed the mirrored surface in the center of this long rectangular mirror in an oval shape. It isn’t perfect, it wasn’t meant to be. I started out with another French photo but wasn’t achieving the look I wanted. I had some new photos that I took of the dried bridesmaid bouquets from Jessica’s wedding. Just what I needed. I printed the photo on vellum, I love the translucent quality of it. I wrapped the piece of cardboard under it in a piece of white paper. When you print on vellum and use white beneath the colors really pop. The flowers look like live flowers beneath the glass. A few finishing touches in the morning and it will be ready for etsy. I love it, but I can’t keep everything. (At least that’s what I keep telling myself!)2 9 14

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

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