Stretch Yo-Self!
May 24th, 2008, 7 Comments
I worked on the Penelope's Web painting some more tonight, but it's not done quite yet. While waiting for parts to dry, I felt like doing something else. I was inspired by Jen Worden's "Stretch Yourself" Challenge which I've wanted to play along with, but never got around to doing before now. Jen recently changed the challenge from a weekly challenge to a monthly one. For the month of May (which isn't over yet, so give it a shot!), the challenge is to create a triptych using some kind of tape, some object from your junk drawer, and a word.
I used 3 postcards (each 3.5"x5.5") as the base and then used paper collage, ink, marker, paint on top of that. I chose two items (a fake coin and sailboat charm) and wrote the word "Risk" on the center card. I didn't do too much planning and let it kind of flow out. I didn't choose the word until after the collage came together as it seemed to fit. Plus it was the word I related to my dream lynx, so it seemed especially appropriate.
The hubster is out of town on business, so I had an evening to spread out with my art supplies and watch Harry Potter. hehe. The cats and I had a blast. What can I say, that's my idea of a perfect night. Simple pleasures.
The synchronicities have continued today which has been very cool. At the crack of dawn, I'll be up to welcome a delivery of some new furniture and then I think I'll be going directly back to sleep. Well, since I do need to get up early, I should definitely be hitting the hay about now. Sweet dreams. I hope your weekend is a wonderfully creative one!
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -Andre Gide
I’d Rather Be in the Studio
May 23rd, 2008, 8 Comments
The lovely and talented Tammy Vitale is hosting Alyson Stanfield today on her blog book tour for, I'd Rather Be in the Studio!: The Artist's No Excuse Guide to Self Promotion. Besides writing, Alyson is also an artist consultant, workshop leader, and writes at the Art Biz Blog.
As part of the blog book tour, Alyson is answering a question at each stop. Tammy's question was about how to write an article about your art for a magazine. Check out Alyson's answers here.
I took an online class with Alyson Stanfield last summer around art marketing and I'm still in touch with some of my classmates! It was very helpful in getting me to think about how I talk about my art and how I promote myself. I still have quite a bit to learn when it comes to self promotion, so I'm sure the book would be a big help! Actually, it was Alyson's advice that recently inspired me to re-do my banner to include my name in it.
Creative Every Day Linkage
May 23rd, 2008, 5 Comments
There are a lot of Creative Every Day 2008 participants, so much creativity!! It can be hard to keep up with, so I like to share links on occasion to participant blogs, so you can see what's happening with the wonderfully creative people on the list to the right.
-Kira of a girl and her journal, has some great tutorial videos on her blog and she's also teaching an online art journal workshop, Artistic Alchemy, this summer that sounds very cool. I love the banner she made for it!!
-There are some wonderful creations being posted on the Creative Every Day flickr group. Go see for yourself and post your own work if you'd like!
-artandtea has a picture of a journal page she's working on with such gorgeous beadwork in it!!
-Wendy of Hammermarks has posted a link to an interview (starts around 32 minutes in) she did about her participation in the VisArts festival. Wendy makes gorgeous jewelry, definitely go see what she's making!
-Lynn of Getting my Feet Wet has created a beautiful selection of cards with her photographs on them to sell in a local gallery and soon she'll have them on etsy too. Great job, Lynn!
-Cathy of Partly Paper has vintage images up on her blog that she's invited anyone to download and use in their own art. How sweet! Thanks Cathy!
Enjoy and Happy Creating!!
Lynx Dreams
May 23rd, 2008, 16 Comments
Since reading Steering by Starlight, I've been paying a little bit more attention to my dreams. Martha Beck describes an interesting way of interpreting dreams in the book that changed the way I looked at the things that show up in my dreams. Beck suggests looking at every symbol, place, and person in your dream, ask them what they're there to do, what they represent, and then answer as that person, symbol, etc...So, for example, if you dreamt about an alligator, then you'd ask the alligator what it was there for and what it's there to teach you. And then you might answer something like, "I'm an alligator, I live in the swamps. I'm here to help you come out of hiding, to be in the sun." Or something like that. I don't think I'm all that good at determining what symbols mean, what they represent in my life, but seeing each symbol as something that is trying to help or guide me in some way, has shifted the way I look at all those crazy night visions that I have every night.
So anyways, last night, I dreamt about a lynx. It was a very vivid dream. I didn't write it down in the morning like Beck recommends, but I kept thinking about it during the day. I remembered that in the dream the hubster and I had bought a baby lynx, but it was growing big fast and had huge claws and one big sharp tooth. It looked a bit like my orange cat, Tabbers, but much bigger. I was worried that the lynx was going to hurt us or our cats and felt that we had to bring him back to the shelter. I felt so guilty and sad about wanting to return him, but I also felt it was necessary. During the day today, I remembered that I'd called the big cat something that started with an "L". In the evening, I remembered that I called it a lynx, but I wasn't 100% sure that was an actual animal name, never mind whether or not it was a big cat.
So, after watching a disappointing Celtics game, I googled "lynx" and saw the cat from my dreams. Very weird. But the thing that totally blew my mind was reading that the goddess Freya (who I've painted and experienced much synchronicity around) was said to have ridden on a lynx. Now, I'd read that Freya was sometimes depicted with cats, but I'd never read about the cat being a lynx. Goose bumps!
Further reading showed that the lynx is supposed to help with psychic abilities and divination and are believed to be the keeper and knower of secrets. The lynx is associated with inspiration, revelation, and mysticism. Actually, the more I read, the stranger it got. Actually, this was kind of cool, there was a group created in the early 17th century called the l'Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of Lynxes) that was dedicated to scientific investigation and the search for truth through observation. They chose the Lynx as part of their Academy's name because the lynx was known to have penetrating vision. The 6th member of this group was none other than Galileo. I found this particularly interesting considering my post this week about how I consider myself a scientific and spiritual person, which is somewhat similar to the associations the lynx has with skeptical, scientific viewpoint and also mysticism.
So, what does my dream mean? Not sure. After answering the questions as the lynx, I believe the dream has something to do with taking risks. But I may do some more writing and see what else comes up.
(Images from National Geographic and answers.com)
p.s. Like the new look? I may tweak it a little bit, but for now, I'm liking it. I'd like to change up the banner a little more frequently. I used to change my blog banner with each season change, so perhaps I'll go back to that.
Art & Inspiration
May 21st, 2008, 11 Comments
Here's some of the art I've been working away on the last couple days. Penelope's Web (above, still in progress) is coming along nicely. It's a bit hard to see here, but the ocean has maps collaged into it and there are objects in the sea (a boat and an octopus). The latest bit of painting has been done on the easel, which is different because it seems like I've been painting everything on a table lately. Much of this piece was done on a table, but I got the feeling like the easel would be helpful and put it to use. Having organized my stuff a little better has also allowed access to my easel which is often covered with artwork. I would love to have one of those wooden racks for stacking larger canvases as there's only so much wall space I have to work with and things tend to get damaged when propped against the wall.
Above is the latest on the encaustic piece (Little Boy Blue, 6"x6"), I started in the weekend workshop. I used some oil paint stick over the lines I'd carved to make the silhouette a little more clear. After wiping away the excess, I think it did the trick. I had other ideas in mind, but I'm liking the simplicity, so I think I'll be leaving it as is.
I love making art.
Some inspiration linkage for you:
- Marisa of Creative Thursday has done it again with another fabulous podcast about art & money. So much great information and told in such a supportive way, it's sure to inspire you!
- Floating tea cups (in her pool!!) from the lovely Andrea.
- A beautiful pendant from Amanda of Hidden Art.
Steering by Synchronicity
May 20th, 2008, 6 Comments
"By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us,
penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible,
whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers . . . This palpable
world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect
with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a
holy place."
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, *The Divine Milieu*
When I start experiencing lots of synchronicity, I have this feeling like I want to share it with everyone, but it's very hard to put into words. Even if I wrote down every little instance of it, it's still hard to get across the feeling that comes along with it. I think of myself as a scientific and spiritual person, with a practical, somewhat skeptical, no-nonsense look at the world, while also having a sense of the mystical undertone to everything. Sounds conflicting, but somehow it isn't. When I try to explain synchronicities, I'm aware of the woo-woo sound of it. But I still see it everywhere. I want to express it somehow, but words escape me. Thank goodness for art, right?
I left a comment on a blog recently about the limitations of language and how that is why art and poetry often seem much more soulful than prose. When we release ourselves of the rules of imagery and language, we can get closer to the heart of what we're trying to express.
Anyways, I've had so many synchronicities around the book, Steering by Starlight, which I just finished listening to on my ipod (and then went out and bought the hard copy of the book with a gift card.) I felt like I needed the written pages because I wanted to re-read passages (which can be far easier than re-winding and trying to find a particular passage in an audio book.) By the way if you do happen to purchase the audio version of this book, you can find the pdf files Beck talks about on her website here. There are definite limits to audio books, I sometimes have trouble absorbing information by just hearing it (the pdfs for this book helped). But the upside is hearing the nuance and tone in an author's voice as they share their book with you. Beck is a wonderful storyteller with a great sense of humor and having her read these stories is a definite bonus. It feels more personal somehow, as if Martha was talking in my ear as I went about daily chores or exercising, and I liked that.
Some quickie examples of synchronicities here: some of the final words in the book were about neural science and mysticism coming together and then moments later I got a link about neural buddhists in a newsletter from Rob Brezsny. Towards the end, there was a whole section about re-decorating and de-cluttering your home when that has been a big focus of mine while listening to the book. Beyond the synchronicities, I deeply resonated with this book, more than I have with any book in a long time.
Creative Every Day: May 19th – May 25th, 2008
May 19th, 2008, 13 Comments
CED2008 participants! Feel free to leave a comment here with a link to post(s) about your creative activities during the week of 5/19/08 -5/25/08.
Happy creating!
Weekend Show and Tell
May 18th, 2008, 6 Comments
My computer has been one hassle after another lately. This weekend the power cable started to melt. Glad I noticed it before it started a fire or something. I looked it up online and apparently it's been a big problem with the magsafe power adapter on Macbooks (even on the Apple website, it's rated just 1.5 stars out of 5.) But seriously, within a few months my keypad stopped working, my hard drive completely died and now the cable is fried. From what I've read you can go to any Apple Store with your wrecked cable and they'll give you a new one and I have the Apple Care extended warranty, so I'll be all set, but I'm not pleased. I think this is the first Mac product that I've had any complaint with though. I still have an older iMac, the hubster uses a Mac at home and work, I've owned an ibook before with no trouble, and we have a variety of ipods. I've always been a Mac fan, but this Macbook is starting to annoy me. Hopefully this will be the last of its troubles for the near future.
The upside of a computer problems is that I'm on the computer less and yesterday I really had no time to be on the computer, except to check my email in the evening, because I took an all day workshop in encaustic painting (so fun!) with Tracy Spadafora. Tracy was a fabulous teacher and I learned a lot. I have done some encaustic work before as I had a brief introduction in a mixed-media workshop last year and I've read Joanne Mattera's excellent book, The Art of Encaustic Painting. But the intro I had wasn't all that in-depth and I couldn't figure out some of the techniques from just reading about them. I needed to see it and then try it myself. I was especially excited to learn how to incise into the wax because I especially love to draw and this is a great way to work with the medium. I started with a purely experimental 8"x10" clayboard (above) and tried some of the layering techniques, some incising and some painting with color. I love the depth created by layers of wax! Then I started a smaller 6"x6" piece (below) that's not quite done (ran out of time), but I like a lot so far. I used a heat gun to fuse one of the layers and it created this cool separation between the medium and color which I liked. When I looked at it after it had cooled I thought it looked like a brain. The silhouette isn't very clear from a distance, so I'll be filling that in with oil or wax another time.
At the end of the day, I had a massive migraine developing, so driving home was not fun and I had to go immediately into a dark room and sleep it off. There was fresh air blowing through the studio and exhaust fans, so I don't know if it had anything to do with the fumes or if it was just a migraine (which I get from time to time.) Hard to say. I'll have to keep an eye on that when I work with encaustic again. Luckily, I found the cure for migraines.
Today the hubster and I had a wonderful hike through the woods on a new-to-us nature trail. It was beautiful out and loads of people had their super happy dogs with them. When I got home I felt so beat! Thought about napping, but that isn't going to happen, so instead rested a bit and then tried making a repeating pattern using instructions from Julia Rothman on Design*Sponge. Very cool. Hope you're having a fabulous weekend, full of creative goodness!
New Cure for Migraines
May 18th, 2008, 5 Comments
A new cure for migraines: Whale socks! (plus excedrin and a dark room, your results may vary.)
Rare Bird Finds!
May 16th, 2008, 3 Comments
Check it out! Today, I'm the guest editor of a special Etsy-themed Fab 5 Friday at Rare Bird Finds! I got to highlight five products on Etsy that I think are cool. It was super hard to pick just five.
I've loved checking out the selections at Rare Bird Finds, so it's especially fun to get to participate. Go see the fabulous etsy items I picked out and while you're over at etsy, check out the selection of prints I've got for sale here.
