Sunday Sunday

Oh, it's a nice day in Florida! Last night we got a great rain storm and I think this brought us some clear (read lacking in humidity) air, a great breeze (another novelty), and some lower temps(whoopee!). So, I opened the windows and listened to the rain last night, left them open all night and haven't closed them yet.

This has not happened for many many days, many months actually. I'm sitting out on my porch right now and the wind chimes are gently blowing. Indigo, our bird, is outside in his cage hanging from the chain I installed so he can hang off of the eaves outside of our garage. The door to the kitchen is opened and the breeze is blowing through the kitchen, from windows out back to kitchen door/garage out front and back again. Not only that but I can see outside.

Usually, during times of air conditioning, long long times of air conditioning, the kitchen door remains closed, the windows are all closed. I can't hear any outside noises, no birds, no breeze through the trees, no wind chimes, or kids or anything. I find the times of summer where I'm entrenched within my house, succumbing to the guilty pleasure of the chill, to be like my dark winters from up north in regards to being shut off. It's where I come closest to a feeling of cabin fever. Today, having the first full week of Autumn under our belts, feels almost like a northern spring to me where the melting of the snow encouraged venturing outside. Ah, muffins in the morning, breezy coolness and parts of me coming alive. I love the first teases of a cooler calendar.

I read this article by Naomi Shihab Nye in Organica Magazine. It's a freebie magazine of arts and activism that is so interesting to read. Go there and read it if you can. It speaks of education and inspiration and learning and life and kids and freedom and life lessons. I loved the poem at the end, and I loved the poem created by the children on spoons. I totally loved the part when Naomi talks about the testing of children in the schools and how it's what the teachers have to spend so much time doing with children, priming and practicing. She then goes on to say how she flunked the questions about her own essay that were included on the Texas state test two years ago because six of the eight of the questions appeared to her to have more than one right answer. How very tricky that was. God, I loved that part!

I hadn't seen the magazine before, but I'll be looking for it again.

Here's a little blog I love going to when I can. It inspires me so. Two women, 3191 miles apart, taking one picture of each of their own mornings, posting them side by side and oh, it's so lovely. I like noticing how they can seem to shoot the same theme, or color, or shape on the same day, without even having any contact with each other about what they're going to shoot. I keep imagining an exhibit with the photos side by side, 365 days worth and how lovely that would be.

Yummy!

Alright, I better get to work or I'll spend all day in my pj's, sitting on the porch, playing with the dog, eating muffins!

Hmmm, I guess worse things could happen.

Photo above was shot by Jordan (with Torin standing behind her, see?) in Burnsville North Carolina. It's the door to a shop. September 2007

Art Class Notes, Class 4

What a great class!

Alright, to start I ate breakfast. Good idea number one. No large coffee with a shot of espresso and calling that breakfast. Good idea number two was just feeling good and strong and confident heading into class and letting it flow, being experimental, and having fun during class.

Here are a few things I worked on and learned.

This is a little chickadee painting I did in preparation for a faux encaustic lesson we did in class. I painted gesso on watercolor paper, a couple of layers front and back, then painted these little guys in acrylic. The words were a contact paper transfer of a photocopy that I attached with soft gel medium. When I got to class we covered this in a faux encaustic mix (very buttery looking, dries like wax). I'm supposed to paint on top of the dried waxy layer, then add another layer, etc. to build up the layers like encaustic.

I'm still working on that part.

This class we talked about a lot of stuff and worked on using Fluid Acrylics. The fluid acrylics were so much fun, so much fun. We were required to bring to class a canvas prepared with Polymer Medium. This made the canvas very glossy and water resistant. The fluid acrylics were very concentrated and for the purpose of the class we mixed them with a bit of water to help them dry on the canvas more quickly. Usually you would mix them with a bit of medium, which makes them a little less "beady" than the water mixing but does extend the drying time. The fun thing about fluid acrylics is that they are very much like watercolors and you can layer them with a transparent result. Layering, then wiping off, dotting, spraying with alcohol, all of these are so much fun and give a different result.

I learned some great design tips at this class as well.

1. Use mostly warms or mostly cools in your art, then add a splash of the opposite for a strong POP.


2. Focal Point of your painting draws your eye to it and should be where the darkest dark and the lightest light meet.

The chickadee painting is a good example of both design components. The chickadees are mostly warm, the background is warm, etc BUT the purple ground is a cool and makes it pop. Also the focal point in the painting is the chickadees heads, which are made up of the black and white next to each other. Ta da! It's as if I knew what I was doing when I painted it. Not so, not until later, but I did like it right away, and I think the design elements are why.

A few notes:

• For writing in your acrylic paintings CrayPaz kids crayons are supposed to be good due to the high wax content.


• Light molding paste can be used with a stencil in your painting to create texture. It takes a good long time to dry, though.


• Another way to write in the painting is by using glaze mixed with your paint color and a stylus or scratching tool. The words are sort of etched in.

This week at home I'm going to keep working on my chickadees, maybe make a few little paintings using some of my learned techniques, and prepare for next weeks class. We are going to learn how to turn tissue paper into sturdy wrapping type paper that's decorated like fine art wrap!

I'll leave you with this photo of Jordan on a river in the North Carolina Mountains. Breathtaking. Cool water, slippery river rocks, waterfalls, and my beautiful beautiful daughter. Such Blessings all around.

Felted Rocks

Can you believe how flipping good I'm doing on my promise to myself to blog more!! I rock!


Here is my latest fun project!



This is a picture of my dear sweet honey pie sugar bunch Kristine holding the felted rock I made and that she got in her Summer Sampler 2007. I love this one!!


This was the second time our group of folks did a Sampler and it was a great one as usual. For more information on what a sampler is go to Home of the Sampler. It's primarily a marketing tool for DIYers and small business crafters, etc but our group has adapted it for our own purposes (just like us!) thanks to Sue Dolamore.

Go Sue!!

So, this is what I made this year...13 felted rocks! I gathered the rocks from the Falmouth Beach in Cape Cod on our summer trip. God they were beautiful rocks, lovely shapes, lovely textures and ah, the speckling and colors. It was the easiest rock gathering I've ever done.





Very cool project. Here's another shot with the rock that Kristine's daughter Elizabeth got along with Kristine's.

First day of Autumn, a little bit of orange

Here's a shot of the oranges the girls were selling back in May. These are freshly picked oranges from our neighbor Elizabeth's tree out in the back of her house. Makenna and her friends Kristen and Amalie decided to try to sell them to passers-by from a basket at the bottom of our drive.

Trying to sell oranges and the girls had so much fun with it; throwing the oranges around, drinking the juice out with it going all over their arms and faces, just good, plain Florida OJ fun! I'm not sure how many they actually sold, but I think that was beside the point.

Here's a lovely shot of Makenna squeezing the last bit of juice out of one of the oranges. Amalie is on the left and Kristen's right behind Makenna.

This is Dried out Oranges Still Life #1.

Now this is what happens when your daughter puts the basket of leftover oranges in your garage, right in front of the bikes, behind your loom, and forgets about it, and maybe you put stuff from the car you cleaned out, and stuff from the garage you cleaned out, stuff that's waiting to go to the thrift store, and the doll house that needs to be cleaned out before it's sold is there too and well....here's what happens to that same beautiful basket of oranges when you notice it in the garage in September when you go back to finish that job you started in June, that clean up job.

This is what's known as roach motel, roach banquet, or very happy roach home.

Need a close up shot? Well, here it is. That's some good roach work, there. Yes it is.

Dried up Orange Still Life #2.

So, there you have it. We don't have pumpkin patches here, or fall leaves, no siree, no apple cider or apple picking, but boy-howdee we do have some rotten ol' oranges and that sure says First day of Fall like nothin' else can. Don't ya think so? Uh huh.

Happy Fall!!

Art Class Notes, Class 3

Hello. This class was a bit challenging for me. Even leading up to this class was a bit challenging.

Why? Good question, one I'd have to think about, but revolves a bit around the issues of doing artwork, expressing creativity, and feeling a bit insecure about that.

Why insecure? Another good question. Probably because we were supposed to bring in some stuff to use to create a collage with and #1 I'm wasn't really sure what type of theme or collage I wanted to make and #2 I wasn't really sure actually how to put together these separate elements we've been learning about into an actual piece of work.

So, resulting insecurity.

We all worked separately on our work which added a bit of confusion to me. I'm going to sort out some of what we did today, and share what I learned in the process...yup, process. I'm sticking right in my original assessment that it was going to have to be about that for me, which today was a Prime Example Of. lol

ok...a few notes.

• If you have parts of the gesso lift image that you don't want in your painting then just use a bit of sandpaper. It sands it right out!


• Here's a new transparency method: Take your photocopied or magazine image and put it on a piece of clear contact paper. Brayer it on the back good and thorough. Let it soak for a while in warm to hot water, then rub the paper off the back. There you go, easy peasy!


• Let's talk Isolation Coat. An isolation coat is a great sealer for the different layers of your work. For example, after doing a gesso lift use polymer medium and paint it over the image so that the paint and other things you do to the painting don't make the lifted image keep coming up due to moisture, etc. It seals it in there for you. Isolation coats can be used for other things, but, hey...I don't know what for yet. I mean, I know by reading my paper, but don't really know.


• We learned a bit of a blending technique today, too. Mostly it seems that the keys to blending are a light touch and cleaning your brush well. Lay in two colors side by side, the two colors you want to blend. The use your glazing liquid to brush a nice strip down the middle of the two. Now, go back and lightly feather your brush between the two colors, cleaning the brush frequently and going ever so lightly. This is the technique as I saw it and understand it, lol. Haven't perfected this one yet.


• Use A nice heavy gel medium for sticking all sorts of collage type stuff into the painting. Just lay in a bit of gel medium in the painting, brush it on the back of whatever you want to add, I used buttons (what else) and flattened dried leaves (again, predictable).
  
• Ok, remember the transparency I made using the soft gel in class 2? Well, I used that same soft gel to get that transparency into my painting. Lay the medium into the painting, put the transparency onto the painting in the gel medium, brush gel medium over the transparency. Done!

Here is the painting I did in the class. I learned a lot by working on this painting.

First off...Laying in the transparency on top of a dark background, which can be seen in the close up here on the right, is not such a good idea. The darkness is very difficult to over come. I added polymer medium to the transfer which made it very glossy and that helped it to pop out a bit. The darkness made it sort of fade into the painting instead of glowing out.

Here is the detail of the transparency I did using the contact paper method. As described above I rubbed in a photocopy of some writing I printed out on the computer. With this area of the painting I made the background very light with pinks and yellows, white, etc. After laying in the lettering with soft gel medium and allowing it to dry I painted around it, adding darker colors, etc. This worked a lot better.

Art Class Notes, Class 2

Class Number 2 happened yesterday and it was a great one. The pics will be coming, right now Jordan and her camera are in Cape Cod, lounging around and generally having a good time being sixteen with her best bud Sadie. So...no camera in the house right now. I'm going to go ahead and post my notes though. If you see pictures sometime soon, ignore the no pics note! [pics have arrived]

Content of this class was color blending and types of transfers. The class was pretty funky and wonderful and the transfers appear to be something that is going to be fun to do in the future. I've been wanting to understand color better for a long time now, so that was awesome as well.















The types of transfers we did were (1) Gesso Lift and (2) Transparency. See pic above for examples of both. Gesso lift is shown with the woman, transparency is the map on the right.

The gesso lift is a technique that uses a photocopied item and gesso (hence the gesso part of gesso lift!). The basic procedure is done by starting with canvas or watercolor paper prepared ahead of time with gesso and allowed to dry. Apply gesso with your paintbrush, not lightly and not heavily, just in a medium sort of way, to the canvas. You don't want it to bubbly. Place the image face down into the gesso and rub gently but consistently for a while, maybe a couple of minutes, until you feel it's made good contact. Try not to get any gesso on the back of this image. In the place that it happened to me the gesso dried as a dab right on top of the image, blocking it out. Allow to dry for one hour.

When it's, dry spray with water from your spray bottle and start gently rubbing the paper off. You'll get all these little paper balls, and rolls, etc. Just brush them off gently, continue spraying as needed, continue rolling...get into a zen place, enjoy it...until the paper is all gone. Please be advised: you can rub the image off, and you might actually do so, if you are not gentle and careful. So, please be gentle and careful. Unless that is of course that you want to rub out the image in places. Who knows, you might. If you are not sure if the paper is all gone allow it to dry for a while and if there is still paper there it will appear as a white image. Just re wet and keep rubbing!

Ok, so with the gesso lift you get a backwards, printed image of your copied image that's right on the paper/canvas, it actually seems to become a part of the canvas. You can now proceed to use this for whatever purpose you'd like within your artwork.

The second transfer we did is a transparency. We used soft gel in either regular or medium. I used a gloss gel, but matte is fine as well. In this transfer you also start with a photocopied image, but in this one you won't be reversing the image. So, words or a map or something like that won't need to be adjusted. So get your photocopy and paint the gel right onto what you want to make a transparency of, right onto the paper. Coat it in a medium way, not too heavy, not too light. Allow this coat to dry and repeat this procedure for an application total of four times. Allow the last coat to dry for 24 hours.

Once this time has passed, soak the whole thing in a container of very warm water. Let it soak, and then when the paper is dissolving or getting soft, start rubbing. Rub, rub, rub the paper all away. You might want to have a place to dump this water, or at least plan on straining it so you don't make a good papery gloopy mess down the drain. It might not happen right away, but it's better to be cautious on this account. Accumulation of time, et al.

Alrighty then, back to rubbing. Once the paper is all rubbed off you have essentially what looks like a rubbery version of an overhead projector type transfer. It's cool.

One thing about comparing the two methods. With the first method, the gesso lift, you are left with something directly in your art, something that you can build up on. With the transparency you can lay this in your artwork over something, something you've collaged in, or paint, or anything really, and what is behind it will show through. Amazing, yes!?

Then next thing we did in class was to make a color mixing chart. Everyone is using different paint in the class so we all chose our red, blue, yellow and green paint that we were planning on using. We then put small brush strokes of each of these at the top of our chart, which is essentially water color paper covered in gesso on both sides (to help in not warp). Basically the entire mixing process was relatively logical. If you start with yellow, make a puddle of yellow, now add one dab of blue, mix that all up and paint it on the chart, now add another dab of blue and mix it all up, paint that on the chart, do this for a total of five times so you get a value chart of yellow mixed with blue. Now you start the whole process again using the next color, say red. Puddle of yellow, one dab red, mix, paint, add another dab, mix, paint until five are lined up across. Repeat with all colors mixed with yellow then start with your next color, say blue. Start with a puddle, add dab, mix, paint, dab, mix, paint. When you mix all of the colors together it makes black. Diana says that transparent colors are more wonderful to work with because they are essentially color mixed with white. Opaques are mixed with white and black, so they tend to get a bit muddier. I can now attest to this statement. But, using what I've got, yes? yes.

So that's it for the color chart. Color is so fun, it's so awesome. I made the most fantastical wonderful purple by mixing the red and adding blue more and more and more. It was gorgeous.
Next week we are supposed to bring supplies for collaging, using elements from this week and our ideas and other stuff from home. It's been a bit challenging for me to think about because I'm not sure if I can do all of the elements I'd need to for the ideas I have. Also, I'm not sure I have a good cohesive idea I'd actually like to work on. I have lots of time though, so I'll keep thinking about it.

Hope some of this inspires you!

Hey, It's Jack!

Hey, It's Jack!

Jack is growing up, and getting to be a big puppy.

He's around 7 months in this picture taken last month.

Isn't he getting to be a cute dog?

We think so.

Say "Bye" Jack.

Ramadan

Last night the girls and I attended an event put on by the Islamic Center of Central Florida Center for Peace called "Building Bridges, Breaking Bread Banquet". For us, this event held a high significance.

We were lucky enough to be included in the event due to the organization of our fellow LIFE member and good friend, Sue Dolamore. Last year Sue's sister, Julie, included Sue and her daughter Ivy in this event and Sue had so many good things to say about it that we were encouraged to attend this year. Last year, Sue, Ivy, Julie; this year Sue, Ivy, Julie, Me, Jordan, Makenna, Cynthia, Sadie, Eliot, Lisa, Torin, Gareth, Tammy, Hannah, Nick!

The evening was so very respectful, interesting, gracious.

It started off with Outreach Director, Bassem Chaaban, welcoming us. Imam Muhammed, the local Imam, welcomed us. Then the first speaker was a female college student telling us what Ramadan means to her, how she integrates the "traditional" meaning of Ramadan into a more personal meaning. Imam Muhammed spoke about Then Bassam spoke about Ramadan, giving us more information about Islam in general and Ramadan in particular and explaining why the banquet has meaning to him and to the Muslim community.

We were then served a lovely meal of rice and hummus, bread, chicken, shish ke bob, salad and drinks. After dinner a visiting Imam from Baltimore spoke to us about his program, his personal program and work involves traveling and sharing with the world about what it like to be an Imam in America. This very educated man was born and grew up in Syria. He came to the United States and has become a US citizen. His experience in the global world is amazing. He described to us how important one of the 5 pillars of Islam, Pilgrimage, is and how he translates that to mean travel. By travelling, he has the opportunity to interact with Muslims all over the world. Let's just say that as an American, he is not always warmly welcomed. "Death to American!" is sometimes how he is greeted. But, one thing to say, one thing to learn, is that by doing his traveling, he can speak to others, he can share how America has given him many opportunities and how not every American supports George Bush's stance on the war. The are amazed and shocked, first that a Muslim can even practice in America, but then that there is education, openness, acceptance, etc.

This Imam, and many of the other Muslims there last night, share the feeling that many of us do that the working together, the peaceful gatherings, the cooperative behaviour do not make the news. But in the words of this Imam "no one will report of this banquet tonight, of this gathering, but if, God forbid, someone gets hurt, it will be all over the news." Yes, it's true. In many ways, and in many places.

For me, the overall feeling of the evening was so wonderful. There was a respect of all religions, a general practice of seeing that we are more alike than we are different. And, moreover, a feeling that killing and hating and war in the name of God was not how to be a good Muslim, not the intention set out in the Quoran. I most certainly share this feeling. It was a very hopeful and healing and educational experience. I left with the feeling that this is the way to peace. It may be slow, and it may be small, but it is there.

I was very thankful for this moving opportunity.

The Painted Drum

Hi, this is us in downtown Burnsville, NC., taken on September 2, 2007. We made a spontaneous trip to visit our friends Kristine, Todd, Elizabeth, and Tucker. Spontaneous trips rule. More on that later.

I just finished a book called The Painted Drum, by Louise Erdrich. I have not ever read a book by her before, but I do believe that I'm going to start working my way through her collection of fiction and poetry. The Painted Drum is the wonderfully worded, painting like writing that I love. The story involves a mother and daughter, both older, and tells he story of their lives~ the nature, the rhythm of life, of nature and the occurances of their lives. And what happens when they find this very old important drum in a private collection.

It's rich with metaphor and also with wonderful descriptions of the natural world and Native Indian culture. The drum is very powerful in the indian culture and so is story telling. This book speaks to that, tells the story of now, but brings us backward and forward in time, and from the plains to New Hampshire and back. I loved reading this book, loved the words, loved the way the author brings you along, brings things full circle. It was rich.

Latest change for Makenna

Hey, here's a picture of Makenna with BRACES!! She got them on the 22nd of August.

I have a renewed commitment to myself and my blog to blog more. I have really let some time slide, as seems to happen with me with blogging and journaling. I have, all of my life, wanted to stick with journaling. I start them and drop them, buy a new cool one, start it, let it slide...and on and on. Well, I've sort of realized that maybe this is a bit of a pattern with me (duh) and maybe I should not beat myself up or decide to not even start a journal if I can't stick with it, that sort of thing.

I've decided to just do the journaling thing like meditation, start, focus on the breath (intention to journal) and bring myself back to the breath when the mind wanders (pick up the journaling again after being distracted from it and having months of inactivity!).

So, here we are again, being brought back to the breath.

And that brings us back to Makenna and her braces. August 22nd, almost 2 weeks ago. Poor kid was in pain, big pain, for a while. I knew she was hurting because I've never seen her so unhappy and miserable for such an extended period of time. Sad puppy. Tuesday she got her braces and by the weekend she was perking up, but still not able to really eat much. By the time a week rolled around she was doing very well. Today in the car she said "I just forgot I have braces!" So, here we are. Life is getting better for the brace faces! Cheesy Braces Smile Alert!

Art Class Notes, Class1

Hey, I gotta put them somewhere!

I am taking an art class at the MDCA entitled Acrylics: Techniques, Tips and Tricks with Diana Barringer. I've been a fan of Diana's work for a while now and am pretty excited about getting the chance to be in a classroom with her. It seems to me that this class is going to be a lot about figuring out and learning about the medium, so therefore very process oriented. I suppose I mean as opposed to being product oriented.
Just figuring out what a technique or trick does is just the first step and it requires a bit of PLAY! See....process, not product.

Ok, so for me a bit of space is needed for note taking.

• First Class: Gessoing watercolor paper on back and front makes for a great "canvas" and doing both sides creates the tension needed so the painting doesn't warp.


• After gesso, we used our Watercolor Pencils to draw on the canvas and then used our nice, soft watercolor brushes with Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid to "paint". This made the watercolor pencils look like acrylic paint. A great idea for travel, or laying in colors, or just layering.
  
• After this initial layer dries, start laying in the acrylic paints. Lush! -OR- add charcoal -OR- let first layer dry and add another layer of acrylic mixed with thick medium.
  
• Notes: Alcohol removes dried acrylic paint, either on the brushes, or on the painting. A great tip. Wet Canvas online for Woodie Watercolor Crayons - very rich and leave a lot of color and Cheap Joes for other items.

Ok, so that's the first class. Yeah, ME! Next week we are supposed to bring in a black and white photocopy for a class project about transfers and we'll see a demo using acrylic to simulate the luster of oil. I'll keep you posted!