Make my Day

Sweet Deryn tagged me as an artist who makes her day. That was a lovely surprise cause I never get picked for this kind of stuff, geez, blushblush. So, welcome to any new readers who have stopped by because of Deryn's post. I thought it would be fun for me to ID some different blogs that I read. Maybe you know them, maybe not.

First up, Susan Tuttle.....I feel sure many of you already know her as she has been in tons of publications (and is kind of famous), but I just "met" her recently. We are working on a project together(I could tell you but I'd have to kill you) and low and behold we have tons of stuff in common, both coming from a background of music before we turned visual, tee, hee. Anyhoo, her blog is delightful, Ilkas's Attic.

Next up, Dolan Geiman, his blog most likely written by Ali (I am guessing?) because Dolan is such a busy guy I htink he must work 24/7 producing tons of art. They are Art Fair buds of mine, wildly talented and inventive. Here's the link to Daily Dolan Geiman.

Amie King, she's Heather Haymart's cousin, is a doll! She makes funky and faboo jewelry; I am yet to own a piece but hopefully some day soon. Her blog is a reflection of her cute, bubbly personality, you can check out The Daily Fluff here.

Heather Bennett is a graphic designer and mixed media artist. I "met" her when she inquired about one of my workshops. Her blog is a mix of art and family, really sweet. I love her new Miss Hattie series. The blog, H is for Heather can be found here.

And last, but not least, Doña Bumgarner, a friend from my SF days. I saw her last year at Artfest and hopefully she'll be there again this year. She's crazy talented in many different areas, fine art, beading, knitting, photography. Plus she works full time at Apple. I don't know how she does it. And we are twins, ha! Always sort of thinking the same thing at the same time; I will sometimes read her blog and swear that she plucked that language out of my head. You can read Aubergine here.


Hope this post introduces you to someone new. Enjoy.

Charmed days

Yesterday I spent some time with my friend Pat Owoc. She is a fiber artist extraordinaire, I think I have talked about her work before. At any rate, I have never been to her house and was pleased to be able to see her studio - both the "clean" space where she sews and the dirty space where she dyes fabric. Very neat. It is all such a magical world to me as I know very little about fabric other than the fact I like it a lot.

Pat and I are collaborating on a piece for a Woman's Caucus show that will open early in April. We got together to discuss our ideas (neither of us had any, tee, hee) and it was fun just brainstorming together. We ended up with a kick butt idea that I will share later as I want to see how it all develops first.

Pat also shared some techniques with me, such as disperse dyeing using photos (b+w copies). Oh it just totally rocks and I am going to try some tomorrow then she is coming over on Friday to see my studio and we'll work on the piece some more.

I've been roaming (or stumbling) around on this Stumble site that my sometime friend Denise turned me on to......I call her a sometime friend because this is basically like crack and I don't know whether to thank her or not. Tee, hee, so now I share with others.

Anyhoo, click here to see some good lookin' bacon. Seriously. Nancy, this one is for you, I don't even know if you eat bacon, but you'll appreciate the pics for sure.

And this reminds me, it's almost time for Grape Arts, a fantabulous fundraiser for Art Saint Louis. You'll have heard me talk about it before. I donate art. I bid on art. And I eat the carmelized bacon. It's embarrassing how much of it I can eat.

When I was young I remember thinking it was so weird that people (like my Dad) would wake up at exactly the same time every day. To the point they didn't even require an alarm.
Well, I am one of those people now. I wake up every single day at a couple minutes before 7am. This does not include my 3-4am awakening, but that's another subject.
Sometimes I am lucky enough to fall back to sleep, but most days I simply get up. Even if I have a specific appointment or somewhere to be, I find I don't need to set an alarm. This feels like some strange right of passage into another age zone.

And, in other thrilling news, I got an orbital sander over the weekend. Woo hoo, I have wanted one forever. I used 'painting the kitchen cabinets' as my excuse. And it is fantastic, sands just beautifully with virtually no effort. It has a handle on the side, so I can operate it several different ways, holding it by the handle or putting my hand over the top of it, or both. With it, I can easily replicate that distressed look on our cabinets - that same distressed look that costs a bundle of money at the kitchen stores, yippee!
Who would have thought I'd get so revved up over a power tool?

Happy Valentine's Day

Remember how I have been on such a "recycle" binge lately? Well, you guessed it, my Valentine's Day cards are all recycled, having lived a previous life as Christmas cards.
I knew there was some reason I had been saving all these cards folks have given us. It was a lot of fun to paint and layer up scraps of paper to make new designs.
I used craft grade paints since they have decent coverage plus leave a nice "dry" chalky finish. I even used old calendar pages for envelopes. This was a lot of fun and I am excited about making some more of them some day.
Sorry for the mediocre scans; I just noticed I actually cropped off part of a couple of the cards but they have obviously already been mailed.

This is my life

We are on Day 3 of the Remodel. I sure don't want my lil ol' blog to turn into Remodel Central but it is kind of monopolizing my life right now. To say the least, geez.

We have temporarily located the cats downstairs in my studio and they are not (I repeat NOT) happy campers. Demolition is loud for one thing and it scares them. Plus we don't allow them to explore each night as there is just too much scary stuff, vents they could fall into, etc. You know how nosy cats are, I think it's driving them crazy not knowing what is going on. Cats hate change. I am also convinced they miss sleeping with us.

One might assume Merlyn would be fearless because he is so large, but that is simply not the case. He is the biggest baby of them all and hides in the most unbelievable spots, usually in some previously invisible corner, somehow wedging his furry body into the tiniest and most secluded spot he can find. He ignores my attempts to offer him a blanket or afghan, instead prefers to sleep among a mass of electrical cords or a folded plastic tarp. Yesterday I had to belly crawl under two tables to find him.

The contractor and his crew are good workers. Respectful, intelligent, very diligent. They assure me they site will be secure enough so we can let the cats out this weekend. Because it is all about the cats. When it's not about me of course.

Our house is a complete wreck. All of the furniture from our family room and kitchen is piled up in the living and dining room. Every single item from the kitchen cabinets and pantries has been boxed up, the art is stored away. Tomorrow AM (bright and early) our remodel will start and 6-8 weeks from now we will hopefully have wood floors along with a newly open floor plan, rehabbed kitchen and relocated powder room.

Like the house, I too am a wreck as I re-think this grandiose scheme of mine. Yikes, I have never done anything like this before and I continue to wonder if we are doing the right thing. I mean what if it doesn't look good once we tear the walls down; what if the floors are the wrong color, what if I mess up distressing our cabinets, what if we hate it all, what if, what if, what if?????Perhaps John will sneak a sedative into my coffee tomorrow so I don't flip out when the contractor and his crew arrive.

That big lump of quilts is actually my piano. Hopefully it is sufficiently protected from damage and dust. The cats have never been up on it before (duh). They are thrilled with the current layout of the living room; it's like one big cat playroom - they can walk up, over, across, under all of our stuff. And you can tell they think they are hot shit sleeping on top of the piano.

Who on earth was the advertising genius with the idea to animate mucus? I mean seriously......Like we're actually going to relate to the idea of our phlegm as chubby green people?!?!?
Enough already.

In more interesting news, click on this link to see a terrific Improv Everywhere gig. It is very very interesting and way way cool. Enjoy!

Free Rice

My wildly talented Art Pub Studios buddy Sarah Fishburn turned me on to a cool site. If you like word games, just click on the Free Rice link to play. For every word you get right, a donation of 20 grains of rice will be made to help end World Hunger. It adds up quickly especially if you are word obsessed like me.

So, give it a try. It's fun and it's a good cause.

February Background Paper

It is February already which is darn hard to believe because time is absolutely flying.

I posted a new background paper over at Artpub Studios. Just click the link to read my post and download the paper. You will also want to check out the home page to enter our contest. And click around to read the interesting posts and claim freebies from many of our members. There's a lot going on!

Enjoy!

Studio Claybord Class

Last week I held my 1st Studio Claybord class; a group of 4 people, here in my studio. It was a dream come true teaching in my own space where I have all my materials at hand. I know I am one very lucky artist to have adequate square footage for such an endeavor. In fact, space is sooooo incredibly important to me that I limited attendance to 4 people just so each person could have their own 6 foot long table. Mainly because that is the way I would want it (as a student). There is nothing worse than being cramped.
The pictures pretty much tell the story and you can see what terrific pieces these ladies made. I do believe I turned them on to the magic that is Claybord because they had great energy and excitement over the process. Wowza, what wonderful work!

And was Merlyn cute or what???
I am looking forward to my upcoming classes. If you're in the St. Louis area, feel free to contact me about your interests. I am teaching several different process oriented/technique classes in my studio. You will find the information on my web page. I am also willing to travel for teaching gigs. If you have a location and a group of interested people, just let me know and we'll figure out if it's do-able.

I loves my aminals

Only 4 more days to go! Boogie on over to Bernie's place and pleasepleaseplease make a donation to help her out. Bernie is one bizzy gal and devotes amazing endless energy to help our furry buddies. Just look at the pictures. But be careful (ha) because every time I look I want to run down there and adopt a bunch of the critters. Then I remind myself, oh yeah, I have 3 of my own. But donations help and all she needs is a $10 for it to "count" in the contest. You can read all the details at the link. I am soooo hopeful she's going to win.
I tried to put the donation badge here on my blog, but I'm apparently too technologically impaired. So click here and you will get where you need to be.
Woof woof, meow, meow.....

And, oh yeah.
I popped into the library book sale yesterday and got an entire BOX of maps. Not just any maps, these are geological/topography maps.
swoon.......be still my heart......this little collage girly loves her maps....

It's all about poultry

When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.

Lou Holtz

What a great quote.

And exactly the one I needed to hear today because I have spent this last week working "internally", pondering my future - trying to count my chickens, get my ducks in a row, re-organizing my biz (just a wee bit) without putting all my eggs in one basket.

With the woes of the economy, gas prices, recession discussion (blahblahblah), I want to spend more time around home, not on the road doing shows. At the same time, I obviously can't afford to sacrifice my income. Duh. So this is the year of more Custom artworks. Of all types - my custom collage paintings with family photos , the custom abstracts, and custom word collages like the ones shown that I made for my grandsons (don't tell them yet, ok?).

It feels good to have a direction. I've been off to a slow start this year and floundering around a bit, ruh-roh, sorry about the fish image in this all poultry post.

Ok, 'nuff about that. In other news, we saw a really good movie this week The Lives of Others (on dvd). It is just excellent, one that stays with you, like Juno (still at the theatre). Two must-sees in my book.

Celebrate!

This is for a Charity event called 13 Squared. It's a fund raiser for Viva Vox, an organization which offers arts mentoring to at risk teens. I am part of a large group of artists who were all asked to create an 8x8 piece around the theme "Celebrate."

I named the piece Font Dance. It is more trash - dirty and paint stained paper towels primarily. Plus some map scraps and ledger pages. I am kind of obsessed now. But you knew that. It's fun and challenging to make trash look interesting. I loved the way this turned out.

Hope it earns lots of dough for Viva Vox. I am not quite sure when the show opens, but keep checking here for details. It will be at RAC.

Gallery hoppin'

Last weekend was full of Gallery fun. On Friday night, we went to the opening of Iain Fraser: Protoplaces at the Millstone Gallery at COCA. Check out this link to see a virtual tour of the show and you can learn more about Iain at his website. If you are in St. Louis, you should really find time to see this show. The forms and spaces Iain has created are fascinating, from the physical construction of each piece to it's stature within the gallery to the shadows created. I just loved it. I think I have some architectural longings in my head.......this coming from a person who actually drew floor plans as a child (ha, it's true!).

And, I was thrilled to find that COCA has St. Louis' very first ArtOMat. I had never seen one "live" before, have only heard about this for years and years. Woo hoo was I excited, so naturally I had to buy a piece (since Iain's faboo work wasn't exactly in my budget) and this is what I got, a gorgeous little abstract by Hulin Pascale. I lovelovelove the piece; it is tiny (size of a cigarette box) but it sure packs a punch. Very lovely, raw and loose, looks to be acrylic and collage on wood. It is absolutely perfect! Thank you so much wherever you are!

Ok, then on Saturday night I headed to Columbia (about 90 miles?) with Rhonda and a friend for her opening at PS Gallery. The opening was a real scene, absolutely jammed with people and outstanding work - a real feast for the eyes. Rhonda's work was great as usual and I love the new evocative work by Joel Sager the uber talented associate curator of the gallery. He is so young and so talented and so energetic with a continual flow of fabulous work. And Jo Stealey, fiber artist extraordinaire. She has constructed these amazing standing books out of hand made paper - woven, painted, with sculptural niches containing paper fruit. My description is an embarrassment because they are truly so amazing I stood in front of them with my mouth hanging open. Just divine.

And so that is that. A lovely inspiring artsy weekend. We are sort of doing it all over this weekend, with a different show of course, one at Art Saint Louis. My piece wasn't accepted at the show but I am excited to see the juror's picks as the shows are always outstanding.

Trashtrashtrashtrashtrash

Lately I am obsessed with trash - I find myself thinking about it; picking it up(I've always done that); making art with it; even talking about it with passion. Which can be just a wee bit embarrassing as some people think I am freakish.

You may recall that last year I made my first piece of art with the contents of my studio garbage pail. The piece was donated to The Missouri Coalition for the Environment and was auctioned off at their fund raiser. I loved the experience and challenge of making something beautiful out of trash.

And I am back at it. Dumped my garbage a couple weeks ago and foraged around like an art-making raccoon, to find the perfect ingredients for my latest painting. It's about recycling. Duh. About caps through the ages and why our local recycling company doesn't accept caps or lids. Weird, huh? The things that inspire me I mean.

The piece is 10" x 30" on claybord. It was collaged with paper towels that were retrieved from my garbage. None of these were painted for the purpose of this piece. I did a bit of touch up painting on top, but the piece is largely collage.

Board Game Class

Between Christmas and New Years, I taught a board game class at Chesterfield Arts to a group of children, ages 1st-4th grade. I swear my presence wasn't needed in the classroom; kids that age are so darn creative. I simply showed them the supplies, let them look at my sample, and poof! they were off and running. Within about 90 minutes, they all had playable games and were fighting as to which one to start first.

And this is one of the reasons I love teaching kids. They are so uninhibited with their art. Their brains have not yet been infiltrated with the so called "rules." They remember how to Play with abandon and the big ole fear issue is never an issue (yes, I got the lesson). With adults, it's always - how are we supposed to do this - am I doing it the right way - what do I do next - etc, etc, etc. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in step by step guidance when appropriate, but I just totally dig it when students (of any age) bust out and do their own thing.

I am teaching another version of this class for older teens and adults. It starts on Feb 14th (I'll bring some candy!) and runs for 4 weeks from 6-8:30. The extra sessions will allow us to explore more in depth collage techniques plus we will have time to paint sections and develop the concept further. Should be a lot of fun. See the link at the side of my blog for more information.

News and Classes

It's a new month and you know what that means, or perhaps you have forgotten since this is only the 2nd month. BUT........it means I posted another free background paper at
ArtPub Studios. So click on over there and steal it for your own use. And while you're there, I am artist of the month if you care to read more about me plus see some new art that hasn't been posted here or on my website.

And in other news, I will teach my Abstracts on Claybord class at Jacoby Art Center on March 29th from 10-4. The cost is $120 and any level of painter would enjoy the class. We will explore creation of a body of work with specific focus on Claybord as a substrate. I will demo all the glorious options for mixed media on this absolutely forgiving surface (you can erase this stuff, it is that cool!!!). Plus I will bring tons of media for everyone to play with, like inks, airbrush paints, oil pastels and pigment powders.

Email me if you think you might be interested and I will get some more info for you cause I don't know how they are going to handle enrollment. They have a hee-yuge space though and this will be a great class - the same one I am teaching at Artfest incidentally, but it will be fun to do it close to home for the local crowd.

And lest any of you St. Louisans worry about the drive to Alton, they finally completed that road (367) and you can just buzz right over there with no issues whatsoever.

Beautiful Memories

I finished this commission right before Christmas. Don't you love the picture of the couple on the boat dock? I had to do a little altering/drawing to make the composition work. The five boys are the children of this couple, all grown up now with children of their own. Dad is gone and the boys commissioned me to make this piece for their Mom. I had a lot of photos to choose from. I sometimes feel like I can glean the "essence" of people by reviewing their life in photos. Lots of love here, that's for sure.