Valley Ridge Registration Opens Monday

I am honored to be teaching at Valley Ridge in 2010. Last year was my first time and it was a special experience that utterly transformed me. It is hard to explain the 'Valley Ridge' experience; it is just such a lovely place to teach and to learn - safe, cozy and comfy, yet also perfectly spacious and beautiful, with nice people and really really good food. I loved it!!

So I can't wait till I am there again in April for back to back classes that are brand new and not being offered anywhere else.

The first one is called Take Three: The Magic of Color Triads is Revealed. This is the class I sooooo wish had been offered to me. I have wasted so much paint over the years, messing around making mud. It took years of study and experimentation for me to gain control over color. This class cuts right to the chase as I share all the things I have learned about color.

My second class is called All on Board for Mixed Media.
In this class we will work on a variety of boards - claybord, gesso board, MDF, wood panel, etc. We'll learn the ins and outs and why you would choose one type over another.

Just click over to the Valley Ridge site and check out the amazing lineup of teachers for yourself. Remember, registration opens Monday, 12/07.

Dance Inspiration

As an artist, I always aspire to do something that has never been done before. You know how it is.....you come up with something you think is so friggin' cool and you start doing it then you pick up a magazine and see 'your' technique. Sometimes I think there is nothing that is truly new. There must certainly be a collective creative vein that runs subconscious throughout every artistic community. Thus what you think is 'yours' has actually been done by tons of people for hundreds of years and, although it will be changed slightly and deemed 'new', it is still very much the same.

Luckily, since we are all individuals with our own specific DNA codes, whatever we do IS precisely ours and no one could ever do it the same way. That is the magic of it all.



So why did I title this blog post about Dance? Well, I continue to be amazed by the dance scene. It seems there are people discovering new things all the time. Hence this dance called Jerking. If you click on the link, you will see a slide show by the NY Times that explains the street gang origins of this young dance. Is it really new? I don't know and I don't really care. I mainly admire the ingenuity of these street kids and am influenced by their spontaneity and energy, just as I am influenced by anything r-a-w. Graffiti for instance. Love it!! And I am certainly not the first to explore it.

Here are a couple of my new pieces, graffiti and dance and bird inspired. My obsession with spray paint continues, as you can see. I built up the texture with tissue paper, not the way you might think, but I got really goopy with it, made snakes with tissue and gel medium. I especially like the family piece.

ps.....if you like these stencils, you can get them here from the fabulous Ginny Carter Smallenburg.

Hey Mr. Postman

I've been a crafting diva today, making envelopes out of old calendar pages. It started simply enough.....I wanted to send postcards for my holiday gigs to my collectors. I had 2 postcards to send, one from a gallery and the other was a listing of places my work is available right now. I got all my addresses together, found postage and ugh, wouldn't you know it - I did not have any 6x9 envelopes.

I had previously promised myself that I was not leaving the house today because I desperately needed to nest with John and the kitties. So, I rummaged around in the studio and found these old calendars, dating back nearly 10 years. Can you say 'pack rat'? Ahem. At least I was able to find them, ha!

Anyhoo, here is the stack, ready to go out in tomorrow's mail. I am hopeful they will bring a smile to the recipient's face.

Puzzling People

We are puzzle people. Jigsaw puzzles to be specific, where all ages of family cluster around the table, shoulders hunched, working as a team. It is good clean fun and I have an entire table in my living room devoted to our puzzle madness. It is so bad we get 'puzzle neck.'

Our vacation this year involved a puzzle. Of course. Sure we were at the beach, but it gets dark and you gotta come in at some point. Our friends brought this monster puzzle of ocean life. It was absolutely the coolest thing ever, 3,000 pieces that were incredibly similar, or so it seemed. The size was exactly the same as the dining table in our beach house. Good thing your lap can hold a plate, huh? Cause the table was quickly converted to Puzzle Central. Certain people (names not shown to protect the guilty) were at the table when I went to bed and were still there when I woke up.

Yesterday we got the coolest gift ever from recent house guests, Chris & Debbie. They were collaborators in the beach house vacation so they know of our puzzle mania, or is that addiction, ahem. Chris and I finished a big 'hot air balloon' puzzle while they were here. We're kinda related to Chris and Debbie - Chris is the brother of my step son-in-law (how is that for convoluted?). Anyway, we adore them and would actually choose them as relatives, you know what I mean?

But I digress. They sent us this uber cool gift, a puzzle of our house and surrounding land. It is waaaayyyyy cool. Looks really hard too. You can check out this company to order one cause this would make a perfect holiday gift.
(no affiliation, bbb, just a neato product that I wanted to share)

Wood Icing is Here!

Wood Icing is now open at Chesterfield Mall in Chesterfield, MO. We are part gallery, part classroom space, part frame shop. We have instructors who specialize in a variety of media including Mixed media collage, Acrylic painting, Faux Finishing of furniture and cabinetry, Photoshop and Digital Photography.

We have lots of fun gift ideas in all price ranges. Some artsy wall art, supplies, such as stencils and rubber stamps, fantastic photography. I have my line of Reproductions and Greeting cards for sale. My friend Heather has her adorable tree necklaces - among other things, of course! We will have guest artists join us during weekends through the holidays.

Come visit!!! You will enter the mall near Houlihan's and you can find us on the upper level by Sears. Open Wed - Sat from 11- 8 and Sunday from 11-6; closed Monday and Tuesday.

Dance keeps you young

Love this!!! She is apparently 80 years old? One report says she is 92. I heard the guy is her grandson.
Thanks to my friend Marian for sharing this.

Where Women Create

I don't believe I have ever 'plugged' a magazine here on my blog, but I guess the time has come.....I have been browsing through the pages of Where Women Create and simply put, I can.not.get.enough. I swear I am salivating as I turn the pages.

This issue features, among others, the amazing Patience Brewster, Winslow's Home and Janice Lowry. Go buy it. Now.
Then come back here and let's talk.

Ok, first, Patience Brewster. Oh my. I have bought her cards for years but I rarely give them away because I can't part with them. I lost site of her for awhile, but found her again recently. Her story tugs at my heart strings. I lovelovelove her art so very much, she is a modern day Beatrix Potter of sorts or at least it seems that way to me. The delicate nature of her illustrations is just so special; if you know me well, you probably realize that I like animals more than lots of people. I sense this coming through in the work of Patience Brewster. She seems like a beautiful human being, both inside and out.

Winslow's Home is a store here in St. Louis. It is enchanting, like entering a kinder and more gentile era. Daft as I sometimes am(it is on their sign, duh), I didn't realize there was also a farm. They are the vision of Ann Sheehan Lipton - I am so glad her her store is in St. Louis, how sweet is that!?!? Reading her story makes me want to chuck it all to raise chickens and plant vegetables.

And finally, the legacy of Janice Lowry is celebrated. Obviously, the magazine didn't realize she would die before their feature was published. All I can say is that I am grateful the feature was written and so many glorious pictures were taken. She must have been a truly amazing woman. What an incredible tribute to her life's work.

So, if you are still here, go buy the magazine already. There is so much more that I haven't mentioned. True eye candy. Try not to slobber on your copy.

(ps.....I have no affiliation, wasn't paid to say this, blahblahblah....its just a great mag)

Extreme Sheep LED Art

You gotta love it! The site of sheep in lighted blankets just cracks me up. And they are so compliant. Good fun for a Thursday. Thanks to Art Fair Insiders for tipping me off to this.

Artsy Fartsy

I had a lovely weekend at home (yippeeee) filled with all sorts of arty events. Friday started off with a play, Secret Order at The Studio. We met up with a group of friends for dinner which included a flight in incredible Zinfandel wines. I loved 'Nine x Nine' Old Vine Zin 06 from Lodi. I am going to see if I can find a bottle or two today; it was so fruity and jammy you could roll it around in your mouth, yumyumyum.

Saturday I met up with my dear dear friend Theresa, who has been part of my life for nearly 20 years. She is the kind of friend who knows where all the bodies are buried (joke) and still loves me anyway. We have been thru thick and thin, but have found ourselves at different places in recent years. So it felt especially good to connect. We roamed around an Artist's Boutique where I got earrings (ok, I should have been buying gifts, but I did that too!!!) from the incredible Diane Balber. The ones I got are oxidized silver yet they have some teeny tiny pearls on them, a great blend of classic and funky. Diane has such a great sense of style, I adore her.

Saturday night I went to see THIS (obviously I wasn't in Santa Rosa, but I thought this video captured the energy of the show Claire and I saw)!!!!


Sunday was 'stay at home' day with my sweetie pie John. We took a nice walk, I made art, he watched football, then we cooked dinner together. A perfect day, just divine. I cooked scallops in the cookware that we just got from Costco. Geez, this stuff is a deal!! Exceptional quality for such a reasonable cost.

So join me in a collective ahhhhh of thanks.....for such a restorative weekend.

Why oh why

Seems like this Photoshop class is bringing out my secrets. Today I will confess to liking dead flowers (and yeah, I love them when they are living too!). I put them on my scanner and also take pictures of them. Not all flowers look cool dead, but I especially like tulips as they assume a completely new persona.

I am off to 'The Mall' again today. I haven't talked about this, but an announcement is coming very very soon, word of a new retail and B-I-G classroom space right here in Chesterfield, MO. And lest you think we have left you out if you don't live in STL, there is a gorgeous Drury Inn so close you could throw a rock. So I feel sure you will want to organize your arty get together with us. Stay tuned......

Dirty little secret

I am fascinated with debris.

Ok, I've said it out loud. I remember a day, years ago, when my stepdaughter and I were going to the airport to pick up her Dad, back when you were allowed to go to the gate. Anyhoo, I surreptitiously (or so I thought) bent down to pick up a piece of garbage. She stopped walking and looked at me with puzzlement, "did you just pick up a piece of garbage?"

Ahem.

Seriously though, the dregs of society, garbage, litter, discards......all fascinate me in a Candy Jernigan way. When I take my morning walk, especially on garbage day, I am frequently puzzled, if not stunned by the things that are left behind. As many of you know, the majority of my studio has been furnished with stuff I have dragged home from my neighbor's garbage piles.

Halloween, as you might imagine, results in a completely different landscape of litter. Geez, the amount of candy was kind of amazing. And I am not talking about wrappers, I mean pieces of unwrapped candy, apparently dropped in confusion.

But this shoe takes the prize. My editing prowess is thanks to Susan Tuttle, I am in week 1 of her online Photoshop class.