She's fearlessly beautiful; isn't she? I want to glue all that sass and confidence to her brilliant soul. (hard for me to believe she's ten.)
a snap of WIP (works in progress) on the wall in my studio
Last year, I posted about some paintings that were works in progress. One painting did come close to completion, but I lost the groove and in the end, I ended up putting them both aside. Recently, I fished them out of the closet, blew off the metaphorical dust, and started working on them again.
I've gone from here:
to here:
The dress is the front half of an actual antique doll dress adhered to the canvas (now under many layers of paint, gesso, paint, pastel, pencil, paint.....) My original concept referenced a Mary Oliver poem called Sleeping in the Forest.
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
I just wasn't happy, so gesso-ed over much of the painting, and started again a couple weeks ago. I haven't worked on it in a week or so, as I needed to step back from the piece to let some things percolate. I can hear it's voice calling to me again, which is always good.
And for this one:
I liked the content, but the painting was too bottom heavy, not balanced.
Now, that one looks like this:
New and more layers, with places from which to move forward.
I also had adhered the back half of the same antique doll dress used in the first painting above to a canvas and had begun a painting that had petered out into nothingness.
Here's where I am with that one:
I actually have a couple of other pieces in progress. They are in that beginning phase where so much is unresolved. I like having multiple pieces going at once in my studio. When I have just one, I tend to not let things dry that really need to dry, or I keep working when I really need to step away.
Painting has always given me puzzles to be solved. The impulse, the need to make hooks us, and the puzzles, they reel us in. Paintings become mysteries we are compelled to investigate.
That's what the process of painting really is, isn't it?
While we paint, we look deeply, listen to our intuition, bring to bear our education, employ our skills. Each mark we make on the surface represents a single choice plucked from dozens of possibilities.
This is why our art is in the process of creation and not the final outcome.
This is why we can look at a painting, and realize the puzzle hasn't been solved, the mystery of getting what we wanted to say out onto the canvas hasn't concluded, and we sally forth with enthusiasm, making, creating, working, puzzling...
I'll start at the beginning.
I have a pen I have had for about twenty years. yes. I really said twenty years. 20. years.
I used to be a fountain pen person, but while in grad school, I got tired of dealing with clogged pen nibs and smeared ink on my class notes and the side of my hand, so I replaced my Waterman fountain pen with a Waterman rollerball.
This one:
Ever since, I have had that pen in the zipper pocket of whatever backpack/purse/satchel I have owned. I haven't ever lost that pen. Now, I have other items I haven't lost. I'd actually be wearing my RayBan, tortoise shell, cat-eye sunglasses from the same time, but my youngest daughter destroyed them when she was wee. (which for the record means I had those sunglasses for over fifteen years.)
Last Sunday night, I opened my purse, unzipped the pocket, and reached in for my pen. My pen was not there. Now, I don't leave the house much (kids to and from school, grocery shopping, library- that's it.) so I knew I hadn't lost my pen somewhere else. I began a thorough and systematic search of my house. I couldn't find my pen. I was hoping my pen would turn up, since it had to be in the house somewhere.
Of course, I had searched my studio- floors, tables, places it might have rolled under; I searched. My studio is on the third floor, and I also have my clothing and dressing table up there. (our bedrooms lack usable closets, a common experience with houses built a hundred years ago.)
I probably go up and down the stairs to my studio forty times a day, at least. Between three children, needing to pee, get a drink, pee again, change the water in my brush bucket, switch laundry, start dinner, empty the dishwasher, and continue on working, I go up and down the stairs in my house all day long.
On Wednesday evening, after everyone was asleep, I went upstairs to my studio to print out a rough draft of a few pages, because I edit better on hard copy. I walked up those stairs for what would have been the hundredth time since losing my pen, minimum. I went into my studio and printed my stuff. I turned, and went to head back down the stairs.
There on the tippy-top step- you know that one that isn't really a step but the floor when you are done climbing the steps- but it is still wood like the steps? Dead-center, in the the middle, was my pen .Yep. Placed absolutely perpendicular to the stair edge. I was so thrilled- my pen! And then, I was a bit, um, puzzled-startled? (can't really find the right words...)
My pen certainly hadn't been there. At that moment, I was the only person awake, even my dogs were sound asleep. (Bella snores, loudly, btw.)
There's no place from where the pen could have rolled or fallen. I was in yoga pants and a t-shirt - pocket-less, and I had dressed in the basement. I've since tried to debunk the possibilities. Joe's tried to debunk the possibilities.
My pen is back; I sure wish it could talk.
Trying to get back into the swing of blogging is much like being swimming along in a fast moving river and trying to climb aboard a boat also moving along in the quick current.
There's always so much that I had wanted to share that has floated on by that I've often given up without even trying to climb back onto my blogging boat! I decided I would do a bit of show-and-tell while I get my sea legs back! So, here goes....
(Quick! Look away now, if crafty show-and-tell annoys you.)
This winter I knitted up neckwarmers and mitts for family, friends, neighbors, and teachers. The neckwarmers are great for littles because they don't experience the "unwrapped & dragging on the ground" effect that often happens when you put scarves on small children and send them out to play. Mitts are always just so good. For the littles' knitted goods, I used a wool-blend yarn that was safe to launder, and didn't have a dye lot. I did everything in garter stitch, with bulky yarn and big needles. Not only do things knit up quickly this way, replacing a missing mitt is easy enough to do.
Here are a few of the pieces:
neckwarmers and mitts for Sunny and Maggie
The "masculine" neckwarmers for Gryphon and Joe (along with mitts for Gryph.)
neckwarmers that headed out as gifts...
mitts that headed to a neighbor's (terrible photo; sorry.)
my set
Other notes:
I made the various flowers and leaves from bits of felted sweaters I have in my fabric stash. The felt balls were from a pack given to me by a friend several years ago.
Meet my little friend. He's a sweetie, but he tells me it is lonely in my studio when I'm away. I understand lonely far too well, so I am making him a bunch of friends to keep him company.
I love that they are so teeny! They make me want to quote Where the Wild Things Are- "I'll eat you up; I love you so."
Here's a peek at three of the dozen or so I have underway:
(the quarter is there as a size reference.)
I'll be putting some of them up for adoption (listing them for sale), along with a variety of other goodies, in the next week or so.
Altered Books, Collaborative Journals, and Other Adventures in Bookmaking
Artists' Cafe (Best of Somerset Studio Art & Design, Volume 4)
Photo Crafts Sourcebook: Projects and Ideas for Making Photos Fun (Let's Start! Classic Songs)
