Ending the Year with Gratitude

"Follow" - Acrylic Monotype with Collage on Freezer Paper

Here is another in the series of little passages that I began this week. There are more to come in the new year.

Artists who Inspire

I also thought I’d share a few random images from artists whom I find inspiring.

Otium cum Dignitade, 1964 - Hans Hofmann

Sign and 3D Material - Antoni Tapies

Ace - Robert Rauschenberg

With Gratitude

Finally, with this last post of 2010, I want to say how much you have inspired me and brought warmth and smiles to my life. You are appreciated more than you know. My wish for you is that you will have a joyous and creative new year full of serendipity.

I don’t make resolutions. But what I want to do more of this year is reading my favorite blogs more often and leaving comments. I can attest to the fact that receiving a thoughtful blog comment is very much like getting a letter in the mail box. They are gifts of one’s time, especially appreciated in this era of 140 characters or less, and I always love getting them. I am eternally grateful for the gift of your time.

Enjoy your New Year’s celebration. I hope you will step confidently into 2011 with renewed inspiration and creativity!

“Where There’s Smoke” – Monotype

"Where There's Smoke" - Acrylic Monotype on Freezer Paper, 4 x 4"

I like the way acrylic paint adheres to freezer paper – imperfectly. If you look closely, you can see that because the thin plastic covering is impermeable, there are effects that you wouldn’t get on paper or canvas.

I have sealed this completely with a generous coat of clear gel to keep the paint from peeling. I will mount this little square onto an 8 x 10″ sheet of watercolor paper.

 

Little Passages

"Smells Like Snow" - Monotype with Collage on Freezer Paper, 4 x 4"

 

I was cleaning up the studio this morning and found my old table cover folded and lying on a side table. It is made of freezer paper, so that I could just let the paint spill over onto the surface and smear and smudge. It stayed taped to the table for maybe a year, so there are layers and layers of paint. My original idea was to incorporate interesting portions of it into digital art, or offset the paint onto another surface (which I have done to a small extent.)

Today I selected a few 4″ square compositions from the huge piece of randomly paint-splattered and smeared paper and cut them out. Then I added one or two small collage elements here and there.

Sometimes composition is a process of selection and rejection of what is already there.

White Christmas in the Deep South!

We had an exceedingly rare but beautiful white Christmas. Not a lot of snow accumulation, but enough to enjoy the beauty of a soft, quiet world for just a little while. This area of the country hasn’t had many white Christmases, so this one was special. Most of the snow melted by the end of the day, but more snow came down yesterday to keep it white for a little longer.

Christmas dinner was wonderful with my sister’s family and mine together at our house. We had eleven in our country kitchen and spilling over into the living room. We gladly gave up our dining room when we moved here, but I’ve calculated that I can serve a maximum of 14, inside and seated. If you throw in the screened porch in good weather, it could be more than that.

And the dogs had a splendid visit from Santa. Here’s Abby, getting ready to take a nap with her new toys.

I hope you’re getting some special time with your friends and loved ones.

Scan Your Old Family Pictures

Unidentified mother and child, photo found among my husband's family pictures

Last night at the family visitation for my brother-in-law, I was reminded what a nice thing it is for treasured old family pictures to be scanned and put into a slide show of memories. I am sure his children had taken care of the major portion of this task well before his passing. He was 92, and by this time they had been preparing for that inevitable day.

My brother-in-law had lived two lives really. He raised four children with his first wife who died from cancer when the kids were just about grown. Then he met my sister, who had four children, also young adults and teens. They became a blended family at a time when most of the kids were leaving the nest.

He was a boy scout leader in the early years, a chemical engineer, and avid mountain hiker. Once a year for more years than I can count, he met several of his friends to hike portions of the Appalachian Trail for a week at a time.

My sister and he loved to travel and find antiques. They created an amazing pioneer village in the woods by a beautiful stream, which was a continuing project right to the very last. Click here to get the full story and scope of this unique place.

Last night we all enjoyed seeing memories of his long and rich life displayed on three different screens. His son had made three separate slide shows highlighting different themes of his life. It was a wonderful labor of love.

Do you know where your old pre-digital family pictures are? Mine are mostly still in boxes. I need to get to work on them, because I’m the only one who knows where they all are. It might be a good idea to compile individualized CDs starring each of my kids with their childhood memories, along with special ones of their own kids as gifts for next year.

When You’re Making Other Plans

This week has turned out not to be all about the holidays. My sister’s husband has died after almost a year in the nursing home. So besides getting ready for Christmas, we are turning our attention to a funeral on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner was originally scheduled to be at my house with ten or so family members, and my sister insists that we proceed as planned with that.

So for Saturday I will be preparing the turkey, gravy, stuffing, homemade rolls, and pecan pies as usual. Others will bring lots of yummy vegetables and other trimmings. Tomorrow and Friday will be all about my sister.

Needless to say I haven’t been in the studio. And I do miss my art, even with only a few days off from it. But sometimes there are more important things that put everything else in perspective.

I hope you have plans for a wonderful holiday. Santa will be coming here just for the dogs and the cat.

 

The Revolving Studio Door

I like it when paintings go out the door and slightly less when they come back.

Does anyone remember this series of paintings titled Echoes? I still had a few of them in my studio inventory, and now I have six more. I had sent these six to a gallery to show to their interior design clients, and after two years and a management change they decided to send them back to me. I like them. But what to do with them?

Since almost all in this series are 12 inches square, I could just hang a whole wall of them somewhere in the studio or elsewhere in my house. I don’t like having them hidden away. Of course I could look for another gallery, but they really don’t exactly fit with the rest of my work.

I have a new website with a new domain name. So now I still have to redirect the old domain name to the new site, but the old one still works for almost another month.

Created on Yola.com, the new one is simple and straightforward with the express purpose of being a portfolio to show to galleries and designers. My old one has served me well, but I needed something simpler.

Staying Open to Possibilities

Yesterday was a day of being open to new possibilities.

I spent the morning in my studio with my next-door neighbor’s 9-year-old son. Eli’s school was closed for the day because of warnings of ice buildup on the roads in the early morning (which didn’t materialize, thank goodness) and his mother had to be at work for a while. So she asked if he could hang out with us. Of course I said yes, even though I had been planning to spend much of my day working in the studio.

In order to make the time as productive as possible, I decided to make some painted papers to add to my collage stash. I knew that Eli could do some of his own. I set him up on the opposite side of the table with his own paints, brushes, plenty of paper, and water container. Since anything goes with the painted papers, I knew my work wouldn’t be in danger from being in close proximity to his activity.

Pretty soon I got involved with what he was doing, answering questions, showing him all the basics you have to show a kid who is new to paints, like not loading up the brush too much, keeping it clean between colors, changing the water, etc., etc.

And then he got really into the paints — I mean that in a good way. It is obvious he hasn’t had much any experience with painting at all. In this particular instance it turned out to be a positive, because he was unafraid to try different things just to see what the paint would do. (You know, the way I paint!)

He squirted a rainbow of gloppy colors on top of the table cover and rolled through it once with a brayer. I said “Stop!” He froze and looked up at me as if he were afraid he’d done something wrong. I smiled really big and said “Now roll that onto the paper just the way it is.” What he had was something truly beautiful, and I told him so. He was so proud, so I dried it with the heat gun and put it in a mat for him to take home.

After about a half dozen more experiments, his attention span was done, and he was happily off to play video games at home. But before he left he told me he was “inspired.”

I picked up a few tricks from Eli during the session. The most important one of all is to stay open to new possibilities. What’s that saying about lemonade again?

Above: “Extra, Extra!” – Scan of Acrylic Paint Deposited on Newsprint, 8 x 10″

Toasty and Warm in the Studio

It’s only 24 degrees at noon here today, but the sun is out so I guess that’s a positive. But tomorrow it turns ugly again — sleet and freezing rain starting early in the morning. ‘Tis the season. But the studio has its very own motel-room-type heater/air conditioner, and that keeps me toasty.

The second day into my studio work week and I’m getting a slow start. There are a few collages from last week that I’m working on putting up in my Etsy shop. That’s a rather time consuming process.

But I’m very happy to report that I just sold three collages last weekend. Theses are the three that sold.

“Passageways 5″ – collage, 5 x 7 mounted on 8 x 10 rag paper

“Spirits are Everyday Things” – Collage, Approx. 8 x 8″ mounted on 14 x 11″ Bristol

“A New Path” – Collage, 4 x 4″ mounted on 10 x 8″ rag paper

 

Here is another new one, though it’s not the torn paper abstract style, but done on a grid. Grid ones are great fun for me, because I’m always thinking of multiple little paintings on the wall, or a quilt where every square is different.

"Twenty Questions" - Collage, 4 x 4"

Still baking bread to keep the kitchen warm. If it’s winter where you are, I hope you’re staying warm too.

No-Knead Bread Success

After spending this cold and blustery weekend in a warm kitchen, I’ve finally gotten a kind of rhythm down for making no-knead bread.

My first attempt fell flat. Well, not quite. The dough was a little too wet, so when I set the finished loaf aside to let it rise, it rose outward instead of “up.” I baked it anyway, thinking it might puff up some more, but it was still pretty flat. So I took it out a little early, sprinkled some grated cheese and Italian herbs on top, put it back in for a few minutes, and pronounced it focaccia bread! It was delicious dipped in extra virgin olive oil and some cracked pepper.

The second loaf was a success, and gives me courage to keep going. This one was baked in my covered cast iron dutch oven, using that to capture the steam from the dough, rather than humidifying the whole oven. Those are slices of the focaccia bread in the background.

And here are slices of the big loaf, showing those nice big holes.

A third batch of dough has now been rising at a very cool room temperature for about 16 hours. This one looks more like the dough in the now-famous videos from Sullivan Street Bakery in New York. Looking at their website I can now see that I want Santa to bring me Jim Lahey’s new book My Bread.

For detailed instructions, this is the best video I’ve found to date:

If I get really brave, I’ll be making two baguettes next.