It's a Winnie the Pooh Kind of Day

I keep saying to myself, "Think! Think! Think!" while trying to come up with a method of concluding my current art project.  The problem with having such a scrambled day-to-day life - running errands, driving kids, trying to be creative, running to the dry cleaners - is that I don't have enough time at one sitting to think things through.  I think I've made a half-muck (if there is such a thing) of this current project.  What was I thinking when I created the image to print out 8-1/2 x 11 inches?  It's canvas, not copier paper!  But it's been stitched, painted and beaded and I'm running out of time, while my mind has half-baked ideas flipping around like a deck of cards being shuffled. 

I spent three hours on the road yesterday driving my son back and forth for his first meeting as an intern for a university professor.  Today I'll spend an least an hour and a half with him at the eye doctor (he's a minor still, so I can't ditch him) with a sketch book in my hands.  I am desperate for some good juju, a muse, anything to work through this dilemma.  Think, think, think some more.

Paint, Poke and Bandage

That's what I did today.  I painted, poked myself repeatedly, and applied one Mickey Mouse bandage, followed by a Sponge Bob Square Pants bandage.  Better yet, I got something done.

I can't believe that I actually made progress and like the project so far.  There is always that moment when I'm about to poke a needle through the canvas and make a hole I can't un-poke, or apply paint that dries so fast I can't wipe it off, but I move ahead and think I can always just print another canvas.  Not that THAT was easy to accomplish.  But having survived the printer challenges, I decided to ditch the family today so that they could go to the movies (one of those horrible science fiction movies that keeps you on the verge of a coronary arrest - no thank you!) so that I could work in the studio, not knowing how long this would take.  I managed to do all of tiny stitching and only poke myself about seven times (the needle was super sharp and tiny, so I didn't bleed or curse too much under my breath).  Digging through my art supplies, I found the perfect glass beads to stitch onto the sandy beach to reflect light like little bits of shells.  One of my favorite things in the studio is my Daler Rowney water colours that can be painted on absolutely anything - metal, leather, etc. - and is permanent.  The ones I love most are the pearlescent paints which I used in the surf, a bit of the sky and a few flecks on the sand.  To give the sunglasses a little more texture, I coated the lenses with a glue that dries clear and with a high gloss so they aren't so flat and actually look like glass.  It's not bad!  Now I just have to figure out how to frame or mount it.

Clearly, I also have to get my act together and figure out to take better photographs of my artwork.  I have a lot to learn from my friends who do such a great job.  I did, at least, take this one in natural outdoor light and manage that one baby step.

Today I was reminded how gratifying it is to spend time being creative.  Being inspired by one artist's work helps me with starter ideas, but I can move ahead on my own with one idea leading to another.  Before I know it, I may be doing more art than just talking about doing it.  Better yet, today I did it without apologizing for wanting to work on art instead of go to a movie I didn't want to see.  So there!

Finally, On a Roll! Sort Of.

It's been a hard week to make any progress in the studio.  Now that the weather is warmer, I have the back walk-through door to the garage open, and the front roll up door open about halfway, with a fan blasting cooler outside air into the too-warm garage space.  Alas, having a studio kitty and open doors means having studio bugs, the most annoying of which are the stupid flies.  Insects in a house are fairly rare here, something I've jokingly chalked up to the smog killing them.  Last night there was a June bug zooming around.  I consider June bugs to be flying kitty croutons.  If one sneaks into the house, I can toss a cat in the general direction of said flying crouton shrieking, "Get it!  Get the kitty courton!" and eventually it is consumed.  Shudder.  Alas, that doesn't work with a blind studio cat.

The flies (this is disgusting, so avert your eyes if you have a queesy tummy) must be in the midst of a frantic breeding season.  They light on Tabitha's "squishy food" (the canned nastiness) and start laying eggs like a caboose with a machine gun.  Disgusting!  So I curse, smack at them, and fan the bowl while Tabitha gets her fill.  I feel a bit like a cabana boy, missing only the large palm frond for waving.  My sister suggested one of those fly traps that comes in the form of a plastic bag and bait to which you add warm water and, supposedly, wait for the creepy crawlers to slip in and meet their maker.  Alas, the stupid flies continue zooming in figure eights, mocking me and dive bombing for cat food.  Worse, that stupid bait thing smelled like a freaking cadaver.  UGH!  It's now hanging from my steel easel in the back yard and the stench is finally gone from the studio.  I hesitate to put it in the trash container because our neighbor's bedroom is on the side of her house facing our trash bins.  I think that would go badly for all involved.  We'll wait for trash pick up day on Monday morning.

On to the project!  After several failed attempts at versions of an art project using a photo of my sister-in-law, I settled on something I thought I could pull off in this limited time I have until her party.  I tweaked a photo taken of her at the beach when she was young so that it's posterized, then attempted to print it on gessoed (sp?) canvas for further tweaking with thread and maybe some other embellishments.  If only the person who wrote the manual for the printer 1) spoke English as at least a third or fourth language and 2) had someone try to follow the lame directions and steps to make sure they worked.  They didn't.  They were wrong.  Steps were missing, settings were missing, screen shots in the user's guide were NOTHING like the actual screens that appeared.  After many choice words, a few whacks to the printer and a glass of wine, I finally managed to make progress and have printed the photo.  Of course, the borderless photo has borders on two sides, but where there are scissors, there is a way!  Wine first, scissors tomorrow.  A girl has to have some rules!

Here is step one.

Amazing video of painting in progress

I absolutely love the site thisiscolossal.com with the many types of artwork that I'd otherwise never have known existed.  This stuff is amazing!  Today I stumbled on this time-lapse video of a self-taught Italian painter Silvia Pelissero creating the most wonderful watercolour.  Love it!

Not Much to Show

I've been working, but don't have much to show for it.  With my sister-in-law's milestone birthday celebration looming, I have precious little time to make something for her and I'm determined to make something for her.  Deadlines and a little pressure always get me rolling.  This time around, I was inspired by a few pieces of art I found on Pinterest.  I love the work of Abigail Reynolds, who creates sculptural collages from photographs, one laying atop the other, with cuts and folds in the topmost image revealing the one below.  What a great idea!  Hagar van Heummen uses needle, thread and ink to make what appears to be a photo printed on canvas with the background removed, and stitches added to the canvas as embellishment, providing another great inspiration for play time in the studio.  

So for now, I'm trying to learn how to do some things in Photoshop Elements I should have learned a long time ago.  There's not much to show but a lot of versions of a photo in various stages of change.  Boring to look at, but it's fun to play.  Maybe this weekend I'll have something finished to post.

Doing Art vs. Making Art

Yesterday I re-read the aforementioned article by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and decided it was time to take action beyond reading the article.  Thinking about the advice to "do" art as opposed to "make" art, I picked up a small blank canvas and just started painting it.  With the tub of paint tubes within easy reach, I just started squeezing blobs of paint on the canvas, squeezing on a blending medium, and moved it all around.  The idea of creating a collage on this first canvas occurred to me, and I thought about the fact that my sister-in-law is celebrating a milestone birthday this summer and it would be fun to make something for her.  While that canvas dried, I grabbed another and just started putting bright colours on it.  My intent was not to create a masterpiece.  My intent was to smear paint and have a good time doing it.  How fun to ignore chores and make a painty mess without the pressure of a deadline or having to have a finished project.  This is my happy mess, phase 1.

On the mom front, I've got two kids at home now which means bigger messes and more chores.  I say kids, but they are 17 and 27.  I find studio time easier now that it's out of the house, something I thought was going to be a major inconvenience.  It is inconvenient at times, but at other times proves to provide a necessary separation of home and creative time.  This summer we will be college shopping for Kevin, which means a lot of time away from home.  Finding time to work in the studio is going to take planning.  It is time for me to start being more serious about it and make it as routine as when I went to an office every day.  Being creative definitely makes me a happier person, so I'm going to tell myself that I'm doing it for my family just as much as I'm doing it for myself.  Does that sound like a big fat fib?  ;-)  It's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Throwing in the Towel

There comes a time when there is no choice but to accept that a piece of art is, in fact, an epic failure and that it is time to throw in the towel.  This piece is just NOT going to happen.  I will never be satisfied, I will always be annoyed with the fact that no matter how much I paint it, attach wires, or change the mount, I just hate it.  This piece has been torturing me for almost two years.  I made a mistake in the form the day I made it, then tried to make the form work.  It doesn't work.  It started off beige and grim.  I tried incorporating fiber and wire and, as I observed back then, the result was a terrorist in a fluffy skirt.  It was horrible.

Next came more paint, removal of fiber, addition of wire, then more wire, and little metal bits.  I tried too hard to save a piece not worth saving.  Tossing this piece won't mean total failure for me.  I've learned what doesn't work, to trust my first instincts, but to also just keep handling a variety of materials in an effort at getting better with those materials.  I can throw in the towel and not feel as if I've completely wasted my time.  Well, I can try to talk myself into believing that if I say it enough times in my head.  In any event, I'll never feel free to do something else until I can just give up on this disaster. 

This last month I have tried harder to find that balance between mom and artist.  It's hard.  I still feel like a fraud when I call myself an artist.  I make stuff, but not even enough stuff to justify the title of artist.  Maybe I'm just a slow crafter.  But I'm spending more time than ever in my garage studio, hoping for continued moderate weather so that I can work in here in peace and mentally begging for creative juices to flow more freely.  Now all I have to do is make a sign for the back of my chair so that solicitors don't feel that an open studio door is an open invitation to interrupt with their efforts to sell me meat from a truck (seriously, it's disgusting) or their fumigation services or their religion.  Time to sport a holster loaded with an air horn.  It works on teenage boys...

Time to move on.