Gratitude

If you're looking for a good, no-pressure warm-up exercise for getting the creative juices flowing, and also for giving yourself a gentle attitude adjustment, get a stack of 5x7" paper and if you're lucky, a roll of "thank you" stickers from some long ago grocery store, plus a bunch of other scraps and pens and crayons maybe, a pair of scissors and a glue stick, and make some one-off thank you cards. Here's a few from my latest batch. Click on the horizontal ones to see them full-size..

One more here...

Art Art Art

A few more collages that didn't make it into the daily collage series (because I made them a little later on in a fit of creativity and then lost them at the bottom of a pile).

The images look terrible here. Click on them to see the right resolution.

Hope you enjoy...

Uplift

(Click on images to see them with clearer, crisper, and probably bigger)

Life has been crazy busy and intense lately. I was diagnosed with breast cancer just over a month ago and have been quite busy to say the least. I've got a little breather right now as I recover from surgery and prepare for chemotherapy. Last night I managed to pull out some materials to put together a collage.

Needless to say, my life, not to mention my body, is permanently altered. (More on this on my other blog.) I wondered if this might show up in my art.

Upside-down, this collage is Chicken Little's biggest fear: the sky is most definitely falling. But that's not the way I intended this piece. I've tried it at every angle but came back to the original. And now it has a title. Uplift.

9" x 12"  mixed media collage

Gorge

My latest: gouache and ink, 18" x 24".

Ganesha: Lord of Success

Ganesha, the elephantine Hindu god, the one to pray to when you have your heart set on something, is the muse for this montage. Actually, there are three elephants in this piece, two resin, one porcelain. I like that. Three wishes seems about right.

Treescrapers

I made this collage a long time ago, but somehow it resonates with me still. When I made it I wasn't thinking about meaning, I was in the flow. But then it struck me that this image had something to teach me, and even now, I am learning from it. There is something about skyscrapers here, about reaching for the sky, and something about the majesty and mystery of nature, and something about how skyscrapers are nature – just like anthills and wasps nests are part of the natural world. It is easy to forget that we humans and everything we make, including our messes, as disastrous as they can be, are part of the natural world.

Art Date

I believe in art dates, had one recently with a beloved mentor/colleague/friend: made marbled papers and paste papers and ate a picnic lunch in the studio, all the while enjoying the kind of conversations we'd never had time for in the past.


Here are a few of the fruits of my labor that day... (FYI: Blogger compressed the images, so they don't look crisp unless you click on them to see them at the intended size. Anybody know how to prevent this from happening? Please let me know!)

The Latest...

Uprising 

gouache & ink

18" x 24"


Click image for larger view


see detail below...

If You're in the Neighborhood...

This is the postcard I am sending out today to publicize my latest show. I wasn't going to advertise this one at all, it seemed a tedious prospect. But then it occurred to me, a postcard is a perfect opportunity to say something nice to people, to give a little present. And who doesn't like giving presents? Besides, I had asked for a mailing list from the organization sponsoring the show, and they sent me the list - already printed on mailing labels! Doesn't get much easier.

(The show is in Windham, Connecticut, by the way)

Ann Herbert and Other Wonders

I've got a show going up at Windham Hospital (Windham, CT) for the month of February. And a half-hour interview on a local TV program (Artists and Authors) which has broadcast once or twice already and I haven't seen it yet myself. Yikes! I've also got a sudden obsession with making digital geometric compositions, such as the one I posted above.

Also, I recently discovered Ann Herbert. You know that bumper sticker, "practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty"? That's Ann Herbert. She's got a blog chock full of inspiring and thought-provoking one-liners. And I found some longer work on this site. Here's a snippet from "The Idea":

The idea is you have some great ideas.

The idea is sometimes you don't notice your great ideas because they are very different than what already exists.

That difference, which makes you shy off your ideas, is part of what makes your ideas great, and needed...

... A guy I used to work for, Stewart Brand, said that once you have an idea you have about five minutes to do something about it. You don't have to do everything the idea calls for within five minutes, but you've got to do something right away to make it real.

That's a good idea, too.