Oh my sweetums…Arty Life has joined the glitterati literati laptop latte set! Yes, indeed. I am sitting here writing this at a cafe, a CAFE, imagine that! token coffee and pastry by my side.
Like a writer, you know.
Does this mean I am coming up in the oh-so cool o’meter?
No, it means the DSL connection at the Porterosa is down. It means I am a blogging vagabond, seeking wi-fi access wherever I go. Even if it means I have to take one for the team and consume copious amounts of bakery fresh carbs. Carbs that were supposed to contain raspberries but turn out to be apricot instead.
Made with real butter and cream cheese.
My delight o’meter is groaning off the charts.
And the music isn’t bad either.
Lack of ready access has opened my eyes to how the interwebs have taken over my day to day existence. My multitasking e-mail checking-social media hopping-news reading EXISTENCE has come to a screeching halt. Now when I watch TV, I watch TV. Which means I’ve turned it off completely because there’s nothing there that can hold my undistracted attention. I’ve been reading instead. Books. Nearly two in the past two days, marketing books I’ve been meaning to read but why bother when there’s an interesting discussion on FaceBook.
Good reads. Shark Tales by Barbara Corcoran kept me up way past my bedtime. Today I’m reading POP by Sam Horn. Maybe tonight I’ll break out a novel. A who dunnit. Something I used to do every day.
Everyday before DSL and wi-fi and social media TOOK OVER MY LIFE!!!
AT&T, bless their sweet corporate heart, says my life, or at least my DSL line, will be restored by the 21st of this month. Probably not enough time to detox the web from my veins.
Not that I want to. In fact, tomorrow the library will be open. They have comfy chairs and wi-fi access. I know, I was there yesterday. Added bonus…no pastries.
And now a reality check. This short video from 1994 has the cast of the Today show pondering the future. Which is now…
Oh my sweetums, life is PERFECT! Yes indeed, perfect because the sun thesunthesun, that big old thing that lights up the days as we spin around in space…the SUN is showing her lovely face around these parts again.
And filling my heart with gladness, yes indeed.
Even though the days are short and continue to grow shorter (Boo! Hiss!) as we head towards the solstice, the storms and wretched dreary days of last week are GONE. Poof, just like that. YAY!!! They’ve moved on and taken their howling winds and fierce rains elsewhere.
Winds that kept me awake through the night, wondering if I would EVER see my children again. Seriously, I almost got up and wrote them LETTERS, farewell, my lovlies… but didn’t…because that might tempt the universe to dump a tree on the house.
Along with the wind came the rain. The heavens opened up and dumped over a foot of water over a few soggy days. The river rose high and ran crazy wild. And tera was no longer firma, just muddy soup.
The dogs planted themselves at the door as the water spill over the gutters and said, We’re not fools,we’ll pee in the house.
But now the rain, the wind are gone. Done. The dogs are doing their business outside.
And all is right with the world because the sun is back, the light is brilliant. And there’s a wee bit o’warmth beyond the late autumn chill.
But it’s the shadows that grab my arty heart.
The way the light comes through the curtains.
And bends Nana’s rocker around the corner.
The way it caresses the oaks in Mama’s grove.
And muffles shadow chimes silent against the wall.
But mostly because it gives me long long legs for dancing in the grass.
I hope wherever you are, the sun is shining today.
Oh, and hey…if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video I made last week. I seem to have struck a creative chord with that one, it’s had quite a few FaceBook shares already. If you like it, please do me a favor and and tell your friends. You can find it on my website as well as my FaceBook page.
Oh my sweetums, I’ve been spinning my wheelsuber busy in ArtyLand, so busy I neglected to post last week. Imagine that!
If you’re impatient or have a short attention span, you may scroll down now and watch the video. But if you’re here for a good story, stick around. You’ll get to the movie eventually.
It’s not that I forgot you, au contrair, you (my most best, BEST beloveds), have been on my mind CONSTANTLY. I’ve thought of you even more than I’ve thought of CHOCOLATE!!! Which is a lie, by the way, because nothing comes between me and my chocolate. But it sounds good, like overtime devotion in bloggy land.
Have you ever gone from point A to point B via points M,Q and X? Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. And getting nowhere fast in the process.
It all started when I got this idea for a blog post. I was scrolling through my iPhoto library, grumbling about the BAZILLIONS of photos I’ve taken and have yet to organize… yada yada… and I must be NUTS to think I can ever find a specific photo. Getting a wee bit frustrated because I’m not exaggerating the number of photos (well, yes I am because I don’t believe bazillions is an actual quantifiable number) when it dawned on me–ping–like a light bulb in the brain–that a lot of my arty photos resemble a LOT of my paintings. I don’t consciously take photos of rocks and paint them. And I don’t consciously paint pictures and then go photograph things that remind me of them–
But you’d never know that from looking at all those photos.
Never. As in NEVER. EVER.
So I thought it would be cool to post photos I’ve taken that inspired my paintings. Or at least resemble paintings enough to see where I drew some inspiration. I began picking and choosing photos to illustrate that point, saving them all in an album. Then I thought what the heck, let’s see how this works as a slide show. And then, since I liked the way it was working, I needed to find music. Music that was legally MINE to use and wouldn’t get all this work kicked off FaceBook or YouTube. That meant half a day pouring through license free music sites. Which is a mega time suck, believe me. I finally found something I liked, tweaked the timing so it would work, converted the whole shee-bang to a movie file, did the YouTube upload and went to bed.
Where I lay there thinking of how I could make it better.
The next morning I got up and did it ALL OVER AGAIN. New music. More bounce. Tossed out some photos, added others. Rearranged EVERYTHING. And then I added text because WHY NOT?
And when I finally got the video I was REALLY happy with, I thought the heck with a blog post, this is going to be my HOME PAGE on my website, the one that showcases my ART. The site I basically ignore.
Ah, but if I’m inviting people to see my stuff I’d better clean things up. Like get the galleries updated, the store open. Things I’ve been ignoring because they’re H.A.R.D. Technical. Not.Fun.
So now you know where I’ve been. I’ve been herding ducks. That’s right, getting all my little duckies in a row. You ever try and do that? It’s like herding cats on quack. (I’m high fivin’ myself for that one, yes I am!) What began as a simple blog post, turned into a video, a revamped website and a functioning store. Holy crap, I’m even impressing myself.
All because of this:
Do me a favor, if you liked this post PLEASE tell your friends. Share it on FaceBook. Give it a tweet. And, as always, stop in and say hi in the comments. I love it when you do.
I called my friend Harriet once, around the time FirstBorn was thirteen. Maybe fourteen. Whatever…he was feeling his soon-to-be manly oats and was a total, absolute pain in the ass.
I wanted to kill him.
Oh, indeed I did. But first I needed to find out if a jury of my peers, i.e, mothers of teens, would put me away for life or give me a high five and send me to a spa. Prison was out, horizontal stripes make my ass look fat. But a spa? I could handle that.
So I called Harriet and asked if it was against the law if I did away with my son. Figured her kid, a few years older than mine, was still alive. I wanted to know if it was by choice or grand design.
She told me it was perfectly alright to kill him, as long as I ATE him. She said it with conviction, without any hesitation, so I knew it must be true.
But there wasn’t enough Maalox in the world to pull that one off.
I’m kind of glad I stuck it out with FirstBorn. He turned out okay. Pretty good, actually. And now when he calls and tells me what’s going on with Princess GrandDaughter, I find myself laughing and wheezing and enjoying myself immensely.
Because grandchildren are the best payback.
And now that we’ve established that, I’m going to put on my Arty Life hat and tell you to gather ’round. Because I don’t want to shout, not on the interwebs, not where everyone can hear me. Because they might not understand when I say artists must kill their children.
No no no…don’t jump to any conclusions and call me as your defense witness. The children I’m talking about the ones that bleed paint. Or clay. The ones you’ve put your heart and soul in and then one day you look at them and think you suck. Or maybe just I can do better than this.
The number one lesson I teach my students is nothing you do is precious. You need to be free to experiment and push beyond your comfort zone in order to find your creative boundaries. And once you find them you need to push past them too.
It’s incredibly liberating to create without attachment to the outcome.
This was an assignment from Judy Wise and Stephanie Lee’s Plaster Workshop. I carved a portrait of a young girl into a plaster covered board and then painted it. There was nothing wrong with it, I’m sure someone would’ve bought it some day. But to me it was an assignment. I didn’t feel my artist voice. So after letting her hang around the studio for a couple of months, I whipped out some joint compound and had my way with her.
Looks like buttercream icing, doesn’t it? But it’s not, I assure you it was death-in-a-can for the poor dear. But her passing gave rise to this…
One of my all time favorite pieces. Something from the sweet creative spot.
The title? Portrait of a Young Girl, Revisited. Of course.
Faded leaves. Bleached grass. Frost on the meadow this morning.
I took the long way down to feed the ponies. Long way means heading to the left instead of the right. Means looping down around the meadow before circling back again.
Because there’s something about the light, the sun-with-no-warmth quality of a November morning, that demands photographs.
Demands to chronicle the understated glory of frost rimed leaves.
And deer trampled grass. Andrew Wyeth grass.
Ice in the horse trough, crackled and crystalized along the edges.
Hiding mysteries underneath.
And in between.
Reminders of children now grown.
And ancient horses. Muddy. Waiting for breakfast.
And Jasmine, the sourse of many ‘mom’s hairy ass jokes’ waiting for her kiss. Mmmmmph!
