I am the luckiest Mom ever!

My son, Andy is a geologist and he travels to all sorts of interesting places testing the soil and water. His field work is frequently at abandoned mines - mercury mines (who knew there were mercury mines?!), copper mines, gold mines... He always comes back with the most interesting tales about the places he has been, the things he has seen and the history. I could listen to his stories for hours! He often comments on what he calls the "little trinkets" he runs across in his travels. Oh! to be a little mouse in his pocket just riding along watching the ground. Stop, Andy, stop, put me down here! Junk envy!

Yesterday he came back from a gold mine in Death Valley and gifted me with these rusty pliers. OMG! He gets it!!! I hugged his neck and told him he could have wrapped these up and given then to me for Christmas and I would have been THRILLED!

He said they are probably about 130 years old and crusted in arsenic so I should be careful. I told him I wasn't planning to lick them!

Don't you think they look a little like an X?

XOXOXO!

Art Room

These are the pictures I took of my art room last night. Art Room is the fancy name. Mostly I just call it my Crap Room. But I'm trying to use the fancy name more. Pretend it and it will become, or so they say!

I guess I should have tidied up a little first but honestly, it always looks this messy and for a couple reasons. First and foremost - I LOVE JUNK! I love to look at it, touch it, sort it and shop for it. I don't think there is anything about junk I don't like, except maybe dusting it. So I just don't do that.

Second is I have been working very hard on learning PATIENCE with my artwork. My inclination is to start something and work it to the end before I start something new. I get frustrated waiting for paint to dry and glue to dry and trying to force the next step. My lack of patience has resulted in many failures. Now, I am trying hard to work on more than one thing at a time. That way I can set it aside and move to something else, especially when it needs to steep awhile. I'm still struggling to remember to do it but I get much better results when I do.

I'm not too happy with the way the pictures turned out so you may be seeing a do-over one of these days. Funny thing is, that's how the art works a lot of the time, too. I make something and then have to do it over because, over the course of the process, I think of things I wish I had done differently or get inspiration to take it in a different direction. Do overs!
The oak buffet "workbench" was a big splurge to myself and I love love love it! It is just the perfect height to stand up and work. It has seven drawers and two cupboards and it is sturdy like a ROCK. The veneer was peeling off the upper drawer fronts so I covered them with cheetah paper. Too cool! I agonized over buying it because I'm such a cheapskate but every single time I stand in front of it I am SO grateful I found it. Worth every penny!

This is my desk, where I am sitting right now as I type this. That pink blob in the lower left corner is the back of my chair and behind that is my sewing machine. Obviously every inch used and barely room to turn around in here - but a joyful place to me!

Sunday Junking

I am such a procrastinator on getting comfortable with this camera! Tonight I came home and decided to just do it. I snapped a few outdoors and a few indoors for practice.
Last Sunday I made my weekly pilgrimage to the Volunteers of America Store. I love that place but not like I used to. They remodeled and cleaned up to make it more like the Goodwill, the Portland gold standard for second hand stores. I liked it better the old way! They eliminated the "as-is" annex. Man, that place was some good treasure hunting! Their final resting place for the things that didn't sell and the stuff they didn't consider worthy of a spot in the "real" store. In short, the crap. Oh Yeah! The dust mites made me cough and reaching your hand into the textile bins was a little sketchy but the lure of the NEXT GREAT THING drew me like a magpie to a sparkly thing!
This was where I found the old photograph that I used in my Somerset Studio Melange article. Twenty nine cents. I remember one time I was shopping there with my daughter-in-law (she didn't care to touch too much in there and I warned her not be alarmed when I started to cough)when I spotted this little old suitcase, the size a child would carry. Brown "leatherette" exterior, rotted interior and neato Lucite handle. I fairly hugged it to my chest and asked the clerk, "How much for this?". She scrutinized it up and down, looked inside, turned it over and furrowed her brow. She looked up and said, "How about 35 cents?". She probably got a good dinner table story out of it, I'm pretty sure my daughter-in-law was mortified and I got this fabulous little suitcase for storing my collection of millinery flowers. The inside is covered in sunflower fabric now and there are sunflowers and butterflies on the outside. I don't actually do anything with the millinery flowers but it makes me happy when I open up my little suitcase and fondle them.
Man, I am getting WAY off topic. I get a little passionate about rescuing old crap.
So Sunday I went over to the new, improved and not quite as fun store and spotted this white metal shelf for just $4.95. Who could resist! This is perfect for my little bonsai trees. The big metal shelf is made from a metal pallet that was used to ship outboard motors. Our friend Bob gave it to me. I dismantled it and cut apart the metal strips and my husband welded it into it's new purpose. It works great but the smaller trees were getting too shaded by the larger ones. There is some funky wooden ball on the top of the new shelf for a finial. I'm not too in love with that look so will have to find something different, but that's another trip to the Volunteers of America!

This is my feet at the entrance to the pergola. Why not. Everybody else is taking pictures of their feet. I think it's supposed to be artsy. I think it's just proof that I really do paint my toenails and wear flip flops like a hip, happenin' chick!

Did I mention I built this pergola from scratch. It was to replace the one I built out of sticks from pruning our apple tree. That's a whole other story. Just so hard to waste something when you can make something out of it....

And one last picture of the foxglove. They are fully open now and won't be lasting much longer. Thank you God and Mother Nature for gifting me with these year after year. They are second only to iris in their tenacity and ability to hold up to anything thrown at them. I didn't even take any pictures of the iris this year.

Damn, I need to make friends with this camera!

Searching

Well, here's something strange to look at! I absolutely know I cannot draw and I don't even know if I want to learn but Kelly Rae Robert's book, Taking Flight, inspired me to give it a try. Trying to find my voice is such a struggle!! Many years ago I tole painted in a folk art style that was roughly based on Bauernmalerei. When I had a blank piece in front of me I knew EXACTLY what to do. I had a style. I painted and people paid and that was that. I lived in a different world then; one where I didn't have what people consider a "real" job. Painting helped pay the bills and allowed me to stay home with my young children. I am really not sure I care to go back to that world. You get caught up in making what people want and making money and some of the creativity is lost. But I digress...
Since I have discovered mixed media and altered anything and outsider art I LOVE, LOVE LOVE the genre but I struggle to find my voice. There are so many talented artist out there and I read the books and I "try on" their styles, but nothing emerges as truly MINE. I know this is a passing fad, just like the tole painting I did in the 80s, so I'm not even sure I want to go back down that road of making things to make money. If it doesn't make money then what's the point (that's my Norwegian side). Making art for art's sake is admirable (that's my Irish side). There must be some happy middle ground!
I am currently using Lisa Sonora Beam's book "The Creative Entrepreneur" to see if I can figure out what it is I really want to do with the art.
To be continued......
BTW, the numbers represnt beers. I thought #4 looked like Tina Turner gone wrong but my son says it looks like a transvestite.

Life in the Grownup World

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I posted. A funny thing happens when life collides with art. Life wins! Or at least it did this time. I suppose some would say you shouldn't let that happen but the reality is that women fill many roles; wife, mother, grandmother, granddaughter, daughter-in-law, friend and worker. I feel grateful that the people I love value me enough to need me. I also know that the art will build inside me until it reaches a fever pitch where I can't go one more minute without letting it out and the ideas will come fast and furious. When that moment comes I will be in that zen place where the ideas are just right there in the front of my mind. I can hardly wait!

Daydream

This was a day filled with emotion at our house. Our sewer had to undergo an emergency colonoscopy this morning. The symptoms had increased over the past week and this morning there was a violent eruption on the patio that couldn't be ignored any longer. Professionals were called in and after several hours of exploratory surgery the cause of the blockage was revealed. We held hope that arthroscopic surgery could purge the polyp but the tumorous root of the problem had grown much too large (damn maple tree!). A stiff shot for the owners, a large check and a jackhammer appear to be the last best hope for saving the patient. The backhoe arrives at 7:00am tomorrow...
This is a page from my altered book that I was working on today to distract myself from the trauma. I'm not sure if it is finished or not.

Bird Shrine

My son came over and gave me some coaching on my pictures (thank you Casey!) so I have gone back and re-done them all and I think they look a little brighter now. Lifelong learning....
This bird shrine is made from a saltbox. Yes, the "when it rains it pours" stuff. Linda Warlyn's article in the May/June 2008 issue of Somerset Studio was my inspiration. I have collected vintage porcelain bird figurines for years and probably have more than 50 by now. I love my little birdies!
This weekend they are predicting NO RAIN and maybe high 60s!! Every day I pull into the driveway and think "that woman who lives here really should do something about that flowerbed!". I am so excited about spending some zen time in my garden!
The library finally got in a copy of Susan Tuttle's Exhibition36 and I can hardly wait to read it. I flipped through it while I was waiting in line and this might be one of those I will need to own. OMG...! What if the weather was so nice I could garden a little, sit in the sun and look at my book, garden a little, look at the book... Bliss!

Seducing the spring sun

This was a daunting week for me. The chaos of lots of company throwing me off my comfortable routine, a (thankfully!) brief bout with some little cold or allergy and our “test” system at work going unavailable which left me dead in the water for most of the projects I’m working. Then my friend Carol gave me her March 2009 issue of The Oprah Magazine with an article called “The Storyteller” book marked for me on page 153. OMG! I rarely read books anymore because I spend what little free time I have playing in my art room. Sandra Cisneros! Who knew! Her take on life and art rocked my world. She put her priorities and goals in order at a young age and, most importantly, gave her self the permission to be who she is. It is easy to say things like “follow your dream” and “be true to yourself” but I think it is the rare individual who finds life balance and manages to make a living, balance work and personal goals and still hang onto who they really are. I will read this story again and again. Thank you Sandra! BTW… be sure and visit her website at http://www.sandracisneros.com/. There is a link to an excerpt from the Oprah article on her homepage and her website is great fun. Be sure to check out the “Button Box”. I swooned! Ebaying buttons was the beginning of my Internet experience and I didn't have just a button box, I had a button TRUNK. I had a suitcase full that I could barely lift and those were just the ones I didn't care about and hauled in to the office so my co-workers could paw through them. This woman is a writer PLUS she likes buttons, old typewriters, occupied Japan porcelain and has the soul of a collage artist!
So about the picture in this post…
This view is right next to my driveway so I see it each morning and each evening as I pull in and out. The emerging bulbs give me hope that we will be released from the worst Winter I can remember in years. I think Sandra would say something like…. “The ripe, swollen daffodil lost patience for the warmth of Spring to reach down through the damp, dusky scented earth so it pushed upward, breaking free from it’s Winter prison, lifting it’s just-born face skyward, seducing the Spring sun to come closer”. Yes, I’m certain she would say something like that.

I might look at the old typewriters when I make my weekly pilgrimage to the Volunteers of America store.....

Watercolor inchies

I haven't posted in a while since I've had houseguests. My mother-in-law was here to visit, taking a break from caring for her invalid husband, and of course the kids and granddaughter were all over to see Grandma. It was a busy week and topped it off with getting a SECOND cold, dangit! I'm worried if I don't keep posting I will forget how so today you get a more recent piece that fit in the scanner.

These aren't REALLY inchies, mine are more like 1-1/2 inches! This was a fun experiment in hand-coloring some papers. I used Easter egg dye on the first ones I tried but the pallet was too limited so I broke down and bought some tube watercolors. I diluted them to a transparent, watery consistency and brushed them on, working lightest to darkest. The papers are torn from foreign language books. I love the contrast of the black stamping on the colored background.The metal grid was some sort of match holder or something like that; made to hang on the wall. I used sheet metal snips to cut it apart then flattened it by crushing it in a vise and then hammering. It seemed to me like just the right amount of blue paint chipped off! I did use a file to debur the edges.

What's Old is New Again!

If you have read my profile you know I'm an avid "junker" - in fact it's just about my favorite thing to do. I found these postcards at an estate sale last month. The thing that really intrigued me about them is the postmarks on the back. The postmarks reveal they are all nearly 100 years old, and yet the art is so similar to the mixed media and "altered" art that is so popular today. Click on the image to get a larger view and you'll see what I mean. I speak to this because I sometimes feel frustrated that my ideas aren't new enough or fresh enough or look too much like what other people are making. None of us wants to copy someone else's art! I think it is nearly impossible, though, to not be influenced and inspired by what other people are making. Maybe it's really about making something someone else wants to "fill up their eyes" with. Maybe it's just about making something you want to fill up your own eyes with! Maybe what's old really does become new again!

The Book of Love

Our March weather was simply, well, March today... with rain most of the day. In spite of two errands to do after work I was lucky enough to arrive home to a break in the rain and a relatively bright sky. Perfect! I followed the advice in the Feb/Mar/Apr issue of Artful Blogging to take pictures outdoor in natural light and my husband coached me on using the digital camera. This is one of the first pieces I made when I discovered this genre. It is made in a shallow cigar box so doesn't lend itself to the scanner. The red circle is an advertising CD covered with tissue paper. Based on what happened with the scanned picture, I think Google will "size" it for me. We will see how my first attempt at posting a photo works out!

He was too good looking for his own good.

This is my first attempt at posting a picture. I made this piece in 2008. The picture is actually my Great Uncle Martin as a young boy. Even at this tender age you can already see he had that special something that set him apart. As an adult he was one of the best story tellers I have ever met and had sparkling blue eyes. When he told a story he could animate it with his expresions and gestures as if he was a player on a stage bringing the characters to life. I certainly don't have his capacity to "become the rabbit" but I like to think he played a part in my penchant for story telling. I will hope it will serve me well in my attempt at blogging!