new pages

Pink Cadillac raw & finished

Mermaid raw & finished

Secret Garden raw & finished

better late than never

a lovely birthday gift from a dear friend last december
a long art-less dry spell
a new creative longing
a new art journal is born

green, green i'm going away

the Irish have long had the tendency to miss things before they are gone, I find myself doing that lately too ~ we are at the height of summer and I am already starting to lament it's passing...ah, perversity!

Green is such a loaded word these days and "going green" de riguer, it makes me feel a bit ~ old in my "hippy" days I was such an earth mother and filled with energy and zeal - we really lived green, of course going to college in a rural area and living in a neo-commune environment like The Wynne Road Home for Wayward Adults helped my illusion...

Today I enjoy my pots of herbs that comprise my "edible" gardening attempts, I do try hard to recycle everything and keep our thermostat set frugally and be mindful in general.

I am a color junkie

One in every color: walking into a bead store like Beadazzled or all the quilting fabrics at G Street in huge store sized gradients always thrills me.

It carries over into my art supply addiction, I have a wonderful basket full of pens and pencils and yet I find my self continuing to work on wanting more and just focusing instead on using what I have.

My current addiction are Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens with brush tips. They are so much fun to color with!



My friend Soodesh went to New York last weekend to shop in Jackson Heights -he very kindly brought me some fun Bindi jewels to use in my collages and assemblage pieces. It's fun to have a touch of bling! I can't wait to make something cool with them....

conquering the "I wants"

I want:

*to not worry about the mortgage

(exchange "mortgage" with any other bill)

* to just pick up and travel

*quit my job and pursue art

*go out to dinner when I want

*one in every color

*a house by the sea

"An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit" ~Pliny the Younger

" Possessions are usually diminished by possession"~ Nietzsche

I am blessed to have:

* a loving family

* a comfortable home

* a good job

* wonderful friends

* faith and reason to discern that "I want" can be destructive

Travels with Muggins

John Steinbeck wrote a wonderful book called Travels with Charley

where he set out to rediscover America with the help of his poodle. Our standard poodle is an excellent traveller and she loves to go places.

We happily shared the back seat of our X-5 last weekend, she enjoyed watching me work on my art journal when there wasn't something better to see out the window.

As anyone in DC knows most of the city seems to be heading down Route 50 and over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on Friday afternoons in the summer and if you're are late returning home on Sunday afternoon you'll find yourself contemplating the ugly side of Easton for miles in bumper to bumper traffic. I'm not sure I'd want to do it every weekend, but a couple of time a summer it seems well worthwhile especially if I don't have to be the driver. I am happy to cross the bridge and find a pot of crabs along with the beauty of the Eastern Shore.

Zen and the Art of Blog Maintenance

I finished reading Tara Frey's book over the weekend, and I am determined to be a more consistent and reliable blogger.

• * I will post at least 3 x per week & include pictures
• * I have set my blog to show only 10 posts
• * I have been leaving comments for other bloggers

* I tried to make my blog clean and simple

I find the thought of contacting everyone on my sidebar links and asking for permission daunting, but I am determined to clean it up. It started as more of a convenience for me to keep track of spots to visit but likely needs some dusting and cleaning.

I took a bunch of photo's this weekend with my son's camera, he lost the cord to synch to the computer, fortunately my blackberry cord worked. I'm going to load Photoshop Elements on my laptop and try some of the techniques for digital framing Tara suggested. Usually I just scan my journal pages at work on our huge color copier as the one above. I know I can do better and make things more interesting. Hope you'll check back sometime and see if things are improving...

my mental pendulum

Julia Cameron writes eloquently about stiffling our negative blurts, and I think I have made true progress with this. Lately I have been struggling with artistic individuality, it's an internal mental war where thoughts see saw back and forth.

I am always hungry for eye candy, artistic inspiration, visual stimulation I search it out online, in books and magazines, taking classes, visiting museums -heck even shopping! I am a very visual and creative person and doing this feeds me.

So what's my issue? I obsess about creating my own art and about having filtered my inspiration enough to make it "original". I read a quote the other day by Joichi Ito:

"Most creative work is a process of people passing ideas and inspirations from the past into the future and adding their own creativity along the way. "

I find myself being judgemental about others' art when I assess it through this prism. I look and see "popular" themes that seem to run rampant through the art world where I like to browse. Do you know what I mean? Birds, wings on figures, dunce caps, big eyed portraits of women -they are everywhere! Is this "creative" or is it just copying, following the pack, being trendy?

It does not mean that I don't like what I am seeing, it's just that my preverse mind thinks that by adopting these elements is not authentic somehow for me.

In the past few months I have done two online classes, one was Shades of Grey with Pam Carriker and the other A Prompt A Day with Kelly Kilmer. I enoyed both and got a lot out of both, the page picture above was influenced by both. I was "copying" to learn techniques and I think that is totally fine, but now I need to take those techniques and make them my own. Michelle Ward had a GPP Street challenge* to make somthing your own, and even though I didn't participate in the challenge I have taken it to heart.

So can I use a bird in my art work? if I do a border edge on a journal page like Pam's is it unique enough for me? my inner perversity has me wondering. A final thought is that I am probably thinking about this too much and I should just create and let what comes come....

* unable to link to these -typepad won't let me in to her sites for some reason

Rock & Roll

This is a journal page I made inspired by the small piece of post it note I found on the washer, Greg must have pulled it out of his pocket (at least he checks them now!). I was already thinking about what fun it was to be interviewed for his paper for History of Rock & Roll. My studio is conveniently adjacent to the laundry area so I stuck this scrap in my moleskine and made a page about it. I am also very proud to report he found out yesterday he got an A+ in the class -not bad for a senior level history course at Univ of MD...

The Sketchbook Project

I love moleskine notebooks and signed up today to participate in a national sketchbook project that will tour as an exhibit. The Sketchbook Project will send me a moleskine and a theme, I fill it up and send it back to them for the exhibit...should be a fun and interesting challenge.

Confirmed Exhibition Dates:
December 11 - 13, 2009 Atlanta, GA

Art House Gallery
309 Peters St Atlanta, GA 30313
February 19 - 21, 2010 Brooklyn, NY

303Grand
303 Grand St.Brooklyn, NY 11211
April 8 - 11, 2010 Los Angeles, CA

Art and Shelter Gallery at The Salvation Army Alegria
2737 W Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90039
April 16 - 18, 2010 Saint Louis, MO

Soulard Art Market
2028 S. 12th St Saint Louis, MO 63104

This is the cover I created on my "cheap" watercolor pad that I purchased for my page a day class. I painted over the cover with black gesso and then painted with lucious Stewart Gill paints.
Unfortunately the whole month of pages won't fit into the pad -so I guess I'll need to start a second one....


5.12.09

5.13.09

5.7.09

5.8.09

5.9.09

5.10.09

5.11.09

5.6.09


5.5.09

Art Journal Class with Kelly Kilmer

I am taking another online class. Everyday during May we are given a set of prompts to create an art journal page - what to paint, what to collage, what to journal. It is very fun and challenging! It has taken me out of my comfort zone. What is also fun is to see the page pictures that everyone posts -we all start with the same recipe, but the pages are all so unique!

May 1st

May 2nd

May 3rd

May 4th

another grey page in progress

Sunday Morning

4 23 09 journal page

back to some color and using some found "inchies" another art fad I fell prey to...