We are Stardust, We are Golden

40 years ago but it still resonates.......

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going?
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock n roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

by Joni Mitchell in 1969

(we both only watched it on the TV news)

The Evaporation of Summer

How is it August 14th already? My summer is evaporating rapidly. The radio is full of ads for back to school sales - they always make me want to go and buy new crayons, pens and pencils.

In a strange and bittersweet twist as August ends so does my time as "the mother of a student". Greg is finishing at University of Maryland at the end of the month. Since he's been living at home I haven't completely disassociated with this persona of mine. Even though he's grown up and independent, it has been a part of my mental identity that it's time to shed...

I know I will find new and different things to color my world this fall. This weekend I plan to be a student myself, I am determined to re-master Photoshop! I haven't used it in years and found that I have forgotten most of what I used to know how to do...it was on our old home computer and I just never use that one. It's now installed on my laptop and I dug out my Photoshop Elements for Dummies book and even downloaded some new brushes of grunge frames to try out. Here's to a digital visual weekend.

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...

Being Treated

This weekend I came to Salisbury to visit my dad & stepmom with my husband & son. As I sit here typing my stepmom is frying up sausage and beating eggs for breakfast. I cook breakfast about twice a year-so to me this is huge! After breakfast we are going off to walk around a huge Saturday morning flea market before it gets too hot.

I love coming here, they make us all feel so pampered and at home.

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...

Eye Candy overload at the Blogging for Bliss Party

Yesterday was so much fun meeting so many bloggers at the Blogging for Bliss party.
I have always been too shy to really leave comments and interact, thinking somehow I don't really know enough about blogging, or somehow my blog isn't a "real" blog -just me fooling around. I am not sure why but I decided it really is time to fully plunge into the blog pool and not just dunk in my little toe. I am still working my way through the party list and hugely enjoying all the eye candy and all the amazing creativity that abounds, it is awesome and humbling and so inspirational! My copy of Blogging for Bliss arrives tomorrow from Amazon, and being me I can never just stop at one book, I am also getting An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers by Danny Gregory and Image Transfer Workshop: Mixed-Media Techniques for Successful Transfers by Darlene McElroy.
This should be lots of inspiration for my artwork and my blog! We are going down to the beach on Friday and I'm excited I'll have some fabulous reading.

Blogging for Bliss Book Party

Today I am joining the book launch party at Artsy Mama's for Tara Frey's new book Blogging for Bliss. I am anxiously awaiting my copy! I started blogging over a year ago and then had a huge lag where I just let it sit. The past few months I am back into it regularly and I enjoy it! I highly recommend blogging as a blissful creative outlet.

If you stop by to visit ~ please leave a comment and your blog link! I'd love to add you to my inspiration list, because visiting and discovering wonderful blogs is every bit as fun as creating one yourself. I am looking forward to the party today and visiting with everyone attending the party.

Soul Collage

I came across some photos of some cards I had made a few years ago when I was fooling around with Soul Collage. I liked the process of thinking about the various aspects of your psyche and creating the collages, but the whole tarot like process of doing stuff with the deck of cards left me cold...I still quite like the cards though, and they are still me.....

This is "The Source" card