Capturing an image

It’s the last day before September, the month that has always felt like the beginning of a new year for me.  Many years of schooling, and then teaching, have ensured that my emotional New Year’s Day is the first day of school. As a symbol of the new year, I choose this flying crow. I have a thing for crows: anyone who has even glimpsed at my work can attest to this fact. My initials could be a factor: CAW.

Why crows? There are many reasons: crows are intelligent, with complex vocalizations. Often associated with death, probably because they eat carrion, crows and ravens are also considered messengers of transformative knowledge, and revealers of secrets. Cheryl has written some interesting articles about crows: The Crow in World Mythology, Crows in Art, Decorating with Crows, The Science of Crows, and Crows in Literature.

Many people have an irrational hate for these birds. Taking pictures of them prompted a number of caustic remarks, such as “Why would you waste film on those filthy things?” Such emotional reactions interest me: there is something powerful at work. And I have no film to waste with a digital camera!

Crow in flight

My camera, whose small size allows it to be taken anywhere with ease, does not seem to allow me to “capture” crows. I will need to query a few of my photographer friends to determine if anything besides a bigger, better camera can amend this quandary. However, I developed a strategy of walking up to them slowly, aiming my camera above them, and clicking just as they became uncomfortable with my presence. A couple of times, I actually captured a crow in flight!

That flow of feathers is gorgeous, isn’t it?

A different light

Spheres

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.  ~Pythagoras

I went shopping in Vancouver yesterday, with my husband and sister, and ended up taking many pictures in a shop that carried items like stone tables, statuary, doors, etc. The spheres caught my attention, among other things. My sister has been to this store many times, and used a number of the resulting photos in some of her collage paintings. She also buys pieces, periodically, so they are quite indulgent about shutter snapping on their premises. Besides, for all they know, we are making a record of future items to purchase.

Shopping is not my favorite activity, unless the shop is an art store or book store, but finding shops where you can photograph items for art’s sake puts the activity in a whole different light!

Artistic vision

 

Disintegrating leaf

I’m visiting family, in British Columbia, and also managing to get in a little art creation. The last few months I have been working (playing?) very intensely in my studio to get ready for a solo show, so I am actually taking a breather. Unfortunately, I am also in withdrawal, because art is so deeply embedded in my everyday life. That leaves me with photography.

While others are taking pics of sunsets and such, I gravitate towards disintegrating leaves and cracks in walls and pavement. I even managed to capture a few crows in flight with my tiny, purse-sized camera! At a recent wedding, I realized the next day when I downloaded my pictures that I had neglected to capture the bride and groom. Ahhh, artistic vision. It skews everyday life .   .  .  in a good way!

Find patterns EVERYWHERE 2

On a previous post, I showed a design that I created from a digital pic of ice on the table on our front porch. I use Photoshop Elements because it is easy, fun, affordable, and meets my current needs. I photograph paper towels, dried paint, just about anything that catches my fancy, and take it into Photoshop Elements. As an artist who uses collage, I am constantly needing and using what I call “art papers.” Because of the ease and FUN of this process, I have many MANY exclusive, personally designed art papers at my disposal, all of which can easily be transformed to customize their size and color as needed. Such fabulousness!

As I cleaned up my paint tray the other day, I saw a stamp impression . .

My paint tray with a stamp impression left on it

So, of course, I snapped a pic and created a number of art papers. The following is an example:

Branches art paper

I called it “Branches,” but it could fit quite nicely into a piece where I want subtle X and O patterns:

Branches art paper: black and white version

And Now For Something Completely Different

Isn’t it wonderful when a new piece of art work completely surprises you? When you step back and say “Huh?”

I admit that using “Huh” does nothing to elevate my thought processes, but it is more honest than saying I stepped back and said: “My stars, this piece is definitely an example of using imagery in my work that represents a major psychic shift, which I shall now take several hours to inscribe in my journal, after which I shall develop a dozen sketches furthering this theme to see where it leads me, followed by a thorough analysis of all that data so I can compose a new schema to inform how I approach making my art in the immediate future.”

Enough hyperbole: I have been doing a few gesture drawings of faces and figures lately. I am not a portrait painter, but using gesture drawings is a fun and effective way of bringing the face and human figure into your work, especially if you abstract it. I decided to use one in a piece that had stalled on me: I just didn’t know where to go next. Then I added the face (I ripped it in half, and the one side morphed into a different face altogether). The piece began to flow for me again. Here are the results:

Gesture drawing of young male

Decipher

Wowee, Zowee: More Paper Quilts!

I might have mentioned previously that paper quilting is quite addictive. When Kelli Nina Perkins first caught the bug, she said, “I couldn’t stop making these crazy things! ” If you had the results Kelli has, why would you stop? Tulipomania, indeed! Kelli describes, among other things, how she creates monoprints for her paper quilts.

Speaking of monoprints, Cathee has a succinct tutorial on a simple monoprinting technique over at Art and Soul.

Lucie Summers is a UK artist who is making some delicious paper quilts: she utilizes her own block prints.

I simply adore, darling, the paper quilt by Jane LaFazio called Following the Sun. It is inspired by a poem by Mary Oliver, and it’s made out of old library book check out cards sewn together and painted with acrylic paint. So right there you have my favorite poet (Oliver), my favorite paints (acrylic), and I have a library degree, so the library cards are significant as well!

Monoprints: on rice paper, using ink on a Lexan plate

Making and using monoprints in paper quilts is a fun, fast, and satisfying activity.

My new header, and giving myself another A

I have an interesting floor in my studio. After putting down the sub-floor, we decided to make it our main floor and simply painted it a flat gray. Then my husband challenged me to just go for it, to paint something lively so the floor would have some “zing.” So, I painted swirls, and circles, and blobs, in white. Then I used a black checkerboard stamp, and made little black marks here and there.

It is not a typical floor.

Well, the other day, as I was cleaning up (something I am forced to do when I can no longer find anything), I was about to sweep up a tiny piece of folded watercolor paper, when I noticed it was shaped like an A. This struck me as quite significant, having read the ideas of Ben Zander in The Art of Possibility, so I took a picture of it on my aforementioned floor. I inverted the colors, because it worked better for what I had in mind.

The result is my new header. I have given myself another A.

A Labor of Love

I have a very supportive and generous husband, Ted, my resident patron of the arts (patron of my art, to be exact). The hallway floor just outside my studio needed to be redone, so we bought some plain square tiles. However, knowing my love for mandalas, Ted dropped a tile (on purpose, of course) and soon found himself in a project slightly more involved than placing the original tiles down. All the pieces are hand cut. He also added pieces from rocks collected by our grandchildren, and a few extra tiles he bought for color variation. Let me show you a couple sections (the color looks different because of variable lighting):

Mosaic Floor outside studio door

Mosaic floor further down hallway

Gorgeous? I certainly think so. I know it’s a cliché, but the pictures do not do the floor justice. Ted has never thought of himself as an artist. I beg to differ.

Lest you think this is a small floor:

The entire hallway

Another Revelation . . .

Just the other day I posted a new piece of work. I commented that I wasn’t sure if it was finished. Today, I went to the edge of the abyss, as Carla O’Connor would say: I completely covered one side of my paper quilt with white, so I would have to repaint it. This is the kind of risk that, O’Connor teaches, actually encourages us to grow as artists. It’s when we “let go” of the product, of being afraid to ruin the piece as it is so far, and just get lost in the process. It’s very freeing.

We push ourselves to learn by capitalizing on our “mistakes.” We might even make them on purpose! We might cover up a problem area, or an area that just doesn’t sing. We might get really brave and paint out a great area, or add a color somewhere that we are sure will not work with the surrounding colors. Adding or subtracting such elements with a flourish can add to the drama, and make it exhilarating, as opposed to terrifying. Then we have to solve the conundrums we have created. We have challenged ourselves, dared ourselves by throwing down our own gauntlet. Next, we have to pick it up. ACCEPT that challenge! Accept it from the inside out, letting our intuition inform our hands, feeling the energy flow. When the flow lessens or subsides, we summon our analytical mind, study what we have done according to the elements and principles of design.

It’s a great strategy. Our mistakes are not cause for despair about our artistic ability. They are our impetus for improvement, our opportunities for invoking creativity and originality!

Let me show you the before and after of Revelation (click on after when you reach the old post).

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Revelation: after the "abyss"

In love with Leonard

My son was lucky enough to get tickets to the Leonard Cohen concert when Cohen came to Kitchener this June. The man is more than a legend. As Robert Reid wrote, for the Kitchener Record,”

[H}is charisma is not the result of fashion, sex appeal or even force of personality. It's a form of grace, a gift with appeal that transcends mere attractiveness.

After each song, and in response to thunderous applause and regular standing ovations, the Monk of Rock offered his beaming, crooked grin, with his hand over his heart in a gesture of humility and gratitude.

Reid also noted:

[Cohen's] best songs have the allure of poetry — compelling, engaging, haunting. Melody, while often memorable, remains secondary to lyrics.

His use of imagery and metaphor is unsurpassed in popular song. His language is so rich and so evocative, it’s impossible to select specific examples; they are simply too abundant.

Over the top? No, this is Cohen we are talking about. And my son, not one to toss superlatives around, offered a close description to Reid’s, when I queried him for details about the concert.

We have all been exposed to singers who can sing, but struggle with the between songs chit chat. “Just shut up and sing,” would be a common audience taunt in such cases. Well, Cohen is superb at it. Here’s my absolute favorite quote. When my son related it to me I honked with laughter and literally danced around the room, clapping. Cohen had been in Kitchener 15 years earlier, when he was 60 years old. “But then,” he quipped, “I was just a kid with a crazy dream.”

That’s me, too, folks. I’m not sixty yet, I’m fifty something, but I’M JUST A KID WITH A CRAZY DREAM!

Thanks, Leonard! That’s how the light gets in!