Archive for the ‘seasonal’ Category

a good problem to have…

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

It seems like forever ago that I started these two vineyard pieces for an exhibit. On Super Bowl Sunday I finally finished!

The challenge I perceived to be the creation of two identical pieces of a vineyard, one in spring and the other in fall. Instead I had all sorts of design challenges not the least of which one was slightly narrower than the other. Also I was going against my long ago learned lesson of creating work to someone else’s specifications and the muse was having none of it. Several times I nearly tossed the works in the trash but something, perhaps persistence pushed me through to each new problem. And then something completely unexpected happened. Someone saw them on the design wall, unfinished and wanted to purchase them!

This happened to me once before when I’d created two pieces for an upcoming exhibit. I was a member of an exhibition group then and had made these two pieces titled Summer in the City #1 and #2 about a hot summer day in San Francisco. I posted them on my website and they sold immediately. I had nothing left to exhibit until I thought…what a good problem to have!

I am never saying never again to the vineyards but if I ever do repeat I will go for a much larger format.

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lesson revisited…

Sunday, January 5th, 2014

I love it when old lessons reappear…sort of a cosmic hopscotch. You think you’ve learned it and yet here you are repeating it.

My current repeat lesson is I choose to not create work for exhibit based on someone else’s specifications. In other words I want to design what I want to design. If my finished work fits a theme or size then I may consider it for said exhibition but to create specifically for an exhibition…nah!

This creating work for a theme and specific size can be mind-numbing. Last spring I decided never again and then in December said well maybe just this once! So I have been laboring for the past few weeks on two identical landscape pieces for a juried exhibit next month. The challenge has been primarily about perspective and also making the pieces identical in design.

After fighting with trees in the background for several days I decided to just stitch instead of fusing them. Then I fought with grapevines for days and just yesterday had the conversation with friend Franki Kohler revisiting that promise we both had made to ourselves about not creating ‘exhibit specific’ work! I said I would give this piece one last gasp and if it didn’t work well then I was finished with it. So there…

Well glory be…it worked! Now I am rejuvenated and on to the 2nd piece determined to duplicate the grapevines. I remain optimistic that I can pull this off while recalibrating that promise to myself to rethink before creating work specific to exhibit.

And my procrastination excuse to avoid working on this is I have been knee deep in family genealogy. What started out as simply research for an upcoming project became an obsession. Genealogy has never really appealed to me and yet it is intriguing and like working a giant puzzle. Ever since I was a wee one I have loved puzzle solving. My art work involves puzzle solving so it seems only natural that I would love this genealogy work as well. I plan to finish it up shortly and get on with other things although I do wonder if one is ever truly done with their family tree.

Posted in new work, patterns, seasonal, shapes | 3 Comments »

the leaf people…

Thursday, November 14th, 2013

I don’t think anything defines idiosyncratic behavior more than the annual ritual of the fallen leaves and what people do with them. It always gives me such a chuckle while driving this time of year to witness the quirky habits of the leaf people. I could have photographed the people but whoa that would take far too much time! These photographs of our yard and our neighbor’s will suffice.

Perhaps my favorite is the (generally) older woman with a broom fastidiously sweeping up the last errant leaf in the gutter at the end of her driveway; while the yard adjacent to hers is covered with leaves and an autumn breeze is blowing.

Next is the guy with the leaf blower shooing them all out into the street for the city’s street cleaning truck to suck up. He is followed by the guy who just blows the leaves out of his yard to become someone else’s problem. There are many who do nothing with them except walk through them, crunching the leaves into oblivion and probably tracking the remnants into the house.

Hubs has been known to collect leaves all over town, looking like Mr. Claus with a huge bag on his back. He runs them through a very noisy mulcher (as in movie Fargo) and then puts the mess into his compost pile. It’s gotten out of hand as people started dropping off their bags of leaves for him.

I still think Charlie Brown had the best idea….rake them into a pile and then jump on it!

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winter solstice…

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

Most of us know winter solstice to be in the deep darkness of December. While we barely notice it in North America I had the extreme delight to experience it in Sweden in 1999. Our family escaped to the hinterlands in an effort to avoid the Y2K mania here in the States. It was such a treat to spend the darkest December days in the far northern part of Sweden, very near the Arctic Circle and to experience the Aurora Borealis as well.

So I am particularly excited to tell you about a Winter Solstice fiber exhibition in Palo Alto, CA Dec 1-Jan 25, 2012. I will have three pieces in the exhibit including the one on the postcard.

Unfortunately I will not be in attendance at the opening. I continue to heal from knee surgery 5 weeks ago. I continue to stretch, ice, strengthen, walk, rest, sleep and eat my way back to independence and mobility with my eyes on the prize of making art again by year’s end.

If ever there was an excuse to pull out of all the holiday stress, fuss and muss this is it. I am doing nothing this year to decorate, shop, cook, whatever. My gift to all dear this year is one of being fully present.

Posted in exhibits, knee surgery, seasonal | 3 Comments »

lazy hazy days of summer…

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Time management is always an issue for me but less so now than when I first ‘retired’ 12 years ago. In the interim I have learned to smell more roses and catch up on more reading. That said the first five months of this year were pretty hectic and I knew that going in. Obligations to speak were booked a year out as were exhibits, shipping work hither and yon and going to France.

I greatly anticipated June 1 as being finally ‘my time’ which was promptly re-arranged when life intervened and my husband suffered an embolism & complications. So June has primarily been a wash although I have gotten back into the studio and am creating new work in between lots of trips down the freeway to ongoing doctors’ appointments. A big help was resigning as his personal secretary which freed up my energy to make art while he could sit on the phone all day.

After two surgical consultations of my own today I decided to have a total knee replacement on my right leg. Neither knee is in great shape but the bone-on-bone of this one has greatly impacted my lifestyle.

With all the ‘corrective surgery’ I have had already I never thought it possible that this could be fixed. I had come to a place of stoic acceptance so I was quite shocked to learn that indeed it can be replaced. Naturally I am nervous about more surgery and what if I end up in worse shape? I have been reassured that is unlikely and while I have heard of all kinds of alternative plans none cures the problem like surgery. So with great faith in surgeon #2 I am consenting to go forward. Rather than work myself into an anxious lather about this I will root out my positive thinking cap and wear it from here on out.

The surgeon’s schedule brings me into September as the next available opportunity. Now instead of relaxing in the remaining lazy days of summer I am thinking I must get downstairs and print some fabric which I have resisted (no pun intended) for months. And I need to make more work. And I need to finish a marketing project and so on and so on …

The world would not end if I did none of this and just declared the remainder of this year as ‘my six months holiday.’ Maybe I will…who knows?!

Posted in knee surgery, seasonal, time management | 1 Comment »