Archive for November, 2013

morning smoothie…

Saturday, November 30th, 2013

I finished Morning Smoothie a few days before Thanksgiving but just today had a chance to photograph it. It was SO much fun to make and stitch after working on the monstrously huge Earth Stories for nearly four months.

Morning Smoothie was designed for Fiber Shots! the annual fundraiser for San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Entries will be for sale for $100 with all proceeds from the artwork used to support the museum’s fiber art advocacy efforts. This is a really great way to acquire beautiful fiber art for a song!

Based on the food theme I was inspired by the cut fruit in my daily smoothie. I photographed the kiwi and strawberries and in the end tossed in the blueberries for pop! The background is a screen-printed linen damask napkin from my Keeping Up Appearances series.

My online art class also just ended so I have cleaned off my design table in anticipation of jumping right into new work.

Next up? …two identical pieces in different color ways…stay tuned!

 

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got fruit?

Saturday, November 23rd, 2013

Ever since I finished the massive Earth Stories project I have been making all kinds of art but nothing specific to my media. I’ve been instead enjoying a painting/collage/text class online with Jane Davies.

Instead of doing lessons on my print table which is the logical place, I brought everything to my design table so that I could walk in the studio, see it and work on it rather than go downstairs. In essence my design table has been covered with paper, paints, gel medium, scissors, magazines etc for the past 6 weeks. Finally I said ‘uncle’ I need to make some new work and partially cleared the deck to do so. Now that I am on the last class of this series the design table will soon be all mine once again.

So I have been working on some small COLORFUL pieces for exhibit next year. The first is for FiberShots Community Challenge: Tasty Too! a fundraiser for the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. The theme is food inspired. Nothing was really coming to me except chocolate and that could just be several pieces of brown fabric sewn together! That is until one morning when I was cutting fruit for my morning smoothie. I grabbed the camera and voila I had a basic design!

I will reveal the entire piece soon. For today I finished stitching the kiwi which really reminded me so much how I enjoy working with cloth.

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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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on the road again…

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

Last week hubs and I flew to San Diego to use up a trip credit and ‘relax’ for a few days. I didn’t take a camera as my phone takes such great shots. I did however become a shooting fool, taking over 200 images, few of which are going to have any art value. Here’s a few…

Taking off from Oakland we flew over San Francisco.

Coming back we flew over LA. I don’t recall EVER seeing LA from the air before. It was literally wall to wall concrete.

Also on the return salt ponds….many images of those!

 

 

I am always intrigued by the proximity of the city to the San Diego airport. The city has literally grown around the airport with one runway shared by both inbound and outbound flights. Coming in we just cleared the Air and Space Museum (ironic) in Balboa Park. I was always checking out the inbound planes.

We toured Little Italy and sampled some wine, cheese and prosciutto! Yum…I loved the old/new contrasts of the buildings,

the famous sign

struck me as humorous because to some people 1950 is so long ago but it is in my lifetime.

There were chocolate bars

and pasta in an old italian grocery store.

We spent time in the Logan Barrio checking out the Chicano Park murals…gorgeous!

And visited the “Hotel del” (Coronado) for a behind the scenes tour.

We went to the zoo so hubs could take 47 photos of a panda in the same position with a lamp over his head chewing on a bamboo lollipop.

I visited my cousin also that day!

We also went to the aquarium, the Visions Art Museum in search of my work in the Del Thomas Quilt Collection. It wasn’t there but it sure impressed the docents to know my work was in in the collection and there I was in the flesh inquiring about it. That gave me quite a chuckle.

We also took a harbor cruise, went to the firefighters museum where I was captivated by any number of mundane patterns and textures like this fire hose.

We went to Torrey Pines Reserve for an ‘easy’ hike and I found love in the form of gelato in LaJolla.

Now that I am back and pretty much caught up with paperwork I plan to take all this inspiration back to the studio and see what happens!

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