One down, about 25 to go

This is a finished work now. One long stitch at a time. Cross that off the list.

"End of Season"- 24"x36". Fiber arts. Please rotate head right. Photo is not co-operating.

Here was an early stage:

 And here are some close-ups:

Why is it finished? Because it has to be. I had a deadline. It was accepted into our local Arts Festival and needs to be delivered in early April. But then there are all those other projects just lying about in various stages of completion or my indifference. Welllll.....I do have another deadline coming up for a show in August. Oh but that's so far away. la la la, lets go check Facebook and see what's up on Pinterest.

And here's a shameless plug for my new Etsy account: www.Etsy.com/shop/artbyValya

The Business of Art

I'm taking a bold step for me and setting up an Etsy account to sell my art. Let me just say I'm the absolute worst at selling things, especially my own things. (the Girl Scouts would have literally kicked me out). I give a lot of things away. Oh you like that? Here take it. It's Christmas? Here, have some art. (friends, I do it gladly) And then every year at tax time I add up all the money I spent on art supplies, and framing, and entry fees to shows, and then add up my profits and.....hey, wait a minute! And do you know how many organizations ask you to donate art for fundraisers.....and then charge you to come to the fundraiser event?

One of my yearly horrors while teaching high school was, of course, the dreaded fund raiser. You would think that a school that was all about the arts would......oh but I digress into bitterness. Don't get me started about sports and pom squads. Needless to say I had about 200 teenagers in dance classes issued giant cartons of assorted candy bars and told to sell them. What could possibly go wrong? Surely they wouldn't leave them in the trunk of a car in the hot sun. Surely their ravenous relatives wouldn't eat them all and thank them for the freebies. Surely they wouldn't leave them in a classroom only to come back and discover them gone. Surely they wouldn't lock them in a locker and then just forget about them. And surely they would happily reimburse you for any candy lost, eaten, destroyed, unsold, or stolen. I was lucky just to break even with the candy company let alone raise that projected $1000.00, to split between 200 kids to purchase costumes for a dance concert. Let's see, two hundred goes into 1000........oh, $5.00 per student, eh? That'll buy a nice headband. OK, let's all bring a T-shirt kids, and we'll dye them and cut fringe at the bottom. It'll be cute. Trust me.

So....Etsy. Now for a catchy name for my online shop. Valya? Taken. Valeria? Taken. Valerina? Taken. Artemesia? Taken. Krasivaya? (Russian for Beautiful) Taken. Valociraptor's Art Attack? Surprisingly, not taken, but still.......maybe I'll just stick with my temporary name artbyValya.

 Oh God, I'll have to handle transactions. I'll have to mail people things and hope they're pleased. I'll have to market myself. Oh God.....did I mention dealing with people? I need a business manager. I need a website specialist. Where's my business manager? My webmaster? Oh that's right. She moved to San Francisco.

Extreme close-up

You know the old saying: God is in the details. And you know the old saying: The Devil is in the details. It depends on the day. It depends on the deadline, on the level of patience, on the moments of Zen, on the weather, on the project, on the level of ADD, on the caffeine.
Usually I'm a big picture person. I see the forest, the wholeness of treeness, the ocean of waveness, our tiny atom of a planet in the cosmos, but sometimes the macro is too much and the micro assures me that every Who down in Whoville is unique and cared for.
That's just a totally misleading build up to the fact that I'm posting little pieces of bigger projects today. I am reveling in the details because every stitch has its place in the whole.

 This lotus below took me a LONG time. At first I cut around the linen square I had embroidered it on and sewed it on a skirt, then I stopped wearing the skirt so now I am integrating it into a larger wall hanging. Whenever I have done this kind of intensive handwork I usually look at it a few years later and wonder who the crazy person was that had that much patience. But then those ladies who did the Bayeux Tapestry are mocking me from their graves.

Eventually the big pictures of these projects will reveal themselves. Eventually.

Still life in the ol' Still Life

When I was little I thought still lifes were boring. My drawings were full of people in action, often riding horses or climbing trees, and sometimes fleeing from villains in grand adventures. My teen drawings were full of angsty sad faces looking poetic and mysterious as they gazed into a dreamy distance. Later in college, I still thought still lifes were boring in art classes when the teacher would pile some random objects on a table and have us draw them. Over and over. From all angles. Again and again. I understand why, of course. It was the equivalent of eating your vegetables before you get dessert. It was good for you. It taught you to look closely at shapes, at shadow and light, at form defined by light, at textures, at perspective and scale and all those other aspects of design important to an artist. So I've surprised myself lately by giving myself a painting-a-day project just to stay in practice, to stay loose and flexible, to turn off my analytical, judging brain and just play. And Voila! Most of my splashing and doodling has turned into still lifes.(Media: acrylic paint, acrylic ink, brush pen and India ink, and a section of a Lego castle floor brushed with paint to print some fun dot patterns.)
Most of the examples below were done from my head, no actual still life models in sight. Although I did bring in a lemon to look at. I do like lemons. And I am sorry the lemons are sideways. I have tried every technique to make them upright and they won't respond. The original image is upright so I don't know why my blog image uploader is fighting me.

Oh well, bombs away, lemons!

I did this little piece a number of months ago. Now it belongs to a friend in Florida who really wanted it. I love it when my art finds a good home.

Tag it.

I have to admit I'm a sucker for office supplies. Folder, pens, notebooks, clips, file cards..... they make me believe I can actually be neat and organized in life and in art. For about five seconds. Then I begin pondering how I can mess them up, alter them, splatter paint and glue on them, and scribble randomly with or on them.
And one of my favorite office supplies is the tag. I imagine them tied to boxes and suitcases with obscure markings identifying the objects inside or the destination they are going. But when I purchased a packet of tags recently I just saw their creamy, untouched surface and decided to play with texture, print, colour, and collage.

Seen close-up they are miniature abstract designs:

Here are are the 15 of 20 I have completed so far:

 A close-up of the lizard and its' negative image:

More close-ups:

And some previously done tags from my Moleskine sketchbook:

I don't know yet what I have planned for them. I suppose I could buy a folder to keep them in. Or put them in a box with a tag on it saying "Tags". But that would be way too organized.

My Little Artwork

I'm working on a new quilted wall hanging and will probably submit it for the Artist's Invitational Gallery at the next arts festival in April. It's a bit risky doing that. Last year I submitted my Absolutely Your Zen series of alphabetical ink drawings and it got in.

  I think a fiber arts entry is more of a risk because many do not consider something quilted to be "Art" with a capital A. The traditional view is that painting and drawing are 'real' art, plus sculpture, then a little further down, prints and ceramics. Fiber arts are now fighting the battle ceramics did  decades ago, in that ceramic artists don't just make pots the same way fiber artists don't just make quilts.

www.jcwclayworks.com

 The medium does not dictate what is art. I might even claim you can make art out of anything even, say, macaroni. And I'm not going to define what art is because that discussion has been going on since Glur looked at Jorp in the caves at Lascaux and complemented her on her amazing horse drawings, while Mirk looked on in envy because hers' looked like My Little Pony.

Here's a teaser for my piece called "October", still in the works. Similar to a banner I did of the West Texas Landscape, so I am interested in earthy textures, the soil, the trees, the changing sky, the passage of seasons.

The tree images are from photos I shot then printed out on sheer fabric through my printer.. I am still embellishing with embroidery, and I am thinking of a unique way to hang it, using an actual tree branch.

Feeling Blue

New year, new projects. Well, actually, a lot of old projects that need finishing. Lots of shows and exhibits ahead in 2013 and I plan (key word, Val, remember it) to be prepared for them. I'll reveal a few sneak peeks as things are progressing. Kind of like watching paint peel from a wall. It's more to motivate me than anything else.
  In the meantime I was working on a little book celebrating the colour blue in all its rich moodiness by cutting illustration board into 5 inch squares and doing a series of mini print/paintings. (Now this image was upright when I loaded it. Sigh.......). BTW I made this book cover from a granola box and crumpled paper bag. You can't get more low tech.

 No great art, just exercises to keep me creating on a daily basis even when I am having artist's block. Unfortunately the putting together of the book itself is proving to outwit me with its' stupid, annoying technical skills and my weak wrists (a hole punch through 1/8 inch thick board requires the strength of the Hulk, or at least someone who is not me). Auurrrrrrgh, in Hulk voice.

 So here is just a sampling of each square.

I sprayed acrylic ink through a bit of lace here then splattered water to let it run.

 Just pen and ink over layers of random paint with a bit of stenciling. Actually this snail is a bit boring. I need to jazz him up a bit.

 More of the same technique, with some tissue collaged on top.

 Sometimes after scanning I try the negative image and find the colours more appealing.

 I literally sprayed paint around dime store plastic lizards then filled them in with ink.

 The albino version........

 Sometimes I just slap things together from my drawer of abandoned bits.

 Just some freestyle flowers in a non-waterproof marker, hence the bleed. Plus the negative version which would make a cool fabric print.

 Jeri's dog Gator. I did this as a reduction lino print and this was one of the test pages that I just added bubble wrap stamping onto. Jeri has her own copy.

 Here's the actual lace I used as a stencil. This time I soaked it in ink and glued it down.

 My feather painting. Looks like a New Mexico landscape.

 You can actually see the marks on the left edge where I attempted to punch holes before my wrists threatened to crumble into dust. Back to the ice pick, I guess.