Be Delighted

"Oh my my my my, what an eager little mind!"

Auntie Mame

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Pretty Cute

I don't mean to be controversial but I suspect that most women have a 'cute' gene. They tend like things that are cute, pretty, decorative, pleasing, comforting, and colour co-ordinated. I know nothing about genetics so it's all speculation and observation. When I go to Hobby Lobby there are not a lot of men in there, unless they are dragging along patiently behind their wives waiting to get over to Home Depot and check out some nail guns. Hobby Lobby is one of those overwhelming places, like Wal-Mart, that has so much 'stuff' everywhere the brain cannot absorb it for too long a period or a fugue state may occur. It caters to the craft-obsessed like MacDonalds caters to high schoolers on a 30 minute lunch break. If possible, I frequent Michael's, which is not quite so warehouse-full-of-craptacular-supplies in its ambience. I also keep my cute gene fairly manageable. I am only there for photo pages, art supplies, and yarn. Everything else is a graveyard for kitsch to me. I am not tempted by knick-knacks, pom pom pillows, seasonal glitz, and cute animal posters. And to really keep me in line I need my daughter there to be ironic and mock-horrified. She, too, is there to buy art supplies, and as her cute gene is pretty non-existent, she will merely give me a fierce conspiratorial glance to indicate that the woman in line in front of us has a cart full of blazing pink ribbon, hot pink feathers, polka dotted paper, and zebra striped fabric. We are not sure if she is making some sort of centerpiece or a pole dancing outfit. Because there is a disorder that occurs when someone is born with too many cute genes, and it can become frightening. It can manifest in a scrapbooking obsession that turns a simple photograph of a baby into a glue-gunned, eye-popping, sparkle-fested page that weighs five pounds and turns the child into a mere background feature. Or it can turn into a house full of doilies and ruffles and figurines and silk flowers.
I keep my own cuteness needs contained to the internet, for the most part. I can visit Cuteoverload.com to see my share of adorable animals. I can save pretty pictures in my Pinterest files, and pass on sweet images on e-mail or Facebook. I've become plainer and more practical as I've gotten older. I don't collect things anymore, no matter how much their cuteness lures me. No more figurines, or dolls from every land, or a little fuzzy Snoopy holding a box of chocolates. And when it comes to art well, that's when the battle begins. My tendency to like the pretty, the nice, and the pleasing, does battle with the inner artistic snob that is telling me I am not serious enough, that true beauty is often the enemy of the pretty. Beauty can be stunning and alarming and soul-stirring, and I may have to keep forging through the cuteness to get there.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Outsider Art

Art is often a mysterious process, even though I have argued before that it is not magical. If you want to do it just take a leap off that cliff and land somewhere new. In that vein, I am fascinated by 'outsider art'. 'Outsider' is often a veiled term for someone with a mental illness creating odd and fascinating works, sometimes with bizarre materials and a subject matter only they understand, like the man who spent his whole life creating a giant aluminum foil altarpiece in his basement. There is an obsessive and often disturbing element to these types of works that seem to indicate, if not a mental imbalance, at least a hearty dose of eccentricity. Most trained artists, no matter how outside the mainstream they are, or attempt to be, have a firm foothold in reality and the wheeler-dealer aspects of the profession, along with a sense of discipline and hard work. Many exploit shock value, especially in performance art , in order to gain attention to either themselves or a cause they espouse. In this sense they are rational and calculating. Outsider artists are rarely that. Their work often appeals because it forces the viewer to enter their irrational world (see the film "Junebug" for an offbeat look into this world). However, not all outsider artists are teetering on the brink, or hearing voices in their head, many are just untrained amateurs with a need to pour out what they see in their head, a prime example being Grandma Moses, who, late in life, began painting her charmingly primitive rural scenes.
Which brings me to my Dad. As a trained mechanical engineer, he had some basic skills in drafting, but never showed any interest in art, other than to occasionally like a picture he saw. He was a bit disappointed in my choice for art as a college major, and never quite understood what I was doing with it, although I know he occasionally bragged to his colleagues, and once displayed one of my more hideous efforts in his office in the Math building. So it was surprising that, in the last year of his life, when he knew he was dying, he suddenly became a painter. He purchased the cheapest of paints and brushes, and painted on old pieces of cardboard, then out came all these odd, yet compelling images, that looked half dream, half memory, childlike, and yet full of detail, as if his right brain had just decided to go wild and have a party, even as his body got weaker and weaker. When Andrea and I visited him in Florida, we left with artwork in our hands. He had stacks of them and just let us sort through. Our brother came and did the same. We were all surprised and baffled by this last minute creative splurge. It was as if we we were seeing a part of Vadim that he, himself, was only just glimpsing. My Dad, always somewhat of an outsider anyway, had decided to take a big leap into new territory before he went off into that unknown country.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

No, I'm Not From Around Here.

I've said I'm not from around here for a long time. We moved here in 1969, so in fact, I have lived here for 42 years now, most of my life. But if I'm not from here then where am I from? I don't even have a home town, technically. My mother had me in a hospital in Stockport, England, then brought me back to Long Eaton, her home town. When I was barely two we moved to South Africa, then a year later to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), then five years later back to England then on to the United States. We lived in Utah for seven years, Wisconsin for one year, Florida for four years, then here to Texas. I thought it would be another brief stay, but this is where my roots finally took. That said I have never felt like a Texan. Something in my genes doesn't quite jibe with all things Texan, and I often feel like a stranger in a strange land, especially during football season, or endless dry, hot summers, or with anything involving big trucks, big hair, big churches, and big politics. It's a loud, brash state and I must have a British village soul. And yet I do envy people who have a sense of place, who feel rooted to a history, to ancestors, to traditions. Our family has always been a bit isolated, a bit nomadic. My father was an orphan who was uprooted from Russia during the Revolution and sent to relatives in Poland. he was always a restless soul, and much of our family's travels were because of his wanderlust.
   (On the ship to the U.S.-1957. Thrilling lifeboat drill. We're all in the middle.)

But the funny thing is, after all this time I finally do feel a sense of community, a sense of this place, this wide open space. I find myself defending Lubbock to outsiders or visitors who complain about its barren flatness, its conservativism, its lack of culture, its resistance to change, because a lot of that is not true if you know where to look. My Lubbock is full of culture and arts and interesting people, and innate friendliness, and beautiful skies, and cool evenings on the patio, and an endless horizon of possibilities.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Making a Mess

I was at an art opening one evening, probably for a First Friday Art Trail, and someone I was speaking to looked at my hands aghast and asked "how did you hurt yourself?" I looked down and saw red paint spattered around my fingernails and on my knuckles. It looked like I had been sacrificing a chicken. Oops, more soap and water needed. Yes, I have spent my life making a mess. You can usually tell what I have been doing by what is clinging to me. If I am covered in dog hair I have been walking Penny. If little threads are clinging to my clothes and hair I have been quilting, and if I am sprinkled with lots of colour you can tell I have been painting. I also have a very small studio. It is also a mess. The walls and floors are flecked with paint and gesso, there are piles of projects in every corner, drawers and shelves of supplies, stacks of fabric, scraps of paper, canvasses, paints, brushes, magazines and books. The space is about eight feet square and includes a work table and a sink with cabinets. I seem to have outgrown it.


When I look at magazines that show artist's studios I have to laugh: everything pristine and organized. Cute cubbyholes, supplies ready at hand, neat stacks of projects arranged by use and need.....I almost weep in envy. But then I come back to reality and think of all the messy artists I have known, stained, disheveled, literally wearing their art on their sleeves. Creativity is messy. It starts with chaos and ends with beauty. So even though I dive into the chaos I try to be presentable. I clean up well. Still, if you see me at the grocery store and there is a smudge of ink over my eye or a blob of yellow paint in my hair just let me know.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Loser

I know this is a country that loves competition. Check out all those reality shows (or not) where people humiliate themselves in front of the nation for some carrot dangling in front of them, or those mothers who parade their little daughters in beauty pageants (what I call the Kinder Whore culture), or every girl scout who ever showed up at your door hawking those cookies so they can be the cookie-selling-est girl scout in the whole world. That's the way some people drive themselves. They thrive on pushing ahead of someone else. And I guess it makes sense in sports. There are scores, there are specific winners and losers. In the extreme version of this, if you are not #1 you are a loser, so the second best football team in the country, the one that loses the Super Bowl, is just as big a loser as the team that didn't win a single game that season. I guess I'm a loser by those standards. I've come in first exactly twice in my life (not counting games of Trivial Pursuit. I am mildly great at that game). I won a city wide school art prize in 1967, my senior year of high school, and in 1995 I was the Texas Dance Teacher of the Year (a moment of hushed awe) for the TAHPERD organization (Texas Association of Health, P.E., Recreation, and Dance). There was no crown involved, unfortunately, because I would have worn that to school the next day, but I shook the hand of  then-Governor George Bush, who showed up at the state convention to endorse health and fitness so make of that what you will. I think I was taller than him. And no, I didn't vote for him.
The rest of the time, not counting one honorable mention in another art show, I am a happy loser. Or rather, I choose not to compete. But then that's my beef with making the arts competitive. In sports there is an actual score as an indicator. In the arts there is usually a judge. An artist may enter one show and come in first place, then enter the same work in another show and not even get a mention. It's all based on the subjectivity of the judge. I understand quality and I understand excellent technique. You can tell when art is good, for the most part (and also when it's pure bullshit). Being juried into a show should be the honor in itself. Assigning 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place after that just seems arbitrary. I have been at many shows where a blue ribbon hangs next to an artwork and a large number of viewer comments are usually in the vein of "Hmmmph, I don't know how that piece won."
So besides being an indifferent loser I am also a sore winner. I brush it off, not really enjoying the attention, and possibly thinking there was a mistake made. I may go all Sally Fields for a few moments ("You like me, you really like me!") and then I want to apologize to the other people who are quietly simmering in their loser-tinged disappointment, or waiting to trip me on the way out. It is an awkward and non-satisfying experience. I much prefer group shows where we all hang what we consider to be our best piece and then enjoy each others' creative efforts. But then I like to stay in my comfort zone most of the time. Not always, and occasionally I will find a way to push  that envelope. Just don't give me a prize. Although, maybe I'm a big hypocrite. My daughter just got into a juried photography show and I sure hope she wins.

Friday, April 15, 2011

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Stupid. In life as in art I need to remember that rule. Sometimes a drawing is done, finished, with one line. Sometimes the solution to a problem is the path of least resistance. Sometimes there really IS an Easy button. Sometimes there's just too much clutter, too many possessions, too much chatter, too many pundits, too much useless information, too many places to be, too many projects to finish, too many choices, too many obligations, too much worry, too much fear. Breathe in, breathe out. Be in the moment. Let it be.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Journaling the Journey

"Dear Diary: Today was a boring day. We had tuna casserole for supper and then I watched Bonanza. Little Joe is cute. but not as cute as Dr. Kildare." Well, I wrote something like that in my first diary. It was 1960 and I was ten years old at the time and hardly a budding Anne Frank. But I did keep writing about my life over the years, picking up in 1963, where I wrote pages....and pages...of declarations of love for the Beatles. I wrote in large, cheap, unlined scrapbooks from Woolworth's so I could glue pictures of them next to my predictable, poorly penned text. I tended to end each day's record with a hearty "Yay, Beatles!" By 1966 I was in full teen angst, complaining about parents and siblings, my weight, my hair, and my buck teeth, or discussing school events and gossip from my friends, and still carrying on about the Beatles, where it was important to establish which of my friends liked which Beatle so there was a nice balance and no jealousy.
                                                      (No penmanship awards for me.)

Then there's a whole embarrassing box in the attic full of my college journals that I am afraid to read and just as afraid to throw away. More angst, unrequited love, friendship dramas, etc. ratcheted up a few degrees in emotional pitch. I only seemed to write when I was in full hysterical mode over something that now seems distant and puzzling. When I was in a less manic/depressive mode my college roommates would beg me to read from my ramblings, as if I were reading them a good night story, only they were characters in the story as well. I turned my misery into entertainment. I highly recommend it.  But not everyone likes to record the minutiae of their lives (except those excessive Tweeters). There are long stretches in my own when I didn't say much. I was either busy raising my children or my angst level was suitably maintained. Eventually I reached that transition in my life when I didn't want to write when I was sad, or distraught, or raving, I wanted to write when I was calm and happy. It was hard to be glib, witty, and sarcastic, a state I love being in, when I was stewing over something, although it's a great form of therapy. Sometimes reading a page from 1964, or 1973, or 1994, I  cringe in horror, but other times I surprise myself with my insights, as if I were reading a stranger's writings, and I realize that I haven't changed in many ways from that ten year old who first thought life was an interesting enough journey to record the process. There's a continuous thread of personality that is almost reassuring despite better teeth now and much more confidence. This blog is itself another form of continuing that journaling process. And in this blog I am, surrealistically, not only journaling about journaling, but in this sentence I am journaling about journaling about journaling. Wait, what? Oh and, Yay Beatles!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

In My Life

In my long, illustrious 'career' I haven't really sold that much art. In fact, after a show I had last year at Art On Texas Gallery, I realized I had sold more pieces in that one show than I probably had in all the years before that. The fact is, I give most of my art away, to family and friends. I'm definitely not doing this for the money or even a tax break. (when your yearly art supplies cost more than your art sales that's not exactly a thriving business). Still, I'm sure with a bit more ambition and an agent I could get some sort of cottage industry going (and NOT by painting cottages, I might add) but then doing it on demand is not as much fun as just stumbling into shows with whatever I have produced.  Still one of my great pleasures is in taking pleasure in my friends enjoying my art. They are my best fan club. And I like the idea that there is a little bit of me everywhere in various parts of the country and even the world. Art makes a great personal gift. To me it's a way of showing my love without getting all mushy. I once even gave a gift and then got it right back. The guy I was dating in the late Seventies wanted to see some of my art. I pulled a stack of drawings and paintings out from under a bed and announced in my usual self-deprecating way that I was getting ready to throw them all away. He grabbed one out, a large watercolour double image of a dancer, and said "Can I keep this?"  Sure, I replied. Later he even cut a mat and made a nice frame for it, so that I saw it through his eyes and realized it wasn't so bad. Even later I married that guy and that painting still hangs over our bed in the same frame. What goes round comes round.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Handy Dandy!

When I was teaching in public school we had to participate yearly in the dreaded 'in-service' meetings, most of which are now but a vague memory involving massive printed handouts, overhead projections, and uncomfortable seats. However one or two points managed to stick to some surface of my brain while doodling in the margins of my lesson plan notebook wondering when snack time was. I do remember a certain session involving learning styles: how we each learn in our own unique ways but that we don't often encounter teachers who realize or understand that, or who teach to those various learning styles, with a variety of teaching approaches. We all then took a psychological test to see what our particular learning style was, because however we learn information is usually the way we teach it. I'm sure it's way more complex than this but the three basic learning styles are Audio, Visual, and Kinesthetic. In the simplest of terms that means: Tell me, Show me, or let me Do it. Whenever you listened to a lecture in college, along with 200 other sleepy/hungover students, and copiously scribbled down the pithy wisdom or soul-deadening facts from whatever professor was assigned that unhappy crowd, you were demonstrating audio learning, unless you were already asleep. If the professor suddenly turned on a slide show or a movie, say of some epic historical battle, it might become a little more interesting to those visual learners, and if you had a really ambitious instructor who would divide you into armies and stage a mock battle then most likely the Kinesthetic learners were having a jolly old time. (See any Harry Potter film for a demonstration of these styles). So when we, as teachers, took this test, some results were entirely predictable. The orchestra and choir teachers tended to be Audio learners, the Art teachers were Visual learners, and the P.E. teachers were Kinesthetic learners. I, on the other hand, was a bit of all three, but mainly Visual and Kinesthetic, which considering my background in Art and Dance isn't really headline news. I like moving. I like doing things with my hands. I was raised by parents who never did much with their hands or had much interest in athletics. No hobbies or crafts going on. No tossing the ball with Dad or doing activity games with Mom. My Dad was not the go-to guy for home repair and my mother never learned to sew or engage in crafty hobbies. I, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of the so-called feminine crafts. I learned sewing, then knitting, crocheting, needlework, cross-stitch, even macrame. Anything remotely artsy fartsy I jumped in to try it. I made paper dolls, sewed Barbie clothes, constructed shoebox houses, embroidered pillow cases, and  illustrated diaries. After the Seventies, among feminists, these skills fell out of favor for awhile, considered old-fashioned and oriented towards keeping women as happy homemakers. But my hands never listened to what I was 'supposed' to be doing. Neither did my brain. My hands wanted to make things. I took pride in making things. And recently, there has been a whole upsurge in these skills again. Quilting, knitting, crochet, and sewing, with newer, hipper yarns and fabrics, and clever, modern designs, have taught a new generation how satisfying the hand made object can be. It's a nice balance to technology. My fingers know their way around a Google search or a digitally altered photo, but they can also whip out a scarf in an evening and wear it the next day. And then I can dance a little jig. Kinesthetic me.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Feast Your Eyes!

As one of my favorite literary characters, Auntie Mame, once said "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death". She was a person who lived in the moment and made the most of the tough moments. Even, having to...gasp...get a job during the Depression, she did so with a cheerful attitude and never forgot to have fun. She also collected art, and artists, and a wide array of modern furniture, but with the idea that if they were all gone tomorrow...oh well. Which brings my thoughts around to the idea of possessing beauty. At one point I remember standing in front of a beautiful painting in a Santa Fe gallery done by John Axton and just being mesmerized by it. It truly spoke to me. It was large but simple, a group of rocks and shore line off a Northern California coast, and it had a powerful sense of serenity, haunting and still. I really really really wanted that painting. But the price tag said $8000.00. So it was not to be mine. I have purchased more affordable art over the years including a prized piece of James Watkins pottery, and I treasure having them in my life. Yet, lately I notice that the urge to own beauty has diminished in me. Maybe it's that second half of life thing.  I would rather just see beauty, even for a moment. beauty in art, beauty in nature, and savor that. It comes it goes. I actually feel sorry for those billionaires who buy a rare Van Gogh just so they can horde it away, hide it in their lair, with alarms and guards surrounding it, rather than donate it to a museum and say "I want to share this wonderful painting with all of you." Most beauty is for free anyway, even in the Flatlands. Drop by an art show, watch a group of folkloric dancers, look at a thunderstorm approach, notice the seasons change, even admire the texture of an old, faded door. There's always a feast for the eyes somewhere. The Auntie Mame of our family, Glenn's Aunt Marien, would sit out on her patio at Buffalo Springs Lake, glass in hand, watching the sun go down over the water, and declare: "FAN-tastic!" Every day I want to see something that makes me say that.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Eventually it will get done.

I like the idea of artistic arcs. Just like TV series that have episodes that resolve the plot in one hour, but have another ongoing plot that is referred to as the 'seasonal arc' to keep viewers tuning in. In fact, some TV shows have the all-encompassing series arc, where the final strand of the plot is not woven in until the final episode of the series. Which can feel complete and satisfying ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") or can really frustrate and confuse ("Seinfeld", and depending on your mindset, "The Sopranos"). So, in my own 'creative' projects, I seem to have these varying arcs, like balls juggling in the air. Some projects are done in an hour, or a day, maybe a week. Some are off and on:  a painting I'll return to later, a collage that needs some element but I don't know yet what it is. Other projects are more far-reaching: a quilt block finished, but I only (!) need to make 59 more for a fabulous bed quilt. Wait, maybe I'll just do 25 blocks and turn it into a table runner. Wait, maybe I'll do 12 blocks and turn it into a wall hanging. Hmmmmm, maybe I'll take this one block and put it in an art quilt as an homage to traditional quilting. Maybe I'll glue it on paper and send someone a birthday card. OK, done. And then there are those epic projects that are so huge I can only contemplate one small portion of it at a time or I'll have a mild panic attack. As has happened with my lofty goal to scan and save every photograph from every album in our family history. Now when I started this it seemed like a summer project (summer of 2008 to be exact). Scan, save, scan, save, scan, save, etc. into a nice little virtual file in the sky so that if a tornado ever blew those family albums away those images would not be lost forever. I think I was motivated by Hurricane Katrina where I saw so many desperate people, and so many of them mourning not the loss of clothing and furniture, but of precious family photos gone forever in the flood. So my role as family historian seemed relatively simple, unless........well, it started with the old black and white photos from the 1920's and 30's. I discovered my Corel Photo program, whereby, on my computer, I could  bring up a saved photograph, remove scratches, hide tears, crop badly framed images, brighten dark shadows and darken overlit faces. I could even go Andy Warhol on it, or make it sepia toned, or zoom in on an extreme close-up. It was like a drug. I could 'fix' faded and damaged photos and make them good as new. So now my process became 'scan, fix, save'. Photo by photo. Some were just fine, others took up to half an hour or more to get right. The black and white images from the WWII years held up the best. As did many photos from my childhood in Africa. Then colour came into the picture. We've all seen how those colour photos from the 60's and 70's have faded and washed out. So now on top of fixing damage I was also brightening colour. I was like Paul Simon's cheerful song "Kodachrome". ("They give us the nice bright colours, they give us the greens of summer, make you think all the world's a sunny day..." ). Right now I have finally reached the Seventies. Only three more decades to go. But wait, those are the photo-heavy decades, the ones crammed full of pictures of my children at every age from birth through college and slightly beyond. All my pre-Seventies photos can fit into two albums. From that time onward I have eight overstuffed, giant albums of various milestones of growth, vacations, holidays, school events, staged portraits, and random goofiness. Those albums look awfully daunting. This may be the epic series arc, the one that ends with me on my deathbed reaching for a snappy version of a combo iPad/scanner/TV/music system/phone/camera/microwave/hair dryer and pushing that scan button one last time. Done!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Draw, yeh Varmint!



In one classic old west Bugs Bunny cartoon, Yosemite Sam, always in need of anger management, fingers his holsters and demands that Bugs draw, to which, in true Bugs style, he takes out paper and pen and whips out a competent sketch. Sam then proceeds to attempt the same but, tongue out in belabored concentration, keeps trying then erasing, trying then erasing, until the inevitable explosion of temper occurs. It's a funny bit because besides being a play on words, there's the meta-level idea of a cartoonist drawing someone who can't draw. Not to mention, it plays into our own frustrations of attempting the same.
I mentioned in the last blog about children just naturally drawing, scribbling, dabbling in fingerpaints, embracing their Crayola time, without worrying about the results. It was all in the process. But as we know, there's that moment in our growth where we become grounded in reality. We see objects in more complexity so we want our drawings to look like that object. We're not happy anymore with lollipop trees and stick figures. We see that faces are more than two dots and a curved line in a balloon head and so the frustration sets in when our drawing of Mom has lop-sided eyes, a snout nose, and a leering set of teeth. Instead of declaring "Look Mom, I'm the next Picasso. Alert the media!" we toss it away in frustration.
I feel the truly great art teachers are those that, given a decent school budget and lots of support for artistic development, work with pre-adolescents through this tough transition, not only with teaching handy skills that enable them to draw what they see, but also to draw what they don't see. Design, color, abstraction, impression, collage, decoration, even collective projects, allow children to experience art at more than just the level of realism. This is when imagination can soar. Or it can die on the vine with endless exercises in coloring inside the lines.
Next time I feel frustration with a piece of art, or just feel my creativity is dried up, I'll try to banish my inner Yosemite Sam before my head explodes, and let that subversive, free spirit Bugs loose. Besides, he loves to dress in drag and he's also a great dancer.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Can Do

A certainly family member who shall remain nameless has what I call 'that old can't-do attitude'. But she's not the only one. Over the years teaching high school I heard many of my students tell me "I can't do that" when confronted with a new skill. Automatically, without evening thinking of a different reply. Just an immediate denial. Nope, not gonna do it. There are two interpretations of that response:
A) I'm too damn lazy to try and it doesn't interest me.
B) I won't look cool in front of my friends because I'm insecure and afraid of failure.

Which brings me back to art and creativity. Among my adult friends I often hear a response to doing art akin to the idea that art is magic and certain people are magicians. Lines and squiggles, paint and clay, turn into recognizable objects, clever patterns, appealing designs. Presto! Still they sigh and say "oh I wish I could be an artist but I don't have any talent." If wishes were horses they could ride a palomino into the sunset. So after many years of hearing this I finally have a response. I say "If you want to play a musical instrument or learn to cook what do you do?" The usual response is "I'd sign up for a class." (cricket sounds, while they mull their answer over). I then say "Well, why don't you sign up for an art class?"  (pause). What it then comes down to is another variation of responses A and B that my high school students used to give me. But my thought is if you want to do something just try it. There are so many classes and courses, so many online resources, so many guides and tools and DVDs, it's almost irresistable. Which brings me to one friend, who, when she turned 50, got that artistic urge and asked my advice. I pointed her first to basic community center arts and crafts classes, suggested trying an art journal or doodling in a sketchbook, trying different media to see what appealed to her. Long story short, and certainly more her own desire and drive than my brief advice, she is now a college student working on a degree in art. It's not always been easy. What new skill is? But she has now demystified the magic of art. Early semester clumsy sketches turn into more refined drawings. Awkward lines becomes elegant. Observing becomes second nature. Hand-eye co-ordination sharpens. Ideas flow more easily from brain to fingers.
Remember as little children we struggled to walk, and talk, express ourselves, tie a shoe, scribble trees on paper, do happy dances to music. We didn't give up then. It was a natural impulse to persevere. We weren't aware of looking or feeling foolish, only of completing that goal and grinning broadly when we achieved it. I think I can. I think I can.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Better late than never

I was a mediocre artist in college. I can admit that. Maybe I was an art major at the wrong time. The Seventies was all about do-it-yourself-discover-the process and very anti-technique. I floundered. I needed concrete instruction and exercises and I needed a gentle, coaxing method. I was too insecure, too sensitive. The tendency was towards the abstract and the art-as-therapy approach. If I wasn't exorcising my demons on canvas I was uninteresting and dismissed. (Still, a special shout out to my favorite art professor, Terry Morrow, who was never dismissive). C'est la vie. That milk has been spilt. Those tears have been wiped. My life turned out just fine anyway. My back up major, Dance, became my prime focus for over 30 years. Now I'm back at the art without anyone breathing down my neck. It's just me breathing down my own neck. If I don't like it, I throw it away. Or gesso over it. Or cut it up into tiny pieces and think: hey, there's a collage in there somewhere. Who knew? Recycle, renew.
So, it's the letter B today is it? Be all that you can Be. To Be or Not to Be. Being and Doing. Faith and Works. Do Be Do Be Do.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Absolutely Zen


How long can a project stay unfinished until you just give it a decent burial? I have quilt tops I have never quilted, paintings I have left in limbo, ambitiously started art journals that never got past page 3, a children's book with the first chapter written, and numerous bits of stitched fabric and glued, or stamped paper left like orphans in drawers. Yes, I even have a sweater I started in the Eighties, that only needs a collar to complete it but it's so out of date now I will have to wait for the next baggy, dropped shoulder, puffy sleeved era to come along to wear it.
That's why I've started working small. There's at least a hope I'll get it done. My last grand project was a queen sized quilt that lives in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. It was my Noah's Ark. Now that I know, emotionally, that my life on this earth is limited I want to do something that gets done in a day. An artwork a day, that's a reachable goal. OK, there's still that eight foot long wall hanging for an art quilt show coming up in June 2012 but I'll drag my feet on that till summer. Meanwhile, I decided to cut some watercolour paper into little squares 5"x5" and told myself that each day I would take a letter of the alphabet, and construct a 26 word poem from A to Z, accompanied by a simple ink drawing. It will take you 26 days to read this poem, much longer than it took for me to create it. It's not Shakespeare. It's not even Pablo Neruda. I love Pablo Neruda, in case you're looking for some poems to read. And I cheated on the letter X.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Everyone I know has a Blog

Frankly it's hard for me to be interesting on a regular basis. My son helped me start up this blog to record my travel diaries but I haven't been back to it since....see previous blog....2009 when I was in Montreal. I haven't been out much since then except for a fun weekend at Ojo Caliente spa near Taos, New Mexico.

I fear Emily Dickinson syndrome is setting in. So.....since I probably need an art blog more than a travel blog I am now re-designating this space for my art adventures until my next great trip.
What I've been up to is basically an ADHD journey into mixed media: a little bit of collage and a little bit of quilting, a little bit of painting, drawing, doodling, stitching, glueing, stamping, and snipping. Making a big chaotic mess in a tiny studio. I've finally reached that stage in my life where I can't NOT do art. I think that would be called a 'soft' addiction, as opposed to my hard addiction to chocolate. Whenever I am somewhere else doing something else, even sleeping, I am waiting to get back into my studio to play. I'm not afraid of failure anymore or what anybody thinks or says. I just have to do it.