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.

Sands of Time

It's December. Time to go to the beach. Although a Texas beach in winter is sort of like a northern California beach in summer. And I know this because I nearly froze to death under a blanket off the Sonoma coast once in July. But our jaunt downstate this time was at Carol's invitation to have a Hill/Burdine family get together at Crystal Beach, east of Galveston and on the Bolivar peninsula. Glenn and I drove to Dallas first and spent the evening with Andrea and Tina before heading down I-45 to Houston. In Houston we all wandered around Whole Foods gathering groceries for our cabin retreat. It was to be steaks one night and seafood gumbo the next. Glenn does make a mean gumbo and this time he got to select fresh crab and shrimp.
We drove out east of Houston then down and and around to approach Crystal Beach from the east rather than going to Galveston and across the ferry. The peninsula itself had been devastated by Hurricane Ike in 2008 and looked pretty bare of even palm trees.
  Here was our cabin, a humble but cozy place as compared to some of the beach front cabins that looked more like McMansions on stilts.

At least all six of us got a bed to sleep which is not always the case. (Well, Mark did end up on the porch on top of the couch pillows). On Glenn's side of the family their idea of a fun vacation is to pack as many people in one small space as possible then let things happen. There WAS only one bathroom but as we were all adults we waited in an orderly fashion.
The cabin was about a quarter mile from the beach so we could walk it easily, and there was also a golf cart for dashes back to the bathroom, the refrigerator, or drives along the beach. It even had a radio, tuned to a country western station playing such hits as "I'd Like To Have a Beer With Jesus". Because it was mostly cloudy and in the Sixties, and hardly anyone was around there was a certain lonely melancholy air. I loved that.

 Glenn and I took a stroll as soon as we got there. I had not seen the ocean since I was in Jacksonville in 2008 visiting Dad before he passed away. Even with the rushing of the waves there was a stillness about the place as if everything was in a state of hibernation.

We all set up camp on the beach and I brought my sketchbook and camera.

Mark decided winter be damned, he was going for a swim.

I was happy just to sketch, and amble along the beach.
Gordon also liked his quiet time.

 Other than that we ate lots of good food (the gumbo was heavenly) and played Settlers of Catan, Skip-Bo, and Spades. Lets just say that Glenn's side of the family is pretty competitive and they all like to bicker about the rules.
Here are some of my sketches, although the ones done on the colouful backgrounds make the scenes look a lot sunnier than they actually were.

Later we went home through Galveston so we got to cross the ferry before driving through a Houston rainstorm and getting back home, finally, 12 hours later. It's a long way from beach and palm trees to a sudden winter dust storm on the plains.