Swan Song

This is my farewell post until early May. If you place an order while I am gone it will be mailed immediately on my return. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves and make art. I expect to gain 10 pounds eating paella and drinking Spanish wine. I'll miss blogging; I can't believe what a habit it's become. Vaya con Dios.

Blue Monday

Misty wrote a wonderful entry on returning to real life after the dreamy perfection of Artfest. We are each feeling it and dealing with it in our own way; my way of coping includes lots of blog reading and more entries than usual. I've been listening to the news from Virginia and feeling sadness for senseless suffering. Painting helps me. I will share what I've been doing.

Lots of scumbled paint on journal pages that I will write on in the coming days. I especially love the shapes of gothic arches and rainbows.

I've done a series of very small studies that are the combinations of media I love - collage, paint, wax and lots of distressing, layers, lumpiness. Stamps, stencils, whatever is close to my drawing table. In the mood I'm in everything looks unacceptable but I know that is the distortion of my mood so I push on.

Get inspired. Uh, okay.

Here is the look I get as my eyes roll all the way to the back of my skull and I flop over backward. Just to stay vertical. Some days that is the highest goal you can aim for. Just not to end up back in bed.

How about a lady in a bizarre bathing cap? I don't know what it's all about. It came to me. It is strange but then so is my life at times. So it stays.

I painted these in all different moods and they show it. As soon as I finish this I'm going to go paint some more. It soothes me.

I call this lady Snow White. Did everyone hear that story as a child? My grandma told us many stories while we were falling asleep. That was besides the Walt Disney version. Grandma's stories always had strong morals about being good and staying on the straight and narrow. The prince and all that, not so much.

I painted this chair some time ago. It says "sustain the fantasy". That's our job here. To be what we want to see in the world. To be creators in every sector of our lives. To make life sweet for ourselves and for each other.

We can do it.

Weekend Update

Look who came to Portland for a visit and met me for breakfast at the Cup and Saucer Cafe. Dear Liz Elayne and her husband John. The world is in good hands with people like these taking the helm. John is a high school Physics teacher and Liz - well, Liz is just a wonder. I didn't know she was a yoga teacher in addition to her many other facets. We had a delicious visit and I was thoroughly charmed by both of them. On the way back to my car I discovered a bead shop where I bought sterling wire to make my own version of the gorgeous bracelet Liz was wearing- always an art angle in there somewhere. Now I have a project to try to accomplish before our trip.

This is the Cherry-Coffee-Cake that my friend Sky brought over on Saturday morning. John turned over some of his tender tomato seedlings into her care and she brought us a pot of stunning blue Veronica (a wonderful ground cover) to plant in our beds. We ate coffee cake and drank strong coffee until our eyes were twirling in our heads; then we talked art for two hours on the sugar-caffeine high. There was a flurry of collage materials exchanging hands and lots of laughter. Sky has been my mero-mero companero for nearly 35 years now. We have seen each other through childbirth, divorce, art school, art fairs, youthful indiscretions (just kidding) and now into this phase of life which is a wonder and a joy. Her friendship sustains me.

There was more. A visit from our dear Kay who will be sitting the house and Hermanito in our absence. She is a wonder of generosity and tenderness.

And so went the weekend. Watched the Sopranos at the youngest daughter's house and threw the ball for Cooper who is no longer a puppy. Friends and family. Painted the rest of the pages in my journal so they'd be ready for the next layer of life to enter.

Tonite: a very good red wine from Spain. We're getting in training. It's starting to feel real.

A Fine Day

Today my friend Diane came and kidnapped me and took me to a house on Milk Creek where she is spending the weekend. If not for preparing to leave for Spain in a week I would have stayed to paint and play (too cold for swimming in April). The house is secluded and restful, just what you wish for in a retreat house. And right on the river. Conducive to making stuff and hoping for a visitation from the muse.

This is the river right off the back patio. High and cold this time of year, snowmelt from the nearby mountains.

It's bleeding hearts time once again. My blog is a year old; I remember photographing them a year ago. They will always enchant me. And the name is so very dramatic.

Double lilacs. The first time I smelled a lilac was in the spring of 1973 right after moving to Oregon. The amazing thing is that lilacs grow on the desert too but my parents were not interested in plants or flowers and therefore I never paid special attention to them growing up. Now when I return to the desert I am astonished at the variety of flora. Then I was more interested in rocks, reptiles and bugs. Those are pretty cool too.

In the tiny little town of Colton is a most wonderful cafe that will take you right back to the 50's. We stopped for BLT's and salad. I snapped pictures.

Of course we sat on the baby blue stools up at the counter. They are exactly the same color as the telephone my parents had right up until the day my mother passed away. I took one look at that phone in her house and my childhood came flooding back to me. Waiting for the boyfriend's call. Party lines. I bet they don't even have party lines any more.

All the food is served on Fiesta ware. We have that in our house too. John started collecting it from second hand stores in the early 70's. Nobody wanted it then. I find the bright colors very cheering.

I had to get one of these to go for the ride home. My grandpa Pyle was a cook in the army in World War One and he made the most wonderful baked goods. He taught me to make cinnamon rolls and to cut the rolls apart by wrapping a piece of thread around the dough and bringing the ends together in a way that pinched off each one. I still do it that way and it's fun.

If you're going to have fly catchers in a cafe this is the aesthetic way to go. Green and hungry and pretty too. Chomp!

Diane's beautiful journal page, waiting for the next entry. She thinks everything she makes is ugly. I don't know what I'm going to do with her.

This is the cat that lives in the house that sits on the lane at the end of the road by the side of the Milky Creek. I don't know his name.

This is the girl who dances by her self to the music in her head and makes up her stories and lives out her dreams and paints happy pictures in the shadow of Wy'East. It is a magical mountain you know. (I'll tell you about it some day.)

Thinking Out Loud

I painted a canvas that is unlike anything I've done previously. I'm not ready to show it yet; sometimes when something is new and thrilling you just need to hold it close to your heart for awhile until you have absorbed all of the lessons it has taught you. Every painting you will paint has a message for you. A wisdom, a teaching to impart. The artist's job is to study that vast mystery and to absorb it. If we are busy being critics we miss the sacred gift. So I am still taking this in; still asking what it is that it has brought into my life that was not there before.

I am a compulsive writer. I have so many notes everywhere that I am deluged - sort of weird and worried for myself that as I get older I will be buried under a sea of words. Dreams, ideas, memories, floating all around me, giving my life shape and meaning. Expressing the joy and wonder of being alive, having a body, being allowed to grow as old as I have grown, to have found the people to love me who do love me and having met all the people that I love. Everywhere I look I see beauty, kindness and loving eyes. Shining souls searching for harmony. How did I come to this amazing place? What am I under this human form? What is my job here and how can I help others find their tranquility? I want everyone to experience the feeling of being loved and finding their inner home.

I have a dream. I hope to sustain it. I know I will not always be this happy or this centered. But this place is attainable and one I can visit often. This place of open love. I hope I do not sound insane. I don't think I'm a savior. I just want the world to be at peace and for each of us to find our place of happiness. For me that means being a creator of things. My paper, pencil, canvas and paint. And glue. And glitter. Pearls and resin, inks and metal. These are my vehicles.I will share.

Another journal page. Standing naked before you would be easier than this. This is all of me.

This is my new favorite toy. Inspiration from the wise guru Randi Feuerhelm-Watts. She gives us everything she's got in these pages; what a labor of love. I am so excited to follow her prompts. She is a great play friend.

Paint, cut, paste, repeat. Die happy.

Some Notes on Style

It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways there are to approach the canvas. The activity I grew up with was drawing on paper with a pencil. I was a reclusive child who preferred my own company; lying on the cool cement floor of my Arizona childhood home (with no air conditioning and not even a swamp cooler) pencil in hand, drawing image after image on the large sheets of poster paper my father brought home from his workplace at J J Newberry's. It seems impossible today but paper then in our house was a precious thing not to be wasted on the drawings of children.

My parents knew they had a live wire in me. They did all within their power to encourage my one love; making pictures. So poppa would bring home the sale posters when they were stripped from the store windows and I drew on the backs of them. I drew very small because even the posters were scarce. To this day I am a person who draws and prints in small letters. I still cannot waste. It was a powerful lesson.

I think that is why I like to start with a drawing in thick, black line. I love to pull the brush across the canvas and watch my image take shape. Acrylic is so forgiving. If you make a false line you can make another line over it.

My other great influence was the funny papers and comic books. Our home was absent of books, art or otherwise. But we took the daily newspaper and on Sunday after church I was allowed to spend my allowance on a comic book. It was always Katy Keene (the pin-up queen) and she was the inspiration for my "ladies". Except mine sat on bar stools and smoked cigarettes and had interesting cleavages. I was all of 8 years old and these things interested me.

So this is how my "style" arose. Draw a picture. Color it in. Gasp in joy at the creation. Nothing has changed since 1953. I am still that precocious child, holed up in a room by myself, playing games in my head and creating a world where I am the boss of everything.

My ladies no longer smoke cigarettes but they do have nice cleavages and they are strong, sassy ladies who like to lead instead of follow and who are in love with love and people and life.

How do you approach the canvas and why do you do it exactly the way you do? Isn't it fun to look back to childhood for the seeds of who we become as adults? What things have influenced your choice of tools, mediums and approaches? I think that even as we continue to add new techiques to our arsenal some things stay stable, like the love of color or the line or a preference for a warm or cool color palette.

Just wanted to throw out some ideas for you to think about.

Sharing Goodness

I have a couple of links to share. There is a great picture progression of the artist Tara McPherson's 18 layer silkscreen at this link. She's young, talented and has beautiful tatoos.

And be sure to read Nina's blog today if you want to experience the spirit of Artfest. It's lovely.

Winding Down

This will be my last Artfest post I think. I meant to put more pictures over at Flicker but didn't really have the quality to justify the effort. With so much going on I'm surprised I got as much as I did. The face above was created by Gwen Delmore in Anahata Katkin's class. There were very impressive collages that came out of that class and this was one of many. I think the colors are exquisite. Good job Gwen!

Not that we made a big frenzied mess of the room or anything.

Misty's demonstration table showing some of the elements she used to show us how she works.

Another project from Anahata's class. The creator is Catherine Taylor.

And lastly, my images from Misty's class. I should have photographed them separately but you'll get the idea. I'm still working on proposals here and my brain has turned to oatmeal.

More Artfest Shots

This stunning journal page was done by a woman at Artfest whose name I have lost. (and found! It was done by Renee Plains! Thank you Sweet Petunia.) It is one of the best journal pages I've seen and in my favorite colors. Those old school pictures. We all have them in boxes somewhere and we should do something special with them (photocopies please) to honor that distant time.

This next page was done by Melanie Sage who lives here in Portland. We perused all of her beautiful journals; they were mostly too personal to share but I think this page will be okay. There was a companion page that read "things that suck ass". It made me laugh. Humor is the best medicine.

Another one of Melanie's pages. Some of them reflected the sadness that enters each life sooner or later. We want life to be easy and happy but let's face it; life sometimes hurts a lot. (thanks, Liz for our discussion of that which came out of Susan Wooldridge's class. I've given it a lot of thought.)

This is the resin journal from Susan Lenart Kazmer's class that I fell in love with. Oh, the resined papers and the colors! So delicious.

This was one of the 8x8's displayed by the "students". Yeah. Like the people who attend this event aren't already accomplished artists themselves. I especially loved this one.

One of the classes made these beautiful pod charms out of the gut membranes of pigs. They were strong, transluscent and lovely.

More of the paintings from Misty's class. I will get a shot of mine up here tomorrow. I'm trying to write some teaching proposals before we leave for Spain but am making little progress. I am having the problem of wanting to put everything I know into each class proposal. Someone needs to teach a class on writing teaching proposals but it sure won't be me. Ha.

More of the work that came out of Misty's class. Awesome, huh?

Another sunrise. I took a photograph each morning out of my window of the sun coming up over the water while I had my cup of coffee. Oh, the gratitude I feel for my life, for Tracy and Teesha, for all my new friends from Artfest. I don't take a moment of my life for granted and none of us should. Do something special today; take a moment to give thanks.

Artfest 2007

My friend Dawn said that Artfest is 100% about the people and 100% about the art. This is true. You will hear that Artfest changes people's lives. It has changed mine. What follows is a short tour of what went on this past weekend. I will be posting more pictures in the days to come.

This is what my little private dorm room looked like. It is the second time I have stayed in this dorm and it is one of my favorite things about Artfest. You schmooze all day with hundreds of artists and then you retreat to your lair where you can journal and reflect in privacy. I love this.

Breakfast with the nicest people you'll ever meet from all over the world. Liz, Tonia and kellyrae. Every kind of talent sitting at this table; writer, editor, artist. And so much more. Everyone has multiple talents and skills. This is where we all come to share, enthuse, create and inspire. By the end of the first day your brain is reeling with new ideas, friends and projects. It is for joy.

In Susan Lenart Kazmer's class I learned how to make projects out of resined paper. In the picture above we are measuring the two-part resin. We made charms for rings, earrings and bracelets as well as book pages. The finished paper is so beautiful and we can make so many things from it. Susan is a dynamic individual and an excellent teacher. Her fashion sense is a wonder. Yikes, does she rock!

The buzz of Artfest this year centered around a brand new teacher; Misty Mawn. Here she is demonstrating different steps in painting on wood panels. The amazing thing is how each of us produced wonderfully lovely paintings, even artists who did not consider themselves painters or draftsmen. At Show and Tell, that comes at the end of the 3 day retreat, it was obvious that Misty had the ability to enable us to produce astonishing paintings. It filled us with such a feeling of confidence!

The woman of the hour. Thank you, Misty, for sharing your amazing talents with all of us. You are a great teacher. (Misty is teaching at Art & Soul in Portland this October too.)

A photo of Misty's fortunate students. This is at the end of the day. Don't we all look happy and successful? That's how we felt.

The uber-talented Holly Stinnett making some masterpieces in Misty's class.

That evening we strolled down to the beach where Tracy, Teesha and the crew had built a bonfire and where there is a rustic wood cabin where we sat at picnic tables and shared our journals. We wrote, doodled and visited around the toasty wood stove and there was a long bar of libations and snacks for us to enjoy. (beer, wine, s'mores, hot dogs, chips and crackers and more) This was my third year at Artfest but the first time I'd participated in this party and I will never miss it again. I love to share my journals and to admire the journals of others; in the following days I plan to share some of the journal pages I photographed that night. Oh, to die for! So much creativity in one place. (over 500 of us!)

My table at the journaling event.

Diane Trout, diligently doodling away. Susan Cohen to my right. Two wonderful artists.

My third day was encaustic with Patricia Seggenbruch. Above is one of her beautiful pieces. She had 4 wax stations set up for us to play with. She showed us how to transfer images to the wax, to add color, inclusions, to inscribe and much more. I've been doing encaustic for awhile now but she had some new tricks for me. Mmmmmm, love the beeswax that smells like honey as you work.

Color. Everywhere.
I'm sure Heather won't mind if I show you her mermaid tatoo. It is on her hip in case you were wondering (not her butt, ha ha) ... I had not met Heather in person until I came here but she is a great person, artist and now friend and I look forward to buying everything from her that I can. She has a great zine at her site that everyone should subscribe to and she generously gave us each a copy of "Eye Candy", a special publication that she produced just for Artfest. What a wonderful talent.


At vendor night Teesha's mother gave me a gift that has inspired my new mission statement. It is so good and so transformative that I will share it with all of you. She said, "the greatest blessing you can give (to yourself) is to bless another life". That is how Tracy and Teesha (the spirits behind Artfest) live their lives and that is what makes Artfest the miracle it is.

If you were there, I don't have to tell you. If you've ever thought of going, make the effort. I hope to be clanking down the sidewalk with my walker when I'm 100 years old, still coming each year for the love and inspiration.