She's Baaaacckkkkk

I can whisper and croak. It wears me out but at least I am no longer completely mute. Stephanie and I travel to our photo shoot on Friday for the plaster book with North Light. I feared finding myself lost in a distant airport, unable to ask for help. But that will not happen now. I can ask for help. And Stephanie is going to watch over me like a powerful goddess. I am going to take the plunge. If I fall on my face I will tell you. But I plan not to wobble.

There are elves in the studio again. Wrapping up doll heads in plaster gauze. They are very strange and beautiful.

If you do this, lengthen the noses and slim down the cheeks so your scultptures evolve from the doll proportions of baby-ness. I got this idea over at Tory Brokenshire's blog where she and her friends altered doll heads with Sculpey clay. Brilliant, I thought. And then I got to work.

I want to make more santos. I love the way plaster chips and ages. Plaster, plaster, plaster. I'm even dreaming of it. No one that Stephanie and I know of has done a book on plaster. It is scheduled to come out early 2011. We will show you the good stuff and hopefully there will be a resurgence of this common and lovely material on the craft scene. It can do nearly anything.

This is my new life. I am a little whopperjawed but still vertical. It is fascinating, really. What we can do. All of us.

Inspired by Lynne, I stretched some plaster gauze onto paper and did a painting on that, scribing lines into the plaster and building up layers.

After the first day I had this and liked the freshness of it. The plaster showing through. Whites sparkling. Sometimes it is a mistake to kill all the whites.

But then heck, I wanted more texture, more color, more puttering. So this is the "flushed" version. I say that because her lipstick is smeared; I think her beau slipped into the studio overnight and they had a kissing session. Remember when you kissed the beloved for so long that your lips swelled a little and you got the razor burn? (sigh) not TMI I hope.

She is my angel with the broken wing.

And here I am taken yesterday morning when my dear Shellie, Steff and Nate visited (daughters and grandson) bringing me a lei and pineapples from Hawaii. As you can see I'm not too much worse for the wear.

The sun is shining in Portland and the chipper-shredder is humming away in the garden. It soothes me to know that life goes on no matter what. New babies, the sun rising on schedule, energy and vitality everywhere I look. 99.6% of the world is perfection, kindness, beauty. That's good enough for me. xoxo

Summer Bliss

One week away from Art Unraveled. I'm collating books, making stencils, filling packets, checking items off my long lists of things to ship. I am happy.

The owls hoot softly in the warm evening air which is fragrant and full of life. The days have turned very hot and the sun shines down without relief. It was 103 degrees today.

Everything in the garden is growing astonishingly fast now. It's almost like a film speeded up with the light spinning arcs across the heavens as we look on in awe.

I spent Saturday at a friend's house taking a class from Stephanie Lee. We were a small but merry group, chatting and painting, learning and exploring. I love what I made there and I learned a lot. Stephanie is a great teacher who loves materials as I do.

My friend came to play with me and so we spent the weekend in class, shopping at the 2nd hand store and painting in my studio. John cooked some food for us but I was a big slacker, preferring to paint, laugh and act half my age. Isn't that what friends do?

After Stephanie's class the three of us went on a photo shoot down the streets of Gresham. Count this as several self-portraits that I've missed in the last few weeks.

Katie in the golden light.

More SP mayhem. Reflections. Photo Elements. I'm in love with photography now and I want to study it and improve.

Stephanie and I shooting photos of each other. Discussing dreams. Change. Children and families.

This is one of the demo pieces I did at the Plaster Painting Workshop in Los Gatos a couple of weeks ago. I have lots of other work to show you too but it's nearly midnight now so it will have to wait. Summer blessings. I hope you are happy. xo.

Los Gatos and Home Again

What a whirlwind weekend it was. Katie and I flew into Los Gatos on Thursday to teach 2 day classes at Cindy's Artful Journey workshops. My plaster class was on Friday and Katie's was a mixed media class on Saturday. On Sunday we both flew home; her to Seattle and me to Portland. I'm still waiting for pieces of myself to come back together; I feel beamed up but still missing a few molecules.

Cindy provided beautiful food for the attendees and saw to our every need, running errands for me in the middle of class (I apologize, Cindy, for needing you to do that) and providing a beautiful place for the teachers to stay. We swam at night in her heated pool and started each day with strong coffee from her espresso machine. It was divine.

Here are the happy ladies at the end of the first day.

On the left is Sharon Tomlinson, a long time blog friend, who flew in from Texas to play. She made the aprons pictured above; Zorana's was even reversible with secret words and images on the back side. If you click on Sharon's link you can read more about the aprons on her blog.

This is a detail; isn't it beautiful?

And also allow me to introduce you to Gypsyfroggie, who has the most beautiful tatoo on her arm. She is another blog friend that I finally got to meet in person; can you say fab-u-lous?

Here is a close up of the magnificent art. I love the starry sky at the top, the hair, face, and well, everything!

Now I'll show you some of the plaster painting that was done in class. I didn't think to start snapping pictures until a number of the students had left and I humbly apologize to the students for that. I try to include everyone.

In this class I urged the students to try a little of everything in their pieces . . . to create a sampler of techniques to remind them of the possibilities of plaster.

I brought some collage elements: inkjet on tracing paper, vintage writing, carbon copies to transfer.

We worked with both Plaster of Paris and Limestone clay concoctions. In comparing the two, Plaster of Paris is much harder.

We had the option of finishing the plaster or clay with hot or cold wax. The results are quite different.

We transferred onto the surface and used stains, glazes and paint as well as stencils, stamps, carving, sanding and layering the plaster.

Now I am home with a pile of mail, e-mail, Art Unraveled stencils to prepare, bills to pay and bags to unpack.

I need a new computer but lack the time to set it up.

And all the roses need dead-heading. Life is full and my sweet memories will float along with me today as I prepare samples for a special collaboration project (full heart happiness is working with another artist on a shared vision), and try to cover all the bases.

Look serene. You are a beautiful swan. No one can see the mad paddling beneath the surface of the water.

Four Days by the Sea

I still haven't returned to earth following my time taking classes at Sitka. If you don't know of it, it has been in Otis, Oregon since the 70's offering summer classes and artists' residencies. It is a magnificent place right next to the town of Lincoln City on the Pacific Ocean and the classes offered are excellent. When I heard that a class in plaster painting was on offer I decided to jump - there aren't that many out there and as a teacher of plaster painting myself I wanted to see what another artist was doing with the medium.

This shot looks down at the Centrum Building there. It is surrounded by deep forest and hiking trails. You will see critters and hear quiet nature. Your heart will soften.

You will eat salmon from the local fishermen and you will rejoice in the perfection of nature's bounty.

You will take pictures and sigh and write in your journal and sigh and walk the powdery sand beach and sigh.

You will sleep under a white duvet and keep your snacks handy and have the whole darned place to yourself.

You will squint into the nice view off your patio and watch the sea birds rise and fall against the wind. You will follow the hunting paths of pelicans as they sweep north and south at sunrise and sunset.

Your excellent teacher, Patricia Wheeler will demonstrate her approach to painting, transferring and scribing plaster. You will learn finishing techniques you did not know before and you will be glad!

Here are my classmates creating a painting together. It only took about 10 minutes and it turned out beautifully.

Every person in the class had a hand in this. It was magic.

A gathering of angels, playing together for 4 days and making an ungodly mess of the studio. We were like children in mud.

This is our studio where the magic transpired.

Holy, holy, holy. With art in my life every moment is a waking dream.

Two More

Yes, my studio is full of plaster dust and niblets of dried plaster but all in the name of science. Tried a different material today; plaster of paris instead of the mud in the tub. It was really different to work with and the surfaces of these two feel different than the previous experiments. The colors are much softer too.

I am loving this so much. I burned the surface of one of these with a torch until the plaster swelled and made a loud popping noise. That's the kind of experiment I love. No guts, no glory. Or something like that. Now I have to rush off and do laundry for my trip to Sitka. I'll be posting from there in the coming week. Chow.

Plaster Plaster Plaster

It was hard getting the colors right on this one. The surface is a soft, powdery blue with warmer layers revealed and sharp focus lines scored in. A colleague once pointed out that a good abstract should contain areas of soft as well as areas of sharp focus; I don't know if I'd adhere to that but this one has both. I haven't cold waxed the surface yet but I'm going to. That should bring up the color a little.