Classes and new things to try

I'm expanding my repertoire, playing with new things.  My current passion is stencils, and I love my stencils, but they kind of require a lot of upkeep if I'm going to keep them clean, and sometimes you just don't want to go through all that. 

So I've taken a couple of classes, to help me expand myself and learn to just put something on the page.  I took one in Art Journaling with the incredible Ophelia, and one in Collage with Sharon DiGiulio of DiGiulio Studios.  (I'm still not sure I entirely get collage on a 'sure I can just do this' level, but I'm a lot closer than I was). 

And everywhere, we used pretty papers.  Book Papers, magazine papers, homemade painted-and-stamped papers, all kinds of papers. And now I'm playing with some random papers I have around the house, and I am having SO. MUCH. FUN.

Pics are going to have to wait til daylight, I think.  But I'm going to take some, and post them here.  Maybe even some process pics, because I'm REALLY enjoying the results I'm getting right now.

For now, though, I'm off to evening ablutions and bed.  The sleepy train is chasing me down at this point.  But I just took a look at the papers I did today (finally, FINALLY dry!) and was too excited to wait til daylight so I could forget to post on this.

Y'all have a great night!

EDIT, Friday:  here's a picture of the completed, dry papers:

Two tries, two color palettes--I like the blue one best for its depth and because it's my color palette, but I like both of 'em pretty well.  I need to be a little more generous with the color for the muted oranges next time, I think.  But I'm really excited about them!

aaaaand holy crud, it's been YONKS.

Spring is starting to peer at us--not opening its eyes yet, but just peeping a bit and waving at us to shut the blinds, no really, five more minutes.  One of the roads in my neighborhood is lined with bradfords, and they're not in bloom yet, but by golly they're gearing up to it.  The buds on my saucer magnolia are fat and fuzzy and I expect pink to start popping there any day now.  The tree we transplanted last spring is popping out leaves (still no buds, but flowers are showy and biologically expensive, so I'll forgive it for that given the hack job we had to do on the roots to get it moved).

So this season of rebirth and renewal and reminding ourselves that so much that looked dead is coming back to life... this seems like a good time to pick this up again, dust off my writing skills, and get back to it.

Watch out, world, the sap's gonna rise again.

--Shannon

spatial orientation is your friend

Today, after weeks and weeks of not arsing myself to continue work on my fabric wall hanging, I continued work on my fabric wall hanging.  I'd been putting it off because I didn't like one of the fabrics I'd chosen when I laid it all out, so I needed to replace those pieces, and there's been enough going on (hello, everyone I know who is moving!) that hauling out the ironing board just seemed like a monumental hurdle sometimes. 

But today, I did it.  I got up and started work on it--interrupted by trips to the thrift shop and the grocery store, and a few things like that, sure, but I got to work on it.  I very carefully laid out and traced the pieces on the new fabric.

Backwards.

That's right, all of the new pieces are mirror-images of themselves, because I am officially a Doofus. 

Welp.  Here goes again.

aaaand I missed April entirely, didn't I?

And now half of May is gone as well. Life gets busy and makes fools of us all.

I have been enjoying playing with my art, although I've also been enjoying the art that is all around me as the weather warms and the plants come out to play, from the early

to the slightly later

That second one, with the deep purple petals on the bottom, didn't bloom last year.  This was the first year I knew I had it planted (the bulbs were given to me in a literal mixed bag the previous fall).  I'm beginning to want to plant my entire sad little yard with irises, just for those first incredible weeks of spring when they unfold into glory.  I'm noticing them more as I travel around, and some of the colors I've seen this spring have made me half-consider nighttime commando raids on neighbors' iris patches, just to be able to plant some in the glorious colors that seem to be everywhere.

That's probably a bad idea, and I'm not going to actually go steal anyone's irises.

But a girl can dream. 

more pottery

I mentioned a week or two ago that there are many reasons I like the paint-your-own pottery places, not least of which is that it's trivially easy to play with someone else's artistic toys and get out of it something that is both beautiful and useful.  Great for beginners, and good for more advanced artists who just need to get out of their regular spaces for a while, or even out of their own heads-- I personally find it to be very helpful when things are weighing me down to get into a different SPACE and away from my own regular art-fodder reserves, into creation with a certain amount of constraint.

So, last week, needing that kind of break, my friend and I went and painted at one of the local studios we hadn't tried before.  Just 'cause they're a little farther out than the ones we normally go to, so it requires a bit more of a time commitment; we'll certainly be back.

I had one piece in mind that I wanted to make: I wanted a butter dish.  My old plastic ones are falling apart, and I HATE the way cold butter shreds hot toast.  I even had an idea in place, waiting only a time when I would be at a studio that had a butter dish on the shelf. 

Friday I brought home the results: 

I gotta say, I'm pleased.  It came out prettier than I'd really even envisioned, and there's not much better that you can say about something you've made. 

It'll probably be a bit before I'm back to paint ceramics, because I've got a lot of other projects in the pipeline and taking a day out elsewhere doesn't just happen that often.  But I've already got thoughts of what I'd like to do, and heck, I've still got 9 boring cabinet knobs in my kitchen (did I mention some of these places let you paint cabinet knobs? my kitchen is SO much more colorful now!) and 7 in my bathrooms, and 5 boring lightswitch plates (although some of those may get paper or paint decorations, rather than pottery ones).  I can't believe I used to think that mugs and planters were the only things available!

Inspiration, and trees

Guild bios are due tomorrow, and as a lifelong procrastinator, I've been putting it off.  (I am a member of the Carolina Mixed Media Art Guild, which is one reason I'm writing this blog to explore my artistic side rather than just making necklaces while I watch TV.  They show me fun things to do, and then I want to do them. It. Is. Awesome.)   And I want to share and expand on it some of mine.

Given the question, "Tell us about your work, inspiration, and any other comments you may have:" I had a little trouble, because I find many many things to be inspiring.  Right now, not surprisingly, I find a lot of trees to be inspiring, because it is still the barest beginnings of spring.  The redbuds are starting, and the Bradfords are blooming (well, most of them; the one I moved a couple weeks ago isn't blooming but it is leafing, which gives me good hope that we didn't kill it and it didn't bloom last year either, so maybe it just needs to be more than two years old). The dogwoods haven't begun yet, and the saucer magnolias are just coming into their own.

What I'm trying to say is, I can still see the incredible structure of trees, everywhere.  Right now this is a lot of my inspiration, because what started out as a closer look so that I might be able to replicate has become a full-on almost obsession.  I can't NOT see it.  I can't not see it even when I'm supposed to be watching the road in front of me, which is difficult, because trees are everywhere and every one of them is an intimate complex amazing fractal creation of life, and rebirth, and solid persistence, and joy, and love.  They are glorious. I catch myself watching subtle shifts of color and trying to track up into the cloud of branches, and the way the light falls on some branches and not others.  I can't stop looking at them.  I don't know whether it will get less distracting once they're coming into full leaf or not, but for now, well...

I can see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower*.... but for inspiration, I dare you to outdo a tree.


*(William Blake: "To see a world in a grain of sand/And heaven in a wild flower/Hold infinity in the palms of your hand/And eternity in an hour")

Just one more thing

Final note, something between a teaser and an enlistment of y'all to keep me honest and on-track.  This is my current workspace.  I'm not sure how it's gonna go, but whatever happens, I'll post it when it's done.  And what have I gotten myself into?