Tangled up in Hues

I wanted to see what the Zentangles® would look like using color, so I started "tangling" in an art journal where I had already created backgrounds. The journal is a recycled publisher's catalog -- one of those thin ones with very shiny, slick pages. I gessoed first, then added color with water soluble pastel crayons, blended using baby wipes. I used the shapes on the page as the "strings" or guidelines. It was great fun to do and I'm liking the look of the color in the background.

There still wasn't enough tooth to the surface, so I scanned the tangles and altered them digitally to bring out the shading and sharpen the lines.

Here's a completely different page, one where I kept some of the printing that was in the catalog:

This one was digitally altered, too. I'm still pretty rough at this, but am I ever having fun!

Woman At a Crossroads

Aren't we always? At a crossroads, on a journey, in the flow, at a threshold . . . and hopefully fully present in the right now. Something to aim for anyway. I think I'm "most present" when I'm doing artwork. There's something about standing at the table, letting the materials I'm using drive the decisions about what to do next that makes me feel very grounded and HERE.

Writing is different for me. What I love most about it is the way the characters and the story take over. I sit down to write for an hour and the next thing I know, three hours have passed and I haven't stretched or done my floor exercises, not to mention how I completely forgot about the laundry or the weeding that needed to be done TODAY. You know the feeling -- where time does that weird stretch and contract thing.

Time alters when I'm doing artwork, too. But it's a different experience. Like flying with your feet firmly planted on the ground (or in my case, the concrete floor covered with a too-thin for comfort carpet and -- by my paint table -- two "cow mats" -- yup, what cows stand on in the barn to be milked). Purchased at your local (if you have one) farm supply store, cow mats are about 1/10 of the cost of gel mats and you don't have to worry about spilling paint on them. They're so ugly they benefit from spilled paint. But they WORK.

Am I at a crossroads? I'm not at one of those huge, life-changing ones like friends who are moving or retiring or changing jobs. But still . . . I recently completed one of the young adult novels I've been working on ever since my first book (ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON, HarperCollins) came out. I sent it off to my fabulous agent and now it is out there "looking for love." I have two other YA novels and an adult murder mystery in process but I needed a break after finishing my Jumble story. That's when I'm so glad I have the artwork. Right now it's a series of mixed media collages called "Woman at a crossroads" -- they are on stretched canvas (using vintage maps, acrylic paint, graphite pencil, marker, wire, beads, ribbon, fabric, decorative paper, hand made paper). The one above (20X24") was a birthday gift to my friend of so many years I hesitate to put the number down. Let's just say, since we were 13! On the collage posted below (20X20"), the woman is attached so that she can be turned to face any direction on the compass. I have two others partly completed, not quite ready to be posted.

Of course, daily writing practice goes on regardless. To kick things up a notch, I decided to try drafting a poem a day at the end of my morning journaling. Inspiration: all the people who were doing that to celebrate Poetry Month. I'm a little slow on the uptake, so it took me until April 20th to get going! I'm happy to report that I have 37 drafts waiting to be worked on (yes, some days I wrote more than one). Seeing through the eyes of a poem is a great way to start the day, so my hope is to keep this as a part of my morning routine as long as I can.

Do any of you flip-flop back and forth between writing and visual artwork like I do? I'd love to hear from you about how that works for you and what challenges arise from doing both!

Happy Valentine's Day

I've never gotten over my love of valentines, especially ones hand-made with paper hearts and lace. Or how about the decorated shoe boxes made in grade school and left on the corner of our desks, waiting to receive all the cards meant just for us?

In the spirit of those long-ago valentines, here's one of my recent assemblages. It is titled, "Young at Art" and created on 12X12" stretched canvas, using acrylics, paper mesh, vintage crocheted lace, digitally altered vintage photo, wire, beads, branches.

Let this be my valentine to you -- may you always be young at heart and young at art.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Time Travel in the New Year

Happy New Year!

This morning when I wrote down the date in my journal -- my goodness, January 16th! -- I felt as if I'd time-travelled. The move from New Year's Day to the middle of the longest month of winter happened in the blink of an eye. (Hey, not a bad way to move through January in Minnesota.)

One of my favorite books ever is Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Award winning, A WRINKLE IN TIME. I wish I'd read it when I was a kid (but of course it hadn't been written yet). Still, reading it in my late thirties was magical. How I wanted to be able to climb into that "wrinkle" and travel through time and space with Meg. And I loved Meg because she was so flawed (just like me), yet so lovable (just like . . . me?). I read the book over and over for a few years and then let it gather dust on the shelf. Recently I picked it up as I was clearing books for donation and sat down with it, and there was the magic all over again. A book written in the 1960s that was still so fresh and real and compelling in the 21st century that it could turn my 60-something self into a young teen again. If that isn't time travel what is?

I don't generally make New Year's resolutions, but this year I decided that my routine needed a little shaking up. The one piece of it that works for me (and has worked for me for many years) is my journal writing first thing every morning. So I asked myself -- couldn't I extend that writing time by clearing my morning slate of appointments, you know -- just in case? I'm happy to report that this is working and I am now making excellent progress on two of my young adult novels. Some mornings I go to the art table instead. Some mornings I end up doing both. But all mornings I'm doing something creative and those pesky appointments and tasks and errands can just wait until after lunch!

That's not time travel, but it does shift time in a way that puts my real work first. When I manage to do that, sometimes the whole day becomes one big creative project.

Summer, summer, summer

What can I say? Spring arrived and we flung doors and windows wide and no matter how hard I try, I cannot stay inside. Right before the weather made its magical turn from icy winter to spring to . . . well, okay, we're breaking 70-year records for how cold it is, but it's STILL summer . . . right before that, I was making major progress on my YA novel and working on this collage. I finally finished the commissioned Story Storage cabinet (yeah!) and a major overhaul of my studio space. (I think it counts as "spring cleaning" when the temperatures are still in the 50s even though it's JULY, don't you?)

Hoarse as a crow (mixed media collage on stretched

canvas; 30"X40")

So far, I haven't taken my artwork outside, unless you count the container vegetable garden gracing our decks or the flower gardens in our back yard. I am happy to report, however, that I have been able to take my writing outdoors. So there's still hope of getting a draft of the YA manuscript I'm working on done by the end of the summer. 

I promise to be better about posting!  Whoa . . . I have to go . . . there's a rabbit munching on the mock orange  . . .  

When Time Disappears

What makes time disappear for you? What makes it stretch out and out and out until one afternoon feels as if it's a week long and then -- snap! -- a whole day has gone by and it felt like five minutes? Nothing does that quite so deeply for me as creative work, the work of my heart and hands.

Lately I've been juggling half a dozen or more projects at once. That's not all that unusual for me, as I'm almost always working on multiple pieces, but right now I'm also taking an online class (more about that in a minute), working through all the visual journal exercises in an incredible book (THE CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR by Lisa Sonora Beam, Quarry Books, 2008), and trying to get better at using Photoshop. Add in several textile art pieces and I think it's safe to say "half a dozen" was a low estimate.

For "Carnival Girl" I digitally altered a failed 9X12 mixed media collage, creating several different versions and learning a few things in the process. Is today Fat Tuesday? She looks like she's ready and wishes herself on Bourbon Street, doesn't she?  Whichever century she ends up hailing from.

"She Says No" is another digitally altered mixed media collage.  The vintage photo of the sulky girl standing by a small table is an image that finds its way into my work over and over again. The girl happens to be my mother, and I'd give a lot to be able to ask her what was making her so cranky that day. Since that window of opportunity closed 30 years ago, instead I use the image to make up all the "What if . . ." stories that flow from putting that image into different contexts. Was she saying no? Probably not.  But if she WAS . . . I wonder what she was saying no to . . . I wonder who . . .

What's kept me busiest the past couple weeks has been an online class I'm taking, Transformative Doll-Making, taught by Pamela Hastings (www.pamelahastings.com). The class, now in it's fourth session of five, is offered at one of my favorite online stores: www.joggles.com, where I spend way too much money on art supplies and books (and now CLASSES). Check out Pamela's website to see her incredible work and read about her process. I'm posting two examples of the dolls I've done in her workshop so far, one a paper doll, the other fabric and twigs.

I would be embarrassed about them both being self-portraits but as it turns out, I can use that to tell you about another book I'm enjoying right now (MIXED MEDIA SELF-PORTRAITS by Cate Coulacos Prato, Interweave, 2008).  It's a gorgeous book filled from cover to cover with inspiring ideas and techniques.

As our third Minnesota winter begins ever-so-gently to shift gears in preparation for its end, I'm realizing that this hibernation thing is turning out to be a great time for learning and experimentation, for writing and playing with all the art stuff I gathered at yard sales and thrift stores, for researching and exploring the scary world of marketing and art as a business.  That said, I also know I'm going to be ready to fling doors and windows open at the first real sign of spring!

Gathering Branches

I've become obsessed with branches.  It started harmlessly enough in a couple of small mixed media pieces I did using old family photos adding sticks and wire as a means of hanging them.  The next thing I knew I was doing another and another, each one larger and more complex (and using more branches).  Maybe I should say it's an obsession with wood, because I've added in driftwood and bamboo and big old sheets of plywood.  I even took apart an old shelf unit and nailed it to this one.  And don't get me started about how much I love the bark of trees.  (Don't worry -- I don't strip the bark from the tree.  I only pick up dead wood!)

I'm sure this will run its course, but in the meantime, I'm working on a series of Family Tree collages, searching as always for the stories hidden in familiar photos and behind the surface in other people's family pictures.

This one is titled:  What She Said, What She Did

It's 2ftX3ft (plywood, canvas board, repurposed shelving, branches, wire, beads, vintage hardware, vintage lace, ribbons, digitally altered vintage photos,  acrylic paint, handmade and decorative papers).

Family stories are what I write about, too.  And they're what I gravitate to in the books I read, whether poetry, fiction, or memoir.  Nothing fascinates me as much as the complexity of family relationships and the stories that are either passed from generation to generation or are suppressed until someone with a lot of curiosity (sometimes called being really nosey) comes along to dig them out or make them up as she goes along. 

This piece, titled "Leaving Camp" uses some of my husband's family photos to explore the experience of the Japanese American internment camps in this country during WWII.  

I don't just gather tree branches. I also love to rescue vintage photos from yard sales and estate sales and thrift stores. At first, it broke my heart to think such a personal thing as a family photo album could end up on a sale table. But after I started working with them, I realized that each photograph of people I've never met has multiple stories to show and tell, a wealth of material I use over and over in my collages and assemblages as well as in my poems and stories.

I am always deeply grateful when people let me use their family photos in my artwork.  It feels risky, even dangerous at times, because unless I'm doing a commissioned work, I'm not really thinking about telling their story. But there are countless stories embedded in the richness of the old photographs, and I always hope to uncover some kind of emotional truth as I work and play with the images.

More Images

Doing It Better

It's too early in this sub-zero winter to be talking about the ice breaking up. But I think some of my own internal ice is starting to shift and move and melt.  As far as I can figure, that's as good a thing as the warm winds of spring will feel when they finally arrive. I've always been the kind of person who pauses right before sharing something I've done, allowing enough time for that shifty thought:  IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH! to creep in. Sometimes the thought arrives even earlier, like just as I get to my art table ready to create something. Or when I'm sitting at my computer prepared to write. And that's when the next thing I know I'm doing email, watching TV, or playing mindless computer games for hours on end.  

I've been working at keeping a visual journal for several years now, but something has been preventing me from truly throwing myself into it the way I am able to let myself go with my written journaling. There are always these thoughts bouncing around in my head: I'm not doing it right.  I need to do it better. It's not good enough! No matter how many times I tell that inner critic to go sit in the corner and keep her mouth shut, I let the voice in and I falter. My work falters. For the past couple weeks I've been PLAYING with some of my "failed" collages and other pieces (like ATCs and postcards), using them to create art journal backgrounds digitally. Okay, this is too much fun for words!  And whether they are "good enough" or not, I'm sharing a few of them with you (above and in the next post).  

On the night of the inauguration I kept hearing people say that our new president made them want to be smarter, to find ways to contribute, to "do it better." President Obama and his beautiful, community-minded, giving family make me feel that way, too. Seen in that light, "doing it better" is a good thing. A place for me to begin is right here in my studio. In a spirit of playfulness. Practicing doing what I love. Finding ways to share it. Because, after all, that's how we get better at anything, isn't it? Today, still basking in the warm glow of Inauguration Day, that feels like spring to me!