Setting the Tone for the Day

Another Note to Myself: I woke up this morning feeling out of sorts.  Every time I start taking a nose dive emotionally, the way I can regain my balance is to identify the needs that generate the feelings and take positive action to address them.

My husband is away for a few days.  I’ve been working alone all week.  I need human interaction! So I just wrote to a friend about getting together for lunch and a visit to Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery for the Rochester Finger Lakes Exhibition. It cheers me up just to think of spending time soon discussing art and life with someone I enjoy!

I visited several favorite blogs of mine this morning. One is  Lesley Avon Miller’s  Textures Shapes and Color . When I visit blogs that are so well designed  I realize how little I know about blogger and how much  more I need to learn  about how to use blogger features. Rather than beating myself up over this, I’m going to make it a goal on my master list .

Once I turn a problem into a goal, I feel a huge sense of release.  I don’t have to deal with it TODAY, but I will focus on creating action steps to improve my blog design knowledge  over the next several months. If you can suggest any resources, please send me an email!

Taking action to address my needs is working its magic. My attitude is improving by the minute! Every thought that pops into my head this morning that  starts to erode my confidence or positivity is getting addressed in some way.  I’m staying home to do some stitching today and make a final decision about applying for a solo exhibition that I just found out about that’s due tomorrow.

I will review the materials in my data base to see if I have enough from other applications to complete the entry without it being rushed and stressful and then will spend some time stitching.

I’ll give myself a break to go out around lunchtime for an iced coffee at Starbucks and buy some fresh blueberries and raspberries at Wegmans for my yogurt. I’ll browse some art magazines for inspiration.

To gain that all important inner quiet, as soon as I finish writing and posting this blog, I will sit quietly and meditate and send out mental images of my desires manifesting!!

How's THAT for setting the tone for a day??? The longer I live, the more I realize the key to my personal well being is totally about attitude and positive action.

Metaphoric Schucked Oysters Pile - & A Pearl or Two!

If you've ever shucked an oyster hoping for a pearl, you can appreciate how many oysters it takes to find one, IF you ever do. Hence the cultured pearl. Oyster servitude. So I tend to make my own pearls, metaphorically speaking of course.

After outpatient surgery to correct varicose veins in one leg on Tuesday, I was back at work in my studio these past two days. I have to wear a thigh high compression stocking and not do aerobics for three days, but otherwise, this is an amazingly non-invasive procedure. Thank you, medical world, for evolving.

By the end of the day yesterday I had worked long and hard -- hence the oyster shucking metaphor -- and didn't feel I had made a lot of progress.

I had mixed up a butter cream beige opaque paint with Pro-Brite textile paints and worked with ideas for layering over parts of the fuchsia paints with a very thin glaze. I kept ending up with thicker layers, no matter what I tried. My samples were caked with creamy layers of letters, screen prints, stamps, lines and blobs.

Then I had an ah-ha. Pro Brite paints take a long time to cure and permanently bond with fabric. This was barely dry and none of it was heat set, so I took it to the sink, hit it with a sprayer and started scrubbing parts of the printed on designs. It seemed that I could scrub as much or as little of the pattern away as I desired.

What remained created interesting suggestions of aging. Nice pearl! Today I applied the paint very judiciously on this piece from last week and STOPPED. I also tried turning it a quarter turn and orienting it horizontally instead of vertically. Interesting. I can add more textural paint tomorrow if I decide any area of this surface needs it. If I add too much and want to tone it down, I have a new technique to do so.

I also painted some burnt sienna over this fuchsia sample and discovered it does turn the fuchsia pink to a rust color. Yay, another teeny pearl.


Another pearl emerged as I used samples to explore ideas for the addition of letters to the surface of these two pieces. I tried cutting out fabric for fusing elements, painting with a wider brush and painting on the textural surface with a fine line applicator.

Slow work, this sampling. Tomorrow I want to try adding more yellow ochre to the paint; it's still looking a bit too white.

Notes to Myself

Since you're most likely a creative person or you wouldn't even be interested in reading this blog about art making, I decided to share some of my personal thoughts and responses as I evaluate this past week's studio work and consider how to proceed.

One lesson that seems to surface time and time again for me is to SLOW DOWN and reflect on pieces quietly, to allow more time for each choice, even if that means making only a single mark after a whole day of contemplating.

Every time I get swept up in the energy of creating the universe reminds me in some way -- fuchsia pink dyeing results for example -- that I am rushing, tearing into a meal instead of savoring each bite.

Slowing down may mean taking more time to sample and test my color palette when I use dyes so that I know how the individual dyes act, from the palest pale to darkest dark applications. And what happens to them in combination with other dyes in my palette BEFORE I apply them.

It may mean doing more sketches and studies and keeping more notes of the results for each work. Perhaps each piece I make could have its own documented history and record of its evolution. That could be a valuable resource in itself.

When I look at Da Vinci's sketchbooks and see the careful notes he wrote to himself over his lifetime as he explored a vast range of subjects, I realize how patiently he observed, recorded and considered each line, each shape, each idea.

When I'm creating, I feel as though I begin to spin faster and faster. Part of me is so keenly aware of time passing, of deadlines and commitments and even my own mortality. I begin to try and cram more and more into each day, racing against the clock or the limitations of my physical energy to produce, to make, to do.

Since creative energy also accelerates and energizes the maker, when we move into an exhilarated creative state it can be difficult to let it go, to disengage, to reflect.

I KNOW the power of stillness, of centering, of getting quiet inside. Most of us do. I experience it. But I don't always choose it when I'm working creatively.

Once I begin soaring and swooping and diving into my work and process, I find it hard to let it go, to step back and quietly contemplate what I am actually intending.

So this week I am going to practice slowness. And intention. Considering. Savoring each thought and idea like it's a delicate sliver of dark chocolate.

Quietly, confidently and assuredly living each moment of my artistic life and expression.

Puzzling Pinkosity

Steaming turned these three new printed pieces a vivid pink-rose-fuschia color instead of the terra cotta color I got on my sample. The intensity of the color surprised me; it seems to be everywhere on the surface and looked very subtle before steaming.

Afterwards, STRIDENT. While I can identify several possible culprits for this happening to an acid dye application, it does leave me with a color that does not seem to be able to be removed or overdyed. Overpainting it with dye didn't work well. Where I added gray, it toned the powerful pink down a little but looks a bit splotchy.

I even tried shibori resists and an immersion bath in Thiox color remover, but there must be a lot of fuschia dye in this premixed color, because it appeared to discharge to yellowish tan but then returned to fuschia once I washed it. Pink it is and pink it seems to be determined to stay! The moral of the story may just be to return to mixing from pure colors rather than being lured by how pretty a premixed one looks!

So here's where I am after my first week of working on new cloth for new ancient language pieces. Mind you, I do love some areas of each of these textural pieces.







It occurs to me that were I to cut each piece apart into sections, I could choose the best sections and combine them to create a collaged surface and then add the letterforms on it with acrylic paints.

I won't get back to my dye studio until at least Wednesday-- I have to shift to completing the stitching on a piece for Fiber Art Alliance and I'm having a small surgery on the veins in one leg tomorrow. These pieces will have time to sit quietly. When I see them again my eye will be fresh and this idea will have had time to simmer. I'm hoping to walk in the door, look at them and confidently known just what to do to resolve them.

Layer-iscious Beginnings

First order of my studio day today was a warm up with this fabric. While I didn't anticipate the terra-cotta drying pink (next time I'll mix a dark shade of it), I think I can correct and improve this by overpainting with rust and olive green. That will be an interesting experiment. If that corrects the color on the piece, then I can paint the fissures and cracks and add the letterforms and see how well the composition is working.

I left this piece to dry at the end of the day and hope that it steams and washes out and will remain as close as possible to what it looks like now. I'll steam and wash as soon as I arrive tomorrow and decide what to layer on next.

I did some discharging on this piece as well, but am still not happy with the results yet. I'll work on it again tomorrow and decide what to layer over it to begin to flesh out the composition.

This is a sample from a few months ago. Looking at it, I'd really like to complete the piece above in a similar vein (only without so much on the surface! I seem to work the samples to death just to see what happens...and one idea always leads to another... and another!)

If anything exciting happens tomorrow, I'll share the results. I'm so thrilled to be working on these ideas again and hope to create a whole lot of compositions over the next several weeks.

Here a Sample There a Sample...

The small studies scattered on every surface around my studio are drying and the wheels are turning in my brain as I review the strengths and weaknesses of each. Looking at what worked is a good way to review them before I return to working on new Parables pieces.

The bottom of this piece is close to what I had envisioned for it but the pearlescent color of the silvery gray at the top is too strong and I didn't use a brush that gave me the ability to keep the lines more controlled and thin. However, these fissures and crackles in the surface are going to be a priority for the next number of pieces, so I will continue to work on tools and consistencies to refine them.

This was fun and freeing and I actually like the results, particularly the black paint which I applied using a Jackson Pollock style of controlled gesturing. Because the black paint was more liquid, it wicked and created interesting shapes on the cloth before drying. The thinner lines of more viscous silver over it offer a nice contrast -- and the small shapes of red painted onto the surface offer a dynamic pop of saturated color.

This is a piece where I experimented in a few select places with adding outlines in brown around parts of the silver. The Loew Cornell liner brushes I bought recently are working wonderfully for this. Then I added a few black lines with the applicator bottle.

Decoy Carving in Clayton, NY

Carving intrigues me, both because I love anything skillfully crafted by hand, whatever the medium -- and because carvers range from utilitarian to artistic. A number of them gathered for the 41st Annual Decoy & Wildlife Art Show in Clayton, NY this weekend. Since my husband is an outdoorsman, hunter and fisherman and I love wildlife paintings and carvings, we both had a great time.


Isn't this old carving bench a beauty? A pile of carved duck decoy bodies have piled up next to it; the carver was taking a well deserved lunch break.


Ingeniously, contemporary carvers carve over these sawdust vacuums. While wood chips and dust still accumulate, it certainly helps decrease them, which has to be healthier for a carver. As you can see from the image, this gentleman is mounting the heads onto the carved bodies.



We bought a wonderful hand painted collector's piece from Linda Ferguson in Woodville, NY. Linda does exquisite painting on these carvings.

A collector's estate auction drew us outside at 1 PM and although we both swore we would be very self-controlled, we ended up buying -- and spending!! -- more than we intended. I totally fell in love with a vintage framed Remington poster and went way over the amount I intended to bid for it. But we hung it up at our cottage and I still love it anyway -- maybe even more now that I've invested money in it!!

Another favorite stop for me when we go to Clayton is the Thousand Island Arts Center home of the Handweaving Museum, which has a collection of over 1,400 handwoven items. Currently on display there is a very nice juried exhibition, "Along the Rivers Edge," that runs through August 28. If you get to the area, stop in and see it.

Bob's sister and brother-in-law live in about a half hour outside of Clayton, so they met us Friday evening at the quaint Wellesley Hotel, built in 1903, on Wellesley Island (Thousand Island Park) for dinner.

We visited them on Saturday and got updated on the progress of the new home they're building (Jim is doing ALL the work himself!) on a solid rock ledge over the gorgeous St. Lawrence River. It will be a beauty when he finishes it.


Imagine having this view outside your window every day!