ArtiphyTheHeart

New Year, New Stuff....

 

...Paris--For Theme Thursday:

Some scribbles in one of my journals after a day of flipping through books on graffiti at Barnes and Noble.

Drawing--Quote No.1:

"If you're creating artwork, it's always about the drawing.  Always." --Hippie drawing Prof. at ASU in the '70s whose name I can't remember, but it doesn't matter because he was quoting someone else whose name he couldn't remember...  

What he was trying to get across to us was that even if you're making a sculpture out of two sticks and a piece of string and you've never touched pencil to paper, everything created is always drawn in your mind before it's created, even if so instantly that you don't recognize it.  There is no art without visualization.  Ever.  And drawing is about seeing, not motor skills.

Drawing--Quote No.2:

"A successful drawing is one that appears on paper exactly as your mind's eye pictured it" --Same Prof., again quoting someone else...

Q. But what if it turns out better than I pictured it?  

A. Then what you have is a less successful drawing that accidently looks better than your mind's eye knows how to picture.  Solution: Practice drawing AND seeing.  

Working In Books (as opposed to "workbooks"...):

At the moment there are five books I am working in.  The Paris page was done in a little hand bound book that I carry with me in my purse, always.  This book is filled with stuff:  drawings, scribbles, notes, lists, collages, glued abstracts, paint, pens, inks, crayon, pencils, watercolor, markers...ad infinitum.  I work on both sides of the page in this book.  It's bound with a variety of papers so that when I want to work in acrylic, I can.  When I'm just using pencil, there's a page for it.  When I want a colored background for gel pens, there are lots of those, too.  And watercolor paper, etc.

The other four serve different purposes; all I've bound by hand.   One of the collage journals is filled with acrylic backgrounds on one side of the page only.  Why?  I'm not sure, but there's something in the back of my mind brewing for the other sides of these pages.  Probably a description.  Anyway, I can use a box cutter and remove pages from this book when there's one I want to make a print of, and I don't have to worry about what's on the other side.

Another one is specifically for work I'm doing in A Life Made By Hand.  

Another one is a chronology.  I do a page every day, or every few days, in chronological order.  I don't skip around in this book and I date the pages.  Later on, this one will give me an idea of what I was up to in 2010.  

Oooops, I said five.  Not true.  There are seven.  The other three are unfinished working journals. I use these to try out new ideas and new techniques.  

I also do lots of things outside of books.

Less and More in 2004 2010:

I liked 2004 better because it rhymed.  Oh well.  Here are some things I'd like to spend my time doing more of, and others that I'd like to do less of.  This is as close to New Years resolutions that I'll ever come:

More:

Drawing

Glueing

Writing

Painting

Abstract compositions

White space

Playing

Getting serious

Laughter

Time with family and friends

Reading

Music

Focus

Organic

Less:

Non-productive time online

Rushing around

Time spent suffering fools

No:

Additives

Preservatives

Hormones

GMAs

I can already see that this will be a prosperous year, as the "mores" far outweigh the "lesses" and the "nos".

Here's what I'm up to at the moment...

Reading Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, Thomas Foster's How To Read Literature Like A Professor, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying Of Lot 49 (all of them Tom's? ...very curious, indeed!)

Listening to Soft Machine's Six, and National Health's Tenemous Roads

Drinking tea (some things never change)

Watching HBO videos of The Flight Of The Conchords

Getting ready to celebrate Russian Christmas (old calender) tonight with friends of the family

Guest hosting for Mixed Media Monday next week, so stop by and submit some artwork!

Have a great New Year, Everyone! One great day at a time!

Tick Tock...

...For Crowabout, Mixed Media Monday, Theme Thursday, Wednesday Stamper, Three Muses, and Pointy Hats and Wings

My fashionable (MMM theme) Zetti (WS theme) was made with images from Crowabout, and from my own private stash of patterned papers (TT theme).  And since the passing of time is a recurring theme in my dreams, it fits for the Three Muses theme, as well.

Tonight's post will be short and sweet.  I'm a little under the weather, and as it's always better to be on top of things than underneath them, I'll be calling it a night early, hoping for lots of rest and pleasant dreams.   I plan to hop into bed with the book I'm reading:  The Needle's Eye by Margaret Drabble, a glass of wine, and I'll try to catch an episode or two of the original Prisoner series on DVD before I drift off to sleep.  We're trying to finish the original series in the order they were made before the new Prisoner airs this weekend.  I must say, I'm not optimistic about the re-make.  From what I've been told, not much of it seems to even follow the original story.  Still, we're only a couple of episodes away from finishing the original, so it will be fun to have those fresh in our minds when we see what the studios have come up with on Sunday.

Stay well, and have a great day, Everyone!

I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want To Ride My Bike...

...I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want to Ride It Where I Like!

When I look back on the things I did as a kid, two things stand out:  Painting, and riding my bike.  Not a day went by without art and a bike ride. 

A Day In the Life...

Painting was the catch-all term for everything artistic.  I could be lying on the floor of my room glueing and drawing, blending chalks and pastels, or constructing a shadow box, and if anyone asked where Barbara was, my mom would tell them, "She's painting".  Probably because most of what I did ended up with at least a little bit of paint on it somewhere.  I've always mixed my media.

In between times, there were dozens of other things I did, usually with friends, and unless it was happening at my house, I ended up riding my bike to it and back from it.  I wasn't really conscious of it at the time, but all those short, solitary bike rides to and from friends' houses and meeting places add up to a lot of collective time spent in thought.  Or maybe out of thought would be more accurate, because really, I didn't spend that time so much thinking, as noticing.  I looked at things.  Everything.  Relevant or irrelevant, it didn't matter.  It was all important.  It was all there to be seen, heard, compared and contrasted, and I did this like breathing--without thought.  The entire world was my source of information.

Patterns...

Not to say I never thought.  I spent plenty of my other time thinking about the things I'd notice on bike rides, and everything else, too.  For instance, have you ever noticed how related themes and patterns seem so often to occur simultaneously?  When I was growing up I'd notice that in a given evening, the themes on TV shows would often follow the same basic thread.  For instance, if the first sitcom I watched that evening dealt with a hit and run accident, the next one might have a patient in the hospital who had been hit by a car, and a third might revolve around a teenage son learning to drive and in the course of it, almost hitting someone in a crosswalk. Entirely coincidence that all of them aired on the same night;  None of the studios cooperating with the others or planning a blitz .  

And while some of the more obvious patterns do occur by choice, often seasonally such as harvest themes in autumn, the patterns I've always been keen to notice are much more obscure. The more hidden patterns in life just seem to leap out at me and say, "Here I am"!  I couldn't always connect the dots, but I knew that somehow, on some level, connections existed and could be found.   

I didn't know it at the time, but pattern recognition is one of the great gifts of artistic participation.  Because I created pattern, I recognized pattern.  I could see it on the outside because it was what presented itself onto paper from inside myself.  

They're Everywhere...

It was always fine until I mentioned this to friends, who'd roll their eyes and say, "So what?"  But I found identifying patterns interesting enough to not let any of that bother me.  Besides, I couldn't not notice what was so apparent to me, even if I tried.  So I just kept painting and riding my bike.

In high school and college, this pattern recognition made learning languages, math, biology and chemistry much easier.  Later, out of school and in the world, I noticed that in practice, medicine, psychology and forensics are all about identifying patterns, as are marketing, behavior research, and everything Wall Street.    A government service job I applied for required an I-Q type test for placement.  I wasn't told my score, but I was called in for interviews based on my knack for--you guessed it--identifying patterns and relationships.  What they suggested to me was so far off from the job for which I'd applied that I scrapped the idea entirely and went to work somewhere else.   Still painting, and for exercise and pleasure, riding my bike.

Connecting the Artistic Dots... 

Back to my childhood, on Saturday mornings I'd ride my bike to the art museum for classes.  I started there when I was four, and continued into my teens.  The museum was my safest haven.  It was a huge, echoing monument in stone to everything important.  Even at 4, I knew that my artistic pleasures were also my most serious work.  In the basement of the museum, I created with others side by side, most often silent to the ear, but loudly communicating our connectedness as we expressed our respective individualities in quiet.  

Aside from the benefits of the classes themselves, which thankfully were nothing like some of the structured agendas presented in the school art programs, the building itself contained all things extant and all possibilities under its one, huge roof.  Each work of art held it's own collection of infinite stories.  More than the history of a period and a study of technique, each piece held and holds the biography of the artist as well as the biography of the beholder.  The sum of these two contains the entire history of the universe.  

But even more than history, art is communication, and each work of art is a conversation.  On the way home from the museum, riding my bike, everything I noticed on the way over had been transformed through my experience with art.  The ride home took the same streets and passed the same buildings, but it was new terrain.  Without realizing it, I had discovered a great truth:  Everything is new when you emerge from the deep sea inside yourself, the place where you dive to retrieve the pearls of art.

Connecting Challenges...

I still paint daily, although I spend more time now driving a car than riding a bike.  I've spent the past week immersed in acrylics, creating various textured backgrounds to use in collage, and been having more fun than you can imagine making collage with the Crowabout group.  With only a couple of exceptions, most of the images used in Bicycle Ride came from our Saturday morning collage sheet.  When I began cutting and moving the pieces around, all the memories of bike rides past and a lot of the circumstances surrounding them came back like a flood.  The next time I opened my in-box to check my mail, Creative Catalyst #80 was there.   It said, "Tell us about something you cherished as a child. It can be a toy, or anything else".  Nothing to think about here. Bike rides and art.  In addition, Illustration Friday's theme is "pattern", and Created By Hand wants to see texture this week.  Click to enlarge and the texture jumps out.

Today...

If I could get everyone where they needed to go strapped onto the back of my bicycle, I'd do it.  But reality dictates that my kids need to be transported in a car, with air conditioning and seat belts.  We're still experiencing 105 degree days, and when all is said and done, we travel about 60 miles each day on average, getting to and from the various places we need to go.

Along with other things, so far today I have been:

Wonderfully surprised by a phone call from the South Carolina wing of our An Affair With Art group

Thrilled by a package from another member containing more fabulous packages within

Catching up on email 

Sipping tea, and

Preparing myself for the blast of heat when it comes time to open the door and go out into the hot afternoon

Have a great day, Everyone!

"Computers" or. . .

. . ."How I Spent My Summer Vacation"...

The Introduction

...What do you do when you're a frustrated artist, at least half of your work is digital (someday I'll have to blog those pics), and you've had on-going computer issues since April?  Well, if you're me, you put everything else aside and quilt a cover for your Macbook!  I'll tell you all about this, but first I must do some gratuitous venting.  Sorry.  Bear with me, please, it's therapeutic...I think...at least for me....and there are some great pics at the end of this post......

Part One--The Plague

First, the PC that runs Photoshop fell victim to an ugly piece of malware which tanked everything but my files, and would have also stolen my identity if I hadn't outsmarted it and disabled the laptop's wifi. The virus (which actually is a package of multiple viruses that rename themselves constantly) didn't like that I did this, so it crashed necessary things like my printer, Wacom tablet and mouse, and then corrupted the device that installs the drivers.  

To shorten a long story, I kissed my Macbook, who (yes, it's a who, not a what), being loyal and virus-free, would lead me back to the promised land of artwork.  But first, I would have to call Adobe for a X-platform Photoshop upgrade, or buy new software for the Mac.  Upgrade, here I come...

Part Two--The Software

Adobe said, "Sure, but first you must remove all components from your PC, destroy the software you have now, and sign our legal document attesting to the destruction of the software--in blood--yada, yada yada.., and fax it to us."  So I did.  After a week of hearing nothing, I contacted Adobe who said my fax had "gone missing". They need a new blood-soaked document.  So, as suggested, I emailed it as an attachment to the address they gave me.  After a week of hearing nothing, I contacted Adobe who said my email had "gone missing, would I send another blood-soaked document, please, this time, through the support portal."  OK, I can do that, and I did.  Hooray!  They got it.  But now, I have to wait--maybe 4-6 weeks--for the department that reviews and authenticates such documents to--you guessed it--review and authenticate it.  I'm waiting...........and waiting...........still waiting........

Part Three--The Mac

There is a reason that Macs are silver and/or white.  It's because they are heavenly bodies.  My Macbook has sat beside me, even without Photoshop, and consoled me through all the on-going issues with PC hell and hackers.  So I thought, "You protect and enshrine heavenly things, don't you?"   Well, there are some awsome-er than life cases and covers for Macbooks, many very artistic, and all quite expensive.  I figured that while I waited for my software, I could easily design something stunning and functional for my little white apple, and whip it up in a heart-beat.

Part Four--The Cover

This is what it looks like when it's open.  Detail pics of the front closure and sides are below.

When I'm stressed, crocheting unwinds me.  I quilted the top-bottom-flap portions of my cover and crocheted the sides.  Partly for therapy, partly for function.  The sides act as vents if the book is still warm when it's put away. 

Epilogue

I've been spending more time lately with obligatory artwork than with the things I'm inspired to do.  At some point, I'm going to have to draw the line, especially since I'm not a weekend crafter who does this for a hobby.  With that said, soul-searching is in the works to get me back to my chosen work, which is mixed-media, journal pages, hand-bound books, digital artwork, assemblages, and daily blogging!  In the meantime, I've been off-and-on without internet service, as have 10% of the subscribers in the valley, due to a screw-up by !@# cable compay.  So please bear with me.  I promise to return.......

Right now I am:

Out the door to the library

Reading back issues of "Wired" magazine

Watching nightly marathons of NCIS

Setting up my Facebook (connect to me as a friend!)

Glad my kids get a summer break so we can enjoy more time together!

Have a great day, everyone!  I've missed you all!