Practice Makes Perfect

There is so much to tell about my recent travels out West, but first I must catch you up on my summer of art.

I have been doing some sort of visual creative expression all my life. If you have read my blog in the past, you know something of my history of the pursuit of art vs craft. Every day there is a project (or three, or ten) that I wake up to and look forward to working on. And just as surely as I continue to "work" every day, I constantly hear from whose who do not, how talented I am, and how easy it is for me to achieve success. I use to just thank them for the complement and move on, but lately I feel the need to clarify the reality. No, it's not all innate talent, it's about passion to try and try again. And it is also about work and practice. Something over fifty years of daily practice surely will improve and refine many skills, and passion for the process as well as the results will show in the final product.

I have been a quilter for twenty years and with every quilted project I did, I included new techniques and skills. In quilting as in every other visual art, I make the project my own. This means that every time I start something, I must use my own ingenuity to figure out technical aspects, and how to best alter them to fit the needs of my vision. Above all, I strive to improve my own artistry and express something important to myself.

This first image is from a photo of my husband that appeared in one of my first blog entries last year. I am learning to interpret a photo in fabric without being entirely literal about color and detail. I show here phase one, where the basic color values in the self-imposed rule of only four gradations is maintained. Should I decide to add more details, they will be added in free-motion machine stitching. Right now I am contemplating the needs.

I am in a collaboration with the "subject" who would like to see this made into a panel of three different colorways, each building in intensity, and finished without a binding, but with something "more modern". My husband is an engineer, not an artist in practice, but he is every bit as creative, because he sees, and feels passionately about his vision.

This next photo shows how I was kidnapped by a yarn shop in Ashland, OR, a couple weeks ago. I had vowed that I wasn't going to knit this fall, but after being dragged in the door kicking and screaming and made to sit on the floor sorting out the endless choices of color in this Koigu yarn, I had to buy the pattern too, and of course, a new size needle missing from my vast collection. Even though I have been knitting since childhood, I have never done the Linen Stitch. I think the approximately 28,000 stitches in the completed scarf will give me enough practice to master it.

Here is the completed, but yet to be mounted, bordered and framed first piece from my Sumptuous Surface Embroidery class last month. I was sad not to have the time to participate as fully during the class as I would have liked, but learned so many new stitches and have acquired so many new resources to go forward, that I am glad I signed up when I did. The best part of the class was getting to design the piece from the ground up, and use a visual journal as a design tool for the first time. It now makes sense to me how to use one.

When I last left you at "Art Camp," with Carla Sonheim, I had completed week one of "Imaginary Creatures." Week two was even more exciting as we had a super intense practice at drawing faces. "Faces 101, " was literally drawing at least 101 faces in five days. Practice Makes Perfect! (Or at least it begins to free you and take away the fear of what you can't do.) I loved drawing faces so much I can't wait to get back to it. Each day we would warm up with expressive lines and then move on to two complete and different techniques and mediums.

One liners are "ten second" sketches you do by not lifting your pen from the page. They capture the essence of your subject.

Cheater blinds are blind contour drawings done with just a little bit of looking. We used two sizes of felt tipped pens, and no erasing. These are from pictures of high school teachers in my yearbook.

These "eraser faces" are drawn with the finger and a kneaded eraser using pastel powder: lay down the colors with your fingertip, then erase in the highlighted potions of the face. Repeat as necessary. Just a couple minutes for each.

Ink drawing done with the dropper from the bottle, and blotted with toilet paper. Wonderfully fun.

Extra Credit: Tea box drawing. We used gessoed tea box or other packaging as a base, and drew in markers. My first experience with Copic markers (the grey shades). I'm collecting them now.

The final week of art camp with Carla was the "Junk Mail Artist Book". This was an opportunity to create the paper media for a storybook from gessoed and watercolor painted junk mail, and then draw a storybook of about five two-page spreads with a front and back cover. All in one five day period!!

While creating the physical book we practiced the technique of creating interactive drawings: drawings that connect from one page to another.

My tied together book with offset pages  waiting for the story.

A look at all the page spreads before they had the story added. Some of the papers were bubble wrap liners of envelopes. Some had plastic windows. Some printed ads. All sorts of colors and textures showing through the layers of water colored gesso.

The completed front cover.

The completed back cover. I hope you will take a look at the rest of the book and the rest of the faces by checking out my photostream on flikr.

And so it was an intense and productive month. Practice may not make perfect, but it will lead to self-discovery and wonder.
The things we can do when we just: Do It!

Groovin'

It has been a groovin' summer for me so far. Maybe not in the sense of lying-on-the-beach laid back, but mine is a kind of permanent vacation, being retired and all. Still my days usually come with as much work and scheduling of projects as a thoroughly supervised corporate peon. Really, my summer project should be learning to climb down from the machine, step away from the idea, forget about the goals. But that's just not me to do that, and I think I really don't mind the structure. It's more a matter of degree. How many projects are enough, are they relevant to my current goals, do they bring me joy or at least satisfaction? So that is where I stand. Having achieved a strong turn this past year toward the life journaling arts, I am finally stepping back, breathing, and feeling a sense of connection to my story.

So yes, a happy medium has got me groovin'. What exactly does this mean? Well, in the sense of the 60's Hippie slang, my life is "groovy"--I am liking, enjoying, being one with--summer! I am sitting still enough for it to warm my bones, soften my consciousness, engage me in just being. Every day possible there is a long walk in the sun with music in my step, there is quiet time in the shade with a beverage, special moments of connection with my husband, time observing and recording my world.


Groovin' is also "in the groove." Literally, fitting in to the stream of the moment. Connecting with a flow both in my online and local worlds. One that I have created over time, and that absorbs me, supports me and lifts me.


So what have I been up to in the last month  (when not just being there?) Starting in mid June, for two weeks , I was totally absorbed and stimulated by 14 lessons in 14 days, in a class called "Photo Silly" by Steve Sonheim. Each morning I woke up to a new challenge, and ended each day with an amazing new vision of my world and my abilities, as well as connections with new friends from, literally, around the world. Two of my newest Facebook friends are from Germany, and we met through the flikr class site. Others were recording their lives in France, and Russia, and New Zealand. While I might be taking shots of an all-American supermarket bagger gathering carts, one of them was doing a portrait of a Maori couple and their wonderful tradition facial tattoos. It was amazing fun.


Here are some shots taken during each day's lesson. These are generally not the completed or chosen entry for the assignment, but illustrate what I was striving to achieve. The complete set of final cuts can be found here on flikr.

Assignment #1-Shooting 20 shots in a row with our eyes closed, but trying to imagine the shots we were getting. This resulted in,  to say the least, some unexpected, but often interesting images.

Assignment #3-Blink. Compose shots with a cardboard viewfinder and  commit to memory or sketch.  Two days later we actually went back to the images and captured them with the camera.

Assignment #4-Biographer Frog. A Self portrait without the self, from the point of view of  a wee thing on the floor. I chose this dark image from a series of seven bracketed exposures, because I like the drama.

Assignment #8-Take Your Camera to Work Day. A rainy start to a day of recording it all. The final pick of twenty shots went into a photo collage.

Assignment #9-Really? Turning our hand into a character and photographing with backlighting. The final pose became the giggle getter on flikr. Look for it there.

Assignment #10-Flip Flop. Teach Steve how to do something in four photo steps. This shot was a warm up idea for "How to Brew Satisfaction".

Assignment #13-Blur. Learning to capture a blurred image on purpose.

What pleased me the most was not any particular technical skills I learned (although the camera started to be less of a mystery, for sure), but three important concepts applicable to all my art:


     1) Find a new focus: look beyond the expected.


     2) Wait for the light: the best photos are real and don't require a lot of artifice to make them work, just look for the best and shoot, shoot, shoot (then toss, toss, toss.)


     3) Connect with my work and the people and animals within it, lose my fear of the stranger and the strange situation, make friends with life.

None of this is what I expected to learn, and all of it was wonderfully useful for moving forward in many disciplines.


Starting next week I will be taking a one week class by Steve called "Shoot Your Art," a more technical set of exercises in how to capture images of your 2D art. I'm expecting this to prove useful and enlightening. (Small pun :-) )


Following the June class I recaptured what I feared I had lost--my need to draw and paint without prompts from others, something I have done on a regular basis since. The carry over of lost fear is allowing me to draw more easily in public, and at a recent minor league baseball game, I did these two journal pages.

Waiting to get in the stadium, I stood in the shade of a tree and sketched a streetlight with my  Grey  Tombow and water brush.

Very new to trying to draw the human figure, and these gentlemen  NEVER stopped moving. An interesting challenge. I was also being watched by my husband's workmates who were sitting nearby.

My little themed handmade books are calling me and I decided to fill the garden journal with ink and watercolor pages that allow me to practice creative composition and record scenes from my own garden while I vacation there in this first half of summer. I am able to do more complex and leisurely painting on my home turf that may take two or more sessions and several hours. Later in the summer I want to practice a simpler,  looser style on locations away from home.

The fountain in the center of my garden, under a large shady elm. The plants were brought in to the house for closer study.

Fourth of July morning,  instead of doing the parade, I painted the hot of the day.

Each of these pots holds a complex floral planting. I decided to go simpler.

One of my online creative friends recently remarked that it doesn't matter how we express ourselves, creativity must out! Less defining, more acceptance and integration with everyday life. The needle is tracking the groove, and it's all beautiful music to me. Care to join the dance?

Out of Words

This week's topic has been elusive. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that I have written fifteen blog chapters of some length since October. I am generally not a person who is good with verbal self expression. Most of my life I tended to keep my opinion on "important" matters to myself. When I think of this trait, then and now, I'm not sure if it's the lack of communication skill, or just the disinterest in having to have an opinion. I think I have always had a part of me just content to be one with things. When I do want to share, it is mostly personal rather than political and social. I best express myself in color and form, and mostly through the years, by ornamentation of myself and my surroundings. 


Naturally, this let to the battle for control over my appearance, both as a minor, and beyond into adulthood.  My clothing called "costume" or just inappropriate, my hair too long, the makeup/no makeup battles, glasses vs contacts. Every confrontation just serving to strengthen my position: being different was my mode and my battle cry. You cannot critique and devalue my expression without showing you feel the same about me. 


Starting early in life, I started the habit of making things on a daily basis. I can't recall when I didn't have a project involving needles, yarns and cloth; cardboard, crayons and glue. Drawing and painting, the 2D things of expression, while generally encouraged by my artistic dad, was not as favored an outlet for me, because I realized early that the results generally ended in large piles of paper in the closet, out of sight and eventually to be tossed. Meanwhile, things that were "women's arts" were more likely to be used or displayed.

Kindergarden: The awards started early, but the actual art is long forgotten.
(Note that the day  I was starting this scrapbook was July 20, 1969, "Moon Day")

First grade art: A little too stiff and defined, true? School art in those days was not so much about originality as about following rules.

By 6th grade I was being recruited for schoolwide projects like designing programs for music events, and gifts to school superintendants. This rug eventually returned to my school and hung in the foyer.

Of course, at that time, there was not the popular concept of journaling or saving creativity in book form, except the occasional scrapbook of paper souvenirs. Only a handful of my high school or college art has survived in a portfolio that somehow was not tossed. But memories do remain. Memories of loving visual self expression of any sort. (And also of being discouraged from the desired path to an education and career in fashion design.)


So here I sit, near the close of my sixth decade of living in this complicated state: no longer interested in a career, but with the great luxury of time and support and self-determination to do whatever I choose. The Internet allows me to "self-publish" both my thoughts and my visual arts. I can take classes and partake in the verbal exploration of the arts we are sharing. I am taking time every day to delve into my new pursuits in ways I never knew I could without formal college classes. I sit for hours now, drawn to the page or the cloth to express with color, texture and form. I thrill as these things pour from me. And the wonderful change is this: I no longer care what results, as long as it is freely done and mine. It does not have to be practical, or fit a definition, or please someone else. It is not a kit, a pattern, a hobby. It is just me, doing what I need to do, finding a way around the words.

The latest page in my hippo collection journal

Week 3 of the Strathmore recycled journal pages
 adds background texture and depth

I have purchased some sequin waste
 and I'm having fun with circular texture

No real plan, just lots of play and fun

I will be starting my two new classes today, one in drawing my world, and the other in finding the  personal story as bits of cloth come together. I will share ideas and energy with my fellow classmates. At the same time, I hope to hold onto my new freedom to not care what they think of me, or let others define me or limit my self expression because of expectations. This is not about talking about art. This is finally about living it.

Dust in the Wind

New Year's Day, "The Littlest Hippos" painted and shared with my world, my husband and I head out for out first coffee date of the decade. We enjoy the simple routine of hanging about and people watching at the Starbucks across from our mall. Living in the almost rural burbs, we've only got one mall to choose from and a couple of coffee shops worth hanging in. It will be several years yet before we can retire to Portland, and people watch in many new places, even walking to them to burn off the snacks.

The smallest members of my collection: earring, pins. button and beads

After an hour of filling the senses: coffee, sweet treats, the colorful parade of characters, and a general sense of good beginnings, we headed home in the rapidly chilling afternoon. Grey, blustery skies made for a bleaker drive back. On the radio a favorite downer song of the late seventies, "Dust in the Wind" by the group Kansas. The well known lyrics seemed to send a clearer message on this day of beginnings, to go deep and feel fresh: we are only here for a moment and then we are over. What we do here really doesn't last or matter, accept that you as an individual are just not that important. For just a moment, a sense of loss and sadness, resignation to my utter smallness.


But the next moment brought a second realization, the knowledge of how wonderful that concept really is. I, and what I do with my moment of existence, counts just as much as any other soul and their moment. What I choose to do with that opportunity is just as valuable or inconsequential as any other. So why should I feel less important or more afraid to tap my creative forces? 


At home I started cleaning the work station for the next hippo painting. At Dave's suggestion I will draw the unglazed porcelain with the baby and birdie on her back--an Egyptian themed page, probably. As I stored away "the littlest ones" I realized that once drawn, the objects seemed so much less significant to me in their physical being. I realized that if I lost them now, I don't think I'd care so much. If I lost the painting, I probably wouldn't care either. What mattered was having the experience of recording a vision of my life that day--I had seem something fully, and now I could let it go.


On Sunday, I started a lesson on Visual Journaling sponsored by Strathmore Art Papers. It involved a sort of multi-media art I'd never done. This one, Recycled Journal Pages, had us use our previously made journal pages or art, photocopied and cut up to create new images. At first I was hesitant to start, not sure it spoke to me, and then I just let go and fell into the experience. The hippo quilt that I shared in the last post has morphed into something new. This is "Deconstructed Hippo". The process thrilled me and the results even more. It is something I didn't envision doing. It just seemed to happen. I let it flow uncensored.

"Deconstructed Hippo": torn and cut paper and ink

One of my drawing teachers and mentors asked the other day for her blog readers to share a word they will live by in the New Year. What came to mind at that moment, and that I shared there, was: fearless.  Now I understand how true that will be.