The Quality of Light

It starts in late August every year. I notice the golden glow on trees and lawns and houses, then gradually through the fall that beautiful, soft, clean aura becomes an all day filter over everything, making life seem like it's stage lit and special.

Lines For Melly

I had been stressing over the line challenge until I looked at these photos and realized how interesting lines are everywhere.

She greets you at my front door; soft lines and cold
texture warmed by the golden light.

Lines: straight, curved, diagonal for me to draw.

 Sunset from my front porch.  I am a lucky person to live
with this beauty.

I know people wax morbid over the dying of the light and the year, but I quite like the late autumn when the leaves have fallen, been gathered and carted off for composting. There's an elegance to the landscape, not stark, but simplified and modern. I like driving West on these days (even just a trip to the mall), the bleached blue of the sky, the bare branches in silhouette, shaved cornrows of the fields surrounding me, while the low sun catches my eye with a wink and a crooked finger of light as if beckoning me somewhere I should be going.


There is something about this time of quiet color and stripped down scenery that makes me feel calm and clean inside, like I can see my life more clearly too. For me it's a time of renewal, of making way for new plans, new adventures. The holidays will go by in a blur. The older I get the less important the individual traditions become. What matters lately is the realization that the years of my life will only accommodate just so many adventures: I mean to have the ones I really want.


I just finished my first serious trip back to my artist self. I found that the talent for seeing with the artist's eye, and the desire to interpret with my own vision are still intact. I'm primed to move forward. Now it will be a matter of keeping high the enthusiasm without my daily cheering section online; about making goals and keeping them, and not getting lost in someone else's vision of my life again.

First continuous contour drawing in ink.
No Pencil, no erase.

Machine Made Objects make for travel memories.

My first flower has to be my favorite one.

We decided against putting up a tree this year. Normally this is the central symbol of our merry December celebrations, even though it is a thoroughly non-religious one for us. But with no plans for at home entertainment, it just seemed like one more burdensome activity, and how easy it was to cross it off the list. Instead we are making plans for quality time in the windy city. Literally, windy. It always rains, snows, blows or numbs, but still we love December in Chicago. We are getting ready for a dinner dance with other "steel guys" and their partners. My recent inspirational drive ending at the local mall resulted in some purchases of festive attire, where the store seemed to be paying me to take the merchandise off their hands. I did my part in relieving them of inventory, but I'm not sure how I helped with the bottom line. I found some girly clothes that makes me feel special, and if I somehow do damage during the revelry, I won't feel bad about it.


My new week brings a new focus on the needle and the cloth. I am taking Jude Hill's C2C3 (Cloth to Cloth, No.3) workshop online, wherein she will share a bit of the techniques behind her poetic needle arts. In the midst of my sketching and line challenge projects last week, I had made two possible woven bases for the workshop, but they are much too safe, too predictable for this work. I will need to turn a more artistic eye to making something worthy this week. We'll see if I can find inspiration in the golden light of late autumn.

The Case of the Creative Overachiever

Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. I know you hear me. You're probably one of us: all the A-type artists out there. You have yet to meet a creative outlet or medium you can live without. That 40% off coupon for Hobby Lobby or Michael's, you need it every week. Always some collection of art or textile supplies that needs a little filling out. And don't get me going on joining up. It was bad enough when classes came in the form of adult ed at the local high school or community center, maybe the yearly convention of your preferred art form --quilters, beaders, painters, multimedia dabblers--come to town, and there goes a week and a week's pay!


But nowadays, what's a starving artist to do, when the computer that faces you down every morning starts whispering your name: "Cheryl...here's a pattern for that thing you always wanted, here's a challenge that's been designed just for you, here's a class by that renowned teacher (and there might never be another!), a book you must read, ten new blogs to follow...heck, Cheryl, the world is waiting for you to write a blog!"


I started this current endeavor just a few weeks ago with a schedule and all good intentions, and already I'm falling behind. So sue me! I'm drawing and painting and sewing so fast and furiously, I don't have time to write about it. Even on my one day off last week from the relentless schedule I've created, I started a new project in yet another of my favorite past times, bead weaving. (And even now I can hear the sound of those tiny glass voices calling me!)

Thousands of tiny glass beads will some day be a bracelet.

These large glass rhinestones are called rivolis. I'm sewing
them into bezels of tiny glass beads.

So it's any given day...And Wow!...all the picture taking and scanning and uploading; naming and tagging and commenting and replying to comments. I can hear my blood pressure rising. I can feel my left brain taking over my right brain, and.. Ouch!...squeezing the creative joy right out of me. Must breath! Must slow down! Must update my Etsy Store. After all, the holiday shopping rush has begun this week and there are unlisted items to be added.


Whoa, horsey! What we need is balance here. The opportunities are so great to learn and interact and practice our skills, but the payback is the loss of uninterrupted time for real creativity to flourish. Real art is not just another task accomplished, or is it? Maybe being too leisurely all these years didn't help either, didn't encourage me to gain the necessary skills that having nose to the grindstone seems to produce. I have gotten the impression from my recent reading of Danny Gregory's "An Illustrated Life" that talent is only a small part of the equation; that putting in the daily work is what brings about the confidence to get the goods out from the creative place and into existence. Six weeks ago I didn't have a flikr account, and now I have a "photostream" of some thirty-six items, some of them even good, all of them a step closer to real art.

Week two of sketching class: leaves

Week four of sketching class: flowers

Week five of sketching class: shoes

This is the final week of my sketching class with Jane. Time to pull out the Moleskine sketchbook I bought for Melly's class last August and used only that one time. Time to take a deep breath, set aside the frenzy, and accept my artistic destiny. I'm going to draw and paint! And maybe do a little beading as well. Or start a new sweater? What about the quilt in the closet...

Can You Say "Synchronicity"?

Just a week ago, I brought up the concept that opening oneself to the possibilities that life offers may result in a surprising number of offers from life. Last Thursday, Melanie Testa, one of my favorite artists, teachers, and all-around artist boosters, blogged about a challenge she had set for herself for the next month or so, and invited us all to join her. The object, as I see it, is to have an open heart to the possibilities of what may come from drawing lines on fabric on a daily basis.

Here was a relatively quick and easy opportunity to continue my drawing practice and relate it to textiles in a direct manner. The supplies needed: fabric, a permanent marking medium such as paint or dye, and a  means of making the marks, a particular sort of pen nib called a ruling pen.

Since I had done some preliminary explorations in early autumn with screen printing, I had on hand leftover soda soaked cotton, and a number of bottles of thickened procion dye. Perfect! Only problem was, I live nowhere near a good art supply store and was not likely to find this "esoteric" tip at the craft chains. What to do? Meanwhile busy with the arrival of out-of-town guests, I put the thought on hold.

The next morning saw us off to Michigan City for sightseeing, a chance for photography of our gorgeous Indiana Dunes and maybe a few dollars lost at the local casino. An outrageously balmy day found us wending our way down rural Hwy 12 through woods and National Park land and past unseen communities tucked away in the dunes. Suddenly, out of the "Myst", rose a mysterious, unassuming structure tucked at the side of the road, promising ART SUPPLIES! We doubled back, thinking, "not likely, but what the heck?" Inside, a rabbit warren of crowded aisles overflowing with wonderful enticing art stuff. A slightly eccentric-seeming clerk knew of what I inquired and dove in to try to locate one. Alas, all that was available was the compass set, that I figured was more than I wanted and not quite right.  I thanked him and went on with my company to enjoy the day.

Looking Northwest form Mt. Baldy toward the Chicago
skyline shrouded in the "Myst".

It may look like November, but it felt like September.

   

It's usually quite windy atop this five story sand dune, but this day
it was totally calm.

Looking East to the Michigan City's coal fired power plant.

  

The wonders of nature: who'd think that trees could grow in sand atop a windy hill.

The boating season over, their summer home all empty and quiet.

The lighthouse, a symbol of Michigan City.

Many hours filled with beautiful sights, a great Reuben sandwich, and a terribly rare event for me: I actually walked out of a casino with new money in hand! (Hey, no fortune, but $25 on a half hour of penny slots isn't so bad.) Again, a sort of omen: I had to go back for that ruling pen, even if it meant getting a compass I didn't need. But it was now ten 'till five, and surely they would be closing shop. But no, lights still on, and the manager in his easygoing helpful manner, saying no to the compass, pulling out catalogues to show me what I needed, and then...finding a lone replacement tip to sell me for...just four dollars! Use it as is, or attach it to a handle of something else, he suggested. Sold! 

As I stood at the register to pay with my winnings, what should my eyes fall upon sitting in a pile directly in front of me, but a packet of sepia tone pens I had been craving after just seeing them used that week by a journaling classmate.  A bit scary and magical the way the universe has reached out to get me what I wanted and needed, and for free, too!

The simple tools for the line challenge, ready to roll!

Here is my first line study. Thanks Melly for the challenge; thanks universe for stepping up to assist!

Five and a half inches square. Black procion dye on white cotton.

The means and the booty. And the change!
Note the lighthouse on the store logo.
By the way, the nib fit nicely into the handle of an old foam paintbrush.