Wunderbar!

My birdies flew all the way to Germany!
If you live there you can purchase these two books illustrated by me.
Published by Verlag am Eschbach:
Fange nie an aufzuhören, höre nie auf anzufangen & Ins Herz buchstabiert.
Both covers were made with my hand carved stamp designs.
Two more books will come out for their autumn/winter 2011 collection.
One is an anthology of poems about the joys of sending and receiving letters that will feature 20 of my bird collages with vintage postcards and ephemera & the other one
called "Soul Medicine" about all those little things in life that make us happy
by Christa Spilling-Nöker :)

Studio Doings

Life is settling back into a more comfortable routine, and I couldn't be more grateful. I don't think I ever realized just how much a creature of habit I had become until something huge came along to shake up my tidy little world.

My studio lures me as it always has, though my hours spent in it have decreased dramatically. That's okay, though- it makes my creative time more energized and focused.

My design wall is humming with fabric, something it hasn't seen in a few months.

I've kind of gone bananas for using my hand prints as a design motif; I love the large scale straight line/inverted "U" marks they make. I know, I know- I'm not the first artist to discover that I have hands, prehistoric cave wall artists were doing this eons ago- but the lovely simplicity of painting my hand and pressing it to a surface is particularly appealing to me right now, so I'm just going with it.

It led me to thinking of my hand as a discharge agent, so out came some old painted and hand-dyed fabrics.

(36" x 45")

 

This piece of fabric is nearly two years old. It was originally hand-dyed, and then a simple screen made with contact paper squares was used to add textile paint. I was totally lost after that which direction to take the piece in (I know now what I didn't know then, of course- never start surface design with paint), so it got folded and put away. But this week, it came back out to receive some hand-printed discharge marks.

 (detail)

I gloved my right hand, made a discharge pad out of a plastic tray lined with paper toweling soaked in Clorox, and began making impressions all over the fabric. After I had reached the discharge effect I was looking for, I plunged the piece into cold water, rinsed it thoroughly, and neutralized the bleach.

Now it wants to come out and play with the other pieces on my design wall, some of which were also discharged in the same manner using my palm prints.

In other news, the basil is doing beautifully... maybe next year I'll try growing some other herbs.

I signed up for another year with the Brooklyn Art Library to do The Sketchbook Project 2012. I chose the theme "Writing On The Wall" and when it arrives and I start working on it, I'll post photos to keep you updated. I hope everyone reading will seriously consider getting involved in this awesome project!

And finally, May is my month to choose the theme for The Sketchbook Challenge. I hope you'll join me over there, and work along in your own books with me and my fellow artists!

Happy living!

Old Treasures

I'm back home with so many beautiful memories of my trip to visit my mom & brother! These are a few of the invaluable things I brought back from Chile.

My mom and I had so much fun going through all the old letters she has been keeping for years. I brought back some of my favorites, old family records, photos and a few really beautiful antiques my mom wanted me to have like an old ostrich egg, a few pieces of silver my mom's had for ever & the wood box to keep all the treasures.

This is a beautiful box full of ink pen nibs I found at an antiques shop in Santiago.
It was still sealed and in perfect condition. Perfect for my white acrylic ink.

Chile!

I spent the most wonderful week in my beloved Chile. I hadn't been here in 13 years!
I'm going back home to Mexico today so full of inspiration and happy to have spent time
with my family & friends. Thank you for coming along with me :)

Dear You: Thank You

A while back I suggested to a friend that she might want to work a particular design she was developing into a larger format art piece. It took nearly a week for me to click to the fact that while I was extolling her to work larger, I, myself had begun working smaller. Much, much smaller.

I don't regret doing it at all, some deeply intimate and heartfelt art has come from this period, but I feel that I can hardly recommend something that I'm not willing to risk doing, myself. And working large has become a risk to me, more than I would have thought possible- years past, all my work was huge and it never intimidated me. But I have to admit that my confidence has been shaken by events of the past eight to ten months, and working in a large format seemed to me like an excellent opportunity to fail on a grand scale.

Still, pushing myself to work in areas that frighten or intimidate me has become one of my favorite ways of taking myself in surprising directions. I never know exactly what the outcome of a professional or creative risk is going to be, but even if it's a raging disaster, there's a lot of information to be mined from such events.

In that spirit, I recently broke out two large canvases from my very earliest days of experimenting with painting. These old pieces didn't look like art to me and more importantly, they didn't feel like art and never really had. The frugal artist in me won out over the archivist who wants to save everything, and I Gesso'd both pieces within an inch of their lives before starting them over again.

This is what emerged from my studio this afternoon.

"Dear You: Thank You"  

30" x 40" 

India ink, acrylics, Stacked Journaling 

on stretched artist canvas

There are some very special people in my life who have spent a great deal of time and energy in the last few months talking me down from the ceiling, people without whom I would have not have been able to manage. This letter, written with love to each and every one of them, is one of the ways I would like to try and thank them. They make the risk worth everything.

Happy creating!

Chock-full of Inspiration

My batteries are re-charged :)

The Squadron

Today was one of those extraordinary days.
I'm in love with these amazing birds and could stare at them for ever.

Snipets

The pearl of the Pacific, the most beautiful port city in the world.

I made a new furry friend. Her name is Sofia.
She was wearing a pearl necklace & a faux fur lined sweater :)
I think Turbo would like her ♥

Enjoying autumn, even if it's for just a few days.

Yesterday's sunset didn't disappoint.

My Day so Far

Spectacular sunrise from the plane.

Delicious lunch with a view.

My eyes couldn't be happier :)

Today is the Day

My bags are packed & a certain someone is not too happy about it.
My plane leaves tonight...
*Hint: I'm going on this trip for pleasure, not work. I'm visiting family :)

Dear Mom

Seriously, these Stacked Journaling art letters are out of control!

But some of them, like this piece, are evolving away from angsty journaling and are becoming much more fun to write. This one is to my Mom, in a very 12-year-old-away-at-camp style with a lot of "You're the best Mom ever!" kinds of sentiments.

Thanks for everything, Mom. And you know what I mean- for everything.

 ("Dear Mom: Best Mom Ever!" acrylics, India ink on paper)

'Geninne' Mani

Today I treated my beautiful cousin-in-law Angelica to her very own 'Geninne' mani.

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

I'm going on a solo trip for the first time
since my teen boys were born and I'm so excited!
I'll only be gone for a week but I'll continue to blog
from my undisclosed location by the sea...
We can play 'Where in the World is Geninne?' ;)

Grafitti-esque Stacked Journaling

No heavy emotional context to this piece, just some fun playing with the graffiti-esque quality of Stacked Journaling. This is super white, heavy card stock layered with paints, India ink and Thermofax screens.

Dear Greg: Hero

For the love of my life.

("Dear Greg: Hero")