art

No word on the job. Tomorrow we are off to Auburn for the opening of Collage and Assemblage at the Scheinfurth art Museum. I have six collages in the exhibit. This is one of them.

Today

Today I am waiting by the phone and e-mail to hear about where I will be working starting Tuesday. 

At least I have my Hello Kitty Slippers to keep me comfortable in my agony. (Aster ordered them and decided she doesn't like them. I think they are Hello Kitty's friend, Chocolate, but she says the web site titled then Hello Kitty).

At least I have a blog for verbal play and photoshop for visual play.

I posted these Gloves this morning - I poetically titled them 

Shadow Gray, Dreary Day.

The sweater had this beautiful embroidery in raspberry, turquoise, cranberry, blue and coral on the ends of the sleeves that will make anyone smile on the worst of days.

I had a lovely Thursday though. Aster and I spent two hours making beads. 

One of which was a collaborative large heart focal... (I made a big blob and then gave it to Aster, the Queen of Glass Hearts). 

And I made 11 nice simple round beads.I used the opal brown frit without reducing it - I like the speckled red it creates. But Lucinda showed me what it can become when reduced. So, I may try that next time.

Later Aster and I watched Project Runway and were pissed that they once again kept that idiot Mitchell, who clearly cannot sew a pillow case and instead sent home the darling odd Malvin who gives a conceptual tweak to design, has such smart ideas and can sew like the wind.

More Sun

More Sun means more gloves.

See the bee on my hand? I put my life at risk for the art of knitting! Well, at least for the art of photographing my knitting! Isn't my wonderful son a fantastic photographer?

These sky blue gloves are repurposed cashmere sweater sleeves. The other two pairs are hand knit and have embroidery on them. I hope to get them into my shop this afternoon. Then it is off to More Fire to make More Beads. Below are the beach pebbles that are mostly dark ivory with some copper green and transparent glass. I finally etched them and I am ready to make a necklace. I love how etching the glass makes the black lines super crisp. The images show the glass beads mixed up with some turquoise, mother of pearl and coral. There are also two of Lucinda's beads in the mix.

The bead on the left is Lucinda's. I love how the etch took away some of the brighter turquoise that the copper green creates. The softer color is much more to my liking.

The picture below looks like something I found on the beach, doesn't it? But actually it is a mushroom that I photographed on a stone. I guess I can find the beach in my own back yard.

best day

On Tuesday, I worked three straight hours at More Fire Making beads and then I came home to find out that my family was going tho the baseball game that night and I was on my own. I had planned on making grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches for everyone, but being alone, I instead had a multigrain baguette with triple creme brie and tomato slices. It was a wonderful dinner. The only bad part  was that I ate over half of the baguette, .38 lb. of cheese and two tomatoes. 

I picked up my beads today. I made nineteen (I was off in my estimate of more than twenty) but still quite a great effort. Here are some of them.Leaky Pen (blue green) dark ivory and copper green mostly on the ones above.Silver foil created the speckled look on the first three on the left and the other two have opal brown frit on white (one has copper green on half). Below more dark ivory pebbles, I just love them.

so much for sewing

I am officially sick of sewing. I forced myself to finish one more owl and then it is back to needle felting and knitting. I have not knit much at all since summer began. I suppose it is a wintery craft for me... But I need to get back to it. What I really want to be doing is sitting straight with perfect posture on a stool at More Fire, in front of fire and glass and focused on nothing but color and shape. There is something so wonderfully fulfilling about creating a glass bead. I no longer care that this new obsession has wiped out my bank account. I no longer care that I am spending time doing nothing but enjoying myself. I no longer care that I have a messy house, a stinky dog (and rat for that matter). I just want to get lost in a little world of molten color.

Empowered

I feel a lot less helpless today. I saw Inglourious Basterds last night and it gave me courage and stamina. Simply, the best movie I have ever seen. As a film, it is brilliant.As a story it is captivating, thrilling and full of feeling.

It has shocking visual stills, gorgeous scenes and scenery and unbelievably interesting nods to other

cinematic masterpieces.

You can probably tell that I really enjoyed the character of Shosanna Dreyfus, played by Melanie Laurent. You can read the NY Times review here. Although I disagree with much of the text, I did like this group of sentences -

As usual Mr. Tarantino gives you a lot to chew on, though there’s plenty to gag on as well. Much depends on whether you can just groove on his framing and staging, his swooping crane shots, postmodern flourishes (Samuel L. Jackson in voice-over explaining the combustibility of nitrate prints) and gorgeously saturated colors, one velvety red in particular.

I did not know it is a somewhat re-make of obscure spaghetti WWII and forgotten B-movie classic,

The Inglorious Bastards. This really isn't important. I just thought it was interesting.

Finally, there was some sun today and I was able to get photos of gloves taken.

These are made from recycled repurposed sweater sleeves that have been fulled (felted) in the washing machine. The gloves are simply the ends of the sleeves of the sweater. The tops are the ribbing of the sleeve, the other ends are rough cut as the thumb hole is too. I am trying to get them posted now and then we are off to shop for school supplies.

urchins

I found these lovely little paintings at Karingrow's Etsy shop. I wonder if I could make a glass beads to look like these? I am quite nostalgic for the sea and the sand and the sun that usually accompany them. I wish I could be Ponyo racing across the crest of the wave.  Although I also wish I could be Tuturo, sleeping in the cavern of a giant oak tree.

treading water

I had a dream last night. I was on a barge that was up against a dock. I was waiting for something, so I picked up a magazine and sat in a deck chair at the back railing near the water.

Then a ten story wall of water came at the barge and swept me away with it. The barge tipped over and I was almost caught and smashed underneath it, but I missed it by a meter and ended up treading water with many others.

My grandmother, Mum mum, was also there treading water with us. (She died over twenty years ago). There was a lot of debris floating around us, so I grabbed something and gave it to my grandmother. I said, "Mum mum, see if this will keep you afloat." Then I told all the others to get something to hold onto. And then another wall of water crashed down on us, knocking us out and sucking all the water away with it. When I came too, there was only mud and rocks now and I saw a person lying on the rocky bottom of what used to be a body of water. I also saw a mermaid lying near by, passed out. I picked both of them up and started carrying them towards an embankment that was high up the side of the edge of the muddy hollowed-out sea space. This wall had a railing on it, it was like a promenade at the seashore, and it had hundreds of people on it watching us.

So what is going on here? Is the mermaid my nonsensical, idealistic side and the other person the pragmatic in me? And I'm trying to save them both...

Obviously I treading water in a tsunami...

and I don't know what I am going to do.

Morning Moon

It is a dark and rainy day. I have been laying in bed since 7 am and just wishing it were night so I could sleep all day. My brain is so cluttered with what ifs and my house is cluttered with stuff. There is not a room you can't walk though with tip toeing in fear of your life (in both my brain and my house). I better go get at it. 

Somehow I'm leading someone else's life 

I cut a star down with my knife

 And right now I still see the way the moon plays this tune

 Though our nights died

someone else's life  by Joshua Radin

Tuesday Torches

I don't why the bigger the picture is - the smaller it shows up on this blog...

But I had a good three hours at More Fire on Tuesday. I made some more simple beads for necklace collections as well as some amazing focal beads.  I am now adding rose quartz on that list of necklaces. Hope to get ten or twelve of them by the end of the summer.
This one is mostly dark ivory with celadon frit and a couple of lines of copper green, I must have put a stripe of transparent in the top part - I don't remember doing it though.

I can't remember how this one started out... But I know it has black on the top and bottom, lots of celadon frit and a couple of stripes of a dark ivory stringer.

Did you know that there are hundreds of songs titled Some Else's Life? Here's one for the day. There will be one tomorrow too.

Lauralee had a headache, I bet you know the feeling
Bangin' your head all day long against the glass ceiling
Lauralee made her mind up, she had enough
She jumped the fence right there and then to go someplace she's never been

She waived the nine to five a big goodbye, she just got tired
Of living someone else's life
She heard the sky is full of stars in Buenos Aires
There gonna says she crazy
Cashing in her ira baby (v2 maxin' out her visa, baby)
She's gonna start living
It's time to start living
Someone else's life
Someone else's life

Maryanne was a waitress, started out as part-time
Six years on she's in a cocktail apron doing hardtime
Maryanne called her sister said put my stuff in storage
Yah and feed the cat, I don't know when I'm coming back

There's a whole new world
Waiting for you girl

She waived the nine to five a big goodbye, she just got tired
Of living someone else's life
She heard the sky is full of stars in Buenos Aires
If you're gonna say she's crazy
You better say it in Spanish baby
She's gonna start living
It's time to start living
It's time to start living
Time start living
Someone else's life
Someone else's life
Hey
Someone else's life

Jo Dee Messina "Someone Else's Life

owls and other

I put together about five of these stuffed owl pillow like things. I am not sure they are worth the effort. They just don't make me smile like the Foundlings do. But maybe that is not their fault. Not a whole lot makes me smile these days. I don't like myself much, so I don't like anything I make. School is looming over me like a dark cloud about to rain ink rain. I do not know where I am working this year but it will definitely not be the position I was in last year - or the building (my choice, as I will not, cannot work there). I am waiting to hear from a private school as my own district made me fill out an entire application and interview for an elementary position (for which I was hired in the first place). I am at such a crossroads.

I want to make art full time, but I wonder if I won't get depressed from being all alone all day and from being broke. I want to teach, but I worry about the stress and schedule problems that my working causes at home. I want to be happy and have the people around me be happy. It is days like these I hope no one actually reads this blog.

Sunday Stuff

Sunday my husband and son took all our junk to the Public Market community yard sale. We have a beautiful clean garage and a lot less stuff now. Thanks hon!
I of course continue to purchase new junk and found lots more zippers and this lovely thread at an estate sale. Above is my attempt at creating an artistic photo of the thread. And below...the shoe molds I did not buy, I just took their photo and played around with it in photoshop.

Mad Men

Mad Men finally aired again last night. My favorite line is when Betty says to Don that their daughter has gotten into his tools like a little lesbian and then she smiles the

most lovely,warmhearted, knowing smile ever smiled. Mostly I just want to look at Betty and Joan for an hour.

If you are a fan of the show you should read this wonderful article What Frank O’Hara Tells Us About Don Draper. The article discusses the use of Frank O'hara's collection of poems titled Meditations in an Emergency with in the context of the character development in the show. I have never read O'hara's work, but here is a taste of the article...

[O'hara was] A gay man, he was an accomplished and well-known poet and published a number of well-received volumes before his untimely death at age forty. He worked as an assistant curator in the Museum of Modern Art and was close to a number of the most important painters of that time, including Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, and Joan Mitchell. These biographical details do not much connote the life of the Madison Avenue lifestyle of Don Draper.

However, there is in O’Hara’s poetry a crisis of identity and identification that very much evokes Don’s life. “To the Harbormaster,” the first poem in Meditations in an Emergency, begins,

I wanted to be sure to reach you

though my ship was on the way it got caught

in some moorings.

I am always tying up

and then deciding to depart.

I hope this makes you realize that you should read the entire piece.

What Frank O’Hara Tells Us About Don Draper

Posted on August 17, 2009 by fisherprof

yart

We stopped at a number of great yard sales Saturday morning (I just missed posting this on Saturday as it is now 12:15 Sunday morning). My favorite find was this package of sewing needles. It was pristine until it bent in my bag. There was a sewing cabinet full of paraphernalia. They wanted $30 for the whole shebang... but I didn't need the whole shebang. I picked out the needles and a bag of a dozen or so zippers. I love love love old metal zippers. and in the bottom of the bag I found these various containers full of pins and beads. And that metal ring with a spring around it. I don't know what for what the metal ring with the spring is used. Anyone out there know?

shadows

While I was taking pics of the glass beads yesterday I noticed the beautiful shadows that the giant thisle was casting. So with bees swarming around, I got two great shots. The second one actually has the shadow of a bee! I love how its wing is just barely there.

Tuesday Torch Time

I am creating a stash of these dark ivory pepbbles. I think I may etch off the shine, add some mother of pearl and shell beads to make a necklace for myself. I have over ten now.These blue and green ones are the beginning of a necklace that is going to hopefully be a Christmas gift for someone special...

sauna

Allen's sister Donna and her daughter, Kaitlyn came to visit last week. They brought Allen this amazing  sauna that they found on the curb! If you do not know,my husband, Allen, makes sculpture using found vintage objects. You can see his work here.

generation A

Aster gave me permission to post these photos she took of herself. She is extremely artistic, has a great eye for interesting composition and is really good at drawing. She is taking private drawing lessons for the next couple of weeks and I am excited for her to be challenged and to discover what drawing on a regular schedule can do.