An ant haiku

Another piece in the Sonheim 365 series I am participating in this year.  I unarchived a piece I did many years ago when I was stamping a lot more. I really loved putting this one together. Our task was to write a haiku about ants, so I decided to use this one from the ORCS Official Files. Not sure why I did it in purple but oh well.

The cave you fear...

holds the treasure you seek. Another way to say "Take the risk."

Gluestick resist enhanced with colored pencil, enlarged Ken Brown/RSA stamp image.

Radical playfulness

That's a term I heard while viewing a video from Will Sonheim. Artists take risks putting their work up front and one has to be ready to be the clown whose nose is poked and treat the promise of errors and mishaps playfully. Have a sense of "radical playfulness, " a phrase I have fallen in love with. Teachers in classrooms emphasize this all the time: not to be afraid of mistakes, that learning happens best with errors and blunders, not successes. The perhaps-momentary feeling of foolishness, disequilibrium, can propel our steps forward or our sense of wonder, fun, or discovery if we let ourselves open to it. And don't take ourselves so seriously.

The clown images are parts and pieces made to mix and mingle. I like to carve stamps. I have been carving out of rubber erasers since the early 80's and have seen the art of carving go through attention periods of highs and lows. This is also true for my own engagement in the process. I remember when I owned a gift store and got so weary of the phone and bills and always having the latest and greatest that I took a personal retreat away from it all. I rented a B&B in Santa Barbara with all my carving tools and supplies and spent the entire weekend in the room carving my brains out. It felt so relaxing and emptied my mind of stress. It was like therapy, only cheaper. (I think. The room must have cost a penny or two, being Santa Barbara.) Skill wise, I am only a middling carver. There are wonderful carvers out there - Julie Fei-Fan Balzer is a prolific carver and shares her awesome skills on her blog. Julie Hagen Bloch. Genuine Zlatkis. Teesha and Tracy Moore. Andie Mayr.   Google will send you to forums and books and videos and tutorials if you get interested.

On creativity

Pan Pastels

Just dropped by to say

Serving up pink today

Today's entry in Carla Sonheim's 365 Class.

It snowed last night! Actually, lots of it, sometime in the space of 4-5 hours while we all slept. The neighbors built a snowman in the middle of our cul-de-sac to celebrate. 

Me, I kept busy inside still trying to find places and spaces for my art things. 

One thing I am certain of:

I have too many rubberstamps and I better start using them. I've whittled down my inventory somewhat, still have some to go, and am unmounting them all. For Carla's class, I am making a rule to use a stamp image somehow on every page. And I shall continue to downsize.