Happy Red-White-Blue Day

Happy Fourth of July, friends!  Eat hot dogs. Watch baseball. Enjoy your friends and family. Thank our lucky 50 stars, even - nay, especially! - in this crazy time for our country.

Mixing metaphors

I wrote out a bunch of metaphors and sayings, cut them in half and mixed them up in a bowls, drew from each and matched new ones. My favorite was "The apple of my...anger."

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.

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.

Catching up...

Now that the longer subbing gig is over, it's back to art and catching up. Three months behind in the monthly postcard exchange.  August....check!

A couple of versions of the carved pansies I just finally finished (although I started them in August!)

Note added a month later:  I pretty much decided that ain't no pansy.  Later versions are morning glories. As they should be! 

Back to Books

…about something other than Budapest, Amsterdam, and points in-between.

carved image by me

I love translated mysteries from Scandinavia, Iceland, Italy, and France. Camilla Lackberg's series is a favorite of mine. This is her latest and my favorite so far. I have a hard time putting it down.

Diane Moline

and just also started this one and can already tell it will be as good as Devil in White City and In the Garden of Beasts.

Diane Moline

January Kings

....a postcard of some carved images that I exchanged in a carving group awhile back.

The chair to sit in....

Adirondack chairs and large letters handcarved.

#99 - Resolution

The same as always. I resolve to get through the ginormous pile of reading I always have around: library books, bookstore purchases, long time wannareads, magazines and news features. I am hopeless.

Ginormous is a new word my students are using a lot. Rarely do I pick up such hybrid vocabulary until it's already out the fashion door. But I like this word.

I'm writing this on a here-and-there gloomy day that doesn't know what it wants to be but it's the first day of my spring vacation and I'm also watching the first Cub game of the new year. The season starts on Monday and I'll be home to watch it! Sweet pleasure.

Image was carved and I did draw it! Hope that counts.