Family can inspire creativity...

Sad news - my youngest aunt - my sister's youngest sister - died last week after a year-long battle with AML - leukemia. She was only 59 - nine years older than I am. It makes you take a long, hard look at what you are doing with your life.

And creativity is - and needs to be - a major part of my life.

Thinking about the world, and metaphorically, how it is like the sea

The following is part of a comment I made on one of my yahoo groups (bell-jar artists) that I felt was important enough for me to post here.

"It seems that the ways of the world toss us hard" (referring to another poster's comment about life);

"I find that if I remember I am significant as an individual, and a single voice can change things, but at the same time, I am a small part of a very large universe, where there are many voices (I DO hear them sometimes when no one else does...), many souls, much creativity that ebbs and flows like tides...(keeping with the imagery deb began with...). I find the metaphor of our soul being a lighthouse very interesting; beyond where our light falls, there is much we do not know about, and we must count on the sea to carry it to our shores...some may be detritus (junk) and some may be treasures beyond measure..."

I love the souls on this list. We may not talk alot, but there is a shared rhythm that gives us a place to seek peace, and understanding, and focus when we lose our way.

Here is some art to help you reflect on how I see my world right now, with the snow and the peace that it provides (as long as I don't have to go out and drive in it!!)

New year, new thoughts, new ART?

Well, I have new alcohol ink stuff to post, as well as the Christmas card I created for my cyberscribes Christmas card exchange, which was a delight - especially in the cards that I received. But I'm nursing a cold, and I haven't scanned the items, so you (my blog-followers...) will just have to wait with bated (or is that baited?) breath for me to get them scanned and posted.

In the meantime, I want to say that I hope 2009 is an art-filled, spiritually-enlightening year for many of us, as we have to wean ourselves away from the man-made consumeristic products that we can shop for in our malls, and instead look back longingly to items that have the handmade element. We can create our art without divesting ourselves of our nest eggs (although, I will admit, that I have acquired ALL of the colors of Tim Holtz's alcohol inks - that was my Christmas gift to "me" - now I just have to figure out how all his creative names relate to the actual colors...lol!). We can use wire, rusted car parts, rusted bottle caps, snippets of fabric (or, old garments retrieved from the local thrift store), leftover paints, pages torn from books and pasted onto recycled board, pictures torn from magazines that are retrieved from waiting rooms (too old to be of any use for actual news...) - all these are ways we can find material for our art.

So - let's not let the poor economy get us down! Instead, let's do our homesteading at home, in our artwork! We throw away so much that we can re-use to CREATE! My challenge to you is to focus on one piece over the next week, and link it to this blog!

Z-tile adventures giving me great ideas!

Wire woman is doing some great stuff on the yahoo group z-tile adventures. Her group is based on the original Zentangles site and designs. Check out Maria & Rick's work at Zentangle.com. I've done a couple z-tiles but not in the official size of 3 1/2 inches square. I've gotta dig out my cool handmade papers and cut up a couple to do tiles. Zentangle site suggests using cold press 110# paper - I think (not referencing site offhand...) - and Pigma Micron pens. I use black rollerballs alot for just regular writing and doodling. But like the z-tile adventures site notes, Zentangling is NOT simply doodling. There are specific patterns - what they refer to as "tangles" - that you learn. Then, as you are decorating a tile, often with a string originally created on your tile, you enter a "meditative state" as you create your Zentangle. Cool stuff.
Here's an old piece I made while listening to a lecture, before I even knew Zentangles existed. I like the piece. I had to cut it off the paper I originally drew it on, and I scanned it against a sheet of lavendar cardstock. The repetitive patterns are what make it Zentangle-ish.

"OLD" art to post

Well, since I'm a bit "blank" at the moment, I am going to post a piece of art that I created a couple years ago, for an exhibition that was held at the Washington Museum in Kansas (I think I am remembering that right...). It was by invitation, and was a punch-card exhibit. You remember the old punch cards that we used to use when we first began doing computer stuff? You had to punch holes in the cards in order to run your program?

Well, these became obsolete, obviously, and this institution found a huge box of these old, unused punch cards, and they sent out a call for artists to participate in creating something with these cards. You had to send an SASE and they sent two punch cards for you to create your art with. Your piece had to fit into a standard #10 envelope. Anyway, here is the inside and outside of the piece I created, which I called ABCXYZ ROYGBV (the second set of letters being the colors in a rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet). I created a sort of mini-book, with a corded and beaded binding.

Hope you like it! I'd love to hear comments about this piece. I loved making it, for sure!

New creations

Doing some polymer clay work, making beads - not finished yet but will photograph when done. Posting a magnet, envelope & card made recently for a Creative Junction friend. Comments or questions welcome!