Saturday, April 26, 2008

Art Journal, ATCs and 4 x 4s

Come on in, we'll have a cup of tea, share our favorite art supplies and create in each others journals this afternoon.
A couple of pages of my notes from ArtFest. I was trying to be free with drawing and writing without thought to the look while in my classes this year. I like how they turned out.
I love to use my hands when painting -- and then it's so much fun to make prints of my hands (and photographs) rather than washing all that great colour off. I made a lot of prints of my hands page after page in my art journal and am in the process of filling out the rest of the page with other colours, quotations, journaling and more.
Really enjoying drawing the buddha -- and still painting the mandalas.
And the shrine shape that I draw into bird cages now and then too.
Side One of my contribution to the Dorm 202 Fatbook (ArtFest)

And now, back to the paint!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

and now there are three...

...as we grow and learn about this baby we are about to see. I am so in love with Sparky (as he's due in July). And I love making these mandalas. Another two this size in the works down in the basement studio.





Yesterday was so beautiful. We went to interview a birth center. Loved it. Booked it (last one in for July, apparently there's a baby boom in the Seattle area this July). Most important baby thing done! Then we celebrated by driving out to Snoqualmie Falls. It was so sunny and beautiful, and then a bit of hail and rain, but mostly it was so sunny and beautiful. I do love me some mountains, especially with a dusting (or more) of snow. A glorious day all around.

Monday, April 21, 2008

craziness...

...and *so* beautiful! I love this little side garden and the sculpture. (All these photos are from yesterday, it's quite sunny and dry today - so far :))
Before church and the snow is coming down in big fluffy chunks.
love the rainforestyness of this basketball hoop.
The apple tree is budding...will this snow be a problem with apple production? I really hope not. I'm looking forward to picking an apple before church each morning this early fall.
my footprints to and from the apple tree.

More Mandala painting going on. Love them. Will post more photos soon.

Friday, April 18, 2008

wild weather


All the rain and hail and snow means that it is always green here. So many shades of green. It really is so beautiful here.
The *big*big* one i'm working on. I'm super excited about this one...I have special plans, stay tuned.
The hand-drawn mandala is working its magic.

Keep signing up for the circle journal. So far 7 folks have signed up!

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Calling my Art Tribe friends....

Please join a round of Circle Journals!

Dorm 202, artists friends, family members...

Now that we are through the ArtFest fun and trading making I want to continue that art tribe feeling. A couple of theme ideas: a particular colour theme, winter holidays, rituals (birthday, wedding, baby showers…), kitchen (include some recipes), wine, coffee, tea, farmer’s markets, our studios, quotations.

My dream, 4 - 10 fun & creative fellow artists to join me. It doesn't matter if you haven't done this before! I am especially interested in meeting folks in the Seattle area, and handing off the journals at coffeehouses during art meet-up times. We will happily include folks we need to mail to as well, including international folks (please let me know if you do not want to ship international and we will work it out when coming up with the circle rotation).

Here are the basics:
1- Brainstorm and choose a theme that speaks to you. A theme you will want to see what other peoples take is on it. One that inspires you enough that you will want to look at this journal over and over.

2- Design your journal. Choose a lightweight one since we are mailing. 6x6 or 8x8 is good. Any type is OK.

3- Mail your journal to your assigned person (or plan a meet up with them to hand off) and it will make its way through the circle to be filled by your fellow journalers. Be prepared for a trip to the post office every other week to mail a journal Priority Mail (or First Class if you are sending early within the 10 days you have the journal) onto the next person.

4- When you receive a journal in the mail and have 10 days from the day you receive it to complete a layout for it. I think visual art journal vs scrapbook, I will use primarily acrylic paint, pens and paper bits. But any medium you choose to use is great. You can go digital, collage, scrap, stamping, paint, drawing...whatever medium is speaking to you at the time. I really enjoyed the wide variety I saw at ArtFest. I plan on using my best supplies and ideas when completing layouts and will keep the person who the journal belongs to in mind because I want them to be happy with what I created for them. If you will be on vacation, have big stuff happening in your life during the 10 days you will have a journal, work ahead (based on the posted photos of the journal) so that you can slip your work into the journal and not slow down the progress of the journal.

5- You MUST post your layouts. A Blog is not required, you can use a flickr account, or a message board or something of that sort. All your fellow circle journalers must be able to view your page progress.

6- After you complete all the layouts your journal should be coming home soon and will arrive back to you filled full fat and happy with layouts of your theme.
To sign up, comment on this post. If we don't "know" each other, that’s fabulous, I’ll meet some new artist bloggers! But you have to promise to stick to the time line AND post layouts as you complete them. *Seriously*

We can expect the Circle Journal project to take 2-5 months, depending on the number of participants and whether or not people take the full 10 days to send the journal on. To see some incredible ideas see: http://shopgirl.typepad.com/photos/circle_journal_2007/index.html

This invitation is open through March or until we get 10 artists signed up. Please email me with questions/suggestions.

Thanks to Andrea at -- http://www.shopgirl.typepad.com/ for the idea and the link to the great typepad photo samples.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Artfest, part 4

My very own Mandala. I'm not sure if I'm done with it yet. I may put another wash - over the bold blues in the lotus petals. Originally my sketch included a crow off center in the middle of the mandala...
Saturday was unbelievably gorgeous here! And *everyone* was out and about. We walked our trail. Amid crazy bicyclists who think they are the bosses of the trail. Then we got our drinks - Jamba Juice for c and Tully's decaf wet cappucino for me and headed to the mountains...to an outlet mall for baby shopping. We'd heard there was a baby furniture outlet...no one there had heard such a thing, so that search continues. We did find lots of other special items though. Couldn't resist some cute ocean-y baby clothes, a few maternity items and a special dress for a big fancy event in May.
I found them! Yippee! So this is the basics of it. Find a photo. Glue it to wood (special wood). Use Jewelry saw (my jewelry saw, totally sub-par, need to buy a new one). Embellish. Put on chosen perch (I have to find my stash of wooden blocks to complete this one).
It's getting there. Though I have run into a problem with the lack of scrap yarn. It's 335 stitches on No. 9 needles...it does eat up the scrap yarn. We bought a couple of balls of yarn from this sweet entrepreneur at the Fremont Sunday Market - she buys up thrift store sweaters, rips 'em up, washes, stretchs and re-skeins them. We bought two to be more "background" colours of this toddler blanket. I'm always thinking of this when I go to a thrift store, never seem to find anything in the yarn weight I'd like. She might get there first.
Cutest. Making another for the Baby Shower Basket I'm making for our Simple Elegance Auction at church. Have to make baby socks, hat and a blanket too.
Two Anahata prints and a miny original collage by Karen O'Brien added to make a much more interesting vignette in the studio. My tree and my little wish house. The gold star and pink button wreath are from my Handmade Christmas Ornament swap.

ArtFest, part 3

Just before leaving for ArtFest I received my set of the prayer flag collaboration! Excellent work friends!
The packaging! Thank you so much! I love it.



I love this transfer image. I'm so excited to use this new technique (once I find the "horrible" paper that is essential to this process)
Now, I have to find the first Tully's and I'm all good with photos of the great first coffeehouses (already have Strictly Organic and Peet's). I'm not a fan of Starbucks coffee - too bitter and burnt for my taste - but you cannot argue it's significance in the coffee world.

In my excitement to get my camera out of my purse to take this photo I tripped over an oddly placed step in the sidewalk. Oow. I have the bruises on my knees to show for my thrill of the captured photograph.
On the way to the Fremont Sunday Market.
Long, long line to get fresh, hot donuts in the middle of Pike Place Market. We didn't wait, but I had to capture this tip jar. It was Sunday. I didn't "fall for this photograph, thankfully!)

The rest of the story by David Moyer

("reprint from The Christian Century, April 22, 2008...not available as a link yet, so I typed it out)
Jeremiah Wright needs no defense from me. Anyone who has built a congregation from 87 members to some 8,000 and whose congregation has created models of ministry in one of the poorest areas of Chicago has a body of work that speaks form itself. A recent press release from Trinity United Church of Christ, issued by its new senior pastor, Otis Moss III, notes that on Sunday mornings alone, over 36 years, Pastor Wright has spoken for a total of 207,792 minutes. The video clips from YouTube that are repeatedly being shown represent perhaps 15 to 20 seconds of that time - or .0000012 of his preaching ministry at Trinity. Yet many are quick to judge him, his church and, indeed, the UCC denomination on this statistically ridiculous sample.

Would I have chosen the exact words spoken by Wright in the clips that are on the airways? No. But, unlike Wright, I have not preached to the same congregation for 36 years and loved a church into remarkable growth in ministry and seen generations being born, mature and return to God. I have not ministered regularly to people in terrible poverty and been confronted in my study week after week with texts that provide a dramatic contrast to the scene of boarded-up buildings in some of my parishioners' neighborhoods. I have not faced the challenge of finding a "word from the Lord" to people who, no matter their success, daily face the realities of racism.

The psalm for Easter Sunday, Psalm 118, begins and ends with these words: "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures for ever." If you go the Trinity UCC Web site, you will hear Wright's voice shout these words with great power and warmth. This could have represented his preaching just as well as the clips that media outlets have chosen.

Put yourself in the study at Trinity and look out on the city and juxtapose those texts for Easter Sunday and find your voice in the context of poverty, racism and poor-quality education and health care. Any authentic word of hope in such a situation will be a hard word, one not easy to hear. But an easy word isn't likely to be a saving word, and that is something the Wright knows. Good news cuts through life and it can wound, but Easter tells us that God in Christ heals those wounds and "makes us strong at the broken places."

On Palm Sunday I was in Milwaukee to share in the second anniversary service at Grace United Church of Christ. The wonderful celebration reminded me not only of Grace's story but the significant role in it played by Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church. Grace was established after Mt. Tabor United Church of Christ voted to end its ministry and decided to give its building to the Wisconsin UCC Conference with the Easter hope that a new ministry could arise on that location. About a year after the conference received the building, I drove to 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago and visited with Wright. I told him that we wanted to start a new African-American congregation, but we had no idea how to do it. I told him that we had engaged in a capital campaign and had money to start a church. I said we were not asking for money but guidance and help in identifying leadership for this new church.

We met for more than an hour, and as I got up to leave, Wright handed me a card with the name of Wanda J. Washington, at that time a senior associate on the Trinity pastoral staff. He indicated that he thought Washington would be interested and would be a good pastor for a church start.

Not long after this meeting, I met with Pastor Washington, and she came up to Milwaukee to se the church building and to meet with some members and association and conference leaders. She discerned that God was leading her to this new challenge, and we began to make plans for a new church.

Once Washington indicated her willingness to come to Milwaukee, we received a letter from the mission board of Trinity, saying that it would pay her salary and benefits for the first year. In the second year Trinity gave the conference and Grace antoher significant gift. When Washington prayed to discern her call to Milwaukee, a group of Trinity women met with her and prayed for and with her regularly, calling on the Holy Spirit's guidance in this life-changing decision.

When plans were moving forward to have an opening service for Grace in 2006, a carload of more of Trinity people came to Milwaukee nearly every week-end to clean, paint and otherwise prepare the building for the first Grace service. When Palm Sunday 2006 came, more than 300 people came from Trinity to Milwaukee to ensure that the service would be well-attended and Spirit-filled. Trinity sent more than 20 deacons to serve, plus a team of trained ushers and security people. It sent 15 women who prepared a feast to follow the service. It also sent one of its women's choirs, and for the first month of Grace's life it sent musical leaders to lend their extraordinary gifts to Grace's worship. Some individual members of Trinity tithed to Grace for the first year to offer additional financial support.

On this past Palm Sunday a bus from Trinity brought a group to the anniversary service, among them some deacons who came to again serve the congregation's spiritual needs and to support the pastor. I counted some 80 people from Trinity at the celebration.

All this support -- financial, spiritual, physical, material -- was the result of one visit to Jeremiah Wright's office. A new congregation, a critical new ministry to a large African-American population, came from this one visit. My hour with Wright was probably even less than .0000012 of the time he spent on meetings over the past 36 years. I wish that some scenes conveying the grace and generosity he and Trinity showed to us in Wisconsin would be included in video clips somewhere.

Wright was the preacher of our conference's annual meeting last June. He was invited because Grace led the worship, and we wanted to show our appreciation for Trinity's exceptional gifts. Prior to the service, Wright and I were eating dinner when his phone buzzed; he receive a text message telling him that someone in the Trinity congregation had died. He asked my pardon and for the next 20 minutes made phone calls to his assistant and to members of the pastoral staff. "Who's on call tonight? Remember, we need to respond to the family in one hour! Who is available to do the service? Let me know when someone has followed through." Though 200 miles from his church, he was still pastorally engaged, seeing that the church did what it is committed to doing - being with a grieving family and bringing a word of hope and a presence of love.

Jeremiah Wright's preaching in its totality, in its African-American context, in its willingness to struggle with the hardest of biblical texts, in its recognition of the essential role of confession in forgiveness and judgment in grace - conducted in the midst of a vibrant African-American community in a major city - this preaching helped to build a church. This preaching would not have yielded the kind of fruit that it did without the absolute clarity of mission that also brought to life a new congregation in another state - or without the deep compassion and clarity about the pastoral vocation that led Wright to pause in a busy speaking schedule to minister to a family that had lost a loved one. This is a part of the story that is essential in giving a fair and just account of Jeremiah Wright's ministry.

****************

Friday, April 11, 2008

ArtFest, part 2

I finally finished editing all *489* photos from my ArtFest weekend! Yowza! Many of them will be on my flickr account later. I really have to upload my TurboTax and finished filing my taxes now that I've cleared all of that off of our laptop.
I'm such a fan of a good patina. Any hints for this result?
and this! how did you get these bottle caps so funky but clean looking? love them.
I do love well placed glitter, don't you? The mandalas...so beautiful. I have a mandala colouring book that a friend gifted me with years ago. I love it. I've done a few hand drawn mandalas in my time...the projects from this class have *truly* inspired me to make some *large* ones. I'm thinking ocean-y ones for the baby's room. And I'm really drawn to some of the pink tones for the studio wall.
Love so much about Fort Worden.
Dianne Trautmann...fabulous journaler. Love this piece with the portion of tree as wings. Very talented.
Also by Dianne.
Loved this book too. Cannot really imagine "giving up" a day of classes to take a two day class though. Love the cut-out shape (I've always been partial to shrines and doorways).

Oh, the colour combinations I have yet to try. So taking this class next year. And playing with more colours and going to Daniel Smith to load up on new colours, new papers, new brushes.
aren't they all wonderful?
don't you want to touch them all and look at them closer?
This box was stuffed full to leave at the Art Asylum. I brought back about half as much stuff...the cylinder tin is full of my journaling pens and pencils, I didn't take them out for the photograph. Saw some great pieces of art with bits and bobs from my cast offs! I hate when that happens, makes it so hard to get rid of stuff! Why didn't I think of that use?
It looks so peaceful and beautiful, right? Oh the secrets of an artists filled dorm...full of creative energy that cannot be contained.

more later, after the taxes are *done*