Eleven days

The pleasure of the ICAD challenge.

Don't think.

Use what's at hand.

Use materials you hardly ever use.

Try something new.

 

Revert to your comfort zone.
 

There's nothing at stake.

It's just an index card.

 

And yet my index cards over the last four years are some of my favorite things I've ever done.

  

And the scrap pile gets marginally smaller day by day.

 

What's not to love?

my date stamp said 7-31-14

It's ICAD season, and I can't resist.

This will be my fifth summer.

Here's card #1

I grabbed my date stamp to mark the back, and not coincidentally, it was set to 7/31/14.  Clearly the last time I used it was the last day of 2014 ICAD.

Here's to the 61 humble index cards of 2015.

Will you be playing along?

Organization

We mixed-media & collage people tend to accumulate a lot of paper.

It can be awfully hard to tame the ever-growing collection and organize in such as way that it's useful.

I found a system a few years ago that works for me.

I bought this mammoth file cabinet at a thrift store for $20.

It's ugly as sin, but it's well made, with deep drawers that roll smoothly.

 
It's squeezed into a corner of the art room, conveniently located next to my chaotic work table.

One whole drawer is devoted to images, sorted by categories that make sense to me.  (Animals, people, nature, architecture, body parts, etc.)

 That drawer also includes folders for security envelopes, old book pages, interesting packaging...

Another drawer is devoted to my hand painted papers, sorted by color:

 Within each color file there's even a separate folder to contain the smaller bits of colored paper that would get lost among the full sheets.

This drawer has folders of painted deli paper, painted tissue paper, altered magazine pages, multicolored marble paper....

In addition to those drawers, I have this little portfolio of magazine images sorted by color.  Sometimes when I'm working monochromatically I don't want to go looking through all my subject folders (Is there something red in the furniture file?  how about in the insect file?).  Nights when I'm sitting in front of the TV I'll grab a magazine and add colored images to this file.

 

 This bin holds specialty papers - little bits of colored rice paper and mulberry paper.  Pretty origami paper.  Cool vintage wallpaper your friend Mandy sent you...
 


 I have not one, but two, cigar boxes of text.  (one for small phrases cut from books, the other for larger bits.)
  


And then there's the junk basket.  This is where all new materials tend to land.  Anything that gets mailed to me, or that I pick up off the side of the road, or find in the recycling bin gets tossed in here.  Often this is the only source of collage materials I end up using!  Whatever is in front of my eyes is most attractive.
When the basket gets full to overflowing I take a half hour and sort it into categories and file it away.

That's what works for me.
Thanks to Marcie for your question, reminding me that I took all these pictures a year ago (in response to someone else's question) and never actually wrote the blog post.

What works for you?
Do you have a system?
Do tell!

Thriving

I spent part of the weekend making art with Mandy and Lynn.  Lynn confessed she'd been worried about me because I haven't been blogging.

It made me realize I haven't stopped because I'm miserable or unwell - I've disappeared because I'm happy.

 

My new job is somewhat all-consuming, and that explains part of my absence.  But the job is good - I'm really loving it and I'm so glad I took the position.  The people are wonderful, I have strong leaders all around me, I was able to jump right in and contribute my professional strengths, I have big plans for the next school year, and I'm feeling challenged in the best possible way.  The learning curve can wear me out at times, making me more likely to come home and relax with a book or TV than make art, but that's not the whole explanation for the four month blogging hiatus.

I've had way busier times of my life and I've managed to make art and blog nearly every day in spite of it.  Upon reflection, I realize what drove me to this creative process and on-line community was sadness and desperation.  I needed an outlet, I needed escape, I needed to feel I was creating and contributing.

 

Now, I'm happy.  I'm relaxed. In spite of the demands that come with learning how to do my job, I feel I've finally achieved some balance.  Work is good, family is good, personal time is good.  Work and life are not keeping me from art.  Instead, because I'm happy, I feel good about choosing to spend my time other ways - be it reading, or cooking or just hanging out with my guys.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm still making stuff.

Another reason I haven't been blogging is because I've immersed myself in improving my acrylic technique and developing more complex abstract paintings.  I have a dozen canvases propped around the studio in various stages of completion. I'm working my way through two of Julie Pritchard & Chris Cozen's classes, as well as two from Karine Swenson.

I've given myself permission to straight-on copy the examples made in class in order to focus on technique without getting all hung up on originality.

I'm learning a ton, and my skills are improving, but since I'm not doing my own work, I don't feel like posting pictures yet.

 

Luckily the 24 hours I spent with Mandy and Lynn were incredibly productive.  In between all the laughing and talking and eating, we all did a ton of work.  The images on this page are just some of the pieces I made at Mandy's table. 

What I will blame on the job is my total absence from visiting all of your blogs and flickr accounts.  I realize now just how much blog reading I did during the work day in my old job.  That's not going to happen with this job. And with less time and energy in the evenings, creating is a bigger priority than keeping up with social media.  I miss my on-line relationships, and I know someday soon it won't feel so overwhelming to pick them back up again.

In the meantime, know that I'm well, and thanks for worrying.

Three element collages

This week's project for the class I'm taking was to create small collages using only three elements and then name them.

I decided to exclusively use magazine images for my collages and I spent the day pushing pieces into different configurations.

I only needed to make six for class, but of course I made a few extras (though you'll notice a few only have two elements - perhaps they aren't done.)

Naming them was hard.  I could only come up with titles that were too obvious and literal.  I resorted to opening my box of random text and selecting titles from there.  My course materials say "Titles are very important, they invite the viewer into each piece and also give them a hint as to what the work may be about."

You could spend a lot of time pondering the deep meaning of these titles, or you can picture me doubled over laughing as I matched collages with phrases.

(Why Horses Paint)

Clashes Worsen Misery

Educational Opportunities for All

How Sparkling Can You Be?

Learn Meat Cutting

Museum of Where We've Been and Where We're Going

Now Everyone Can Be an Astronaut

Rubber and the World of Mr. Jones

Rural Americans and the Rest of Us

Young People and the Need for Planning

Bad Playground for Raccoons

Start Your Child on This Sensible Plan

It's late, I'm punchy, and there's another foot of snow heading our way.  At least there's no shortage of paper, glue and silly captions.

 

The view from Tuesday

The news says my town already has 18 inches of snow.

It's hard to tell because I've got a 4 foot drift on one side of the driveway and a bare windswept patch on the other side.

We'll continue to have blizzard conditions well into the night.

Across town, my dog-sister, Maggie, is less than pleased.

It sure is white out there....

 

Inside, it's much more colorful.

Jake is enjoying the art room's new orange futon cover and coordinating pillow cases.

And there are sock-inspired postcards in various states of completion.

I'm just waiting for the two teenage boys (who are currently sprawled on my couches after a late night of gaming) to wake up so I can start the baking portion of the day.

Monday morning

These paints didn't have silly names like the last batch, but if one were so inclined, one could call them them Chocolate, Blueberry, Lime and Mustard.

(and then one could go throw up at the thought of that culinary combination)

We are bracing ourselves for a blizzard that is expected to bring upwards of 2 feet of snow, and while the National Weather Service is throwing around terms like "crippling" "historic" and "life threatening," all I can think is "day off spent painting."

My decline in creative output in 2014 was not just time spent staring at the wall.  I also managed to read 63 books. 

It seems to have become a steady habit.  I've already read 10 books in January.

I recommend this one.

Don't bother reading this one.

Last night's family movie night was the 1983 classic "War Games" with a baby-faced Matthew Broderick.  Our tech-savvy child of the new millennia enjoyed the liberties Hollywood took with its portrayal of the fancy-pants military computer which was about to start World War 3.  (Gotta cover those machines with lots of colorful blinking lights in order to advance the plot.) But then there were the parts where his parents had to say "no, that's actually what computers and phones looked like."

I made lamb shanks in the crock-pot yesterday.  Today I generously packed the small portion of delicious leftovers in Ric's lunch.  Now am I wishing I'd been willing to stand in line at the deli yesterday so that I could have packed Ric a turkey sandwich and kept that lamb for myself...

Bake.

That's what else I'm going to do during the blizzard.

Bake.

And read.

Paint and bake and read.

Plus I have the movie "The Way Way Back" checked out of the library, so maybe I'll do that too.

This blizzard better last three days.

My next series of painted postcards was inspired by a pair of socks.