Artist Reborne

We artists are a fickle lot!

Sometimes I wonder how great it would be to find myself saddled to just ONE creative medium.  Over the years I have dabbled in...drawing, paint, collage, art journaling, tole painting, ceramics/pottery, embroidery, applique, scrapbooking, card making, and rubber stamping.  Recently, I added rug hooking to the mix.  It is another of those historic arts that makes me feel so connected to my feminine past.  The kind of medium I find myself drawn to again and again. 

The piece pictured above is nearing completion...I am just awaiting the arrival of the "dusty rose" wool I ordered to fill in his cheeks.  This chipper little gingerbread will grace the top of a gingerbread-shaped paper mache box.  Decided to start the first project small; going for that instant gratification *grin*  And since we are officially in the thick of the holiday planning season, I figured it was a good place to start.  I am thinking, if I can find some, that I will spritz him with a bit of gingerbread scent to add to his charm.

I am already planning the next project, a small rug to lay at the foot of my daughter's bed.  Every night for the last year, and I kid you not, she has requested that we sing her "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".  EVERY....SINGLE....NIGHT.  Even when the temps were in the upper 80s, even when the sun still shone brightly on a summer's night.  Every night.  So to commemorate this obsession, I decided to make her the first of my major projects in this new medium. 

I already know I am not following all the "rules" and I am pretty much teaching myself (I have only briefly had chances to talk with fellow "hookers" at craft fairs and such), but I think I am doing alright, and to be quite frank, I am loving it.  It is very relaxing, totally fills my need for texture and is so easy to pick up and put down according to the whims of my dear family.  What more could a girl ask for?  Maybe some new monks cloth for Christmas, or some new hand-dyed wool perhaps?  Hint, hint.

I already have plans for more future projects, but I am hoping I can keep myself to only one or two current projects at a time.  I can get so excited about that next idea that all the ones that came before suddenly find themselves stalled and in limbo, likely to never be picked up again.  Don't want to do that this time.  So for now, I will just fill my new sketchbook with plans and dreams and settle in with Rudolph for some fine winter hooking!
 

A Little Pre-Halloween Fun

 

Playing around on picnik.com again today.  I bought my daughter this witch hat at the Target "dollar spot" a couple of weeks ago, and it has become one of her favorite toys of late.  She put it on one day and came into the the kitchen, giggling uncontrollably (I guess she thought she was being soooooo cute!) and I said, "Hey there, Witchy One!"  Ever since, she comes in wearing the hat and saying, "Hey, Witchy One!", then proceeds to ask me to scream.  Then she puts the hat on my head, and she screams.  Again, the hat goes on her head, and she asks me to scream, and the cycle continues about 20 times in a row until we are both quite giggly.  I love the way her little 2 1/2 year old voice says, "witchy one"...I am definitely getting out the iPod so I can record that one, it's a keeper!

Thought the stamps on picnik added to the photo...she's really holding some music sticks.  They have some really cute stuff over there right now.  If you have pictures of the kids all dressed up being cute, you should head over and see what you can do to enhance the moment.  For me, this will definitely be a scrapbook moment.  Boy, do I need to work on that!

Signs of Autumn

I had barely entered the room.  She was delivering a plate of their signature mom-and-pop fair to what was most likely a regular when our eyes met.  A slow and sly smile crossed her lips, then she uttered these words...

"Is it the first of fall?"

She has a wonderful memory.  Or maybe it's just that I am such an unusual "regular".  Ever year, right around the first day of autumn, I enter the little cafe and order the same thing.  A piece of baklava.  Every year, like clock-work.  And every year, she is there, with that slow smile of recognition and (yes, tis true) a hint of friendly teasing.  Seriously, how many other people can call themselves a regular for a once-a-year visit?  And what a weirder reason for it is there than the fact that baklava screams autumn to me and in order to make it special, I only partake once a year?  To sit, fork in hand, and crunch through the layers of pastry, like dried autumn leaves, watching the honey ooze from around and beneath mounds of walnuts...ahhhhh.  Did I mention, I LOVE this time of year? *grin*

So cup of Earl Grey in hand, I picked up my recent read, Just Jane by Nancy Moser, and settled in for a few precious, if not silent and alone, minutes of pure autumn bliss.  Faithful readers know how I feel about the first of autumn, how I have held it as my sacred Personal New Year.  It is my season of rebirth, a time when I decide the direction I want my next 12 months of life to take.  This year, I didn't feel that urgent pull to reorganize or reprioritize.  I just wanted the option to sit and mark the moment in my own fashion.  It is a overcast day, leaves in the neighborhood are changing and, despite the heat, it is very much an autumn day.

Lots has been done of late to ready ourselves for our upcoming trip to DisneyWorld.  I am in a crafting frenzy, trying to outfit four little pirates and princesses to meet their favorite characters for the first time.  In fact, only this morning, I finished the two princess skirts for our girls (mine and my sister's)...Meara hasn't taken hers off in the last hour.  I can't wait to see them all done up, meeting Aurora and Snow White and Cinderella for the first time.  They are all so excited!  So the crafting continues and I find my stolen moments to just breathe in the autumn refreshing. 

May your day hold moments of the precious for you as well.  Happy Autumn!

Fraktured Beauty

This lovely "lady" was made to be part of a local fundraising exhibit that will benefit breast cancer research.  The exhibit, "True to Form", will be comprised of 25 of these paper mache torsos designed by local artists and is meant to show the local population the breadth and depth of art in the Columbus area.  I was honored to be asked to participate, and this is what I came up with.  If you live in central Ohio, check it out at European Papers starting in October.

Fraktur painting, an antiquated art form coming from central European German-speaking countries in the 16th and 17th centuries, has caught my attention in the last couple of years.  I first came across this wonderfully talented woman at the first Ohio Country Living Fair in 2007.  She made some gorgeous large-scale piece that, had budget allowed, I would have loved to bring home.  Instead, I settled for a print in bookmark form.  I loved the simple, yet stylish folk artness of the fraktur.  The colors, so a part of my preferred palette, are rich and earthy.  Over the years I have noticed objects, especially old rugs in historic homes, that contain this style of image.  I recently shared this piece, inspired by a fraktur-style rug.  That embroidery piece led to "Fraktured Beauty".  I'm hooked.  I look for its influence everywhere now.  Most of its motifs are floral and bird in nature, but you will find people and non-living objects as well.  I truly love to see people who are working to keep antique art forms alive...quilting, rug hooking, fraktur painting, etc.  That is what I enjoy most about gatherings such as the Country Living Fair (which is this weekend, yay!)--seeing so many artisans who still practice these arts there in person... getting to talk with them about what first brought them to their chosen art form, hearing the pride and love of the history of the thing when they speak.  I for one enjoy this opportunity to leave off the bonds of technology and modern life, far prefering this ode to the past.

I have plans to maybe work these designs into some other pieces of art...a canvas or possibly my new foray into rug hooking.  I just got a vintage Rigby cutter off ebay and am (not so patiently) awaiting the replacement cutter and fingers from the manufacturer so I can finally try my hand at this fascinating textile art form.  I know, I know, like I need one more medium in which to work!  But truth be told, I am STILL searching for that one that really makes my heart sing.  I love to paint, I love to embroider, I love to play with felt...but I am not sure that any one of these is quite yet that all-encompassing love.  So I continue the search, and it has led me to rug hooking.  We'll see how it goes.

Meet Winifred

She "arrived" this morning in those precious hours after I dropped my boy off at school.  Really pleased with how this little 8x8 canvas turned out.  Especially the background.  Can you feel it, people?  Autumn is coming!  Huzzah!

Participation does have its priviledges

Over the course of the summer, I participated in The Next Chapter's on-line book club.  We played, I mean SERIOUSLY played, with Keri Smith's book, "Wreck this Journal".  During that book club I was contacted by someone from her publishing company wanting to know if I would be interested in previewing her next book, "This is Not a Book".  Initially, I hate to admit it, but I thought the whole thing was a hoax.  I mean, really, how did this person find me anyway (and he only knew me as Artist Reborne)?  Well, apparently, the powers that be surf the web looking for such on-line groups of like-minded people who might be interested in the next new thing.  So after checking the guy's credentials, I told him, "yes, I would love to see Keri's new book!".

Now let me say, I fell in love with WTJ immediately upon finding it at my local bookstore.  Had to have it, couldn't wait to get it home and start wrecking.  Then it kind of fell to the wayside and didn't get picked up again until this summer when I signed up with TNC.  I fell in love with the book all over again.  Now I know, it had its critics..."we are spending $13 on a book just so we can smear it with ketsup and throw it from the roof top?!"  But for those of us who took the challenge, it was such a great piece of therapy.  Letting go, being in the moment, being present, playing...these are all things, believe it or not, that many self-proclaimed artists wrestle with on a daily basis.  We hold ourselves, and our work, to such [impossible] standards, that we often strangle the very creative process we need in which to survive.  Keri's book gave us the "permission" and the prompts in order to help free us from those wild constraints we allow our minds to place on our creative beings.  WTJ liberated many of us from our own self-imposed prisons.

"This is Not a Book" promises to be the next step in that process.  Much like WTJ, it is a book (or not) filled with prompts, ideas meant to get us thinking outside of the box.  For people like my son, out-of-the-box-thinking is second nature.  For the rest of us, we need a little extra push in the right direction.  Not a Book is just such a push.  And I think it is a great companion piece to WTJ; a second course, if you will, in our quest for a masters in self-exploration.

Although I haven't had much chance to play with Not a Book yet, one page I think I want to start with is this...

No matter how hard I try, "stuff" just keeps accumulating around here.  I need SEVERAL copies of said portal in order to make a large chunk of it all go away.  Maybe that will be my excuse for leaving the book (that isn't) laying around the house.  "But Honey, look how it made this stack of bills just disappear!"  Or "I don't see any dirty dishes, do you?"

The best thing about Keri's books...they are there when you need them.  None of them require solid weeks of dedication, although that can be fun.  They are there for those moments when our confidence in our abilities falters, for those days when we wake up and say, "I am such a fraud, there is not a creative bone in my body!"  And they are sooo much cheaper than a therapist.  Thanks Keri, for another great (not a ) book!

One of the things I have been up to this weekend

As the summer is winding down (school starts Wednesday), we are entering a flurry of handicraft and home improvement.  As I type this, hubby is in the garage putting his limited carpentry skills to the test making us a wonderfully useful, highly needed cabinet for our living room (need lots of space for those kiddy accoutrements!).  And I have just completed this darling little primitive stocking, which shall make its way into my shop later this coming week.  Kitchen cabinets are getting a face-lift from what I fervently pray turns into a much deeper shade of red (I hate using red paint...so many coats!) and a layer of chalkboard paint.  More projects wait in the wings, some outside, some in.  But for now, I think it is time to spend a little last minute time with the boy before his life takes a decidedly academic turn. 

Hope your weekend was a great one!

P.S.  That isn't evergreens in the stocking, but some of my wonderfully aromatic rosemary, straight from the garden.  Ahhh.

State Fair wrap up

After my company left yesterday (thanks again guys for coming to celebrate the boy's birthday!), I have been slowly returning to the work at hand, trying to get all my ducks in a row before school starts in two weeks (two weeks?!).  One of the things I needed to do was send scans of some scrapbook pages I took to the State Fair to the scrapbook store that put up some of the prize money (scrap-n-country).  I was lucky enough to win Best of Show and two firsts and a second.  The page above is the only page I haven't shared here before...it took second place.  The fair has been good to me over the years, and it is always so much fun going on opening day to see how all my projects did.

This year, my husband and I competed against each other in the "Christmas ornament, not ceramic" class.  Being an engineer, he likes to make very symmetrical, exact and minute objects.  These are the projects we both entered...

this one is mine, you've seen it before, maybe even in Somerset.

And this is hubby's.  Made completely from scratch from little pieces of balsa wood.  Finished at 3am in the morning.  The night before it was due.

Let me start by saying, for some reason, this is a really tough category.  The only thing that ever takes first place is a finely tatted snowflake ornament, probably made by the same woman each year.  And don't get me wrong, they are gorgeous, but come on, every year?  Mine, the one that has been picked to be published in an international art magazine...zip, didn't place at all.  Hubby's, as you can see, took second place.  Oh, folks, let me tell you, I am NEVER gonna live that one down!  He has already informed me that the ribbon will remain intact, even while it hangs on our Christmas tree.  Probably so the kids will ask, "What's that ribbon for?" each year, allowing him to once again relive the sheer joy of whipping his artist-wife's butt in competition.  "Hey, kids, did I ever tell you about the time your mom and I entered ornaments in the State Fair...?"  LOL  Yep, this is definitely going to make for an amusing family tradition.  And I couldn't be happier for him...God knows he worked hard enough on it.  You wouldn't catch me trying to pull a stunt like this *grin*  Maybe now he'll leave me alone about the "monkey cake" or the Boston cream pie.  Did you read that, honey?

Now it's all about the holiday sales season on etsy, trying to get the store stocked up good.  Right now I am working on what I hope turns out to be a really adorable stocking.  I'll keep you posted on that one.

 

For the Love of Wool

Beauty Blooms Beneath Your Feet 19" x 9 1/4" wool/wool felt on linen

It has been an incredibly mild summer, and so my thoughts, and artistic leanings, are already pointing towards autumn.  And thoughts of autumn tend to get me thinking about wool these days.  I have always loved the warmth and texture, but in recent years, I have really found that I love working with wool and wool felt in my artwork.  The above piece was inspired by a 75+ year old rug at the Bowen House in Logan, Ohio.  The Bowen House is an cultural arts center that focuses on artists from the Hocking Hills region.  The rug that I mentioned was this gorgeous, aged piece that filled the little parlor room.  It had a deep blue background and all these gorgeous folk-arty flowers and leaves in ochre and barn red and deep green and warm orange.  While listening to a live country band perform, I found myself drawing quick sketches of the motifs on little yellow sticky notes.  When I got home, I couldn't wait to combine them into this piece.  I am a little disappointed at the slight puckering that occured in a few places, but overall, I love this piece.  A real labor of love taking me about 8-9 hours of stitch time.  I am sending it to the Bowen House to use in their current art exhibit.  If it comes back to me in the end, then I will probably add it to the Red Barn Mercantile.

I have also been researching rug hooking.  I have been interested in this art form for some time, but again, it seems to have really come to the forefront in the last year or so.  Been running into hookers at the State Fair (boy, does that sound wrong!) and on the internet and am slowly assembling my supplies of wool strips and ideas for small projects ('cause God knows, I need to keep them small or they will never get finished).  Hooking is such a beautiful and primitive art form, which of course you know gets me every time *grin*  With the Country Living Fair coming up at the OHS soon, I plan to hunt down all those wool suppliers to see how much closer I can get to actually starting a project.

And finally, I have gotten a shoppe update over at Red Barn Mercantile.    Here is a sample of what is in store.  If you have a moment, please go check it out.

A Crayola Morning

(tissue paper, origami paper, marker and pencil)

After our over taxing, stressful start to summer, we are trying to scale back, simplify and be more in the moment.  So today I decided we should break out the supplies from our art closet and see what would become of our day.  While the kids played with their projects, I made this.  How fun, how RELAXING to just muddle around with paper and glue sticks and Crayola markers!  Sometimes I swear that access to "nice, good quality" artist supplies=hampered ability to be freely creative.  It is good to take a break from all the expensive supplies and come back to our childhood roots...like priming a pump, it helps get the juices flowing again.

So in between another round of studio purging, I am playing around with my childhood psyche, trying to re-center my very messed up soul.  But I keep reminding myself, it took several months to reach this point, it will take most likely as long to come back to a more peaceful place where anxiety doesn't put a death grip on my heart every time I think of my list of responsibilities (which is being greatly scaled back).  Here is hoping that your day is as peaceful and stress free as my Crayola morning has been.