a post just about art

At the risk of seeming like I am fishing for compliments (I’m not, however don't let that stop you if you feel so inclined) I'm going to post individual images of the art of the notecards and framed prints. I should have done that last post I guess but there was just too much other stuff weighing on my mind. But not just those. I’m posting all the colored pencil drawings in my sketchbook in the order in which they were done. I'm showing them on the page in my sketchbook so you get an idea of the size of each drawing. The pages in the sketchbook are 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".

First, I think I have finally admitted to myself that I am not going to be doing any more glass sculpture. While I have several unfinished models and ideas of what I might create I seem to have lost any desire to do that work. It is time consuming, it is labor intensive, and while I did enjoy the submersion in creating in 3 D form, of sculpting the models out of blocks and sheets of wax, I’m just not feeling compelled to get in there and do it because the rest…the mold making, filling the molds (tedious and also time consuming and a process that really needs to be done in one sitting taking an average of five hours to complete), the firing, the finish work with my very old worn out expensive to replace equipment…was just work. And to start again would involve having to go into the city and get fresh plaster and silica flour and moving the kiln over here to our garage from the shop since Mikey is using the bay with the appropriate plug. I look at my shelves of frit and wonder what the fuck am I going to do with all this.

I suppose I could post on the glass SM groups to sell it all, first come first serve, but I’m not quite ready to do that. As for the sculpting part, I could switch to ceramics but again no kiln, no glazes though there are a couple of people here in this town that I might possibly be able to get to fire my pieces for me. So, something to think about.

In the meantime I’ve turned to colored pencil drawings and watercolor paintings but I’m not very productive with the drawings or paintings. After 40+ years of making art every day I’m finding time for other things like gardening and yoga and reading and sewing (again, some).

So here are all my colored pencil drawings. The ones with two drawings on the page was just because there was space. 

Blue Jay Feather

White Orchid Tree Flower and Bean Sprout

Poppy Seed Head and Wren Skull

Morning Glory Bush Flower and Acorn

Green Pecans

Amaryllis Bud

Zucchini Flower and Zucchini

Iris Bud

American Lotus

Heavenly Blue Morning Glory

Yellow Trumpet Flower

Chinese Tallow Tree Leaves in their Fall Colors

Buckeye Butterfly

Honeybee (I don't have the original anymore and I seem to have deleted the picture of the whole page but the bee itself is 3" square)

I have even fewer watercolors so that can wait.

commando, art, despicable people

My across the street neighbor was working out in his yard mowing and trimming Sunday morning and he was going commando. The reason I know this is because when I went out with Minnie to have a look around I happened to look across the street and he was bending over fiddling with something on the ground and his pants had fallen so far down his rear that I could see his butthole. Ewww, dude, pull those pants up. Seriously. Nobody wants to see that. 

I got all the note cards packaged up and the larger 5" x 7" prints framed this week. Each package of notecards has a sheet showing which images are in that pack.

Then I delivered them to Hesed House after SHARE Thursday and they were delighted to receive them all. I still have the two little original watercolors to frame and take to them. Maybe next week.

An early morning conversation at SHARE yesterday put me in a foul mood for the day. It was pretty slow like it usually is on the first Thursday of the month because people have gotten their WIC funds we surmise, only one or two small food orders the first hour, so I was sitting in the back with the guys when one of the volunteers mentioned he had seen a chart of government expenditures. He expected the military the biggest but first was Medicare/Medicaid. The military budget was third. I remarked that if medical care wasn’t so expensive in this country people wouldn’t need help which set him off about how we’re paying for other people with our taxes and how people think socialized medicine is so great. I told him everyone I knew who lived in a country with socialized medicine liked it. Another guy chimed in that he had lived in Norway and you had to wait a long time to get a procedure. And I’m thinking, first, why would you not want to live in a country that had a healthy productive population and second, how is having to wait for a procedure worse than not being able to get it at all. Then he went off on people just wanting all this free stuff, illegals getting free medical care (they pay taxes I told him that they don’t receive any benefit from, well not if they're paid under the table he said completely ignoring the fact that they pay sales taxes just like everyone else), people applying for everything as if all you need to do is apply and not have to qualify. He went off on college, how he went through college, got his degree, and didn’t get in debt but now nobody wants to pay for it they just get all the loans they can and not pay them back. My comment that people are paying on their loans but after 20 years they still owe the same or more went over his head. The Norway guy spoke up that he didn’t get in debt either but then when he went to college tuition was $300 a semester for as few or as many hours as you wanted to take. Yeah, things are different now. First guy wasn’t through, complaining that colleges just teach useless stuff, people get degrees and can’t get a job. I’m thinking who is he to decide what courses colleges should or should not teach. Not interested in that course of study, don’t take the classes but why bitch about the fact that they are offered. Anyway, I’d had enough by then and we got a food order in so I went back to my station and stayed there whether I was busy or not the rest of the morning. Just about everybody that volunteers there votes republican which at this point voting for Trump makes you a MAGAt as far as I’m concerned. I just can’t reconcile the disconnect of these people that volunteer at a food bank that also offers clothing, housewares, diapers, linens, etc to people in need and then vote to reduce aid, whether it’s medical care or food and housing assistance to those same people, people that they have nothing but disdain and scorn for. Republicans have brought back the myth of the Welfare Queen only this time it's the able bodied man living in his mom's basement who chooses not to work. Do they think Medicaid just sends people checks instead of paying the doctors or hospitals for the medical care? 

When I went to college tuition at the University of Houston was $200 a semester. I don’t know how much room and board in a dorm cost then because I was living at home. Here’s what it costs today.

I wish I could turn that volunteer into a 20 year old and then see if he brags about getting his degree without getting into debt.

Last night during dinner I bit the inside of my cheek, not a nip, but a crunching bite. Then this morning I woke up from a long involved disturbing dream full of struggle and a bit of a headache, reached over and tapped my dream catcher, my talisman bag, and my guardian angel that hang on the wall beside my bed and told them they weren’t doing their jobs. And if that wasn’t bad enough when I went out to raise the garage door (have to do it by hand because the motor quit working after the flood) a wasp that was building a nest behind one of the metal struts on the door stung me right on my nose! Fucker. Because that still wasn’t a bad enough start to the day, during breakfast I bit the inside of my cheek again in the same place!

So today is the 4th of July. I won’t be putting out my flag, I won’t be celebrating what this country has become, a country where the President, a state Governor, and Cosplay Barbie of Homeland Security stand in front of their new concentration camp to incarcerate 3,000 people snatched up without warrants or due process and put in cages in tents surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire that they built in 8 days in the middle of the mosquito, alligator, and snake infested Florida Everglades in the middle of summer yucking it up, big smiles, thumbs up while they imagine potential escapees getting eaten by alligators. The whole thing designed for maximum cruelty. 

The government won’t build housing for the homeless, doesn’t want to feed the hungry or provide medical care for the sick and injured but they can and did build a concentration camp in 8 fucking days to fill it with people who had jobs, families, contributed to their communities, paid taxes, were self sufficient that now the government must provide for however poorly they plan to do it. 

So, yeah, my day is just peachy.

 

new acquisition, new growth, same ole pettiness

As a working artist all of my working life; well, I did have a series of jobs before I started my etched glass studio and you can read about those here if you are so inclined; I like to support artists and so I have a small art collection that I have been in the habit of adding to once a year more or less. Generally I buy a piece of art for my birthday or holiday gift but it’s been a couple of years I think since I bought the last piece which is a print of a drawing of a bumble bee. But this year I bought a new small sculpture. It’s the second piece I have bought from artist Jennifer Tetlow, a stone sculptor who lives in the UK. I follow her blog on which she posts pictures of her work. Awhile back she posted a picture of two small birds which she calls hedge birds which I loved. I waited a month or so before I contacted her if they were still available and if so how much. Of course, they had already sold but she offered to make more and in January I got an email with pictures of four little hedge birds. I selected two and they arrived Friday. Here are my little hedge birds, so called because they were inspired by the little birds that inhabit the hedges that line the countryside in the UK.

I consider my art collection to be one of my objects and I could easily fill a big chunk of ‘my life in 100 objects’ if each piece counted as one object so my dilemma has been is my entire collection one object, in which case I would post a selection of pictures or is each individual piece a separate object or maybe I’ll divide it into categories, each category being one object. Anyway, I’m due for another ‘object’ post.

Saturday was warm enough and dry enough to work out in the yard so I pruned back the four roses in front of Pam’s house, worked on the wild mass of stuff on the east end of the shop, and in my yard cut back the rock rose, the clump of fall aster by the driveway, and the bigger area of wild Mexican petunia. That leaves one small patch of the wild petunia, which I may do today (or not as it’s cold and windy out), and the banana trees and my yard will be done. Audra and the great grands were across the street visiting Robin while Mikey worked in the shop so I got some baby time.

Monday and Tuesday nights are going to be well below freezing…again, and so I will have to cover the ponytail palm and a few others and bring in those pots that I have moved outside. Covering the ponytail is a two person job and a pain in the butt. I had a welcome surprise earlier though. I used to have a nice bunch of toad lilies in the ground outside my back door that would bloom every fall but the last four years or so that we have been getting these arctic blasts fewer and fewer have returned in the spring after dying down for the winter so last fall I dug up the five or so struggling roots I had left and put them in a pot and brought them inside. All but one stem died down but I watered them regularly and the other day I saw that those roots have sprouted new growth.

I’m having to fill the bird feeder twice a day, granted it’s small, probably only holds half what my old one did. Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, house finches, sparrows, white wing doves but the most abundant right now are the goldfinches tanking up for their flight north.

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Three items today out of the many, from the Department of Petty Vindictiveness:

Trump and Musk illegally retrieved $80M in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funds from New York state’s bank account because they don’t like what it was being used for.

The Missouri attorney general is suing Starbucks because he thinks too many women and people of color work there accusing them of racist and discriminatory hiring practices ie not enough white males. “Such practices force Missouri consumers to “pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services,” he argued, because making hiring decisions “on non-merit considerations will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work.”” As Jeff Tiedrich puts it “here we go again with this inane fever-swamp insistence that women and people of color can’t possibly be qualified to do the jobs for which they’re being hired. it’s fucking Starbucks, you imbeciles. they’re pouring coffee into a cup and putting a lid on it.”

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be arrested for informing undocumented immigrants of their legal rights.

In other news, the Finding Out part of FAFO is in full swing. Trump voters are surprised to learn that that leopard is an equal opportunity face eater. They are also losing jobs, benefits, relatives, and federal grants. "I didn't vote for this!" Yes, yes you did vote for this. We warned you but you wouldn't listen. You just thought it would only happen to the people you don't like.

new theme, crystals, and why is my subconscious dragging up my mother

I’m going to try a new recurring content in my posts, My Life in 100 Objects, the idea taken from Rosemary Murphy of Share My Garden. She has a separate blog for this but I’m just going to scatter them through my own future posts. So here is #1.

This painting, 47" x 37", by William Anzalone hung in the breakfast room of my childhood home directly across the table from where I sat. It’s what I looked at during breakfast and dinner. I have claimed this painting as my own almost from the time my father first bought it though I don’t remember what age I was. Anzalone would, in the future, have a big impact on my artistic ability. I took Drawing from him in college at the University of Houston during which I learned not only how to draw (as opposed to just sketch or scribble) but how to see the thing I was trying to draw and other rules (who knew there were rules for drawing) like how to render a curved object and perspective among much more. I remember the first class when he told us the hardest thing to draw was a straight line, not because it was so hard but because of our fear of putting pencil to paper. I didn’t get possession of this painting until after my father died and my mother went to live with my brother in the PNW. It currently hangs above my bed. 

Sunday I finally hung all the rest of my crystals that I've been accumulating. They look great. What took me so long! Well, beside the fact that my desk is up against that wall of windows and it’s a tight squeeze to get back there.

I took the screen off the window first which I had been planning to do for some time now so I would have a clearer view of the bird feeder since the screens are old and cast a gray filter. Also I don’t ever open those windows (see above) and they won’t stay up anyway, have to be propped up. I just leaned the screen up against the bank of windows on the outside, hadn’t put it away in the garage yet, and the next morning a little green tree frog and an anole were taking shelter behind it.

The frog was still there when I put the screen away.

Every day when I go out there’s another branch or two or three that has fallen from the oaks and the pecans, ones that were broken during hurricane Beryl but not fallen. I’ve just been piling them up next to the magnolia tree during the burn ban instead of putting them in the truck which pretty much makes the truck unusable for anything else. 

As you can see I also pulled the kidney shaped small pond out of the ground since it was finally light enough with all the water evaporated and the water plants dead. Now I have this big hole to fill. I may set the pond up elsewhere in the future but I won’t sink it in the ground as before.

I had another weird dream Monday morning. I was in the kitchen of my childhood home and it was a mess with dirty dishes and empty food containers strewn over all the counters. I was shocked that no one was cleaning the place up or providing decent food for our old senile mother who I suppose was in her bedroom (where in real life she spent much of her time sleeping her life away). She wandered in and got a box of dry cereal from the cabinet and started just eating handfuls out of the box. When I tried to take it away from her telling her to at least put it in a bowl with milk she grabbed it back and wandered back out of the kitchen. When I walked into the family room and looked out the sliding glass door into the backyard, there were three men digging up bulbs and plants. I opened the door and yelled at them to stop and to leave and then I went back into the kitchen and out the back door to get the license plate number of the car they must have come in but it was a police car and there was no license plate and as I was writing down the name of the police department the men came around from the back and tried to drive away. There was more to the dream before I woke up but the rest of it is murky now.

Today is the day. I am not going to watch any election returns and plan to stay off social media, preferring the shock or awe on Wednesday morning but hoping to greet the day with jubilation. 

 

the significance of water

More signs that the season is changing, that the planet is continuing its path around the sun. I saw some snow on the prairie in a pasture the other day, the sun has moved enough so that it shines through my east facing window and into my face through a break in the foliage of the photinia as it rises in the morning while I sit at my desk reading and writing requiring  me to wear my ball cap until it gets higher, and the season of beautiful sunsets is starting, witness the one last night.

I was musing about the significance of water in dreams. I wouldn’t say that it is a frequent element in my dreams but I have had some memorable dreams throughout my life in which water was featured. When I was around 8 or 10, I woke up one morning convinced I could breathe underwater and it took awhile to shake that certainty that the dream I had had of swimming underwater without needing air had left me with. Another one I remember from my early 20s married to my first husband involved finding him with another woman and I left walking down a road with him following me in a golf cart trying to talk me into coming back. I ignored him until the road disappeared into a body of water and I couldn’t go any further. I waded around in the water before deciding to go back but when I woke I knew that it was over and I divorced him about 6 months later. Another dream involving water probably in my 30s I was at a beach watching as all along the shoreline were artists facing the water painting on easels when a huge wave came and washed over us all sending everyone tumbling and I was immersed in the water which didn’t recede. There was more to that dream but that’s the part that I remember. And now this most recent one. Certainly there have been more involving bodies of water but these are the ones that have stuck with me.

Curious, I asked the All Knowing Oracle what water in dreams represents. Apparently it’s a common theme and can represent any number of things.

“Dreams about water are symbolic of your emotions during your waking life. They're said to be linked to the deepest recesses of your subconscious mind and your intuition. Water is also associated with fertility, creativity, emotional well-being, renewal, purity, and new endeavors.”

Another list of possible connections.

• Emotions: Water can represent your emotions, and how you feel about life. 
• Subconscious: Water can symbolize the unconscious mind, and the depths of your psyche. 
• Life: Water can symbolize the source of life, and the wellspring of growth and vitality. 
• Fertility: Water can be associated with fertility, creativity, and new endeavors. 
• Purity: Water can symbolize purity and cleanliness. 
• Flow: Water can represent change, flexibility, and rejuvenation. 
• Birth: According to Freud, water in dreams can be closely linked to birth. 
• Overwhelming emotions: Tidal waves or flooding can symbolize overwhelming emotions or a sense of being overwhelmed. 
• Personal growth: Dreaming about waves of water could symbolize a desire for personal growth. 
• Need for connection: Dreaming about waves of water could symbolize a need to connect with nature. 
  

I don’t know what was going on in my 8 - 10 year old life but I think I can discount emotions, life, purity, birth, and connection but change, feeling overwhelmed, and this last one, fertility as in new endeavors maybe relates to the transition I’m going through probably giving up glass as an artistic medium and working in watercolors and colored pencils instead. Although the rest of the dream is a big what the hell was that all about or maybe the challenge involved.

Anyway, interesting stuff.