Monday, September 14, 2009

blog time

Past time, actually. I have been distracted by Facebook and incoming e-mails..but I expect to stay awake long enough to post today's blog TONIGHT. To encourage this, I am drinking iced coffee from this morning: as long as I don't reheat it, it is lovely and strong and makes me happy.
Oh, cool - this picture came in exactly where I wanted it.  Hooray!  Yes, I really was at my own workshop on Sat. and here I am, doing one of my favorite activities.

I am trying out Blogger's new(beta) system for posting. The good news is that pix are inserted where you want them (as they used to be before Blogger changed it) instead of at the top, which was a major cut/paste pain. It also puts the date on for when you actually post, not when you start writing...although I'm not sure this is a good thing. And they layout is giving me problems - spacing is weird.

Today, Marty and I went to an art opening: Abstraction, A Woman's View. Quite honestly, I'm not sure what the second part of that title means, but the work of the four artists was wonderful.  I know three of the artists; Freya Gervasi, a sculptor who works in alabaster and other sensual stone but does not have a website (tsk, tsk), Lisa Pressman, whose encaustic is lyrical, and Susan Lisbin who works in a number of mediums and whose paintings I would like to own. The fourth artist, Andrea Epstein, creates energetic, complex, mixed media monoprints. I was delighted to be introduced to her work.  While I didn't buy any art in the exhibit, I stopped to look at a case in the lobby filled with beautiful hand-blown glass. Before I knew it, this piece had come home with me. While the picture doesn't really show it as well as it should - it is a square drinking glass and the inside is a lighter blue.  This is so weird because I am not a blue person. OTOH - I have just finished a piece that is primarily blue--a color that I never use in my work.  Blue=calm and the curves and lines of this glass are nothing if not calm.  I strongly believe that the colors we work with during certain periods stand for elements we are either missing or emotions we are feeling at the time.



This has been such a good weekend!  I love teaching in my studio.  4-6 people is a perfect class size and a luxury for me, as well as a high degree of individual attention for them. Yes, it's work to rearrange everything in the place, and it's not fancy -- but it is such a pleasure to have a workshop there because there is such good karma in that space. Everyone who walks in there feels happy immediately. Me, too.

When I got home on Sat night, there was a package of paints waiting for me from C&T. My assignment: to print some fabric with those paints  and make a small work to send back to them for their booth at Market. I figured I'd better get busy, so I printed one piece of fabric. Tomorrow, I need to take the fabric and paints with me so I can print another piece with a different scale because I have only limited things to print with at home. Then I need to do something with the fabrics and send them back.
I also have to iron, roll, and ship my 2 yard pieces for the Art Cloth Network exhibit at the gallery in Houston, which opens Sept. 23. Before then,
I'll post info for anybody who lives or will be in Houston during Festival.
There was one other package that came last week that I had been waiting for.  Look how cute! A roll of MistyFuse that is 100 yds x 12".  What a perfect size for fusing small pieces of fabric!  I love this.

Busy week ahead.  My daughters have birthdays: Jessica on the 14th (today!) and Hilary on the 15th.  Friday night is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which is early this year. For the first time in decades, I am not feeling up to making dinner for the family so we are going to Hilary's.  I will still make/bring something, but with my inflamed tendon on my left hand, I don't want to cook and prepare a ton of stuff.
I am trying to live with it and avoid hand surgery, which just doesn't fit into my schedule. The caffeine is wearing off and I am turning into a pumpkin, so good night.


3 comments:

Eva said...

Have to comment on both postings. It is a little compensation for not being in your workshops: to have the candy of your reports. I have often thought why am I less creative than I imagine I could be? (It is getting better.) Picasso once said painting like a child is the most difficult art to reach. This means that in our growing up, we collect inhibitions that keep us from a free self-expression. And these inhibitions obviously can be thrown overboard -- as I see it -- in your workshops. And, believe me, a mess is a necessary side product -- no, it is a breeding base for the creative process. Once you are in the flow, you would disturb it if you started putting things back in order. It would mean, too, that we have to leave the brain rhythm of the creative wavelength which is unpleasant to do, to immerse in a different rhythm of consciousness in which it is possible to name, sort and differenciate. If you finish a phase of creative work with a deep breath which is similar to the one we wake up with, you can be sure that the wavelength of your brain has changed. I don't like at all to be disturbed in this process.

I did not find the blogger software too pleasant to work with, but I found out and use some tricks. I'll try the new one for sure!
Hope your tendon will be better soon. Chinese medicin would recommend to avoid bitter food and drinks during inflammations.

Saw the paintings by Lisa Pressman. Got lost in space! How would it be in front of an original?
"A woman's view". That would annoy me. Hey, I can wear men's haircuts and caps, the shape of my head doesn't have a gender, and not the inside either. I hate the German habit of indicating the gender of an artist, "Kuenstler" or "Kuenstlerin". Our women's lib activists believe that they have to stress it for the good of female share in culture. I guess it works the other way.

Nina Marie said...

I want to say that I too believe that colors we work with reflect what's going on in our lives. As I see my colors choices change over the years, so has the stages of our family. Also - I don't know how to resist art glass either - the way light, color, texture all plays into that media is amazing! My art glass pieces might not be the most expensive things I own but they are some of the most treasured!

Debra Dixon said...

I would think any place where you can happily create would be the best spot in the world. Having others come into that space and add their own energy must be great. It would be a bit of a letdown the next day not to have them there until you gain your own momentum again and begin creating.

I think we go through color phases too--and if we don't work fast enough on the fabric we've chosen while in that color phase, we have this ton of "what was I thinking?" fabric years later. I am now working through that pile!

soup weather in June and a little more

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