cross breeding art

I think this has been the worst year for my art production, personally. BUT (always a "but") there have been some significant collaborations where my art has been involved in music CD design, theater props, animal shelters, and the farm to the kitchen.

I moved from the studio to the workshop and the classroom.
Now I am not sure if this should bother me or not.

Moving out of here...CAR FOR SALE

1964 Karman Ghia, stored in barn for 19 years, sounds great when it runs ... not sure about the brakes- working on them this week.
painting 6 x 9...

Painting still available- the CAR has sold!

Persephone's epistle

It's been a wild ride, this winter...
Will Persephone emerge? How much of the pomegranate did she eat after all?

HAPPY valentines day

It's one of my favorite holidays...
I created a book about it out of pink tissue and black lace with cut paper plates. What other holiday can you do that with? This is best enjoyed with fresh flowers and chocolates.

Under a bush

Is your heart hidden under a bush? Bring it out! There is a unique dance inside each one of us and we owe it to the universe to share it. I am going to be kind to my heart today. It's so easy to forget how fragile we are... how our hearts and bodies are just containers for star dust.

Mixed media on paper 8 x 10 inches

If you are in Florida... in St. Pete, come to Studio @620 central avenue for reception between 6-9pm tonight. See you there.

Isn't this the time of year we do impulsive things?

I remember seeing the back of Malcom McMullen scooting off on his bicycle after I heard the door bell ring when I was in about 6th grade. At the door my nanny found a giant heart-shaped box of chocolates with a little silver bracelet taped on top. I still have the bracelet with Malcom's name etched onto it. How brave he was!
And dozens (30?) years later I drove my 11 year old son on an icy February morning to deliver roses to an unsuspecting girl. Just outside the door he had cold feet and we both realized the flowers were in danger of freezing before their prime effect was to be had. He flung them at the door- rang the bell- ran to the car- and as his chauffeur, I dutifully sped us away...
Ah! What speeds us on at these moments? Is it love?
Small collage with paint on wood. 3.25 x 6 inches, I call it "...loosing my mind".

14 days to Valentines

Sometimes I can say it with a rooster and a hen.
They (usually) fall out of my paint brush easy and with personality.
This Valentine has been in the works for years. See the postcards I made of it in 2005, the year of the Rooster. The original is made sewn layers of paper... a collage... of two hearts. Of course, there are issues here, and I recently shifted the value range with paint to lend it some extreme passages of light and shade. Still not sure. The chickens don't look committed as of yet... they appear to be waiting for me, or you, or someone to tell them where to go next. Do you see what I mean?

Hibernating journal

The bed as an alter




What happens when you close your eyes?

Planting and burying in the same strata where we have roots and dreams.


Listing things that drain me and things that restore my soul.





There is a time for every season...

As a Hen stands balanced

...On the edge of her milk crate-turned-nest, I contemplate my own off-kilter existence. I am not at all balanced... in any realm!
I can't get all my picky lists done. There doesn't seem to be enough of me to please everybody. Could it be, in fact there doesn't seem to be enough of me for me? The inner judgement is an exhausting voice that tells me I am fat and lazy and should be calling so-and-so and getting those letters written and looking for that job and... I feel so empty yet my body seems a fragile thing with murmurs, eruptions, aches and so aside from balancing the outer world with all it's fast paced to-do-lists, there is an inner world that seems out of balance as well.
I am hoping this daily practice of painting again will help center me and gain me some... down home balance!
Sewn painted paper, 4.5 x 3 inches $35 plus shipping

Resolution in the works

Along with things like exercise and consuming less salt, there is the practice of keeping a daily journal. My history in all three has been a complete failure. I used to have to hide my words. No convincing, through arguments or begging, kept them private. So I snuck pages in the backs of books, in random hidden notebooks, in letters written and never sent. It's pretty insane. Recently, as I start to organize my life, I come across excerpts of pain and risk scattered in the oddest places. Safely hid under barely worn gym gear, or even in the basement freezer. I have started to gather these loose missives and sew them all together so that I can dispose them in one final shape. Everything is out of cyclical order, but there is a spiral repetition to the theme of time and question. So
Now... should I start a real journal? I could do it with a new freedom to be authentic and open.

the elf thing

I always get inspired to make something for the holidays- and I work like mad on prototypes, mix media, and then, as I hand out the gifts just days before the holidays, I am struck by how meager the offering actually is. Is it cheap of the soul to make chachkis for your friends?
I don't know, but, as always there is a pattern here, and I'm heading to the mall!


(making missile toe for gifts)

Oh a tree? Or not?

Should I put one up this year?

Cutting paintings in half

It's easier than you think. This evening the county legislators will hold a public hearing on their budget cuts. As of this moment there is no money allocated to the arts. No money for artists to work with school children, no money for 40% of the local theaters' operating budgets, no money for the hospital's healing arts programs, no money for the stadiums music concerts... As a board member of the county arts council and a working artist and teacher I have a passionate interest in things being resolved differently. It would cost each taxpayer 67 cents a year to keep the arts funding level to what it was this year (which was hugely cut from previous years). Imagine if people spoke up and said they thought they could afford to spend that 67 cents!
Lack of imagination may be a poverty of society, but soon we may have a whole generation lacking exposure to anything other than their TV and their cell phone.
Imagine what we would be missing. Is anyone interested in a show of paintings only half there, a concert of music only 1/3 played, a film without editing or ending...?

How to continue

This painting has been sitting in the studio for at least a month. I can't decide if I should touch it, cover it up and start over, or burn it. The 14th colony art group is discussing the therapeutic benefits of burning art... and so the idea of a mass burning- everyone bringing one work of art to burn- and then taking the ashes home to make another work of art... Does that stimulate my brain? Is that something I should do? I've a few works in the burn pile in my own yard... The purpose isn't to manefest another work, just clear the debris.

I think I have been spending too much time sleeping. I go to work and come home and sleep. Unless there are people here. The last few days are the only days the last month or so that there hasn't been anyone here! So I guess I haven't been sleeping too much. I think I have been spending too much time thinking about sleeping!

I didn't want to get out of bed

In the fiction of my painted stories, I create lurid and exploitative tales featuring myself as heroic character.

In that vein, the bed is a place to safely destroy the past, mourn it with the salt of tears, nest until blue and broody, and then create new relationships...
How fantastic is that?

I think she is finished...

having conquered the stag. No idea what to call this painting. Taking suggestions.

wallowing brings forth bodies of work

40 paintings to mimic the 40 pages of the divorce document and a bed book containing 24 pages from my 24 hours of wallowing over the demise of my 24 years of marriage.

Hah! Now that my real work is done... can I go hold down a regular job?
Yes!

some words...

There is this wonderful Los Angeles times newspaper headline: "And who is she this time?"

Deer Diary

Still confused... the idea for this painting is so illusive now... when I try to pin it down it moves away from me. Constantly I have to ask myself , "what am I trying to share?" It's intensely personal...A recurrent yet fleeting dream. Mostly when I see the stag he is behind me, in the corner of my eye. So to look at him head on is a bit strange. Not sure I want it so visible... is that better? Turning the stag into a couch?

Bad TV

Been married now 24 years! My husband moved out 11 months ago but is not agreeing to the separation. It's what my friend calls, "bad tv". Script goes something like this:
A:How much will you pay me to never see me again?
B:(Sigh)How much do you need?
A:What?
B:What is it you truly want?
A:How about everything you've got?