We just returned from a week in Death Valley (thanks Iris, for this and many other beautiful shots). Every aspect of that place was profoundly different from my life in Eugene. Here I have been suiting up to keep dry, searching out the sun for it’s thin glistening gentle warmth. Life here grows thoughtlessly, no concern for location or viability. I am always pulling persistent and ridiculously matted clumps of vivid green weeds from cracks in my driveway, constantly staging tiny battles (in my shower stall, on my roof, even in the corners of my closet) to stave off the damp and doggedly determined life forms that will grow grow grow anywhere anytime if we just step back and let them.
Death Valley is a glorious illustration of barreness. The dust is a constant presence. The sun is a focused beam of heat. It parches anything but the very toughest that attempt to take root and survive. Life there is intentional, and twisted from it’s patient effort. Plants take root along spring fed cracks in a rock. Animals come out at night when the sun’s relentless heat has passed. Plants and animals seem smarter somehow, thoughtful leaves, hardened curious old branches, clever coyote, patient praying scorpion, as if the difficulties they’ve weathered and the evolutionary trickery of their ancestors has left a lasting mark of wisdom on the dusty grey face of life in Death Valley.
that sense of completion
In the same week I finished an elementary school artist residency, (clay with 220 children) and I sewed the final nub onto this 8 inch by 8 inch piece. I have been feeling pretty self satisfied. The residency was a monumental and rewarding task. Lots of loud talking, hauling little fragile clay forms, hustle hustle, blossoming artists, get it done! This little quilt, on the other hand, has been an exercise in tedium. I could sew on about 8 little nubs an hour ( I made a short video about it for my website. You want some real action? check it out.) Its funny though, how often I’ve picked this quilt up and pondered it since I’ve finished. It is almost as if I miss making it.
Morning Glory
I just hung work at Morning glory Cafe. It will be up through April 15th. Yummy breakfast, interesting stuff on the walls!
boggles the mind
I am so taken with nature’s knack for transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. This is ice on chicken wire. Every artist spends sleepless nights searching their psyche, scouring the ether, waiting for a lightening strike of inspiration, an idea even half as simple and elegant as what nature routinely awes us all with. I imagine her working and humming: a little moisture here, a little cold air there, a bit more sub zero conditions, and voila!
renegade artist
Yes, that's me, cast out of kinkos for attempting to feed inappropriate materials into the copy machines.
I’ve recently started experimenting with integrating photographs into my work surfaces. I like this idea of extrapolating what may lie beyond the edges of the photographs. So, I am looking for ways to print images onto cotton. I messed around with adhering cloth to sheets of paper and running them through an ink jet printer. That worked great, for the most part (thanks and sorry, to my husband for his help in that experiment). I was hoping to do the same thing at kinkos. Unfortunately I was intercepted, reprimanded, and ejected from the building.
I am desperately seeking methods for transferring photos to cloth. If anyone out there has any good ideas, that won’t get me banned from Eugene’s copy stores, I’d love to hear them.
a role I’m not good at...
After a week of working full time in the infirmary, nursing my 8 year old through a wicked winter flu, I am so happy to be sitting in my studio and stitching. I love being a mother but I am not a gifted nurse. I do far to much wringing of hands, touching forehead, concocting kitchen get well cures and forcing them on my patient, rearranging bedding, staring into the patient’s flushed face seeking unknowable answers... I am the harried nurse, constantly glancing at my get well watch, and second third fourth guessing my decision to call or not call a doctor. When my daughter awoke bright eyed and energetic after 6 days of illness, I literally felt my whole being unclench. I suppose I should be asking myself just why I struggle in that role, but for now I am just happy to strap on my artist wings and fly a while.
a carcass
Some bright hot long day last summer we stuffed a dryer sized cardboard box with old carpet padding, painted a bull’s eye on the side of it, and dragged the whole unruly beast out into the far back yard. My oldest daughter, a succession of neighbor kids, and curious dads shot arrows into that docile, grazing, cardboard bovine (or was it a hungry, stalking, angry, cardboard predator?). Hundreds, maybe thousands of arrow holes riddle the thing. The recent winter rains finally destroyed the creature. I looked out across the wet yard while pouring my morning coffee and saw the blue green padding guts exploded outward, the sagging skin slumped into a melting brown heap. The sight of it somehow made me sad. That melancholy one sometimes feels upon encountering a memory. Like coming across a seal carcass on a long beach walk, a sadness for what’s lost and beautiful and temporary.
My daughter, like most self respecting 12 year old explorers, has moved on from her dreams of feeding her family with her bow hunting prowess. Now its illustrating graphic novels, playing in a rock band. Next season it will likely be something else. What ever it is, I am ready to stuff the metaphorical carpet padding into the metaphorical cardboard box, and help in any way I can, to turn a dream into a reality.