Art and Words

I have been doing some projects with kids using virtue words.  It amazed me watching them and me cut and collage the impact of positive words or symbols.  The importance of the two together and the effect on the viewer as well as the maker.  It made me think of that water experiment where the man labeled the water good or love and it was clear and pristine and the same water labeled disgusting turned brown and icky.

More work to be posted soon I am happily and busily working away!
Julie

The Tim Burton Exhibit

I am so inspired.  We went to LACMA to see the Tim Burton exhibit for father's day.  Wow.  It was so rich and layered.  Amazing how true he stayed to his vision.  His work is so authentic.  What a testimony to allowing the should and have to, to be thrown out the window.  He had like this one tiny corner from cal arts and then the rest is the same consistent vision since childhood.  Obviously the art had grown in many ways, but it was  really very eerily the same.  I highly recommend going if you can!

Relief Painting

I'm off to home depot again to buy a new jigsaw.  You can see my dilemma the wood grain is so beautiful how can I possibly cover it up.  I'm seeing this weird parallel between parenthood and painting.  There is a point with teenagers t   hat you have to hand them back to the universe and let them make their way on their own.  If you overstep you can tarnish the delicate details that are just beginning to surface.  Painting is the same way it dictates where it wants to go.  If I can stay in the moment and not need to force all my little plans and ideas the magic can really begin.
It can be hard and it takes bravery.  I'm like everyone else I want to feel like I'm in control.  Great art like great living requires letting go.

A Visit to Home Depot

Dove and I hit the hardware store today looking for alternatives to foam for my reliefs.  I am excited by our new purchases.  There is the new  30% lighter sheetrock - exciting in possibilities and especially in how well it will take to plaster.  Then there is the plywood, which is so  surprisingly lightweight, that Dove carried it to the car for me, Considering that  he is 7 years old, this is a big deal!  The wood however,  is so beautiful it speaks to me in different ways.  It screams to be celebrated for it's own self.  It sticks up its' splinters at being covered in plaster.  It demands to be stained and encausted and respected.  Let's see if I listen.

I need a new relief technique

I am looking for advice.  I did this painting I'm really fond of awhile back, but the materials were on the toxic side.  I want to do a light weight relief that I can cover in plaster.  I'm trying to save my lungs and stay away from styrafoam.  It's just so light weight and easy to cut.  Any ideas are greatly appreciated.  Thank you and much love!

The Family Tree

This is part of a drawing series I am working on about modern families.  Every year for several years one of my kids' brings home "the ancestor project" or the "family tree project".    Every time I get so angry at this formula tree that leaves no room for all these different types of families. This series of drawings is part of an installation I am working on this year.  

Creating Time

My classes are dwindling down and the time of the great art experience should begin!  Somehow however, it seems I am busier and struggling to get into the studio.  Funny how when you know you only have two hours to create  it is clear exactly what to do with those two hours,  and when you have six hours, you do your grocery shopping, you go to the gym.  With 2 hours I'm clear -  tonight's dinner is peanut butter and butter ( sounds gross but that's considered a delicacy in my home).  Six hours and suddenly I'm making lentil stew and home made bread.  My fingers ache with the need to paint.  My resolve is to make every day a two hour day!

Sincerity and Devotion

This is the idea that you enter into something with the utmost sincerity and fidelity. Ideas such as devotion, honesty, and "one's true heart" are also contained in this word.

This is a universal word as the Chinese, Japanese Kanji, and Korean Hanja are all identical

I have been getting the characters for my paintings from orientaloutpost.com
It's amazing how the language and characters  have these layers of meaning.  I will have a loose idea and then be transformed just reading the different character's meanings.

Wabi Sabi

"Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional."


Periodically I find myself questioning the value and importance of art.  I will walk into a store like Target and see this overwhelming array of perfect designs.  Perfect circles and perfect birds stenciled in off beat colors like maroon and chartreuse.  These lovely designs are stamped and stenciled on plates, towels, toothbrushes, blankets , and clothes.  There is an offering of  endless array of perfect beautiful designs.  What's the point of being an artist, I would ask myself.  Then one day it hit me.  In the way that only the most transcendent of spiritual experiences can hit you.  Wabi Sabi.  Suddenly, I knew my time had come.  It is the best and most incredible time to be an artist.  Similar to the emergence of photography on the impressionist, because the advent of computers has allowed seemingly endless design possibilities to every lay artist on the planet.  But Wabi Sabi takes some skill, it takes love and patience.  Who needs a perfect circle when any person can get a perfect circle design from target.  My imperfect circle was hand crafted the colors were not perfectly even, The brush stroke was obvious and the place where my hand trembled is visible if you look for it.  I began to take a second look at the perfect masters and you know what I saw: Wabi Sabi.
This was the answer to my freedom.  Now every time I start to question whether I'm good enough or perfect enough I take myself back to that moment in the mall and remember I'm striving for a human experience not a computer generated one.

Workshop Schedule 2011

I am currently working on my schedule for the upcoming 2011 - 2012 year.
I am looking forward to so many exciting events for both children and adults.
I am very pleased to put forward my schedule for 2011
Please let me know what peaks your interests as well as what your needs are.  I respond to my email frequently.
I should have this updated by the end of June check in then!
Happy Art

Water Color - Devotion series

Prints

Self Portraits

Mixed Media - Relief

Water Color - Devotion series

                                                              Devotion

Acrylic Painting

   Listening to the Swan

Nudes

 Little Series of nudes                                                    

i

Silk Collagraph

Scenes from my studio door.  Close up of leaves and berries.