Originally uploaded by blubird.
A little silliness with an old photo.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Saturday, August 27, 2005
I have come to the conclusion technology & I don't bond well. Seems the flickr problem has caused a couple pics on my blog to disappear - I blame it entirely on Yahoo as it is so typical of what happens constantly with them. Ok, enough said - the more I talk about them the more I will be irritated.
I hoped to add some pictures of work I did last weekend (where did this week go?!?) - but have not had luck photographing, I rusted the heck out of a couple tins and the pictures are coming out too dark. I was going to take them outside today and try but got busy running around out and about (did find a new antique store in Moorseville - well, new to me) and it's been overcast all day so not enough light now. I will get to it. What I did was buy every commemorative bandaid tin I came across within the last few weeks- 12 of them to be exact - and aged and arted one up to start - ATCs fit inside perfectly!!! Also have another tin which was given to me that baseball cards originally came in - again with the ATCs. Very cool if I do say so. However, as there were 85 in each box I now have 1,020 bandaids - can pretty much count on never having to buy another in this lifetime - I'm clumsy and uncoordinated so do use more than my share but I think I'm now set :~)
School started this week, thought I'd do a collage as I don't have kids to send off (have seen some of the most adorable and excited kindergarteners in the store, too precious) - the scan is a photo I bought today that ought to work perfectly. Think I'll get busy.
I hoped to add some pictures of work I did last weekend (where did this week go?!?) - but have not had luck photographing, I rusted the heck out of a couple tins and the pictures are coming out too dark. I was going to take them outside today and try but got busy running around out and about (did find a new antique store in Moorseville - well, new to me) and it's been overcast all day so not enough light now. I will get to it. What I did was buy every commemorative bandaid tin I came across within the last few weeks- 12 of them to be exact - and aged and arted one up to start - ATCs fit inside perfectly!!! Also have another tin which was given to me that baseball cards originally came in - again with the ATCs. Very cool if I do say so. However, as there were 85 in each box I now have 1,020 bandaids - can pretty much count on never having to buy another in this lifetime - I'm clumsy and uncoordinated so do use more than my share but I think I'm now set :~)
School started this week, thought I'd do a collage as I don't have kids to send off (have seen some of the most adorable and excited kindergarteners in the store, too precious) - the scan is a photo I bought today that ought to work perfectly. Think I'll get busy.
AUGUST 2005 003
Originally uploaded by blubird.
this is a collage I made earlier this summer using the fab basic grey paper I LOVE! Note the hat on one of the girls, I was practicing making newspaper hats and this is the teeniest tiniest of the bunch!
Friday, August 26, 2005
I did get a little bit of art done over the weekend and am plugging away at getting my pages done for the PINUP fat book which is being hosted by Rebecca Zuniga (and which I predict will be ultra-cool as she has such a fabulous artistic bent AND promises the books to be hardback which is greatly intriguing)! I am getting these ready to mail any minute to Texas!
However I am at an of course they changed things just as I got the hang of this point with this blog. Seems Flickr now is under the control of YAHOO as of this week and to upload a picture takes forever and a day. Why oh why do they screw everything they touch up?!?!?! Here is what is posted on the page as you wait, and wait and wait.... When a lot of people are uploading photos all at once, you may have to wait a little while before the photos you are currently uploading appear on Flickr. THeir view on what "a little while" and what my perception of same is is vastly different I'll tell you that much. So, we will wait...........
On a good note - it is wonderfully, blessedly, fantastically, blissfully COOL this morning!!!! I seem to be whining incessantly about this heat down here in NC this summer but I want to add for the record I am not the only one - LOL! Native north carolinians (of which I come across a few although have come to the conclusion that most people that live in my neck of the woods [and the general meeting place being the grocery store where I work part-time] are either from New York, New Jersey, or Ohio) have had enough, period! But this morning when I first went out around 5am with Ernie it had to have been in the 60's - absolutely heavenly. I actually drank coffee outside today, something I have missed doing since about April. I have alot of bluebirds and it has always been a pleasure to sit out there and watch them wake up in the mornings. During the hot summer months they aren't as visible except right before one of the million and one thunderstorms we have had in the late afternoons. Truthfully - although we don't have to deal with adverse driving conditions, I feel I have just survived the equivalent of an Ohio/Michigan winter and just now emerging into a soothing spring, in this case of course autumn. The other day on the news the weather reporter predicted this to happen later in the week and it was suggested we start digging out the sweaters. This is a different world in many ways.
OK, still no picture ready, I am aborting this uploading process for this morning. Maybe will have to find an alternative as this doesn't seem to be doing the trick any longer.
However I am at an of course they changed things just as I got the hang of this point with this blog. Seems Flickr now is under the control of YAHOO as of this week and to upload a picture takes forever and a day. Why oh why do they screw everything they touch up?!?!?! Here is what is posted on the page as you wait, and wait and wait.... When a lot of people are uploading photos all at once, you may have to wait a little while before the photos you are currently uploading appear on Flickr. THeir view on what "a little while" and what my perception of same is is vastly different I'll tell you that much. So, we will wait...........
On a good note - it is wonderfully, blessedly, fantastically, blissfully COOL this morning!!!! I seem to be whining incessantly about this heat down here in NC this summer but I want to add for the record I am not the only one - LOL! Native north carolinians (of which I come across a few although have come to the conclusion that most people that live in my neck of the woods [and the general meeting place being the grocery store where I work part-time] are either from New York, New Jersey, or Ohio) have had enough, period! But this morning when I first went out around 5am with Ernie it had to have been in the 60's - absolutely heavenly. I actually drank coffee outside today, something I have missed doing since about April. I have alot of bluebirds and it has always been a pleasure to sit out there and watch them wake up in the mornings. During the hot summer months they aren't as visible except right before one of the million and one thunderstorms we have had in the late afternoons. Truthfully - although we don't have to deal with adverse driving conditions, I feel I have just survived the equivalent of an Ohio/Michigan winter and just now emerging into a soothing spring, in this case of course autumn. The other day on the news the weather reporter predicted this to happen later in the week and it was suggested we start digging out the sweaters. This is a different world in many ways.
OK, still no picture ready, I am aborting this uploading process for this morning. Maybe will have to find an alternative as this doesn't seem to be doing the trick any longer.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Originally uploaded by blubird.
Another day near 100 degrees. The heat index prediction is it will feel like 111. I predict I will get some art made today as I won't be out there!!
Friday, August 19, 2005
Since moving to North Carolina from Ohio 19 months ago I have realized that being a life long packrat definitely has its' drawbacks. I had to pare down so much to go into a house half the size I had and one without a basement I might add. When I sold and immediately started the task of going through over twenty years worth of accumulation I asked Joe, then 17, no matter what he was doing on a given evening if he'd please stop back home and take the daily load to Goodwill. He has a van and I can't even tell you the number of full loads that he brought there in a month. The last day, as the moving van was nearly packed up I pointed one more small pitiful pile left for him to take over. His comment was "thank goodness, I bet they think I am Robin Hood"!! He is so astute.
I've had to be much more selective in what I bring into this house here and everywhere I've kept a lid on it except my art studio. Another memory - Luke was home from college on break when I packed up the other one, a very small room that was once used soley as our office and gradually where I began doing all my art work as well. I was astonished how much was in there and Luke, sitting at the computer while I worked at it told me, "Of course there's alot, I've only been home [x-amount of days] and there still has been stuff coming in this room and I see nothing going out". Well, mixed media art has a way of making you look at everything as a possibility for something. I remember when I was in an art-doll making phase I saw every single thing as a body part.
Earlier this summer I started the task of sorting and trying to get some semblance of order to my studio here in this new house which is at least twice as big - why do I seem to think that means four times the stuff can now be brought in?! This spring I got a beautiful old farmhouse table from a friend who had gotten herself a new table for her kitchen, a great new space to spread out and work on projects was my intention. As you can see from pictures posted earlier, work on it?! There isn't a square inch of space left to work on anything and I usually end up working on a 12" square pull-out surface on my computer desk - after I clear it off. SO, last night in a burst of energy I began again to clear and sort out what I'd begun a couple months ago and have continued today. Ernie's eaten a button (an obsession of mine - who needs 10,000 buttons - ME)! And the books. Two things I cannot live without, books and music. There are so many fabulous art books alone I've crammed on the shelves up here and a library full downstairs of all the others. This in turn spawns --
Another problem - I have so many ideas, so many great things I want to create I can't seem to get a single thing finished. I've got books in progress, journals half way completed, tins rusted and patinaed, assemblage pieces staring at me headless, collages in various stages of drying, ditto with painted canvasses, boxes distressed - I have got to FOCUS. But I just got Claudine's new book as well as Lesley Riley's and Karen Michel's is on the way.......
A couple years ago I bought a barbie, a Lucy Ricardo barbie. I've kept her on the shelf, with a tag on her which says - "Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting". I should just drop the facade and go with the flow, it's inevitable, sigh!!
I've had to be much more selective in what I bring into this house here and everywhere I've kept a lid on it except my art studio. Another memory - Luke was home from college on break when I packed up the other one, a very small room that was once used soley as our office and gradually where I began doing all my art work as well. I was astonished how much was in there and Luke, sitting at the computer while I worked at it told me, "Of course there's alot, I've only been home [x-amount of days] and there still has been stuff coming in this room and I see nothing going out". Well, mixed media art has a way of making you look at everything as a possibility for something. I remember when I was in an art-doll making phase I saw every single thing as a body part.
Earlier this summer I started the task of sorting and trying to get some semblance of order to my studio here in this new house which is at least twice as big - why do I seem to think that means four times the stuff can now be brought in?! This spring I got a beautiful old farmhouse table from a friend who had gotten herself a new table for her kitchen, a great new space to spread out and work on projects was my intention. As you can see from pictures posted earlier, work on it?! There isn't a square inch of space left to work on anything and I usually end up working on a 12" square pull-out surface on my computer desk - after I clear it off. SO, last night in a burst of energy I began again to clear and sort out what I'd begun a couple months ago and have continued today. Ernie's eaten a button (an obsession of mine - who needs 10,000 buttons - ME)! And the books. Two things I cannot live without, books and music. There are so many fabulous art books alone I've crammed on the shelves up here and a library full downstairs of all the others. This in turn spawns --
Another problem - I have so many ideas, so many great things I want to create I can't seem to get a single thing finished. I've got books in progress, journals half way completed, tins rusted and patinaed, assemblage pieces staring at me headless, collages in various stages of drying, ditto with painted canvasses, boxes distressed - I have got to FOCUS. But I just got Claudine's new book as well as Lesley Riley's and Karen Michel's is on the way.......
A couple years ago I bought a barbie, a Lucy Ricardo barbie. I've kept her on the shelf, with a tag on her which says - "Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting". I should just drop the facade and go with the flow, it's inevitable, sigh!!
Thursday, August 18, 2005
This has been an odd summer for me, for one thing it is hotter than anything I've ever experienced (although this is my second summer in NC I am told last year's was the coolest in over a decade - I however, felt it hotter than any of Ohio's or Michigan's obviously, but nothing compared to this). Lots of thunderstorms in the afternoons, reminds me almost of the tropics - of course without all the benefits! I've been taking medications which caution being in the sun and truthfully it's been so unbearable anyway I haven't even wanted to go to the pool, and there are four in my development I can use. I have spent alot of time outdoors what with housebreaking this puppy but am thankful to have a covered porch so always have shade, for what that's worth. But no tan :~( which I guess as I've never gone without one in close to every single year I've been alive (and there are many!) it can't be a bad thing to take a break. I do miss Lake Michigan!! Here are pictures of me with my mom and dad, respectively, at what looks like Grand Haven in 1959.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
fat books & skinny books!
For the past year I haven't done near the varied swaps as I have the past few. Mostly I have done nothing but fat books and skinny books. The fat books are 4x4 in size and I've done them with as many participants as 65 and down to 35. Each person creates an original piece of art to a theme and then copies it the number of times there are people participating and then they are sent on to a hostess who makes covers and binds them together then sends back a wonderful book. They are fabulous!! I currently have 10 fatbooks now, the titles of which are: Blackbirds, Fly With Me, Valentine, Sticks & Stones, Portals, The Sky's the Limit, Winged Things, Circus, Three Little Words, and one done by people who attended ArtFest 2005. I have one I am awaiting to come to me yet, the theme is Anatomy and am currently working on one which will be all on PinUps! The two skinny books are done the same but with different sizes of pages, I have a marvelous one Emmy Tofa hostessed which is called Paint! and the other a delightful mix of collages by some of the art-e-zine crowd. This last I got in on due to a drop and just received it. Shauna Palmer took the reins on this and did such a great job, the cover is wonderful! Of the two pictures posted here all my fat books are arranged on top of the red cabinet and as you can see I'll soon have to find additional places for the new ones! The second pic is of my two skinnies.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
This is my new puppy who came to live with me the end of June at 12 weeks of age. He is a cavalier king charles spaniel I named Ernie after the youngest boy in the old tv show, My Three Sons. I have two sons who are in their twenties and out on their own now, this new little guy is, tongue in cheek, their new "brother"!
starting my blog...
Today is the day I finally take on the task of creating a blog. Have been wanting to give this a try for awhile now but get frustrated easily by technology. As I've wanted to be able to add pictures and have barely mastered my new camera I have been hesitant. But from a helpful tutorial over a great lunch yesterday I was given some pointers on doing so in the easiest way possible. Thanks Marie - I am working on it and feel in a positive frame of mind I will be able to accomplish this now!! I have named the blog after a line by one of my favorite poets, ee cummings.
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