Maybe I invented this...

I am absolutely not sure ... In any case, for a non- OCD person like me, it is a great idea.

I just made these.  I hate perfection in stamps or in stencils or in anything that looks "manufactured" so I tend to make my own stamps etc.  Cutting them takes time, and mine are always a little rough.  What I did here, which is MUCH faster than "real" stamp carving is to stick together, using the sticky backs, two Sticky Back Foam Sheets... when stuck together they looked like this:

and then I used my smallest Xacto blade and cut patterns, having drawn them first with a Sharpie.

In one I got a little enthusiastic with the Xacto and cut through both layers in a couple of places, so on that one I cut another square from a third Foam Sheet and stuck that to the back to hold it together.

I actually like this better, as it is a bit firmer when it prints so I may well do it to the others too.  Main thing is ... they print!!!

Will they last forever? probably not but they will be "rustic" which I love and quite inexpensive and fast to make.  I am loving the ease of making a bunch quickly. 12  sheets of sticky back foam are about $8 on Amazon and I made about a dozen squares and a few long thin stamps from 2 sheets. 

FUN!!

I went to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

I knew what I was going to see, but while I was looking for the show I was hunting for I saw a lot of this amazing building that is being repaired from a lot of wind and water damage it has suffered recently.


This was what I was looking for.  It is a show thru July 29th of sculptures in fiberglass and plaster called "Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)" by Jane Alexander.  It is disquieting, and strangely beautiful.

 

 

 

 

There are many more pictures and a lot of good information at the link above.


After looking at the sculptures, it was interesting to look at the other visitors to the cathedral differently than I might have if I had not seen them....

Day Five of Learning Something New - Past/Present

Past/Present .. I was having a hard time with this and then it just "slapped me upside the head" as they say in the South.  I love this quote from Adam Gopnik talking about Joseph Cornell --  one of my alltime heroes...

"The false kind of nostalgia promotes the superiority of life past; the true kind captures the sadness of life passing."

I suddenly related that quote to the small rectangles I have been doing every morning for several months.  I never really thought about them as relating to the passing of time, the decaying of signs on old buildings, the fading of memory. 

The turtles, somehow, are part of that in my mind, not sure how, but there it is, the unconscious is a different country.

Zuni turtle fetishes represent the earth, a centered self.

 

Day 4 of Learning Something New -- Home

This one was hard because I am VERY home centered.  I would never leave if I had total choice and could import friends, restaurants, theaters, flea markets and museums.  

SO .... I wrote everything I did in and around my home for 2 days (not really everything but the reportables and importants and pet related).  I did one day vertical and the other day horizontal.  Then on top of the words, I drew the view out my studio window.  What you see are (top to bottom) the sky, the Palisades of the Hudson River (the New Jersey side), the Hudson River and the trees of the Hudson River Parkway in New York City.

I have a little personal project I have been doing since January in the calendar from the Alexander McQueen show here in New York.  For the first 5 months I drew the view out the window every day, fog, snow, rain, green etc etc.  Then as summer stretched on I got bored with unchanging green, so I started doing little graphics that continue daily.  You can see THEM, if you want, over on my photo blog, link on the right of this page.  Remember these are in little tiny rectangles... about 1.5 inches by 2 inches.  I am going to go back to daily views when the leaves start to turn.  

Also, I am doing this project in an already bound book, that I am using in landscape mode generally. The "thought" part goes on the left page and the "image" part goes on the right side.  Looks like this:

And like this...

 

Day 3 of Learning Something New - Steps

Steps, the prompt talks about taking steps as a way to build a habit. If your "habit" is art, there is another part you need to remember. What I learned when I started taking art classes and really working at learning painting, drawing, photography, collage, printmaking etc, was that steps are not linear.  I thought "If I learn A then I can go on to B and then to C etc and I will get better at each step."  

Seriously not so.  Art is far from linear, it is circular.  Learning a bit about B reveals the flaws in your mastery of A and C does the same for both A and B when you try that!  Printing feeds into painting and both of them feed into photography, which feeds back. Art, for me is a huge circular staircase designed by Escher and you never come to the end, to "mastery".  Also, you have to step back now and then for distance to provide more clarity than the close up study gives. You have to learn to love circularity.

Below is a staircase from inside the Vatican.  A gloss medium transfer of an inkjet print. 

 

Day 2 of Learn Something New

I have had a lot of teachers in my time, but something I read in my early 20's has stuck with me and, I think, shaped me more than anything else.  I learned the power of "Yes" from the autobiography of Armand Hammer.  As I remember it, when asked if he could build the trans Russian railroad he said yes, although at the time he probably knew next to nothing about it.  He just trusted his gut and his instincts.  Later, I had a friend who helped me clarify that what I regret in life are sins of omission, not sins of comission.  "Yes" in a different format.

The image is an image transfer of a two bear fetish from New Mexico.  Bears carry strength, self knowledge, courage, adaptability, healing and the ability to read spirits. These two carry bundles on their backs and I see them every day.

 

I am a fan of Tom Otterness

But I had missed these folks in front of the Hilton Hotel on West 42nd Street.

That is what I looked like taking these pictures, but I didn't have the guy behind me to hold my bags, alas...
There is another Otterness picture here and a series on either side of this posting about how the 14th Street Subway stop for the A train is full of his work.  The story goes that he just kept making more and more because he found it such fun to find places to put them.  I believe the story.

Even in the snow in the city....

There are roses on Park Avenue!

and I will tell you we really needed them this year

But like in other gardens, even those on Park Avenue come with

BUGS!! of the good and the bad kinds. These metal fabrications were great fun.

Painting Class

I have talked before about the painting class that I go to at the Art Student's League on 57th Street in Manhattan. I am a bit of an odd duck since I am not an oil painter, nor do I paint only with Pastels. What I do is to lay in a figure with gouache - an opaque watercolor - and then work back into it with pastels. Unfortunately, these paintings are difficult to photograph because they are very matte and the color mix is hard to see.

That said, I have done a couple of paintings recently that I like, so I thought I would put them up here because they will get moved off my walls as newer things get done. Everything I do goes up, some for a longer time, some just for a couple of days.

It has certainly been a long strange trip this 2008..

A lot of this all started with a group of us who decided to post a picture every day for a year in 2008.  I didn't put any requirements on mine, I used old and new and whatever came to mind, but I generally did accomplish it.. or I will have done it on the 7th of January.  I got a late start.  

That photo blog led to a "real" blog, since I found that I often had something to say that had no relationship to the picture of the day.  

There are a couple of zillion blogs and bloggers out there talking about their New Year's Resolutions, so I will not add to them.  HOWEVER.... Leah over at Creative Every Day has decided to have a word to focus on for the year.  That led me to thinking what my word would be were I to join in.. 

Because everything I ponder like that has pluses and minuses - multiples of each - and shoulds and should nots and maybes and perhapses attached to it I think that my word for the coming year is Simplicity.  Just give over and simply be, simply do, simplicity.

We shall see how that resonates, it isn't midnight yet..

I wandered around for a while in my photoblog for the past year and picked one picture from each month as a favorite.  Some months were harder than others, June was a real banner month for possibilities, as was May.  April, on the other hand didn't have the same depth.  I wonder if there is a study of the reasons for that?    What follows is a collage of 12 of my favorites, with one extra thrown in because it was impossible to leave out the bridge and maybe it deserves a collage of its own.

Happy 2009 to all of you, and if you decide to follow Leah and do a word, let me know what it is.. I am curious about the complexity of choosing...(grin)

creations.

Two creations.. one is the work of an artist, the other is .... whatever it is.
First there is that lovely postcard from Nadine over at Knitting with a Poodle. Check her out, she is a real original. as you can see from the color and texture she created in that postcard. She does a lot more than knitting, and that poodle is a truly interesting critter too.

As for the "sculpture"... well... my stove seems to put a lot of hot air out the top of it when it is on. The peppergrinder was right next to the space where the heat emerges, and you can see the result........

Relax, those of you who know what a packrat I am. I did manage to throw it out. You will not be seeing it sitting in the studio for months.

I do know what you think when you see I have found things that look like that on the street. I do have SOME restraint....... really.

I've been busy!!

After the shellshock from steeking wore off, I thought I would tell you want else I have been up to.

One of the big spaces in my life has been the opportunity to paint. I just don't SEE landscape. I am not particularly interested in painting it, I would rather photograph it and so just going out and painting never seemed to work for me.


I love painting figures and people. I have probably never shown you these, there are many more in a drawer, but they are what I love to do. I rough in the figure in gouache and then use pastels on top of the gouache, so I really need an easel, a bit of space to spread out the pastels, and a model to do what I love to do.



This is an old New York Institution, on 57th Street
in a landmarked building, and I had a brief experience here several years ago.

Back then I found it snooty and old.


However, my painting mentor/teacher is now teaching here, and there is a class that meets Wed. and Thurs. evening. With all those inducements I decided to give it another try, so I am now taking a class there and last night I even managed to come into legal possession of that most desired of objects, A LOCKER KEY!!!.

I have only done 2 sessions, so one "completed" painting (I still need to look at it next week to be sure it is as done as I am going to make it.)

So I can't show you that because it is still there. I feel really good to be painting a model again. I thought the next time I might take some pictures of the work in process and show you that, but that is for next week. For now the older pictures will have to do.

ALSO, I am going here on Saturday. It's time for what I used to call the anthrax festival. I got Sienna a babysitter and have a rental car for the day. Blogless Nicki and I are going up to Rhinebeck to look at yarn. I have no need of yarn, but that has never stopped me before!! SO there will be some "what I did at Rhinebeck" postings soon.

Everyone knows I am a sucker for Artichoke

Photo from http://www.lamachine.co.uk/ by Matthew Arnold, who are somehow linked with Artichoke on this one..

Well, I wish I were in Liverpool... and that is something I couldn't quite imagine saying a month ago
La Princesse, a giant spider has crawled up onto a builcing in Liverpool and, despite what appears to be totally beastly (Maybe arachnoidal) weather, has gone for a walkabout.

The pictures on the web are sketchy right now, I think the weather snowed?? and certainly rained while she was perched on the building

I wish I were in Liverpool... this is much more exciting than the Telectroscope. I want something that moves on THIS side of the Atlantic...

my continuing obsession with the subway

Anyone who has read this blog over the past several months knows that I have a continuing obsession with subway art and signage.









I was in the 42nd street station on the A line last week, and found several different art pieces. This was really fun. It is called "Losing My Marbles" and it rolls around the corner wall and up the tunnel.


According to the artist's online resume, "it is a glass mosaic mural project, consisting of 5 walls, approximately 90 ft. by 9 ft. in total."

This is just one of the marbles close up.. They are really fun, I would probaly rank them second so far behind the Circus at 34th Street.

here is the info listed and an inadvertent self-portrait

I'm running a series of pictures of patterns over at AbovetheGWB Photo I am working on incorporating a "studio journal" into my daily practice. The class I am taking online is with Sharon B and I have written about it here before.



I am doing more "thinking about it" than using it right this moment, but in part that is while I am processing how to change the focus from fabric to the sort of collage of things that I do. Besides, I was knitting a bathroom rug, and that took time.
I have been shooting a lot of photos, and I decided to get away from representation and into pattern for pattern's sake, so you'll have to bear with me a bit.


















Meanwhile, I think part of the dithering is because I want to do so many things and Sharon B. is so pinpoint about what she is all about. I admire that a lot and it makes me feel unfinished or some version of that because there really is no way I would be totally happy with one thing.

The word dilettante springs quickly to mind. At least the definition they use first is lover of the arts. Followed by jack of all trades master of none or words to that effect.

I am loving shooting so many photos. There was a class at ICP that required shooting a roll of film a day doesn't that sound like a great class???? I REALLY wanted to take that class and kept ditzing about it (partly because of the cost, I can assure you) I am almost doing the equivalent now and it is amazing. Digital photography is certainly liberating in that way, and I don't have to pay for developing.

The unknown museum

There is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. It is downtown at Bowling Green, near the ferry dock, and has an amazing collection and some interesting shows. One of the shows that seems to be at least semi-permanent is called Beauty Surrounds Us, and Gill and Mark saw it when they last visited. It is one of those shows that keeps revealing itself and so I set up a series of shots from that show over on my other blog. So every day for the next 7 days a new picture from the show. I do like this advance scheduling feature..
Since I was down in the Wall Street area I was, on a Sunday, surrounded by tourists. There is a big metal bull sculpture that is quite popular since there is not much else down there on weekends.






A little boy was checking out the sculpture when he saw
"things" whose shapes he recognized.


He charged over and began hugging those round metal things .... I guess he thought he could take them off and play with them...