inch by inch

been working on getting my "inchies" on...what kind of debauchery is that, you say? inchies are one of the latest new art swap...or maybe i'm getting in on the fun late in the game...either way, i'm having a blast working with paint techniques and working in simple assemblage accouterments, as well as working with what i call my "word salad," scrapping incomplete sentences, mixed with visually pleasing punctuation, creating grammatical tension...all that in one square inch...or at least that's what i'm shooting for.. this is in preparation for Artfest...whoopie!

sorry for the blurred pix, still learning the ins and outs of digital close-up snap shots...i love lumiere by jacquard ...iridescent, pearled paint...


tags are in the mail, compadres... tag! you're it!

swap update

Great news, crafters! craft pirate's tag swap has been linked up by Swapdex , a site dedicated to crafty swaps everywhere! so here's the skinny...the cut off date for our current swap is the 15th.... tags will be sent straight away and due back to me by 15 december... i will get the finished tags to you all swiftly for holiday use if you chose...simply email me your street address (don't leave it on the comments as that is public) at waters at frii dot com....i will email you with my address as well...let the tag-fastic fun begin!

swap-o-rama

wow, seems like an age since i was back bloggin'...so sorry to my three readers, but....iiiii'm baaaack....(snicker)

so, in case you didn't have enough to do around the beginning of the holidays, i am going to add to the chaos... join up for the tag swap! what's that, you say? this is how it works: the call for participants is made, i tally the number of us and send out that number of plain, manilla shipping tags to each of you...say 10 of us sign up you receive 10 tags...then you proceed to decorate, paint, alter, sew on, collage, glue found objects....all of them the same or each a unique work of craft and art... you send them all back to me and i'll organize them so that you each receive one of each of our tags.... you can use them on gifts or, as i'll be sending them back on a string for hanging them up, you can just enjoy them as a hanging piece of art.

so, who's in? here's the guidelines: on one side leave enough space for us ,if we wish,to write on them. Have a string of some sort in the hole so that we can hang them on the gift. send them all to me by 5 december...this is important for the swap to go smoothly...

here is my example:


collaged tissue paper, paint, old children's book cut out and magazine words, wire, plastic flowers and lace.

here are some other examples i gleaned from Somerset Magazine...



email me at: waters at frii dot com or just leave a comment if you wanna do this!

recently i took myself on a walk along the railroad tracks just off of trilby road...look at the rusty stuff i found.....yippee...

i love treasure hunting...aaarrr!

boo!

...did i scare you? i'm back on line after a major epic, saga, story that i will not bore you as it really bored me... aaarrrr...

friends emily and mark came over for dinner a few nights ago and we did what every dinner party extravaganza ends up doing....pumpkin carving! guess whose squash has an eye patch???

back to more art this week....posts soon...

kitty update: eating, grooming, happy chasing kitty toys...jaw is quite crookedly hanging off his skull...it doesn't seem to bother him....he's happy, we're happy...

we are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by ...(while i am pulling my hair out and saying, "AAARRR!)

my computer's harddrive had a bad, fatal accident...while i am away, please know i am thinking about all 3 of my readers...

cat update: he got his resin posts undone yesterday and is finally eating full plates of food instead of just a teaspoon at a time...he's lost a lot of weight and his jaw bone wasn't ready to be mobile but ...his jaw is crooked but he is a happy boy now...depression is lifted...

now go forth and make a great day for yourself...back late next week ...

aarr....

what's important

not much art has happened in the past week as we are dealing with a broken kitty...last week i came home from a twelve hour shift to find my kansas city kitty walking from the back yard in shock...his jaw was broken in two places we soon found out...he was at the vet hospital for four nights... on the fifth day he had surgery to wire his jaw back into place and to have his top and bottom "canines", if you will, resined together, essentially wiring his jaw shut...

here's before the operation...

the cutiepie is our vet, Eric's daughter, Erica...you can't see the mess kansas' jaw was in (do you really want to?) but you can tell somethings not right... here is a very unhappy cat...

there is just enough space for his tounge to get through.... no, grant didn't take a bullet in the forehead, he bumped it on some stainless steel edge in the kitty kennel before the kansas surgery...there are more details but i'll pass--let's just say he's had to return two more times to the vet, gone under general anesthesia twice more .......

he is now a very depressed kitty, hardly eating....

soooooo....

i like to look at the ground....in search of treasures ( i am a pirate)...i find my best rusty things along busier streets...more detris, flotsam and jestum....while grant and i looked at a run down 1910 farmhouse on trilby road this week, i looked on the ground...it wasn't hard to find junk....the yard had been used for a dump. literally. some people....

here's what i found... the gnome was delighted as i was...notice the small machine gun? that will become a charm on a gun necklace i'm making...

now, what to do with junk one finds... art dolls are a great choice... i get great enjoyment in assemblage...taking disperate items and making them congeal into a coherent piece...

these are three that are from earlier in the year that i thought i'd share... salad tong fork, key, soldering dripping, copper wings from a nasty 60s wall art...the wings were put in a solution of miracle grow in order to get that oxidize look real quick...

here's one with a sewing machine lightbulb, wire screening, a crushed piece of thin metal i found in a parking lot in ithica, ny...and some solid metal thingy....it stands or hangs on the wall...a fav...

the above piece is poorly fotographed...i'm still learning...it's a vintage spoon from some hotel, a sewing machine lever, wood, electrical parts, a watch face etc...

i invite you to go for a walk, look down and find that buried treasure that might just make it into your next art project... pop pirate, off looking for buried treasures....

here knitty,knitty

the weather is turning a bit to the fall direction...wet, cool, cloudy...i bet i'll be able to see my breath tonight...so i've pulled out my knitting...a co-worker is having a baby in october so i've started on this...

the yarn is a baby-soft, champagne colored acrylic i got at hobby lobby for 99 cents a skein... once i knit all the funny twists and turns it will turn into a tiny version of this...

it's an orgami teddy bear pattern that is knit up flat, and then folded in such a way as to, all of a sudden like, look like a bear...i gleaned from one of the many mags and books i copied when i first got into knitting... the multi-colored one above is for a bear auction in november to benefit the children's harmony house in fort collins...

here's a very warm lion wearing the scarf i'm knitting for my mom...

she (my mom, not the lion) picked out the nubby grey and white yarn and i am cruising through it while we watch the hbo series "Rome." great entertainment that fall of an empire is..

new art soon to be posted... i got commissioned by emily and marc to create some art for the wall space above their bed...i have been in quite a flow and can soon reveal it ... it is an interesting process to make art that fits with another's vision...more later...caio (yes, pirates can speak italian as well as say aaarr!)

TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!

... AAARRR mateys, i can't believe it's here again. ...my blasted favorite day of the year next to thanksgiving, ( montana's birthday...my birthday, grant's, dates with friends...) well, ok it's up there with my favortite days....i've got pirate-tude, how 'bout you, you scurvey landlubber???

festerin' boils! it's cold as a witch's tit this mornin'... well, i hyperbolize a bit here but it's a cold 'un...so i sit at the computer with tea in hand (i'm certain pirates can drink tea...should i get some grog and splash a shot in it?) and see just how many of us pirates are about... there's this one...and here's one that you must take some time to ckeck out...

so pull on your boots, grab your sword, but most of all get your pirate on and have fun searching for buried treasure today... you might be suprised...

AAARRRR!

to market, to market, to buy a ....

i invited grant to come with me to the Ballpark market in denver saturday...i've been wanting to go all summer and i finally made it happen...it turned out to be a flea market that is a bit more focused and doable in a morning than milehigh fleamarket ... look at the first booth i saw and just know i was in heaven...

i saw vintage and new aprons wafting in the morning breeze at the just picked vintage booth...

and just look at the plethora of vintage clothing...

and here's just one of many boxes of rusty things i picked over...

grant initially really didn't want to come, but decided to join me in my junkers world...he ended up spending way more money than i did...he bought an oak sideboard we will use in the office... here he is wheeling and dealing with steve the funiture guy...

what a great way to spend a gorgeous fall day...



...home again, home again, jiggity jig!

art benefits many

"art simply keeps me sane..."was i ever crazy? Maybe...or maybe life is. Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing the dark secret. It's you or me--amplified." from the movie "Girl, Interrupted"

for the hand up charitable art show and exhibition, each participant was asked to write a little something regarding how art has given us a hand up in our lives as artists. this was my "little something." the soiree was aparently a success with all the red sold stickers ...but before i leap ahead, some fasion news...

before:

and.....

after:

back to my short do...melissa, at cost cutters, did such a great job i tipped her big-time... i love it...so i was ready to go to the art show...

there was soo much great art on the walls....

and these:

fabulous friends:

mark and emily

jette, as she saw all the art and my hair

my clinical director and the oncology social worker, Katherine and Janet

kelly and her family and her art were there:

fab husband, grant

and the best picture i have of my piece,

"bird in the hand: 2 & 6"

in all of its off-centered, poor lighting glory

i'm so glad it sold ( love ya' kelly!) more than half the price goes to charity...what fun and yes i will do this again...

so, today, it's cold here in fort collins. oh so cold. high of 67 but it ain't close to that yet. slippers and sweat shirt pulled out of hiding...

ok, so this doesn't look cold with all the greenery in the front of the house..how's this:

doesn't it just make a chill climb up your back looking at all that cold steel on the white-loaf-of-bread volkswagen bus next to the steel grey sky???

have a warm day...

there's 2 things that money can't buy, that's true love and homegrown tamaters

yesterday my across-the-street neighbors, the Brunson-Williams' , brought me a sieve full of garden harvests....

mister kite obviously had to give it a sniff...

this is the garden goodness they brought just a few days ago...

now they can't give their tomatoes away fast enough...is your garden as fecund as theirs?

now, i have never paid attention to those in the art circles gush about going to Artfest but i happened to be cruising around the cyberhood yesterday when, lo and behold, i came across the site for Artfest 2008...the more i investigated the more excited i became... i downloaded the registration form and filled it in, thinking, ok, maybe i can make this happen....i got really excited when i thought about telling my friend, lisabeth, and begging her to consider the notion of meeting me down in washington state.... she only hesitated for a quick few hours and then shot me an email saying yes!!!!! she would get in her application... here's mine...just a bit of mailart ( i overnighted it today)...

i am excited to have the potential to hang with some high caliber artist and LB...more as we go along...

i spent way more time on this mailart for my sis in sacramento...

the gal at scotchies, the dry cleaner/mail place, thought i was wacked to be taking pictures of my mail...you can't see it well but there is a section of steaming romance novel up where my address should be... i hope she reads all about Teal and Chase's love life... a surprise gift for her...can't tell...shhhhh...

do you do mail art? i would love to get links to it or even better, receive some from you.... there are blogs dedicated to mail art....more on this later....

this place

having art assignments that give me a deadline help me get into my "studio" more often...having been in academics (read: being dazed and confused in higher education for 9 years) so long i work best with homework being due...so i join altered book clubs, art swaps ....people depend on me to get my contributions in....well, now i am scaling this back and want to focus more on my own art... i want to eventually hang an instillation in a local coffee cafe, where they are infinitely generous to local artist...

so every artist has their space, their nook, their studio... i have half of a 15 x 10 room...studio tour?...

i walk in and look left.... chaos corner...i use a lot of vertical space for all things rusty, unused and full of potential...


coming around the white shelving you get a look at....


look right and you see my desk...and the filing system i like to call "piles"... shining in the flash is this computer...
turn 180 degrees and here is where all things art and craft happen...


shelves that grant hung are bowing with schtuff...

and that ends the studio tour...some folks have an outbuilding dedicated to creativity...(sorry you had to go and move away from yours, l.b.) some have a basement or whole, entire room.. and some simply have a corner desk... but it just is another example of "it's not the size of a thing but what you do with it"...

so i will attempt personal bench marks in art/craft, imposing regular time in this chaos corner...

here's a book that i am loving right now called living the creative life in which the author has a running conversation with 15 different artists, some of whom are my current faves... in it they talk of what they have in common and one of those is that creativity is natural but channeling this into your interpretation manifest is a matter of getting into your studio space and simply sitting with your media whether it be beads, clay, rusty detris, or paints...having a disciplined time, even it it just one time a week, puts you in a place of increased possibility....

so here i go...

lisabeth won the very competitive game of guess the lyric ( although montana gave an impressive answer naming the band given that she doesn't even like them) ...the lyric is from katy lied album by steeley dan and the song title is "gold teeth II" expect a package in about 10 weeks alaska time....