Oh Dear, the year is ending. Good bye 2017!

Needs a caption, right?

The year ends, I did a lot of stuff.
I made mail art continuously though not every day. I did may be 150 + but I made other stuff. Mainly, a lot of knit mitts, because I was buying a lot of cool yarn and knitting was keeping me from getting crazy about politics.

He let everything go to his head!

Map of our favorite beach area

We went to the Outer Banks (OBX) for a holiday at Thanksgiving. We didn't plan on it because of financial constraints then said, oh dang, let's do it, so we did. Three days, the five of us. It was very nice. We walked on the beach, went to the giant dunes (Jockeys Ridge) and cooked and baked.

Bizoo

A sign on the OBX

The Atlantic at the OBX

The GrandGirl and her toy bat

Bizoo misses us when we leave though he's got a come-by care-giver.  He's also having some physical problem that has caused him to not urinate in his box, he uses the bathroom sink. Grrrr. Oh if only I had the patience to teach him to use the toilet, and flush it, too. ha ha



The Grand Girl continues to delight us, even though she's gotten a bit sassy at times.  Normal stuff, which is funny, and, thankfully, easily changed.
She's my cleaner-upper, baking assistant, art studio companion, and all around joy producing little person. She never fails to make us laugh, think, wonder, and feel grateful for her presence in our lives.


Happy New year, Bonne Année, Feliz año nuevo. May the year ahead be better than the last.  See you in 2018.

Be Nice

 A couple images that I was able to pull off my phone. The most recent images don't show up in blogger for me to post. Frustrating, it's just frustrating, but so it goes.

BE NICE is actually a framed tea towel that I saw in a gallery in Paris last month. I didn't note the artist's name and I can't enlarge the photo enough to read the label. Maybe you can.

In any case, I like the admonition. It's especially powerful in our current political climate in the United States.

These legs are from a series that I did at a couple of art exhibits in Paris. I like to sit and watch people and I snap photos of feet. I think that I'll make a book of these, but I never do. I have lots of photos like this that I've taken over the years.

Maybe I'll make a book, someday. or not.

Oh and something very cool to share - My son made a shop where you can buy cool stuff with his cool images on them. Check it out HERE.
 

 

Creative Sprint - I'm sprinting along.

Homage to Josef Albers

Jakarta MicroGralleries

So Creative Sprint is sprinting along, and I'm doing each day as the prompt pops up.

 I can't remember which day that was for, but it was prompted by my remembering how much my art foundation year was so informative to my life as an artist and a teacher.

My profs had been educated by men who immigrated to the U.S. to escape Nazi Germany. They were teachers at the Bauhaus academy and brought their knowledge with them where they could all get teaching or professional jobs. How fortunate for all of us.

My teachers learned from them and passed it along to me. I remember how profound the feeling when I viewed the slides that Josef Albers showed to our Art History class. He was invited by our teacher, Canio Radice (who wore bowties to class and I think might have smoked a cigar.) I don't remember much about Albers, silly 18 year old that I was, but I remember the impact the slides of his projects had on me.

The second photo was taken in Jakarta. The organizer of MicroGalleries enlarged our favorite of my cards, and also made postcard sized copies of it for people to write on. I don't know what they wrote or where they sent them, but isn't this so cool?

Jakarta and a test

I'm testing to see if I can post from my email, and to show you my work as it's installed in Jakarta.
The MicroGalleries installation opens October 6th. I'm not sure how the pieces are pasted up but one looks large! These aren't the originals, of course. I sent digital files.

Creative Sprint - the new daily project for October

Day 1 - something to fit in your hand

 Creative Sprint has started! Yay, it's fun already.

And here's the notice for all of you out there - you can do this, too.
It's easy, it's free, it's an international art game.

Sign up HERE.

Come on, join me. Use a translator, if you have to, but find out what's going on.

Day 1 - use what's in your immediate environment.

Day 2

What does your name mean or how did you get it.

Day 2 It's a long story

Day 3 Combine two things that don't go together.

End of one project, start of another - the letters

 Here they are, all of the letters that I wrote since my previous post the beginning of Sept.

I think the only ones that I didn't have photos of were the first three envelopes. But hey! I got all the rest.

The adresses are obscured for obvious reasons.

I've heard from three people so far, via e-mail, ha ha ha, thanking me for writing to them. Sweet.

Here are the last three of the month. Whew! That was fun. And I enjoyed making note cards using either one of my collages or one of the grand-girl's drawings.

I hope they brought smiles to the recipients.

Here are four more, out of numerical order because I don't know how to move images around without starting over.

But that's not important.
I just wanted to share with you and to encourage you to reach out to people you haven't heard from in awhile, haven't seen or spoken to, or have only met on-line through one of your social media groups. It's really important to connect or stay connected. Really.

And here's another plug - It's not too late to join me in Creative Sprint. We're two days into it, but you can still join. Go to the link HERE.

New Project for September

So I decided that I am going to write a note or letter every day the month of September. This will prepare me for participating in the October #CreativeSprint.

So far, so good. But then it's only day 5. I've sent mail to Morocco, Canada, California, New Hampshire, and Florida.

I even made some note cards using one of my SMILE collages.

Now for my pitch - Join me in the #CreativeSprint.  Sign up. It's easy. You'll get a prompt in your e-mail box everyday for a month. You can choose to do it or not, but doing it daily is an amazing practice. Anyone can join. It's an international art game, sort of. It will change your perceptions, make you less anxious, buoy your spirits, reveal amazing things about your creativity, and you'll make a lot of new on-line friends all around the world. Really, it's amazing. It's free. Anyone can participate. Young, old, classrooms, schools, businesses, social groups. Do it. Join me. Please.

Therapeutic endeavors!

two tote bags

a couple more tote bags

dreaming of fishes

Because of the political turmoil in the U.S., I'm feeling the need to do things that are therapeutic, like making Mail Art, and sewing bags. They're both meditative activities for me.  Plus I get to use up fabric that's been hanging around, and scraps of paper and cardboard, so all good.

following along

another bag

The partial eclipse shadow

The odd eclipse sky

The eclipse was seen partially in our part of the country and, even at 86% or whatever, it was pretty phenomenal. The sky turned an interesting color, the light changed to something eerie, and not describable.

Fishy tale

The sweet thing was the people came together to appreciate the event in impromptu gatherings. We went to the park near us. People shared their eclipse glasses and exclaimed at the crescents in the tree shadows. Marveling at the light change, and even a slight temperature difference that was noticeable. Oh for a sweet few moments, we were all friendly and neighborly. It buoyed my spirits considerably.






And I hope that my Mail Art recipients' spirits are lifted by receiving something fun in their mail box.

Hope you share some neighborly moments or get some good mail.

Hugs for everyone.

Mail Art

I've been working with these three elements for awhile. A pair of glasses, a mouth, a hand. I think I did the first one in the fall of 2016.  They made me laugh so I started to collect these images from magazines.

When I was notified that Micro Galleries was doing another event, I submitted a few images to see if they'd be interested and they were.

Yay, these pieces will be seen in Jakarta, Indonesia. I hope they "translate" visually for people of a different culture.

I'll have a total of 27, and will label them with letters of the alphabet for simplicity.

I'm not sure how they'll be displayed, but they'll be kept original size which is 4" x 7" (10.16cmX17.78)

Do you have a favorite? I do!

More in the JFK series

#79

The Mail Art on the left with the Kehinde Wiley painting as the background is the most recent of my JFK collages. I'm really fond of how it turned out. I'm, also, using old postage stamps in these collages.

Number 80 was made today, to send to an Internet friend, who found out she had a life threatening illness.

Butterflies always bring some joy into the world.

I don't know why the image of that Mail Art moved down below, but it did, and I can't move it back up here. Dang parameters of this platform. Dang.

  I included a photo of the commemorative postage stamp sheet that the JFK images are coming off of.  I scooped up a bunch of them when we were doing a mailing for a friend of mine, who's running for political office locally.  I have lots of them, so let me so you'll be seeing this series a lot in the coming months.

The stamp sheet

#77

#78

#80

La ciudad de Mexico (February visit)

A beautiful mural in a difficult location.

 We came across a courtyard full of sculptures like this. Charming, I loved them. I have no memory of the artist. Anybody recognize these?

A church interior, very peaceful even with a lot of people in it.

 So much gold. It's real, too.

Architecture against a blue sky is kind of perfect.

In the gallery at the Museum of Design. There's no collection, but rather shows of design work that change, and a nice shop.

The exhibit at the time we were there, two sisters from Buenos Aires.

Fabulous jewelry, and all for sale!

They used vintage materials for parts of their work. Very different.

I got a pair of earrings, but at the moment, I'm thinking "where are they?" I can't remember where I put the. Uh oh!