Caught up with myself, whew!

 This morning, after I quickly made and posted my 365 Mail Art, we drove up to Washington, D.C. with friends, to see the Smithsonian Craft show. And a special treat at the Sackler, the Cyrus Cylinder.
Amazing! It's sooo ancient. Check out the link.

 My friend took this reflection of our honey's. You can tell that she's a professional photographer, right?

365.2 # 267

#365.3 #117

These two pieces of Mail Art were made on Saturday after I hosted the Slow Art Day 2013 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and had dinner with friends. It was late, I was tired, what to do, the day was almost over!


Because I was rushed I grabbed the Washi tape and put a strip down on each card. What to do? Circles of course. And you know what, I actually like them a lot.

365.2 #268

365.3 #118

Since I felt that yesterday's mail art was successful, I used Washi tape and circles again today. More tape, more circles.



I'm quite satisfied with the results of these, also.


What can I say, I'm just satisfied to be making Mail Art every day. I think that sums it up for me.

Here's another view of the entry to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. I was relaxing on a bench, a couple days ago, after having done a walk through to check on the route for Slow Art Day 2013.  I really like the reflections in the curved window. I like how Robinson house is condensed and it appears that there's a vista beyond.

Oh dear, Saturday already? Mail Art catch up

#206

#56

 These are altered Chuck Scalin assemblage cards. I'm having a really good time with these. Thanks to my honey for giving me his cast offs. The woman has eyes that remind me of my mother's. Mom is on my mind a lot these days.

#57

#207

 I was fortunate to find several of the same notices about our state library ancestry services. There was this great old photo that I am making good use of, by cutting out the people in it. They work nicely with the old paper.

#58

#208

I recently received some old knitting pattern magazines. In #56 I make my first attempt at using a bit from one of them. More experimentation is needed with them.










I'm using an old show card that I brought from Paris last winter. I'm not sure this is my most successful solution with this particular card but it had to do as I was rushing to produce 2 cards on this day, since I had company arriving.

This elephant is here just for fun. He's in the main hall of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. He or she is quite gorgeous. It's huge and magestic.

Mail Art Monday, some clouds, and flowers

#204

#54

#205

 These are the last of the past week's color and circle pieces.

It's difficult for me to stop with a series like this, once I get the feeling for it.

#55

The possibilities are endless. One could continue to "study" the relationships between shape and color endlessly.











I began to see these pieces of Mail Art as sketches for paintings. I think that if I had a larger studio, I might consider doing large paintings again - that looked just like this.







But the reality is, I'm better off doing small works (4" x 6") and mailing them off to other people. I don't have to worry about storage this way. But wouldn't they be fun reeeaaallllyyyy BIG?

 The clouds were so lovely puffy yesterday. I'd gone off in search of something to put between two layers of fabric to make a blanket and remembered the little quilting store at Willow Lawns shops. When I returned to my car, I looked up - lovely blue sky, lovely puffy clouds.

When we went up to Washington, D.C. last week, we stopped at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian to get some coffee in their cafe. To our delight, there was an exhibit of Orchids of Latin America. 

The orchids were AMAZING and the scent in the room was wonderful. What a treat. There were orchids that looked like corsages, and others that looked like butterflies, or crabs, or insects. And we saw the orchid plant that produces vanilla pods. I'd never seen that before.
I love surprises!

More Mail Art, more Ai Weiwei, More mitts

#200

#50

 More using up of scraps. Look, I'm at day 200 of my 365.2 project. Amazing!

This looks very American Southwest landscape to me. What about to you? Anything?

Quote on reverse: "When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do." Rachel Naomi Remen


This one, too, has a kind of lonely out west feeling for me. And a connection to the phases of the moon Ai Weiwei piece though I did it before seeing his work.
 Quote on reverse: You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." John Bunyan

 These are porcelain crabs that are part of the exhibit of Ai Weiwei's work. They were in a huge pile and are a commentary on the situation in China, which I won't try to explain because I wouldn't do it justice.

 This image shoes the tail end of an enourmous snake made up of typical school children's back packs. If you click on the word snake you'll find out more about it, but the one we saw at the Hirshhorn used way more bags. Very intense!

Here are some more of my mitts. These remind me of a snake, not that I've seen a snake in these colors in real life. The are very soft merino wool. Since I learned out to make neat stripes, I like doing them. See more in my shop HERE.

Wednesday - Mail Art, Ai Weiwei & Mitts

#49

 There's something about a black ground that makes colors "pop!"

More using up of scraps of color paper that I'd punched circles out of.

#199

The paper I'm using is quite old and if I get any adhesive on it, I'm in trouble. It marks easily, is hard to clean up, so I have to be very careful.

I like the pale color combination on this one.

 And check this out, this image is of one of the pieces of work that Ai Weiwei had in his exhibit. And doesn't it remind me of my Mail Art? You bet it does. His has to do with phases of the moon. It's an amazing piece.









We drove up to Washington, D.C. with friends yesterday, just to see the Ai Weiwei exhibit at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Gallery. It was an excellent exhibition, very moving. This image is a sculpture made up of very old wooden stool.

I had my honey take some nice photos of my newest mitts. Some of the photos that I used for my Etsy shop weren't very good so he helped me out with new images. I still have to re-do the older photos, but these new ones do the mitts more justice. M. wore her orange mitts this past weekend and got lots of compliments on them, plus her hands were warm. Yay!

Sightseeing and more.

 Our nephew and his wife are visiting us from California.  We wish it weren't so hot and humid but we couldn't do much about that so on a very very hot day, we headed up the pike to Washington, D.C.
Here's photo from inside the huge Air and Space Museum.

 The Capitol building was just so picture perfect. My photo looks like a postcard, right? To bad it was so hot that we felt like we were getting heat stroke! We tried to stay indoors for a long time.

 This Merman sculpture was at the National Museum of American Indians, which is a gorgeous building, with fabulous exhibits. We spent a very long time there and learned a lot, plus we ate lunch there, as there's interesting food choices based on various native foods. Lots of vegetarian choices!

 The next day, fully recovered, we went to the Virginia State Capitol building, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. We took a tour, actually 2, We caught the end of one, and then picked up the start of another, and we learned a lot. This is a sculpture of George Washington, done from life and life sized. 

 Sad news about the dove. Yesterday, I checked on her, and this is what was left: her simple twiggy nest was a mess, and there were some feathers, and that was it. No birds. A hawk? A cat? Who knows, but we're sad she's gone.

 Last night we had a birthday party in our patio for both myself and my honey. We invited our friends, and the neighbors, and asked them to bring food to share. What a feast. All of our friends are very good cooks. There were salads, fruits, cheeses, noodles with peanut sauce, a Turkish dish, a Persian dish, shrimp, chicken and pasta, pork barbeque, and more, plus desserts, and our birthday cakes. We didn't get a good photo of them as we just started to cut them up and eat them. 

 Mine had a curly design and my honey had stripes, like his art work. They were tres leches cakes and quite delicious. We danced a lot, which was fun. AND no one called the police on us. Possibly because   all the neighbors were there. Who's left to complain?

I had to include this little critter. This squirrel was very friendly. He came up to us while we were sitting on a ledge at the Police Memorial in D.C. I think maybe people sit out there at lunch time and share with the squirrels. It was quite used to people.