Last Seen at the Paper Trimmer

Last seen at my paper trimmer, each member of this series developed with quick intuitive touches of paint, ink, and oil pastel.

I sat with each until a title fell into place, then framed them and snapped photos (photographing art that's under glass? oy).

You Know What Is So and What Is Not
8 x 10" in 12 x 16" birch frame; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Everything That Happens to You Is Your Teacher
8 x 10" in 12 x 16" birch frame; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Sit at the Feet of Your Own Life
8 x 10" in 12 x 16" birch frame; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

See for Yourself How the Light Strikes the Ground
8 x 10" in 12 x 16" birch frame; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Open Studio

Have to say it's kinda fun when my 'kids' and I have someplace special to go, and we run around excitedly getting ready—taking showers, styling our hair just so, putting on accessories, and preening in front of full-length mirrors.

On Saturday, some of the kids were so excited to get out that they decided not to return home!

my 'kids' all gussied up at Porter Mill Open Studios 12/1/18

All the World in a Few Square Inches

A few quiet moments of nourishing contentment and absorption this afternoon:

• rounding up a scrap of textured watercolor paper,
• swishing the decisive blade of my paper trimmer to cut the scrap in half,
• gathering paint markers and red gel pen,
• poking around for tidbits of a trimmed painting,
• grabbing a glue stick,
• folding, gluing, writing.

A tiny bit of prep for my Saturday gig at open studios at Porter Mill.

Walking Through Some of My Doors

I am always so grateful when I can take, and even welcome, life as it comes, when I can walk through some of my doors to see beyond what I have until then perceived as limitations.

The Ability to Respond Gratefully to Problems
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Blame and Battle No Longer Apply
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Others Have Gone Through the Door Before Us
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Each of Us Goes Through the Door for Others
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Whole New Way of Seeing

Early in my years of active parenting, a friend directed my attention to Whole Child, Whole Parent by Polly Berrien Berends.

I had no idea at the time that it was the gift of a turning point.

The Road That Leads to the Road
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

The Suspicion That I'm Not Seeing Straight
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Dying to Wake Up
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Please Tell Me What My Mistaken Idea Is
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Starting Point

Every feeling except love is not-love.

Love. Not-love.

Let's go with that as a starting point.

I Awake Under the Dome of Pre-Dawn
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, India ink, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Unmoving, I Yet Move with Everything on Earth
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, India ink, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

All the Time

A moment of zen is mine for the living whenever long-time friend Sarah, now a dog coach, posts on Instagram.

Recently:

Every living thing is learning, all the time. You can teach crazy or you can teach calm. The choice is yours.

Oh.

Yeah.

Now I remember. 

The choice is mine, crazy or calm. I feel myself breathing more deeply already.

No Boundaries Between Me and the Ground and the Grass
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, India ink, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

No Boundaries Between Me and the Planets
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, India ink, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Perspective

I'm captivated lately by shifting perspective, those experiences of suddenly seeing through new eyes, whether spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and/or—more literally—visually.

Today I start with stuff. Stuff in drawers and baskets, stuff in boxes and folders—a transparent acrylic skin made in October, a painting exercise from 2016, calendar posters from 2014, a black envelope that came in the mail who knows when and bearing who knows what.

Cut a snippet of the acrylic skin, cut the painting exercise, cut the envelope, cut the calendar pages.

Blink.

Through new eyes unrelated stuff becomes two elegant greeting cards, completing a quartet whose other members stepped out together yesterday.

I think [s]he saw art 
where other people
saw nothing,
but that's the nature
of the artist
in the first place,
isn't it?

-Elizabeth George, For the Sake of Elena

Moon Lifts, Sun Drops, Pines Pirouette
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and watercolor pastel
abstract
2018

Lasso the Flames and Sparks If You Can
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, collage, and watercolor pastel
abstract
2018

Multiplication

To multi-ply is to many-fold and, starting at a young age, my son Scott took a shine to folding paper airplanes, which led me to get him a beginner's book of origami instructions and a package of paper, which in turn led him, at age six, to have an exhibit at our public library of origami figures he'd folded, an exhibit that included an 18-inch-long Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton made from 21 squares of paper, each of which had many, many, many folds.

So it is that when I go rag-picking today, I find origami paper among my odds and ends, providing the perfect backdrop to two found compositions extracted from a 2016 improv exercise. Together, these elements become mono-fold greeting cards.

The Sun So Bright It Bounces Off the Water
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, collage, and watercolor pastel
abstract
2018
sold

The Moon Folds Over and Then Straightens Out Again
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and watercolor pastel
abstract
2018

Resuscitation

This trio started as an experiment on the front porch of a cottage on Beaver Harbor in New Brunswick, Canada.

June, two years ago. Bright blue skies. Fresh air. Early morning sunlight.

Played with acrylic and oil pastel on a long strip of canvas paper. Did some cutting up, fiddled with some superimposing. Brought it home in a pile of several such experiments.

Moved it from drawer to drawer.  Sighed more than once at its incompletion. Fell into some negative self-talk.

Then, a few weeks ago, a bookmark sneaked out of it.

Today, a triptych of greeting cards. Couldn't be more pleased.

You never know!

Just a Ferry Ride Away from Dulse
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Unexpected Port of Call
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Responding to the Prevailing Wind
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Ragman

Years ago I'd often head to a former factory in Cambridge, MA, with friend Anne. What we referred to as "Ragman" was a place that in post World War II years bought used clothes in bulk and cut them into rags for industrial customers. Then, in the late 1970's, the owner decided to separate out less-worn items from the raw materials and sell them on weekends for $1 a pound.

Craziest place ever. Big plastic garbage bags instead of shopping carts. Clothes heaped all over the old wooden floor. No changing rooms. Big scale for checking out at the end.

Initially paralyzed, I'd eventually pick a starting place and begin pawing through. My left brain had no option but to yield to my right brain. I found the best clothes clothes there! $23—new wardrobe!

My studio is a little less rough around the edges, though not much. I paw through piles of past paintings, let my right brain rummage through all that raw material. I find the best stuff there!

Another series of cards:

The In-Between Moments of Slack Tide
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and pastels
abstract
2018

The Sea-Rich Muddy Harbor Floor
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and pastels
abstract
2018

Redolent with Pungent Gurry
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and pastels
abstract
2018

Chiffonnier

Rag-picker is a term for someone who makes a living by rummaging through refuse in the streets to collect material for salvage and reuse. Although solely a job for the lowest of the working classes, it was considered an honest occupation. 

Well, of course!

And, not only that, but also—fancy this!—another term for rag-picker is chiffonnier. La-di-da!

Today, as studio chiffonnier, I salvage a 2016 'busy & quiet' exercise—itself made of salvaged material. I cut it into a diptych, mount each half on scraps of a wallpaper sample from a 2013 kitchen renovation project, slip each card into a clear protective sleeve.

This chiffonier says, Voilà!

And Follow After
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, pencil, and collage
abstract
2018

The Day Together
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, pencil, and collage
abstract
2018

In Production

In limbo, waiting for some supplies on order, I've pressed pause with the WIP last seen at the paper cutter. I have shifted gears and am now in production making a bunch of greeting cards.

I do some more 'rag-picking' again today … and look at this sweet duo! The art comprises two found compositions from another piece done for an online Jane Davies class in 2016. The backing is the inside of an envelope—marketing material, I think. Way fun!

The Smell of Damp Wood and Sun
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, India ink, and pencil
abstract
2018

The Smell of Earth and Grass
4.25 x 5.5 greeting card; acrylic, India ink, pencil
abstract
2018

You Never Know

In my mind's ear I can hear perfectly the clop-clop of a horse pulling an open cart down Chepstow Place in London where I lived in 1968, adding its hoofbeat to the one-line chant voiced by the man running the operation: RAAAAGs'n'bones, RAAAAGs'n'bones.

A rag-and-bone man collects unwanted household items and sells them to merchants. In 19th century London about a thousand of these men lived in extreme poverty, surviving on the proceeds of what they collected each day. By the 1980's they were mostly gone.

I'm somewhat of an updated knockoff rag-and-bone person myself, of the sort portrayed aptly by Florian Roderi in A Weekend with Picasso:

We artists are a bit like ragpickers;
we like to have all sorts
of odds and ends around us.
They may seem completely useless
to other people
but
       you never know!

I experience such pleasure today as I decide which of the odds and ends around me to make into a greeting card, pressing into service a 'mostly monochrome' exercise done for a Jane Davies class—an exercise which itself pulled from several odds and ends—along with a promotional postcard salvaged from the mail. Scissors, acrylic matte medium, books and bricks to press pieces together, and finally a crystal clear plastic sleeve.

You never know!

Buzzing Bees, Like a Haze in Spring
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, India ink, and collage
abstract
2018