ArtFest 2010 Catch Up

Here's a toast to ArtFest 2010! Tracy and Teesha Moore have outdone themselves once again. I had THE BEST TIME! Every year I think that they won't be able to make it better, more fun, more jam-packed and every year they prove me wrong.

Even the weather co-operated.

I took classes from Catherine Witherall in PMC bead and ring making, a class from Bee Shay that was delightful and on my last day I finally had a class with Lynne Perrella (whom I have been trying to get into one of her classes for five years!). Each class was wonderful and I learned a long ton from each of my teachers.

Classmate in Bee's class who was really into her painting....and I can't remember her name, unfortunately!

Bee helping a student in her Draw It, Paint It class on Friday.

My painting from Bee's class. This is Lady Phyllis Sopwith, wife of Tom Sopwith (of Sopwith Camel fame). She was described in an article in the London Times from the mid 1930s as having "pretty teeth" but I suspect most people who are familiar with her name remember her for being the navigator on an America's Cup challenger in 1934 and 1937. There was time for some early morning beach combing.....

....and a little shopping in Port Townsend....here's Bee modeling a hat. I think she looks like she's having an IDEA! I'd have bought one of these amazing felted hats but the $300+ price tag was waaaaaaay over my hat budget! But my goodness, they are really cool hats.

Nonie and Bee at lunch at The Silverwater Cafe in Port Townsend.

Cheap advertising for a surprisingly good coffee shop.

Morning reflections at Port Hudson, one of my favorite places to start my daily walk.

If you ever have a chance to attend ArtFest, RUN don't walk to sign up. It's magical.

Doing what I love best (Self-Portrait Friday)

Painting.

Have I mentioned how much I love the process of painting? When I get into "the zone" it feels free and exhilarating like swimming or dancing. I lose all track of time and place, I am just moving and flowing and color and texture. It's magic. When I was young I only ever felt that way when I was swimming. Now I have painting, too. Lucky me.

O, lucky lucky me!


Painted in Lynne Perrella's Go For Baroque class at ArtFest 2010

Photocrawl with the Unusual Suspects

I had the best time today on a photocrawl of the Fremont Sunday Market with Gwen Delmore, Louie Shellenberger and her sister-in-law Suze Stewart. We shopped, took photos, laughed, ate, printed some of our photos and journaled in these cute little journals you see here. Gwen made a journal for each of us and they are just the perfect size to document a very pleasant Sunday. We even got lucky with the weather!

We had lunch at a great spot called the Blue Moon Burger and I would like to publicly thank them for allowing us to plug in our Pogo printers and take over two tables for several hours while we printed, ate and journaled. The food was goooooooooooood, by the way.

I don't usually journal in such a style, so this was a fun way to do something out of the box. I love my little journal and will treasure it as a reminder of a happy day.





This gentleman had been "dressed" for a birthday. He's very festive, don't you think?

And these shoes....ah....they give a whole new meaning to Toe Shoes, don't you think?

Friday Portrait of My New Reality

Here I am, with my newest best tool---my glucose meter. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in late November and by following my doctor's orders I am getting it under control. I am eating right, getting daily exercise, I take my medications and do as I'm told. I guess you can say I'm (finally) being an adult! Well, sort of....Diabetes is not something you fool around with, it is something you have to take very, very seriously. And I am. And it is paying off.

Educate yourself about Diabetes. Exercise daily, watch your diet, lose weight (the bain of my existence) if you need to or keep the excess poundage off and don't smoke. Diabetes is rampant but you can do something about it.

I plan to be here a long, long time yet and I want you, Dear Reader, to be here too, healthy and happy.

Okay, stepping down off my soap box now and returning control of your computer. Have a wonderful weekend!

Packing for ArtFest

Let me ask you, Dear Reader, if you know how to spell "mess." You do? Do you spell it ARTFEST? Well, I do, at least right now. My house is a total, absolute, complete mess. I have milk carton-like crates sitting about where I have stuffed this and that. Things I want to take with me, things I have to have, things I think I need but won't touch the entire time I am there. (Past experience tells me this is, alas, a truth.) Each class requires different art supplies. I print out the supply list and try to be organized in amassing the piles of things required. I try. I try but I fail.

Many experienced, long-time ArtFest attendees have written helpful hints on the Yahoo group page to share their packing tips. One of the best suggestions is to put all your supplies, including the supply list, into a ziplock plastic bag. This is very useful and I do it for my classes....those that will have a supply list that will fit into a ziplock plastic bag, that is! I am taking a class from the amazing Lynne Perrella a week from Saturday that is requiring a whole crate. I am hoping that all the things I need for her class will fit into one crate. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please

How do the people who come to ArtFest by plane manage? I have a CRV and I'm wondering if my stuff, my sister-in-law's stuff and Bee's stuff (including boxes of her new book that she will be selling at Vendor Night!) will fit into my vehicle. Each year we swear we are not going to take so much. Each year we take more.

The images above are toner copies of images I need for Ms. Perrella's class, Go For Baroque.

Will it all fit? Will I gather all my supplies in time? Will I be able to find room for Nonie & Bee's things? Stay tuned.....

Self Portrait Friday

I was reading Nina Bagley's blog, Ornamental, this morning and her latest post was Self Portrait Friday. It occured to me that I don't have any photos from my birthday of myself, the big Six O (as people always seem to put it for some obscure reason), and I decided to play long. So, here is my Saturday Self Portrait, for what it's worth---and it isn't much!. Here is the sixty year old face that is very grateful to be here, in good health, lucky and blessed beyond belief and happy.

Life is good.

New Travel Journal

I am going on a dream trip in late April to Tunisia and Morocco so lately I've been working on putting together the journal in which to record my experiences. Sometimes I honestly think that the best part of a trip is coming home and having my travel journal to remind me of all my experiences.
I've done my interpretation of a minaret for the front and back cover, one in the day and the other at night. I used paper for the minaret and the moon/sun, acrylic paint and gel medium for the rest of the covers. I like the texture I achieved with a small roller with the gel medium. I am a messy journal-keeper and am likely to put my journal down in a puddle of something at a restaurant or coffee shop, so water-proofing the covers is a real requirement.

I love this quote from Proust and decided it would be a good reminder while I was traveling, so I put it opposite the first page of the journal.

I like the effect I achieved on the inside of the covers using walnut ink, glimmer mists and kosher salt. I will definitely use that technique again.

The other big news is that I turned 60 earlier in the week. My family gathered last weekend to celebrate the beginning of my 7th decade (!!!) and that was the very best gift I received. I must say that never have I had so many birthday wishes, phone calls (from as far away as Norway and Nepal), flowers and gifts. I feel so very loved with this out pouring of well wishes and love, and rather humbled by it all. I've been taken to dinner, to lunch, to coffee and I've been emailed and hugged, spoiled and cosseted and it's been going on now for over a week. I guess I can honestly claim to be having a birthday season rather than just a birth day! I like it---it's fun! And there will be more celebrating when my dear friend Bee arrives as we celebrate our mutual birthdays together. The birthday season continues.

There are so many flowers in the house from all these lovely friends that it looks like there has been a death---and then I realized that there has been.....my "youth!"

My New Neighbors

My DH and I have been seeing a lot of a little Rufus Hummingbird in our back yard. The other morning, DH called me into the bedroom and, pointing out the window, showed me why we have been seeing so much of this beautiful little birdie. Lo and behold, right outside the window, in very plain view, not five feet from the window glass was a nest, with two very perky and healthy occupants. I feel rather dull not to have noticed this before now, but in my defense, on that very window ledge sit six gorgeous blooming phalenopsis orchids. I get distracted easily with big, flashy orchid blooms.

Now, of course, I can't stay away from the window and keep popping back into the bedroom to see what's happening with the new neighbors. Having these precious birds right outside my window seems to me to be the most precious gift I can imagine.

Watercolor Travel Journal Class

I took a class today at the Cole Gallery here in Edmonds that was taught by Faye Castle. I loved the class and was very happy to be able to learn from Faye, as her style of mixing watercolor and pen and ink is very similar to my style when working in my travel journals. There is something wonderful about adding the ink work at the end of the painting experience. Faye was telling us that she can hardly wait to get to the place where she can add the inked lines, that her hands shake in anticipation, and I knew immediately that we are much the same as that's exactly how I feel, too! We worked mostly from our own travel photographs and I spent the majority of my drawing and painting time working from a photo I took when I was in Otavalo, Ecuador. I was happy with Faye's gentle suggestions and was not totally displeased with the outcome. I didn't spend much time on the little painting, but I did try to put into action many of the things Faye taught. She's a great teacher.

She had us do some exercises in value and also to make a color wheel with the paint that each of us had in our own, particular watercolor sets. It's always a good idea to work with the paint you have so you know exactly what to mix with what to get the color you need, to see what is staining and what you can lift off with clean water and which paint is 'granular' and settles into the little pockets in the watercolor paper. (I like the texture of cold press paper much more than hot press, as hot press paper just seems flat and dull to me. I like how some paints will settle into the depressions in cold press paper and how that will add to the dimension of the finished painting or sketch.) Faye had us begin by doing blind contour drawings of our hand---and I will spare you my attempts to capture my hand without looking at what I was drawing, only at the spot on my hand that I was drawing. Try drawing something yourself using the blind contour method. It's amazing how bad, or how enlightening, such a drawing can be!

I bought a wonderful little Winsor Newton travel watercolor box. It has it all! Twelve half pans of paint, a tiny little travel brush, a water bottle and the lid of the box turns into a water container (although it sure doesn't hold much!). It's compact and it has everything you really need to get a fast sketch down on paper while standing and gawking on your travels. I plan to take my new little set with me when I head off to North Africa (Tunisia and Morocco) in late April. I expect that it will be perfect, especially as I also treated myself to a Kolinsky sable travel brush that is to die for! Oh, how I love brushes and how this one is just too too....too yummy. It holds a ton of water and/or paint and it comes to a very fine, sharp point. When the brush is taken apart, it fits into the cap and is no bigger than a ballpoint pen. It is just scrumptious!

Yes. I am. I am addicted to art supplies. And I don't care!

Faye shared a number of books that she finds extremely useful with us and I got many ideas. I will search out some of the titles and see if I can't find them used on eBay or Alibris. I told Faye about one of my favorite journal artists, Hannah Hinchman, whom she had not discovered. I am always delighted to bring someone else to "meet" Hannah, and it turned out that both Hannah Hinchman and Faye have a connection to Montana. If you aren't familiar with Hannah's books, check them out on Amazon. It was from reading A Life in Hand: Creating and Illuminated Journal that I finally had the courage to try adding watercolor sketches to my journals, much to their improvement to my mind, at least. My art may not be great, but it does give an inkling of how a place 'felt' to me, how I saw it. I owe Hannah a big thank you for helping me make my journals, and journaling experience, that much richer and personal.

NO ORANGE

I belong to a collaborative color journal group and it has proven to be a very fun and challenging project. Until ORANGE arrived, that is. I do not appreciate the color orange. That is not to say that I don't see the beauty in a clementine or satsuma orange, or that the wondrous streaks of orange that can light the sky at sunset don't amaze and delight me. But for a color to work with in my art projects, nope, don't like it. It grates. It's too bright. It's too 70s for my taste (a decade that should live in infamy for its clothes, hairstyles, design and especially, music!). Orange just doesn't get my creative 'juices' flowing (pardon the pun).



The other members in our collaboration all seem to be happy, or at least okay, with orange. I am really looking forward to see how the others handled this poor cousin to sunshine yellow and fire engine red.

I finally found a photo I took in the Caribbean last year that was orange. REALLY orange. I use that for the foundation to my page. It turned out okay. I mean, I loved the image, and I used orange, and I turned it in on time and like that there. But, it is still ORANGE. Ugh.

Do you, Dear Reader, have a color that you abhor? Does some bit of the rainbow grate upon you, like fingers scraping down a blackboard, and make you crazy? Or is it just me?

It's probably just me....

Congratulations Bee!

Oh happy day! My dear friend, Bee Shay, has written a fantastic book and today it arrived on my doorstep. Her book is called Collage Lab:Experiments, Investigations, and Exploratory Projects . I can't recommend it highly enough. If you have any interest in collage, or in mixed media or just love to look at creative and entertaining books stuffed with great art, this is one you will want for your personal library. I have been drooling over the projects all evening and plan to get out my art supplies and put into action some of the great ideas Bee puts forth in her projects just as soon as I finish packing up "Christmas."

Have I mentioned how enthused this book has gotten me---all jazzed up and full of ideas to try? I bet is will plant many seeds in your psyche, too. Try it, you'll love it!

To my little Kumquat, congratulations! I am so happy to see all your hard work realized, in a beautiful book I can hold in my hands and return to whenever I need inspiration. Hip hip hooray and atta girl and wa-hoooooo! Bee, darlin', you are amazing.

Talk about a hat trick!

Happy New Year

Instead of making resolutions this first day of 2010, I want to be grateful for all my blessings. I am especially grateful for my family and my friends (family we get to pick!), for my heath and my generally optimistic nature. I am grateful for the physical beauty of this Earth. I am grateful for time spend on or near waters. I am extremely grateful for my easy life. I am truly, truly blessed and I don't ever want to take any of it for granted.

And to you, Dear Reader, I wish a healthy, happy 2010.



The art of blessing the day

by Marge Piercy

This is the blessing for rain after drought:

Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,

a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.

Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.

Enter my skin, wash me for the little

chrysalis of sleep rocked in your lashing.

in the morning the world is peeled and shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:

Now everything shakes itself free and rises.

The trees are bright as pushcart ices.

Every last lily opens its satin thighs.

The bees dance and roll in pollen

and the cardinal at the top of the pine

sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:

those green boxes of tasteless acid the store

sells in January, those red things with the savor

of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.

How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,

warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.

You are the savor of summer in thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:

Although I shall not forget that things

work in increments and epicycles and sometime

leaps that half the time fall back down,

let's not relinquish dancing while the music

fits into our hips and bounces our heels.

We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,

the blessing for love returned, for friends'

return, for money received unexpected,

the blessing for the rising of the bread,

the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental

about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote

with no more feeling than one says gesundheit

But the discipline of blessings is to taste

each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet

and the salty, and be glad for what does not

hurt. The art in compressing attention

toe each little and big blossom of the tree

of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,

its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

It is going on eleven on Christmas Eve, and my house is quiet. My DH is working on the new notebook computer I gave him, the cat is curled up asleep next to me as I type this and Christmas carols are drifting in from the other room where they are playing softly on the radio. I have things ready for my brunch guests in the morning. I was lavishly gifted by my family and friends, fed a wonderful meal at my mother-in-law's, enjoyed time with family and have more invitations for tomorrow than I fear I have the energy to truly enjoy. It is, simply put, late on my favorite night of the year.

My house is full of peace and hope and quiet joy. I wish the same for you.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving

May your stuffing be tasty,
Your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious,
and your pies take the prize,
and your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of your thighs!

I wish you all a Thanksgiving filled with family and friends, good food and good humor. Have a piece of pie for me!

New Favorite Quote

“I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity... I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not--more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.”~ Beverly Sills

Family Milestones

My DH has turned 60 this past week. On November 14th we had a huge family party to celebrate this amazing achievement. Family came from near and far (California) and we wined and dined and DH blew the candles out! I think his best gift (and mine, too) was having our daughters and our son-in-law-to-be home! It's always a party when the girls are home!

Odd to think that we will have two sons-in-law and they are both named Chris....
My eldest daughter, Jen, and the love of her life, Chris, became engaged Friday night. Poor Jen tried and tried to call me, but I was at the Great Big Sea concert and hadn't taken my phone and didn't check it when I returned home. She called at 7:45 on Saturday morning and caught me lolling in bed and then passed on the happy news. We are so happy for them both and so very excited to welcome another Chris into our family. Jen's Chris is just the nicest fellow and he makes our girl so very happy. I am giddy with glee over this news!

Great Big Sea

© Roadrunner Records // Photo credit: Andrew MacNaughtan

This was one rollicking and toe-tappin' Friday night in Edmonds! One of my all-time favorite bands, Great Big Sea, came to town today and played at the Edmonds Center for the Arts, all of three blocks from my house. Nonie and I went and had front row seats! (I guess it pays to be an "official" fan of the band as I bought the tickets through their website and got these fantastic seats.) From the start to the finish, it was a night of great music, great fun, a lot of singing along and much laughter. I got to hear some of my very favorites, especially The Night Pat Murphy Died and Ordinary Day.

I should be going to bed and getting some rest before heading up to my cabin to face the clean up after the recent burglary, but I'm too jazzed from the concert and I'm bouncing around the house listing to more of my favorites.

If you ever get the chance to see the lads in person, run to buy the tickets. You won't be sorry!


Courtesy MuchMusic // Photo credit: Geoff George

This just in from our local paper, The Beacon.

"A Newfoundland Kind of Night

by David Brewster and Bill Wood for the Beacon

"Okay, so we've all attended concerts where the artists received a standing ovation at the conclusion of a fantastic performance. It happens most weekend evenings at the Edmonds Center for the Arts. But until last Friday ECA concert hall had never experienced a standing ovation at the beginning of the show, nor one that extended pretty much over the entire duration of Great big Sea's amazing concert.

"Great Big Sea has inspired a legion of fans from Canada and the U.S., and these followers, some from as far away as Fairbanks, were in full force throughout the show, singing along with nearly every song, pumping their fists high and dancing in place from introduction to the encore's end. The joy felt back and forth between the audience and the band made for a magical evening.

"The band, formed in Newfoundland in 1993 and lead by co-founders Alan Doyle, Sean McCann and Bob Hallett, performed songs from the full range of their recording career.

"On selections such as "When I'm Up," "Lukey," "Can't Stop Falling" and "Here and Now" the band and audience joined in full-throated song.

"Much of their original material shows the influence of their Eastern Maritime roots-sea shanties and story songs- and the traditional acoustic instrumentation helped put the voices right up front.

"Lead vocal duties were mostly shared by McCann's sweet tenor, which often rang out above everything, and Doyle's baritone, which was appealingly gruff around the edges.

"McCann was particularly powerful in leading an a capella performance of "General Taylor," a traditional from their 1997 album Play.

"Hallet is a multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, his skills on equal display on bouzouki, mandolin, fiddle, squeeze box accordion, harmonica and tin whistle. Doyle and McCann took turns engaging the audience with banter, improvised ditties and impromptu sing-alongs. the band is ably rounded out by Murray Foster on bass and Kris MacFarlane on drums and percussion.

"On several occasions the band praised the charms of Edmonds and the Pacific Northwest, and it will be hard to forget the power and passion of Great Big Sea's performance last week. We hope, along with the band, for their return in the future."

Amen.