Soul Collage

So, I am trying my hand at SoulCollage. You can read more about the concept at http://www.soulcollage.com/home/index.php, Just wanted to share my second one:

I Am One Who is the Storyteller.
I Am One Who Traces Her History.
I am One Who Remembers.

Son of my heart

I wrote these words to some friends and realized how well they went with these pictures I took of Noah and I the following day:


I met with Noah's caseworker, this really wonderful dynamo of a woman named Beth, who is helping us get all kinds of services for him. We talked about how the public school is just not meeting his needs, though their intentions and hearts are set in the right place, their training and facilities are inadequate.

We talked about what is happening to my bright, fizzy, loving, driven, creative, charming, passionate baby boy (ok, he's just turned 6...but he's my BABY!); everyday he comes home crushed on some level. I don't know many 6 yr olds who hit themselves in the head, who call themselves dumb and stupid, who cry and say that want to die. I still reel when these things come from my child's mouth.

His mind is a dazzling and complex landscape where brilliant sunshine and raging storms plow through erratically, alternately blinding him with manic giddiness or sucking him up in a twister of rage. Sometimes both at once! And here he is, this tiny new soul, still trying to understand the world, and people, and though everyone who guides him tries hard to encourage him, the messages he hears and internalizes every single day are...
not good enough
unnacceptable
innappropriate
try harder
stop fussing
you're overreacting
get a grip
you're ruining everything
get away from me
you're scary
you're mean
you're bad

...and he is starting to believe it. We need to get him OUT of the mainstream educational system before it destroys him. He is an octagonal peg and they are jamming him into a round hole by whittling down his self esteem, his sense of self, his hope. I cannot stand by and watch my child be strangled by red tape while the almighty dollar holds sway over his future.

The suicide rate for boys with this disorder is terrifyingly high. I am in a fight for not just the quality of his life, but his life! His LIFE! And some days I get a glimpse of how very small I am on the battlefield, with the rusty little bugle I am trying to muster up a "charge!" with, and a shitty broken musket. And maybe a pack of smokes. Ha!

Anyway, sorry, it is something I can rant about for days. He is a fire in my heart all the time.

The upshot of this meeting was we are going to seek out of district placement for him. A special school that the town will have to pay for. This is going to be a HARD FIGHT. These things often involve lawyers, appeals, and general misery. The school we are aiming for has a $46 K annual tuition rate. We will have a fight on our hands.

So the person who really needs the glory love and prayers is Noah, whose spirit and mind are under fire everyday, and whose childhood is an emotional battlefield being slowly littered with memories of bad days. And prayers, too that the hearts and minds of those with the power to make a change for him are moved to do so, to make a call that changes the course of his entire future. So much for our family will ride on this. Everything, in fact.
Read more about what Noah is dealing with HERE.
Here is my baby boy:

Ready, set...create!

2007...I am starting the year with a clean studio and lots of projects lined up. Fingers crossed I can keep all the chainsaws I am juggling under control while making it look easy. People, its not easy. Let's face it, there's no way I could make it look easy. But I can try to make it look pretty!

Forest Mini Journal

Ornamentation

A friend of mine was ebaying some of these lovely storage tins, and reminded me I had a lot of them stashed away in a box and was not using them. They seemed to lend themselves to little shadowbox vignettes, so I turned some into ornaments to put in the Holiday Shoppe at Artella. They were great fun to make!

Card Attack

Working hard to meet their goal, my two Jr. Sharpie Scouts spent time in the studio with me today! Here is some of their work!

Homers

Decos that come home are like little mail miracles, are they not? To me they seem as rare as a message in a bottle, sent adrfit...and they wash up on shore after shore...and somehow drift home. Of the over 100 decos I have sent into the world over a 3 year period, 8 have come home. In fact, the eighth arrived in yesterdays mail, and had been traveling since May of 2005. Hope Clinchot created this Visions of Africa deco, and its pages were filled by artists from around the US and as far away as New Zealand. Thank you to all you contributed, and to Kathleen for sending it home!
Here it sits in a place of honor in the "gallery" of my studio.

9.11

Remember by mail art

From Fumes to Final Product

Here is a page from my Art Journal.Remember that box for of Sharpie Products I was sent by Sanford Co for being such a loyal fan (and having an inside connection)? If not, scroll down, you'll see it.
Lookee how preety...I love the colorrrsssss...

Myra

Who is Myra? She is My Roaming Altoid tin doll. I am playing in a round robin with 11 other fabulous artists for this challenge. Take an altoid tin, take the first steps to creating an art doll of it. Send it to the next in line, along with a journal to track the dolls travels. That person then adds to the doll and sends to the next; meanwhile I get someone else's doll and add to it. The project is slated to run for a full year, so that hopefully next Septmeber, Myra will return home fully arted up, be-limbed (is that a word?) and strutting her stuff. She has a gypsy theme; she travels with her journal in a mini-suitcase, which is also loaded with tiny beads and charms and trinkets for other artists in the group to use during the process. Today, she heads out into the world!

Happiness is a Box Full of Fumes

Sharpie Love...breathe it in...

Art Journal pages again

I think this journal has been the keeper of my sanity this summer...

The Seaqueen

This weekend I fiddled around with sculpey...something that is hard for me, since my carpal tunnel symptoms seem to really flare up angrily when I try to use modeling compounds. My fingers go numb within minutes. So I sculpted her form rather quickly and imperfectly...but then dressed her up in glass microbeads and fibres to cover her rougher spots. Her shaowbox "sea" interior measures about 4x4", so she is petite. I may sell her; but I am attached to her right now...she makes me think of an old friend I miss.

paper beads

I just love making these things...I get vey focused and it becomes zen like...takes my mind from my troubles...

Summer

Has propelled me outdoors and away from the studio...which means less art...but more photography. Here are some from my garden...

The nitty-gritty

So here are my latest Try it Tuesday gambles...a technique I really enjoy fiddling with: faux rust! Gesso, gold foil, sand, sugar, alcohol inks, acrylics, pearl ex powders,and watercolors.

Be sure to check out the Try It T's link to the right; I am sponsoring this weeks prize with a tote bag from my Cafpress press store stuffed full of art goodies!

Journal Pages-influenced

Some more art journal pages..this time the assignment was Gluebooks...haphazard collage with paper ephemera...but as usual I could not give in to chaos and wound up with not only an arranged series of collages but a theme. Gah. Heavily influenced by reading the DaVinci code, the notion of the Divine Feminine and the balance of the sexes crept into one...and messages in art in another...Ah, well, I like them anyway. Also a few other random pages...

graphicsperiment

One of these days I will try photoshop. Or something like it. One of these days I will brave the world of digital manipulation and not be freaked out by all the Scary Complicated Toolbars. In the meantime, I do stuff with MS paint and my free fujipics software...how pathetic.
Here is an odd self portrait. All the colors are fragments of my photos, pictures of the flowers in my garden...iris, rhododendron, bleeding heart, forget-me-not, peony and pansy. Odd, but I like it anyway.

New techniques and new blooms

A combined-subject post, since both these things came about on the same day. Yesterday I got some nice macros of the rhododendrons and peonies in the yard; thought I'd share. And the artwork is a result of my latest "try-it Tuesday" challenge: easy image transfers. Believe it or not, for all the years I have been doing art, this is something I have put off learning. I think now I am hooked! The background is primarily watercolors, acrylics and embossing powders. The pearls and text are stamped on, the leaves and stem are acrylic, and the flower and face and tranfers.

20 years!

So, its not art...but I survived my 20th reunion, and that takes talent and skill!

Try-it-Tuesdays challenge

I took on Chrysti's Try It Tuesday challenge last week and here is the result; I did a gel image transfer and added some paper lave for texture over the acrylic background. it was a lot of fun and I learned an easy technique; what more can you ask for?