Maker 2 - 2007
watercolor

Chilly days

We had our first serious cold front wander through. When I first moved to Texas we used to have longer chillier winters but not now. I remember my first snow flurry.... it was 19 degrees in San Antonio and I saw snowflakes tumbling down. I was so excited. My aunt couldn't understand why I was so impressed with a few flakes of snow. So when colder weather hits I often hope for snow. Last year we had ice storms which are beautiful but more dangerous. Austin drivers don't drive well in snowy or icy weather. We do fine in heat not wet. This year, because of the drought (we're down about 19 inches) everytime it rains, the water mixes with the oil on the street and creates goo that is pretty slippery. We get an increase in accidents because of it.

This one hit Austin on Tuesday evening and brought more sleet and icy rain than snow. I could hear it on the roof and outside on the bushes, making that hissing pinging sound that sleet and ice do. It gets so quiet when it does this here. I wonder though, where do the birds go when it sleets? Do they get cold feet sitting huddled among the leaves?

By the next morning my car had tiny banks of ice along it's windshield. I admired them as I walked to the bus stop. Everything else was just damp and darker concrete grey. The cooler bouts of weather have produced some beautiful colors of trees this year.

printmaking

I've been taking photos of my art work and slowing arranging them onto this blog. Since I'm pretty clueless how to do it expect to see things come and go. (Much like a dance when people bob and weave.)

I started working with printmaking about a year and a half ago - having always wanted to learn. I really was fearful of doing an etching - you know - acid, copper and those dreadful chemicals that could potentially ruin something. But the local Community College had a printmaking course and in a moment of trying to free myself of being stuck in the inertia of artist's block, I signed up for it. Even if I didn't like the processes I would at least have to think creatively and get out of my dark pit of non-art I had put myself in.

The course was an introduction to three types of printmaking processes - wood block, etching or itaglio and lithography. I liked wood block, loved intaglio and had a grim struggle at lithography (which I have to go back and finish one day). So I am staying with it to the point that my boyfriend bought me a little press for small prints so I can work on stuff out of class. (How many times can you take a class just to use the equipment?)

At any rate, it's been a rare experience for me to learn, plus it's allowed me to meet some really great people.

This morning the weather was totally perfect. It's chilly and crisp and very sunny. I'm sitting here in my office staring out the window at the red tiled roof and the warm yellowish red brick across the street. The brick isn't really orange -- more of a warm toned pale red -- what I would call a venetian red. It's still fairly quiet, a lot people both faculty and students aren't awake yet.

I didn't start out in life as a morning person. In my wild and checkered youth I really enjoyed staying up late and then sleeping in. Slowly over the years I've come to enjoy the brief time I get leaving the house, waiting for the bus and walking the few steps to the building. Mornings hold such promise to me, a place to be anew. Even the chill this morning wasn't enough to dampen my enjoyment of the moment.

Across the street from the bus stop is this tall sycamore tree in a neighbors front yard. It's a beautiful tree. There's always a different story it tells when I stand there. Sometimes I see only it's silhouette, a few leaves clinging to the branches, the seed pods hanging like ornaments. This past summer was so hot that a lot of its leaves fell so it already looked autumn like before our brief fall actually started. Other times , I can see the morning stars in amidst its branches or the first early colors of the dawn. The tree makes the wait for the bus just a little friendlier.

Where does one start when beginning an on-line journal? I never what quite what to say or do.