This year I've really decided to work more. Both in this here blog -poor thing- and at home on art. I have loads of good intentions but never get past that. Too many wasted opportunities to do something.
And my poor blog. Really I'm a terrible records keeper.
All one can do is try. So let us try.
Happy 2011. May it be better than 2010 and more productive!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Dia de los Innocentes
I hadn't planned on not writing much or the gaps getting so far and in between posts. I have great thoughts for writing here. Often, when I visit other peoples blogs I'm amazed at their thought - the depth of the ideas and sentiments often help me explore new vistas.
So when my best friend sent me his new blog I realized I needed to perhaps commit to writing on a more regular basis. At least once a month if not every week I will be writing. I tend to be a more visual person rather than a tactile person - i.e. I have trouble framing thoughts with words and not pictures. But the routine and practise of writing in this blog will help me become a better writer.
Today is Dia de los Innocentes or Dia de los Angelitos. -- or in English - Day of the Innocents or "little Angels" . In Mexico the souls of children who have died are remembered on November 1 and tomorrow or All Souls' Day is the day whereby we remember our adults who have died. The veil of the worlds of the living and the dead is thinnest this time and we remember them for two reasons. The first that if we let the Dead we remember them we can keep them at bay so if they wish to be harmful we can aknowledge our awareness of them. The second reason is that we can also tell loved ones we remember them and still in our hearts love them.
In some parts of Texas and the United States, it's more widely celebrated than here in Austin but I have gone to the cemeteries and found graves colorfully decorated with windchimes, and flowers, photos and toys. It is perhaps one of the holidays I prefer more primitive and for me, a comfortable holiday. I have a big bunch of African Marigolds in my kitchen and bought a loaf of Pan de Muertos, a sweet bread with grated orange peel and anise which I love. Maybe next year I will make my own. Dia de los Muertos reached a more personal note this year for me as well. My boyfriends mom lies in the hospital gravely ill, after she went into cardiac arrest so we are more part of this holiday that I expected or truly desired.
So when my best friend sent me his new blog I realized I needed to perhaps commit to writing on a more regular basis. At least once a month if not every week I will be writing. I tend to be a more visual person rather than a tactile person - i.e. I have trouble framing thoughts with words and not pictures. But the routine and practise of writing in this blog will help me become a better writer.
Today is Dia de los Innocentes or Dia de los Angelitos. -- or in English - Day of the Innocents or "little Angels" . In Mexico the souls of children who have died are remembered on November 1 and tomorrow or All Souls' Day is the day whereby we remember our adults who have died. The veil of the worlds of the living and the dead is thinnest this time and we remember them for two reasons. The first that if we let the Dead we remember them we can keep them at bay so if they wish to be harmful we can aknowledge our awareness of them. The second reason is that we can also tell loved ones we remember them and still in our hearts love them.
In some parts of Texas and the United States, it's more widely celebrated than here in Austin but I have gone to the cemeteries and found graves colorfully decorated with windchimes, and flowers, photos and toys. It is perhaps one of the holidays I prefer more primitive and for me, a comfortable holiday. I have a big bunch of African Marigolds in my kitchen and bought a loaf of Pan de Muertos, a sweet bread with grated orange peel and anise which I love. Maybe next year I will make my own. Dia de los Muertos reached a more personal note this year for me as well. My boyfriends mom lies in the hospital gravely ill, after she went into cardiac arrest so we are more part of this holiday that I expected or truly desired.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Great Adventure
Well I signed on to do an art project so now I'm forcing myself to do more. You would think as much as I enjoy it I would work on things all the time. It's just I'm incredibly lazy and will put doing what I have to do. If I have to do dishes I will sweep the floor. If I'm expected to draw I will reorganize my file cabinet.
I think it's so I don't succeed --- hence I've started this project due in January 2011. http://arthousecoop.com/ My subject I picked was "dirigibles and subversives" - a great place to start. It's a great project and I"m going to log in and keep a record of what I do. Starting this week I'm going to do one drawing a week to get it going. Who knows maybe it will get me going in different areas as well.
I don't know anything about either subject really.... I mean I understand what the word means but have never incorporated them into artwork. Once the sketchbook is finished I will send it back to the arthouse and it will become part of a library of sketchbooks for people to check out and look at.
So watch this space.
I think it's so I don't succeed --- hence I've started this project due in January 2011. http://arthousecoop.com/ My subject I picked was "dirigibles and subversives" - a great place to start. It's a great project and I"m going to log in and keep a record of what I do. Starting this week I'm going to do one drawing a week to get it going. Who knows maybe it will get me going in different areas as well.
I don't know anything about either subject really.... I mean I understand what the word means but have never incorporated them into artwork. Once the sketchbook is finished I will send it back to the arthouse and it will become part of a library of sketchbooks for people to check out and look at.
So watch this space.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Spring in the backyard
I'm always late and months after I do something I find myself wishing I had added it to this page. So instead, I feel guilty and leave a void. Hence the distance of time between this blog and the last one. But it's spring and quite lovely. We've had so much rain that everything is totally bursting out in color and growth. Our backyard looks wild in the in the middle of the city, the wild garlic that grows together with the beggar's ticks are as tall as my waist and when the cleavers or goose grass was growing you couldn't walk without getting it wrapped around you.
Yet some spots of civilization remain from the long summer of last year. Two rosemary plants have survived the terrible drought and a culinary sage that sits blooming next to the "Batik" German Iris. Another Iris, who's name I have forgotten is blooming in the other part of the yard.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Fox maidens, Owls and other social outcasts
I admit I'm fascinated with myth. Every time I paint I create a myth about what the story is behind the image. How can you not create a history for your artwork. This means that over my life I look for reasons that perhaps are not within the realm of probability but at times something more supernatural. This doesn't mean that I wholeheartedly grasp every fabulous story. I'm a skeptic about ghosts, fairies, elementals that haunt gardens and the Loch Ness Monsters. Having said that I also keep an open mind - who am I to say that things don't exist or aren't really here. Maybe there are fairies and I'm not lucky enough to have the perception of seeing them. I really wish I could.
In my life I have seen a few things that rationally I cannot explain. Mysterious things that now, after many years past the experience, I have made it into a legend or improvised a rational image to the improbable story. That super- rationale experience has caused me to gather as much information as I can in order to find out the myth or the truth of what I saw and dealt with. In keeping with this is the whole concept of synchronicity that tries to explain the phenomenon of unexplained connected items popping up. I get interested in some aspect and suddenly I find references springing up everywhere. Take for instance the recent interest in fox- maidens. So I start playing this game over the summer that has a sub race of women who are fox maidens. A friend sends me a card I receive in the mail of a fox dressed in a kimono. I get a recommendation to read a series of books by Christopher Golden in which one of the supporting characters is name Kitsune, the Japanese name for the fox-maiden in the mythology of Japan. I go through my hodgepodge of a library to find some information on coyotes and next to it is a book I bought and forgot on foxes.
All this leads me to start working on art that has to do with foxes and fox-maidens because they are such an odd point of Japanese myth. Here are animals that are able to become human in appearance, marry and bear children with humans, only to be treated as an embarrassment to the humans involved. In fact if a man marries a fox-maiden, he's treated with respect but his wife not so much. If she dies or goes back to being a fox, his village and townspeople just act like he never was married or his wife just didn't exist. Poor fox.
So this whole idea has started me on a mission to develop artwork based on fox-maidens and my own slowly developing mindset on them. I think they are much maligned. After all they are a cousin to Coyote, nothing less than an important trickster in north american myth. I really feel like perhaps, fox maidens want to fall in love with a human so that they can be loved and thereby get a soul.
In my life I have seen a few things that rationally I cannot explain. Mysterious things that now, after many years past the experience, I have made it into a legend or improvised a rational image to the improbable story. That super- rationale experience has caused me to gather as much information as I can in order to find out the myth or the truth of what I saw and dealt with. In keeping with this is the whole concept of synchronicity that tries to explain the phenomenon of unexplained connected items popping up. I get interested in some aspect and suddenly I find references springing up everywhere. Take for instance the recent interest in fox- maidens. So I start playing this game over the summer that has a sub race of women who are fox maidens. A friend sends me a card I receive in the mail of a fox dressed in a kimono. I get a recommendation to read a series of books by Christopher Golden in which one of the supporting characters is name Kitsune, the Japanese name for the fox-maiden in the mythology of Japan. I go through my hodgepodge of a library to find some information on coyotes and next to it is a book I bought and forgot on foxes.
All this leads me to start working on art that has to do with foxes and fox-maidens because they are such an odd point of Japanese myth. Here are animals that are able to become human in appearance, marry and bear children with humans, only to be treated as an embarrassment to the humans involved. In fact if a man marries a fox-maiden, he's treated with respect but his wife not so much. If she dies or goes back to being a fox, his village and townspeople just act like he never was married or his wife just didn't exist. Poor fox.
So this whole idea has started me on a mission to develop artwork based on fox-maidens and my own slowly developing mindset on them. I think they are much maligned. After all they are a cousin to Coyote, nothing less than an important trickster in north american myth. I really feel like perhaps, fox maidens want to fall in love with a human so that they can be loved and thereby get a soul.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Morning sky
Sometimes I get lucky with my beat up old digital and find a picture I really like. I've been exploring my neighborhood looking for shots of things I take for granted. One morning I remembered to bring the camera and while I was standing and waiting for the bus, I got a shot of clouds.
I did something I didn't think I'd do and that is I removed an entry because of someone's remarks. I' m not upset about the remarks, just the fact that the person missed the whole point of my note. I'll repost it after I tinker with it a bit.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Words
Sitting on the bus this morning and was talking to the bus driver, Darleen. About this and that. I'd been taking a different bus from the one she drives so we spent the time catching up, an activity that allowed me to reflect on the fact that friends come in different shapes and sizes and every person you meet has the potential of being a friend - or not.
In thinking this, the word "profundity" came into my mind for no apparent reason. I certainly don't think of myself as profound, rather just an ordinary person. But then I realized that people aren't ordinary, each is capable of being interesting and of teaching you something about the world and about yourself. And that is when I thought of the word "profound". Each person in the world can simply be described as "profound".
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word, profundity, is a noun meaning, "1. a. The quality of being deep; great or vast depth. b. A very deep place, an abyss; the deepest part or parts of something. Also fig. Now rare.c . Downward or inward measurement or extension (esp. as one of the three dimensions of a body, opposed to longitude and latitude); = DEPTH n. 1a. Obs. 2. a. Great wisdom or knowledge; acuteness of insight. Also: an insightful observation or idea. b. In pl. Matters requiring great knowledge or wisdom to be understood; the essential truths, mysteries, or problems of a particular field of knowledge. 3. Great depth or extent of a state, quality, or emotion; intensity.
Wow, so much for a word I thought about on the way to work. Friendship is profound and I do think that people have those "great depths" should they choose to delve into them and explore them fully. Sometimes you choose to embrace the depths of a relationship and sometimes you don't.
In thinking this, the word "profundity" came into my mind for no apparent reason. I certainly don't think of myself as profound, rather just an ordinary person. But then I realized that people aren't ordinary, each is capable of being interesting and of teaching you something about the world and about yourself. And that is when I thought of the word "profound". Each person in the world can simply be described as "profound".
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word, profundity, is a noun meaning, "1. a. The quality of being deep; great or vast depth. b. A very deep place, an abyss; the deepest part or parts of something. Also fig. Now rare.
Wow, so much for a word I thought about on the way to work. Friendship is profound and I do think that people have those "great depths" should they choose to delve into them and explore them fully. Sometimes you choose to embrace the depths of a relationship and sometimes you don't.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)