loopy doodles and paint

As a creative person I try to find something that will take me "away".  I have thrown myself into these very large loopy, doodle paintings that keep my mind off of everything as I paint.  This one is is now on the wall in the upstairs TV room. It's huge 54" x 60" I'm also painting another one.... not sure where that one will go.

Music and Martini's

 

Fleas and a split second

I didn' t know if I wanted to write on this blog anymore, but here I am typing.  It's absolutely true that an entire life can change in a split second.  My daughter and I went to her apartment off campus the first weekend of June to pack her stuff up and get her moved out. As we were packing we realized that her apartment was infested in fleas and I didn't want them traveling back home with me..... I decided that we needed to find the nearest Walmart to get flea bombs, set them off and pack up on another weekend.  I haven't lived in Austin since 1996 and it has grown tremendously, so I am not familiar with the city anymore.  I got lost, took a wrong turn, didn't see the signal lights at all, as I ran a red light at a major intersection, getting T-boned on the passengers side where my daughter was sitting..... My reaction as I was passing under the bridge, not seeing the signal lights at first, then looking up, realizing it was a red light I was going through, my head and body turned to my daughter as I watched the impact occur in that split second. All I wanted to do was grab her in that instance and prayed that she would be ok. The Fire dept, EMS and Police couldn't believe that we made it out of the wreck, much less on our own, I'm traumatized that I put my daughters life in danger as well as the other driver.  The car is totalled, but we are alive and all the material stuff can be replaced.  I truly believe in God, angels and guiding spirits. I believe we are all connected spiritually. They say everything happens for a reason, but something like this I just can't figure out why...yet. I love all my kids dearly and I love my husband. I work to support my family and I try my best to be a good person. I am thankful that God, angels and guiding spirits were watching over us.

One more thing, my mother sent me a picture of St. Nicholas in 1994 with a note on the back of it saying that St Nicholas was watching over me and she prayed that he watch over my entire family.  I had framed that picture and gave it to my daughter, and she had it in her apartment. Before realizing there were fleas in her apartment and deciding to  leave for the store, I had packed it in the trunk of the car with some other pictures.  When we retrieved our personal items out of the car a couple of weeks later, the pictures had broken frames and glass everywhere, except St. Nicholas. The frame wasn't broken and even though the glass was shattered, it was still in place, like a mosaic of clear glass.  

The shift

I took my first stained glass class in March of 2001, and over the years created quite a few pieces of art. My creations varied from windows, stepping stones, mosaics, fused glass and pendants. Throughout the years that I was playing with glass I had fun with it. At one point I thought I could create a business, but it just wasn't meant to be in the overall scheme in my life. Over the last few months the EPA has had a major impact on the manufacturers of art glass in the U.S.A., and I agree that the environment is important to keep safe. With that in mind, I believe the government could help these businesses by providing some sort of tax break or grants to make the manufacturing of glass as safe for the environment as possible and keep these companies in business.

All of my stained glass windows, stepping stones and mosaics were created with Spectrum Glass. This company is closing it's doors after forty years in business. They were the only manufacturer that produced machine made glass, which made their glass just a bit more affordable than hand blown glass, with stunning color variations. Spectrums average retail price was about $6-$10 a square foot. They also produced  a line of System 96 COE for fusing glass, again a bit less expensive for the fuser. They stated that it wasn't just the EPA that affected the closing but the business never fully recovered from the recession. You can read the letter that the announcing the closure of Spectrum here.

Bullseye glass, my favorite glass that I use for fusing (90 COE), along with several other glass manufactures were all under a nationwide review by the EPA.  They were all ordered to install a filtration system to keep toxins from seeping into the environment, which they did comply. Now this past week the Governor of Oregon ordered a Cease and Desist order for Bullseye to stop manufacturing glass because of lead levels in the environment.  As of today May 23, 2016, Bullseye will have to start laying off people in their company, and have made this latest announcement, read here.

With everything that is going on in the glass industry, there will be a trickle down affect with all the small Mom and Pop glass retails shops, either their prices will be skyrocketing or they will be going out of business. I am hoarding my current glass supply and will not be creating anything with it for a while. I have a feeling that they way things are going I won't be able to afford to play with glass in the future.

My stash of powders

  

pretty in pink

As an artist I want to be identifiable by my art. I feel this shift in me right now that I want to delete everything I posted online and start over. But then I think this is who I am and this is what I put out there for the world to see and read. Good or bad it's out there. Who really cares anyway.

I am moving from glass to painting on canvas. I don't have the electrical outlets or space to create with glass right now.  Since I LOVE creating loopy designs I am going pursue it for now, maybe I will find success in it :)  I'm actually excited about this transition!.

Yesterday when I was looking out the window, I noticed that my neighbors blooming flowers match my pink bird house that is sitting on the fence post.  I thought it looks so pretty!    What little bird wouldn't want to live there? 

Music-Art

What does music look like? I'm sure when a person closes their eyes and just listens to the music, it "looks" different in each persons mind. In my minds eye, music pops with color and flows with the rhythm.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about that little drawing in my sketch book that I painted with water colors. I decided that I wanted to created a similar pattern on canvas, and ended up going much bigger than I first thought I would.  The canvas itself is 59" by 47".  It's not on stretcher bars but on the floor in my studio where I have been working on it every evening after my day job. This weekend I was able spend most of my Saturday working on it, and I just finished this afternoon. I will be making the stretcher bar frame for it, so a few inches will be lost on each side, but that's okay, I'm really happy with this painting!

Here are the pictures from the sketchbook drawing along with the progress and the finished piece.

sketchbook with watercolors

"Music"

Finished Piece!!! 

(I'm not sure which way is up yet, I'll figure that out later.)

This is what it currently looks like on the floor. I used step stool to take the pictures. 

busy bee!

Last weekend I laid out my plans for the "loopy" painting. I started with my wood, canvas and drawing.  I decided that I was going to make one panel rectangular with "floating" triangles of different sizes on either side. So on Saturday I went and purchased six 1" x 2" x 8' pieces of wood to cut into triangles. Well, my table saw only cuts up to 45 degree angels which means I had to think about this for a few minutes after I made a few cuts and they were all turning into square frames.  When I pushed one of the boards up from another board, walla!  go a 90 degree angle!  Now I'm not one to measure so everything was done by eyeballing cuts and I got the results I wanted, 6 triangle frames of different sizes.  

my first Triangle frame

with reinforcement

On Monday I ended up at Home depot on a late lunch break buying some sample paint colors for the canvas, oh yeah I forgot to mention that my canvas is actually a bit bigger than I first thought I was going to make, Anyway, as I turned around to leave, behind me in line was Michael, a young man that my daughter grew up with in the dance studio for many years. I hadn't seen him for about five years and he has turned into a very handsome young man. He is a professional ballet dancer and a wonderful young man. My daughter and I are planning to see him perform with the Joffrey Ballet this summer.

Inspiration

Every morning I wake up to coffee, e-mail and Facebook. It's a ritual that I enjoy for about 30 minutes before I have to start getting ready for my day.  This morning there was a video with an article about a 100 year old woman that runs. Her daughter talked her into running at the age of 67. She had lost two sons in drug violence and I found her story very inspirational this morning. Per 100 year old Ida Keeling: "Get up and do something, even if you don't feel like it. Sometimes you don't feel like doing this, that or the other. Do the things you don't like to do first  and get rid of it".

Her story is truly inspirational. you can read all about her here.