joyouslybecoming

the wedding - lots of photos

Those of you that have been followers of my blog know that last December, we traveled to Cancun Mexico to celebrate the wedding our youngest daughter Marissa, to her beloved Mick. After much waiting and anticipation, we finally got access to the professional wedding photographs, and I want to share some of of my favorites here. It was a beautiful wedding, set atop a cliff looking over the sea. My heart overflowed with happiness to see this dream of my darling Marissa's finally realized, to experience the fullness of their joy and be touched by their love for one another.

LilyAnne

the sound of waves crashing and the smell of the sea

exchanging rings

 

congratulations you two!

marissa with the mothers

   

Violet dancing with daddy

father of the bride dance

I did it! (well almost, anyway...)

after almost 2 weeks of working LONG days and getting 5-6 hours sleep, the studio was presentable for my little class today, and it is soooooooo worth it. I stayed up till 1:00 AM again last night, getting the things I could put away and resigning myself to stacking up a pile in the corner that I still have to sort and deal with over the weekend, see here

here is a close-up of the fabric i wrapped my painting table with, vintage stuff i've been holding on to for just the right project - around the yin/yang sunflower the words read peace, love, harmony...yes, i'd say those are top of the cosmic list, now and forever.

look at all that i accomplished in these 80 hours of cleaning/sorting/purging/... (can you hear me squealing with delight?!)

 

i shared a wonderful day with friends who came over to test drive the class i'll be teaching at ArtFest in just over a month. we had such a good time making art and catching up with one another.

they didn't even seem to mind (too much) untangling the organza strips that tangled themselves around one another as soon as they had been "stripped".  i think maybe the wine helped :-)

I will finish the last leg of the organizing this weekend, what a relief and what a joy!! I have such a big space compared to so many, and it is crammed full, crammed. And in case you didn't know, when the weather warms up, I will be tackling my shed, a seperate building that houses all my metals, ceramics, frames, and everything else too big to fit in the studio. i'm realizing just how much stuff I have. i've decided that whenever i have a visitor, i will sent them home with some stuff of their choosing....my first steps on the path of a simpler (less stuff) lifestyle. my dilema - so many broken and discarded things and my mind generates a plethora of ideas on how to recyle/refurbish. the dlimena comes from the fact that there are only a certain number of hours in the day, and days in my life...yes, i would like to downsize, it pinches a bit at the time, but feels so good in the end...

and so you know, i finally got access to the wedding pictures from the photographer, of marissa and mick's dream wedding in mexico last december. i will be culling through them this weelend and putting together some of my favorites so i hope you'll check back.

i'm hoping you all have a peaceful and creative weekend, thanks for stopping by, i apprecaite it. xox

a lot of determination and elbow grease

studio progress report

i've put in hours and hours and you might think it doesn't look a lot different but see that floor space? that wasn't there before. and looking a little closer,

my felted wool sweaters are all in bins now. i know, i have a LOT of them but i teach classes where i sometimes supply the wool as well as make my own little creatures with them. and you need a variety of colors and patterns you know...

my ribbons are all sorted now

and some of my fibers and yarns

lace and sweet spots of different fabrics

and little bins of my oddball stuff

Okay, back to it. I've got just over 24 hours to make my deadline, whew!

Artful Journey Class Shout-Out

 
I can hardly believe that we're halfway through February - spring really is just around the corner! On March 1st, registration opens for the class I'm am excited to be teaching at An Artful Journey  in Lost Gatos, CA, on Saturday July 11th:  Paste it Down, Paint it Up.  I'll be sharing a variety of techniques as well as mindsets I use when creating my mixed media art.  And just  in case you are on the fence about making the trip, another draw for coming to spend the weekend arting it up - my good pal Judy Wise will be there teaching a fascinating plaster class on Friday.

I continue to sort, purge, discard, and/or reassign the slowly shrinking mountain of stuff that is my studio.  My deadline for finishing this make-over is Tuesday evening (only 2 more days!) and i have the feeling it will take all the daylight (and some of the evening) hours in between now and then. I am finding my mind is responding to the anticipated space and order with joy and excitement. Photos forthcoming.

painting practice

where some people might see "scary" when they see this, i don't.  i feel a strong emotion in myself, but it is one more or curiosity and attraction. i believe it is a shadow element in me that is looking in the mirror and saying -" i recognize you".

 i spent a couple hours painting it last night - trying to copy the original painting as best as i could to capture the emotion that so captured me. although it is a very crude rendition of the artist's magnificent work, it was an engaging experiment, and i was curious and excited during the process, trying to figure out how the artist got the results (s)he did, things i don't know but can only guess at being a self taught artist. i could tell that the original was done in oil - nothing can luminate tones and hues quite like oil.  I pulled this small magazine clipping of the painting from my collage image box  - i don't have a clue who the artist is, or what period is was painted. can any of my art history friends tell from this whom it might be?

i worked on a sheet or heavy watercolor paper, painted it with a coat of gesso, and then transfered a page of inkjet images onto the page, copies of pieces i had done earlier and reduced, just to fill the page with some areas of dark and color. i don't like working with a white surface so i usually put down collage elements to work my paintings on top of. working on white will be one of the future challenges i give myself. then i painted over everything with a layer of burnt umbler mixed with some black, rubbing away little areas around the face for the collage elements to peek through. 

i want to do more painting where i start with a black or very dark background and build up the light layers. i'm using tools to scratch away top layers of paint (like sticks, my fingernail, a razor blade, the end of my paintbrush) as well as using sandpaper, and alcohol to remove underlayers. 

I took the day off from studio cleaning and walter and i went out to lunch at a sweet little deli in Port Orchard called Cosmos where i ordered an egglplant marinara sandwich on panini and walter got a ruben stacked high with corn beef and saurkraut. the coffee there is excellent. then we went to the theater and saw the new stop-motion animation film Coraline, one I was so excited to see, and thought walter would enjoy too.  i LOVED  it, loved it and already want to see it again. the link takes a short while to load but is so well worth it, check it out.  i had so many favorite parts but the audience of scotty dogs i think takes the cake!

i got more bins and containors while I was out, i've loaded up on trash bags and i'm off to studio for a good day of sorting and clearing. wishing all of you the best weekend!!

a peek - studio progress report

my work space will never be one of the popular, the pretty girls. i'm afraid her destiny will always be one of a rumpled wallflower. but just because she's rumpled, doesn't mean she has to house a whirling troupe of howling monkeys. really. so, i'm sending the monkeys, at least most of them, back to jungle, and giving the monkey house a facial.

these are both photos from today. my goal is to have this space ready for a class i'm giving exactly a week from today, IN THIS STUDIO, haaa!! nothing like a little pressure to generate a good head of steam.

view this morning, the big picture...

a little corner of progress

okay, back to it - i'll keep you updated. 
showing you my creative work space certainly keeps me humble.

the OWOH winner

Thank you to all who stopped by and left their kind comments about my work and giveaway, I hope you'll come visit here again.  I have thoroughly enjoyed participating in this event.

The drawing is now closed and I used the Random Integer Generator to determine the winner from all  the comments left. The winner is is:

comment #10,  Betsy 

   I have already emailed her and plan to send off her prize to her ASAP.

in the thick of it, with art breaks

the studio excavation is now well underway although if you didn't know the studio like i do, you wouldn't know i'd done a thing - it's still piles high with pathways. the difference is that my car is stuffed with bags and boxes for goodwill, any suitable art stuff i can scrounge for mary ann's kiddos in a box (thanks for commenting about this gwen - it's such a worthy cause), stuff for the dump, a few things i may put on ebay if i can get to it, and the rest will be finding a tidy home on a shelf on in a bin. i can now visualize an end in sight even though it is dozens of hours (days) away still. i will post photos when the progress is a bit more apparent.

i give myself  break 'rewards' where i put on the timer (thanks steph!) and do art. i've started working on arting up some 90 postcards for the poetry exchange i'm doing with the same group of women i retreated at the oregon coast with, it's will start up on the spring equinox and my goal is to have the cards done/nearly done so all is pull one out and write my poem.

i haven't shown any new art for awhile so i thought i'd show you some of the postcards here...

 

 

happy birthday my darling girl

  it doesn't seem like 28 years has passed since you were born, where does the time go?

 and here you are now, a remarkable young woman.

february 7th is heather's 28th birthday - we celebrated it early,  last night...so much fun.  i wish i could capture it all in a photo but you know how it goes, the present moments can't be captured by a camera, no matter how good a camera it is. i am so proud of this young woman, all she is, all that she is becoming each day, the balancing act of three young children and a husband who is often away from home.  i am in awe, really.

i tried to get that perfect shot of the whole lot of them, 3 of whom are wiggly kiddos. i think  i got a sweet one though, posed as it is, to document the special day. such a dear little family.

if you're wondering about that cake, i know. and it took me two tries, i burned the first one. it seems the longer i don't cook/bake, the harder it is to do. but it's the thought that counts, right?

and can you tell that me and my man walter are feeling pretty happy?

lily anne is growing so fast, talking a blue streak although we don't always know quite what she's saying. she's passionate and persistent and keeps at us until we 'get it'...  

and little violet... need i say more?

 

 

such a loving dad jeff is, it warms me heart to watch him with the kids

i'm feeling so grateful that they live close, that we get to be such a part of their lives right now.

Every day

by the gentle green hill and the streams and rocks

we dream together

sometimes grateful

 spirits offering the winds

our music,

harmonious madness.

As we kiss the ground.

a flower feels the eyes of day

one thousand precious souls drive the flying deer between

splendid blue veined oceans

all the world round

whole.

a voice booms

the billows stiffen drowsily

souls crest in secret

on the blades of twinkling grass.

I'm feeling quiet these days but want to stay in touch here is  my latest painting and a poem i wrote to go with it.  wishing you all fullness and grace...