the unknown

I picked up these interesting feathers on our hike Monday but I have no idea what kind of bird they may have come from. I've found some like this around home before, too, and I'm curious, so I'm asking my friend Nate to see what he thinks...

training hill hike

Decided to go on a hike today with my brother Joe while he is in town for the holiday. We both enjoy hiking but he usually goes solo at home and I don't go often for lack of willing partners. He chose the Auburn State Recreation Area near the Middle & North Forks of the American River, a fairly short drive away.

We took both the dogs, of course, as they love to go hiking - and my daughter decided she wanted to join us, too. Moey (my adolescent staffordshire bull terrier) acted as though he has no leash training at all and was eager to pull me up the trail we chose, called "Training Hill" and promised to be steep, but was the only path that led away from the road (Hwy 49) and the accompanying traffic noise.

I brought my new iPhone & then used the BeFunky camera app to play with the photos later - I don't even have music on the thing yet, but I'm having plenty of fun with the toy camera aspect.

After a truly steep long climb, during which we took several breaks and some considered turning back, we found a couple little cairns, no doubt built by hikers who felt they had achieved something by getting to the top of that particular hill.

We had to go a little further to find any kind of spot to get a view that was something beyond our immediate environs - not an iPhone camera kind of view, but the viewers were plenty interesting.

The trail continued and led to some of my favorite kind of landscape - the oak savannah of the Sierra foothills.

Joe & Sparky, who is much more civilized on a leash than her housemate, wait for me to take a shot.

Having way too much fun playing around with BeFunky...

Large rock on the savannah, like a monument to something long lost.

There were a couple trails to choose from, but time considerations made us head back the way we came, mostly, until we came to "Pig Farm Trail" which headed down the right part of the hill - a dry gulley testifies to our lack of rainfall so far this winter.

finally caught up!

It's been months since I could say that I don't have any deadlines looming, and in one sense it won't be entirely true until I've got a couple things done that I'm putting together for Christmas, but as far as art business goes, I am finally caught up. Yesterday I delivered and installed "Wisdom" and "Trust" to my collector friend.

Originally these pieces were called "Compassion" and "Beckoning Path," the other works I did that these are based on. But as I worked on this new pair, that just didn't seem right, and my collector was open to me changing the titles and adding new text to this fresh pair.

This kind of commission, where I am copying work I've already done, is in some ways far more difficult than creating a brand new work. The collector has found something I've done before but it doesn't work for them, most often because the first piece has sold, or because the size isn't appropriate for their space and then I have to recapture the feel of the original work.

I always make it clear that no two works will ever be the same, which is part of the appeal of original artworks, but it always puts me a little on edge as well; I get worried that I'll somehow mess it up - maybe not a rational thing, but it's how my mind works nonetheless.

In this case, both original works had been sold and they weren't the same size, but the new pair were intended to display together, so I created them as a pair, working all the stages together on the work table while keeping reference images of the first two nearby to get me going on the right track.

Reference image of "Compassion" 12" x 12"

Reference image of "Beckoning Path" 24" x 24"


After all that working and fretting, the pieces came together and the collector and I are both very pleased...

"Wisdom" 24" x 24"

"Trust" 24" x 24"

I had intended to take a photograph of them in their new home but I completely forgot at the time... I'll have to visit them later...

a day's work

Working on a pair of commissioned pieces and I am finally ready to paint! Seems like it takes a long time to get everything to this point and then suddenly it all starts to come together! Here they are with the colored pencil work & the first defining purple I put in last night:

And now at the end of today with several more layers of paint:

Not quite finished, but I have high hopes for the next couple days...

SAFE

When I was working on this project about home, I was thinking about all the qualities a home should have - and feeling safe and secure was at the top of the list.The trees in this piece stay within the confines of the box and the nest and birdhouse are all inside as well. The crate was an old 7-Up crate and you can see some of the markings on the outside still.

where your heart is #2

Returning back to the concept that started this series, I wanted to create another piece like the first one which was auctioned off before I pulled together more assemblage works.This close shot shows the box portion with the collage and ceramic chicken, which is entirely moveable. Since it's been sitting in my space at the Kennedy Gallery Art Center, it's accumulated a rock that sits on the shelf or on top, getting moved around by my gallery mates at times. It's exactly the kind of interaction that I was hoping for when I created the piece.

The tree branch sort of seems to grow out of the box into the adjoining space - my heart always has a place for trees to grow in it.

new commission launch

Finally! My friend and patron has been so patient, waiting for these pieces while I was busy with so many other things. It's good to be busy, but it can create a backup of work and I'm actually nearly caught up!

Both of these pieces are based on previous works I've done, but they weren't originally paired, or even the same size. This time they'll be displayed together as a matching pair and of course, will not be exactly like the first ones. (What fun would that be, anyway?)

If you look at the top of the image, you can see the printed copy of the original, which I reference for basic composition and color until I've got the pieces well under way. Then I'll likely put the original images away, so I won't be too distracted by them.

I'll be posting regular progress photos - today I got the panels gessoed, the collage work and texturing done - tomorrow I'll start the coloring process with colored pencils...

nesting box

Another of my assemblage pieces for "Where Your Heart Is" - this is a cigar box I call "Nesting Box" and turned out to be less assemblage than I envisioned, as I didn't have a nest that fit into it well.

The top of the box has a house with a dog on it -

And opens to reveal the creek scene inside the box cover.

Inside is the nest, with a feather, my personal symbol for an angel - this time also referring to heaven, where Jesus promised he is preparing a place for us to live - getting the nest ready for us, in a manner. This box also has room for personal keepsakes, to make it even more special to its owner. In fact, it might gather things as it sits where I can put things into it...

find your way back

Another one of my assemblage pieces that's up at the Kennedy right now -

Titled "Find Your Way Back"

My husband and I are both from the Sacramento area; most of our families are here, as is much family history. But when we were young and first married, we could hardly wait to get the heck away from here. As far as I was concerned, Sacramento was an overgrown cow-town with little to offer. Scott was joining the Army as a pilot about the same time as I was graduating from college and we were eager to start our adventures in faraway places.

The first place I landed (after he finished basic training) was flight training at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Different is what we wanted and different is what we got and I soon discovered that the biggest city in Alabama at that time was not as big as the little "cow-town" I had come from. The larger town with a real mall about half an hour from the post was about the same size as the little college town just west of my home, which I suddenly realized was actually a city.

It was in Alabama that I first became homesick for the dry brown hills of California... for a vista that I could look out over and see mountains with snow caps in the Spring, for the farmlands of the Central Valley running past the long freeways that connect north to south... all the things I had never known I loved.

From Alabama we moved to Germany then to Colorado, where my husband had his final assignment. The life of an Army gunship pilot wasn't all we had dreamed of for our growing family and we had started to feel a little like Dorothy over the years, often saying "There's no place like home!"

We happily returned to Northern California, to home with family and landscape and weather we know and love. We returned first to a smaller place in the valley, with a commute to the Bay Area, then were quite thrilled to make our way back to our home city of Sacramento, now wishing other family transplanted to far flung spots would come back, too, just for visits, if for nothing else.

There's no saying we won't ever leave again, but I don't think it would be to go to far...

thrift store find

I'm starting to look at things in thrift stores in new ways... like how might something work into a piece of art? I'm carefully browsing with an eye to deconstruction and re-construction all at the same time - most often finding boxes that can house my more natural finds. This was once a medicine chest in someone's bathroom, I fairly sure, but it has grander things in store for it now.

napa valley

Nov 19, 2011
Napa Valley
Hwy 128 & Lodi Lane
afternoon
cool, cloudy

Out for a drive with Scott to catch fall colors but the light is flat and less than inspirational - haven't seen many things that I've wanted to shoot in Napa the past few times we've been through here, like I'm having artist's block with the place. Weird, but I'm just pushing through it today - enjoying the time with Scott regardless.

Hwy 128 & Sage Canyon Rd, farther south:

More shots for the "crazy woman on the side of the road" series - waist deep in weeds, feeling the rush of air blasting me with every passing vehicle - but the barn and vineyard really caught my eye and once there, it would have been silly not to go ahead and take the second shot - came back to the car for post-production, though - feeling chilly.

The sun peeked out for a few short minutes as we head back around Lake Berryessa -

I keep the camera ready in my lap, but the light continues to fade and I finally resign myself...

WHOLE

As I've been exploring assemblage art and the concept of home, I've tried to share my own feelings of what home is and to take advantage of the three dimensional quality of sculpture. It's like whole new game that I get to play, creating a piece of artwork that shares something from every angle that it's viewed.

I call this piece "WHOLE" because a true home is where one feels whole and complete, and then also because a whole home is more than just a house that is built, but especially for me, it includes the landscape around it and the relationships within it.

I haven't used images of people to describe relationships but different animals, which also refer to our inter-species relationships...

Materials used for this piece include three cigar boxes, acrylic transfers from digital & film photographs, prints from my original sketches, twigs, rocks collected by my great-grandfather & a dollhouse chair. (And I am never quite content until I have colored & painted an artwork.)