no pictures

  My apple, which the ‘genius’  referred to as ‘vintage’ with a sincere smile as he said it, has died.  I had not backed anything up it was just not a thought…so I lost all my photos some of artwork given away but most photos over 400 and how at that moment when I heard the news did I miss my camera with its film vs my digital. I have negatives from over 30 years ago but no photos from the last years two vacations and countless walks around the city. I am surprisingly cool about it and have not figured out exactly why possibly because I had lost photos on my camera not too long ago hitting too many of the wrong buttons just not paying attention…perhaps that prepared me for this though this work was so much more important. once again thinking about what I choose to hold on to and what gets given away or thrown away. what is forever saved on some level and what is shredded on purpose or lost carelessly.

a slightly altered page

Thomas Hart Benton… how sweet to have him above my fireplace but alas an altered page from an altered book…. I love to look at his paintings and am always so excited when I see one by accident…like I am walking around a museum and there he is.  Yesterday I was working with a man in one of my groups who for the most part only makes self portraits.  He needs to  look in a mirror so I set him up with one of those two sided ones so I was sitting across from him and could see myself.  I think when an artist has such a good understanding of their face and where they have been, what they have weathered it is reflected in their work. When I write something like that I think well isn’t that obvious….

 

For this particular page it was about making a good picture fit into another good picture in a space that it would be highlighted and how I wish I had a fireplace and THB right above.

…more cities

one of my first cities

one of my first cities

This is one of my first cities created in altered books.  I find small paintings or drawings of houses or apartments and then add more until they are town and cities.  I like the idea of having a variety of one next to another.  I think ultimately it has to do with wanting a home more than just a place to live and wanting to fit in…to be in a community that says something about what is important to you.  I am aware that it is possible to do even in such a large city, but it doesn’t always feel that way.  I am also aware that there is nothing original about this concept.

This is collage, tape, gel markers and regular markers.

…more altered bookwork

page two of two

This is from one of the four books I worked on altering with a good friend.  She had these tags that I found interesting to mark and then string to the page.  This is mostly a layered page pieces of work that I didn’t like that I tore up and then pasted down and marked over.  I used gold paint and my favorite black gel marker. I like the idea of using pieces of another piece of artwork that wasn’t really working for me. And I like the idea of having something attached to a page that can then move away from the page when I turn it or just to play with what is there.  I haven’t worked on a book in a while….

closed/open

I first saw the work of Martin Ramirez (1865-1963) at the American Folk Art Museum in NYC in 2007.  I usually spend more time looking at the art in museums than I do reading..when I was younger I read what was on the walls all the time, but I find I appreciate the work more if I look first and then read the second time around.  The one or two pieces of information that stayed with me where that he had left home, Los Altos de Jalisco, Mexico where his wife and children were to come to the U.S. , (California)  to find work so he could then send money back home. He did not speak English and found himself without a place to live, without a job  and then locked up…well he was picked up by the police…he was confused…you get the picture… then he ended up in a psychiatric hospital where he did an incredible amount of art work with very basic, some hand-made, materials.  There are many more interesting facts, but I will leave that to you to research on your own.

It was after I saw his work that I started to do all these drawings with repetitive patterning, line after line and seeing where one worked its way into another, one form that is, and I started to fill up books I found it comforting and I found that at times when I didn’t have any control of way too much that was happening in my life and all this stuff that I had to “let go of” well I had my drawings..churches..body parts, figures, houses..all having to do with wanting to connect and not being able to do so, with wanting to put things in order when there wasn’t any.  I love these drawings just for what they gave me and not necessarily for how they always turned out.  I will post some more of them later.

flowercloud…1

my flowercloud

My flowercloud keeps me company when I can’t speak when my heart is broken and no one will listen because they have their own lives and to tell you the truth there are times when that is just fine with me because I don’t like false. my flowercloud and I know one another very well. This is a character I am developing…she has a story…like we all have stories some of which are interesting to share and some are better left alone.

I like drawing on these cards they are Crane cards and come in a pack of 12 I think and they are pretty heavy I wish they were white though. they are a cream color I can post them in white if I play around with the iphoto on my computer and I use a black gel marker a Bravo Pilot. I buy five or six at a time. They are the best …as much as anyone can ‘love’ a marker I love them.

…like mother like daughter…

okay let me say first…. I have tried to crop this along with many other small drawings that I have done. Yes I know get a scanner that would most likely alleviate the evidence of my shaking hands and inability to make a straight photograph. That said.. I have such admiration for Tim Burton and wanting to find the him in me to explore the figure in all its forms and feelings.  Like mother like daughter…I have a cloud and so shall you…my heart is broken and I will give it to you so we can share and you don’t have to be alone with your broken heart or your cloud. At some point you will make your own cloud and your heart will get broken all on its own and you will have to decide what to do.

when one road ends

when one road ends

 

…I used stabillo watercolor crayons that I love..you can use them with or without water, draw first then use a brush or dip them in water and work with them that way.  There range of colors is incredible. I used a watercolor pencil as well for some additional texture and finer lines.

Who wrote the poem about the road not taken?    I have taken too many wrong paths and it has ‘made all the difference’.   What goes into decisions …how much thought ….how much time do we always have to make the ‘right’  choice?  I think this also looks like two things meeting to close off what is in front …and where would that then leave me/us..when that happens…because in choice there is both loss and gain..what we will get and what we will no longer have.

on the beach at Kennebunkport, Maine

This is postcard size. While I used watercolor paints, I think I used them more like acrylics. When I think of taking a watercolor class I am reminded of my undergraduate days…and remember one of my teachers and how he walked around the room after setting up a still life, asking everyone ‘is this okay for you’ yet when he came up to me paused before saying, ‘well it doesn’t really matter anyway’ .  See I didn’t paint the  “right way”  …what was on my canvas rarely if ever looked like what was in front of me in terms of what the teacher had set up and what the rest of the class was painting.  I am not sure if it was my way of rebelling or that I thought I couldn’t do it so I didn’t even try  or… the reasons are many… I do know that I would like to go back… I liked my class, I liked painting with everyone three or four in particular…I don’t think I had a care in the world at that time in terms of responsibilities outside of what I was going to paint, yet I still managed to have such angst….
I scooped up water from the shore with a little shell that I found on a morning walk…some of it spilling out as I walked carefully over to where I would be sitting to paint.  My red sky never felt red enough.  Why if I love the beach so much have I not created a life for myself that would allow me to be there more often if not everyday?

I’m sorry, I love you

I'm sorry, I love you

This is part of two pages of one of the altered books I worked on with a good friend of mine, I chose to isolate this one section for the photo. Once again I am working with apologies.. I’m thinking this is a note from a parent to a child an adult child, but the parent is on some level incapacitated…emotionally…and while so much damage has already been done, the child still wants a parent and has to forgive them so they, the child can move on with their own life. See because if you don’t forgive then you end up carrying around so much resentment and hate and shame..shame is very big… people often say guilt, but shame is first…it’s all very heavy and collects around us/me.

Angels needed…

 

Angels needed....

I just recently purchased a digital camera and have been a little bit like a one-eyed cat as I walk around the city. As an undergrad I always had a camera with me and as a result have over 6 years of my life recorded. I saw this drawing in a school window not too far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was so excited to be able to further document this kind gesture. I started to wonder what exactly had happened and if “Hunter” was the one giving or receiving the apology and if the apology was accepted or was there another drawing in the making. See apologies for some are very easy they say it like it’s something in passing whereas others really mean it and follow it up with a change in their behavior. It’s from their soul…or some deep part of them anyway. Me…it depends who it is and what it is that I am sorry for.. I would like to think that for the most part when I say it, I mean it. In this case I think there must have been something very hurtful..yeah..because there is a drawing…a work of art, to prove it…arms outstretched…no hands though….but a solid body and head…how helpless or vulnerable does one feel when saying “I’m sorry” ?  But look close…see the little one hearing “I’m sorry” they are smiling and they have a heart right there in the middle of their chest a heart…why didn’t the artist give themself a heart?

more altered book work…

rearranging furniture

….there is this constant rearranging that goes on in my head and eventually finds its way into my day.. the “nesting” a friend of mine calls is when referring to my cleaning, throwing things away, rearranging furniture, moving around what is inside and bringing it outside..suitcases with photographs, portfolio cases with drawings, binders with negatives, couches that people keep forever and sew where they have been worn from use only to have someone else cart it away when they die.

I don't remember....

I will be sad when you go

my artist chair

I pasted some pages together here, cut them in the middle to make a window, stapled them back,  used gold paint, a favorite that I don’t use nearly enough, and let the chair show through just enough. I look for that chair and have a space for it in my apartment for when I find it.