Paint Streaked and Happy

This was the view at 7:30 AM from my roof, downtown Seattle as I was up taking high resolution photos of the painting I finally finished last night. And what a glorious morning it was! The perfect world welcoming for a piece still yet to be titled.

What a couple of weeks it has been with this painting pretty much consuming me and leaving me seen as paint streaked wherever I went. Here is a pic from towards the beginning of the piece with my happy late night studio and various states of dis-array lying about:

After many many late nights of coming home after work to wolf down food and then get back to the painting I'm done... and throughly thrilled with her and her crow companions. You might have guessed that the two pieces come together as a puzzle - that was Andy's geniusness as he was cutting my panels down for me. And the moment he suggested cutting the last panel this way instead of "boringly" in half I just knew - I knew what the painting would be.

Now onto the "work" of getting ready for a show - printing & hanging!

See you at Arts Walk I hope!

What: Pioneer Square First Thursday Arts Walk

When: Thursday, October 2nd

Where: 619 Western, 5th Floor

*** P.S. - and I totally forgot to update you --- I did indeed get into La Familia Gallery!!!

Nudge from the Universe

So I had a moment of chills yesterday morning that now I have to share with you. It is totally proof for me that the Universe or the Fates or the cosmic muffin DOES give you gentle little signs and tugs if you pay attention.

On Craigslist a co-op gallery in Pioneer Square had posted a call for new member artists. I went to the site, checked it out and was like hmmm… It’s a small financial & time commitment since it is a co-op so I figured I would think about it. The deadline to apply was coming up so I was poking around on their site yesterday and was kind of leaning towards not applying even though it was free to apply, would give me a ton of connections in the art scene if I did make it in etc. I think I was just feeling lazy and over-co-op’d.

That is, until I saw a picture of myself and my friend Katie on the website. Talk about “seeing yourself” in the space. Jeez.

They must have taken a pic just randomly during a past arts walk and then posted it on their site. It’s fuzzy quality but I totally recognize us both. Wowza.

Here’s our mugs:
http://lafamiliallc.com/sceneandheard.php

So I ended up submitting to them. And why this long lengthy story about it? Because they just ASKED ME FOR AN INTERVIEW!!!!! They wanted me to bring a sample of my work in right away - Wish me luck for tomorrow!

And thanks - thanks Universe ; P

Inspiration Hubs

Well I'm back already. Here it was I thought I'd be too busy busy to blog (which I am really) but then I read a post by Holly on Decor8 that got me musing.

She brings up the question of living the creative life and remaining inspired in a big city verses a small one. This is an issue I have mused on regularly - especially since I moved to Seattle, WA from Olympia for the very reason of art infusion and community. And I'm glad that I did. Yet at times I strongly miss my little quiet town.

The point that Holly brings up about it is one that I felt but never tried putting into words:

"I imagine that at times it must be nice to not live in uber creative communities because you are able to really be alone with your work and spend time developing it and fine tuning your style. Does this make sense? I guess I think this way because I lived for years in Boston and only when I relocated to southern New Hampshire did I really ’slow down’ enough in my head to focus on my own artistic and creative spirit. Everyone is different of course. I cannot doubt the explosion of creativity I feel whenever I’m in San Francisco, L.A., even parts of the south where I grew up… But you can really be creative anywhere on this planet and though many artists pack up and relocate to the hip cities to be part of the local culture there, there are plenty of artists who do just as well in their little corners, too. If you’re like me, I go to cities to be inspired but I feel completely fine living outside of creative hubs now because I don’t need to be immersed in it 24/7. It almost stresses me out if I spend too much time in New York City, for instance. I like it there but I find equal inspiration walking on the beach in Maine."

There is validity in both for sure. I feel that here in Seattle I've found a pretty good balance. Which could partially be because I return to Olympia so often. Or it could be that so far, Seattle seems to me like it has a more collaborative than competitive arts community. Or perhaps I've just been lucky.

Olympia is where I started my style, but Seattle is truly where I've honed it. Who's to know though if it was truly Seattle that did it or if it was merely time regardless of where I live. Hmmm....

Not really MIA

I'm not really missing in action - I promise! Just been real super busy getting ready for showing my oil paintings at the next First Thursday Arts Walk in Pioneer Square - YAY!!

I'll be at 619 Western on the 5th floor from 5pm - 10 pm on Thursday, October 2nd.

Till then my plan was to be happily painting away. Until I discovered a large community of univited studio mates that is... Why is it that when you're crunched for time the universe throws a few more things into the mix? Like wool eating moths. It's SO cool how they love to munch on all things animal fiber - including expensive paint brushes you had nicely stored in a drawer... Bad Bad buggies!!

Sigh. I'll make it through I'm sure. On the plus side my studio sure smells good now - got about a dozen moth be gone sachets in various hidey-holes. Mmmm herbs!

I'm going to probably be a little quieter on the posting for a bit while I focus on painting. I tend to go a little one-track-mind when it comes to oils. Love it!

Handmade Gifts

One of my absolute favorite things about being "the artsy one" in the family is that I have no trouble making hand made gifts. Two years ago one of my close cousins got married and I made a pair of hand painted silk pillows which were gushed over. At the time I neglected to get a picture - silly me.

So this year with the announcement that another close cousin was getting married I knew just what to do. Another pillow pair of course! My sewing skills have drastically improved since the first pair (which were painted on pre-made silk pillow forms from Dharma Trading Co.) so for these I got more creative and had a lot more fun with them.

Natural unbleached Muslin, some scrap brown raw silk for the trim and some saddle brown fabric paint and voila! Lovelies - and oh so easy with the envelope closure. Eventually I'll make some for myself but for now I'll just have to enjoy these pics.

Oh yes and by the way - the wedding was in Wenatchee, WA so now I'm fully stocked on apples & Aplets and Cotlets for awhile! Mmmm!

San Francisco Jet Set Go

Holy Airplane Batman - I sure had me one wonderful astounding Labor Day weekend adventure!

For a long time I have refused to do much traveling for Labor Day. (I think an overcrowded crazy camping incident in High School is what afflicted me.)

But this Labor Day weekend I threw all caution to the wind and planned an incredible jam packed artsy girl weekend with my long time friend Karrie. I hopped an airplane early early Saturday and found myself in San Francisco by 8am. Karrie had driven up with her guy Noah the night before and they crashed at the Metro Hotel on Divisadero which is where I met up with them and we started our weekend.

The Metro Hotel had this great garden courtyard in the back where we took our first of many attempts at photographing ourselves.

I of course had to play with my Macro setting to get this cool flowers - anyone know what they are?

After catching up a bit we went for our first wander up through the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. I felt like I could have filled my camera with pictures of just the houses alone! Here are my two favorites:

The craftsmanship on these houses was amazing! And then I completely fell for this garden spot - I heard about people losing their hearts in San Francisco...

I also was quite taken with the graffiti in this neighborhood - this sidewalk spot is just a tiny taste of the amazingness we saw.

While we still had Noah and his car (before he left us to our adventures) we all went to Golden Gate Park. It wasn't until afterwards looking at a map that I realized the section of park we wandered in was only a small small parcel of the whole.

We visited the Japanese Tea Garden and I fell in love with this particular pagoda (a zillion more pics on my flickr!)

After wandering Golden Gate it was time to check into our accommodations at the Hotel Des Arts where every room is painted by a different artist. We splurged and got a double suite - and it turned out to be perfect for the 2 of us. Can you guess at the theme?

Above the door between the two rooms is perhaps the title, "Crazy Booby Rainbow"
Oh yeah!!
After freaking out on our room a bit we managed to extract ourselves long enough to wander through the Gates of China Town in search of cheap noodles. Window shopped and fed, we returned to enjoy the space and prepare ourselves for a trip to the San Francisco MOMA to see the work of Frida Kahlo.

The Frida show was packed to the gills of course but we both still greatly enjoyed it.
I could go on and on about it but I'll just touch on the biggest "eureka" moment of seeing her paintings in person:

I had NO idea how much of this piece was collaged!

We also explored some of the MOMA's other collections and admired among many great works a Warhol we both actually liked:

And this incredible piece that I'm now kicking myself for not getting the artist's name. Looks like shadows... but it's not! One of the more fun and subtle installations I've seen.

During our stay we had many more adventures and sights including:
Riding the Cable Car (twice!) to Fisherman's Wharf and catching the sunset over Alcatraz.
We also managed to catch a glimpse of the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill (but of course I didn't get a picture. Just trust me on that one!)

But out of all of it, one of my favoritest of pictures is this one taken at the Musee Mechanique:

Thank you San Francisco - I think I'll be back to visit soon!