Continuing benefits from the closet purge

More on my closet cleaning efforts, discussed in Monday's blog entry:

After getting every garment I honestly didn't like out of my clothes closet, I was left with (far) fewer things, but I really love what's left.

When I wore an outfit made up of these few remaining old favorites to my college class on Thursday, I received no fewer than FIVE compliments on my outfit from various random students (plus one professor) throughout the afternoon.

Anyone who has any contact with young women in their late teens/early 20s knows that they are notoriously picky when it comes to fashion. So I considered it a high honor that they approved of what I was wearing!

Another sign that my closet purge was the right move to make.

Women of the Cloth

Here's info on a new exhibit I'm participating in at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, opening to the public this Thursday, March 6.

Room for the new

I am a firm believer in releasing no-longer-needed possessions to make room for the new. Every time I clean out and organize a closet or shelf, something special and unexpected happens.

Case in point: today I went through my clothes closet, tried on everything, and filled three garbage bags with any and all items that no longer fit or that no longer suit me (bound for a charity clothing drop-off box).

And as soon as I was finished with this task, I went on line to check my email, where I found a message saying I had been accepted into a juried show called "Women of the Cloth." !!!

Remembering The Fox

One of my favorite bloggers, Rebecca Crowell, wrote in a recent blog entry on the subject of artworks that were influential to her when she was growing up.

This made me think about the art that influenced me. I didn't really discover "fine" art until I was in college, but the images from many of the books I loved as a child are clearly fixed in my memory.

When I was 3 or 4, somewhere in there, I loved Peter Spier's "The Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night," an illustrated version of the familiar folk song published in 1961 (example page shown above). My mother used to hold me on her lap and sing me the song as we read through the book at bedtime.

It seems that children's books these days always have splashy designs and over-the-top colors. I guess the publishers think they have to hit kids over the head to stimulate their imagination. But Spier's simple line drawings captivated me with their detail and their apt depiction of an expansive environment.

Perhaps the early experience of seeing these beautiful, descriptive lines influenced my love of line as an artist?

Odetta recorded a great version of this song, but I still prefer my mother's rendition.

Blue print arrangement

Here's how the blue fabric I mentioned a few days ago ended up. (Petey the Cat made it into the edge of the picture. He's always up for a photo op.) This piece is 40 inches square.



I've had such great feedback on my Patterns Series that I thought I'd continue on with that type of format.

My review of "ReORGANized" at Artworks

Click here to read my review of "ReORGANized," a group of fiber-based installations by artist Rachel Hunt, now on view at Artworks! gallery in New Bedford.

The review appears in today's edition of the New Bedford Standard-Times.

One thing leads to another

I've been "drawing" with paint on lengths of white voile ($2.50 a yard, on sale at Joann's Fabrics!) and rolling over the marks with a brayer, which flattens them out and reprints them.



Not sure exactly how the cloth will end up being collaged, but I had luck in a past painting cutting them in long strips and gluing them to a white canvas, so maybe I'll try something like that again:

My profile on painter Sig Haines

Click here to read my profile on landscape painter Severin (known as "Sig") Haines, published in today's New Bedford Standard-Times.

Sig's solo show, "Skude, 360 degrees," is currently on display at the New Bedford Art Museum. It's a show of spectacular scenes and colors, highly recommended viewing! Here's the museum's website, for more information on hours and directions.

Happy Valentine's Day

Tomorrow, Valentine's Day, will be the 20th anniversary of my first date with my husband. Since that day, we've never been apart. That's us, in the picture above, 20 years ago.

I love you, Kevin!

Brayer play

I've been fooling around with a brayer this morning, with fluid acrylic in squirt bottles and paper. Who knows where these pages will end up -- probably a bottom layer for something, or torn up for collages -- but they were fun to make, lots of 'em!

I was quite saddened to hear of the death on Sunday of Roy Scheider, a most talented actor and always one of my great favorites. Roy, I thought of you while making these prints this morning. The creativity of others is inspiring to me, and your performances in particular were an inspiration.

Quick studies

When I teach, I often have chunks of down time when the students are at a certain stage with their projects and need to be left alone to work some things out without my input. I like to made studies myself during these times. This way, I feel that I’m contributing to the creative and focused energy in the classroom by working myself, but I’m physically available to the students if they want to ask a question.

On Saturday I made the two studies above, the face in my fashion illustration class (we were drawing heads) and the garlic in my watercolor class (we were talking about mixing grays from primaries and working with the white of the page).

I was interested to find that I really can make decent studies in these styles and media, even though they are far from what I do in my own studio.

A funny thing happened on the way to the dryer

I went downstairs to fold the laundry, but found myself pulled by the lure of my nearby studio. Next thing I knew, I had assembled the collage painting shown above (and not touched the towels).

I like this piece because the darker squares are cut from a much larger painting that was totally not working, and the yellow squares are from a work on paper that was totally not working. Here, together, they’re working!

Gambling on juried shows

Does it ever seem to you that the act of entering a juried art show has a lot in common with going to a casino?

You enter a bright, active room filled with enticing possibilities. (Viewing lists of calls for entries.) You select the game that suit your fancy, that makes you feel lucky. (You pick from among the juried shows the one or ones that fit the style and/or themes of your work.) You open your wallet and plunge in, hoping for the best. (Most juried shows have those pesky entry fees.)

Hopefully your talent gives you all the luck you need, but jurors' or juries' tastes can be hard to predict, no matter how much research you do. (Steve Martin advised, "Be so good that they can't say no," but that's easier said than done in a world governed by personal taste.)

I'm looking up at the clock right now and realizing I've just spent hours preparing applications for 3 juried shows. (No wonder my fanny has fallen asleep.)

Have we really come that far from sticking little labels all over our slides to conform to the individual requirements of each show? It still takes time to resize each jpg for various shows and burn the CDs. Not to mention first combing through the works you have available to see what might suit each show best. Not to mention filling out all the paperwork.

So why do I do it at all? Because I'm one of those people who gets off on imagining what great things might happen in the future (I told you it was like gambling). Frankly, I LOVE acceptance letters.

Well, time to seal up the envelopes and trust my luck! It feels like dropping a coin in a slot machine.