a love letter

reserved for p. senter

i must be doing something right.  in the last three days, i sold twelve one-a-day paintings.  a few were sold online, but mostly i sold them the old-fashioned way, through the store.  i put a small basket on a table at the lucky dumpster so folks could easily thumb through them all.  i was dumbfounded and amazed by the positive response.  as a result, i'm feeling wholly encouraged and super motivated.  today, i would like to offer a hefty thanks to all y'all who take the time to look at this thing:  it makes me feel so proud to hear you say, "i love your blog,", honored to see you sharing it with your friends, and so grateful that you would take the time out of your busy lives to look.  every day, when i sit down, i do it with you in mind.  these paintings, these words, are for you.  honestly.

beneath it all

reserved for a. werder

 some days are charmed.  last night leading up to today were particularly so, making up for all the preceding moments full of moody malcontent.  thank you universe, for starting me off on the right foot, for keeping me optimistic and productive and in a darnright sociable good mood, for making my interactions with the world stimulating, inspiring, and full of positive reinforcements, for helping me understand why i am who i am.  it's not always easy, but it is always worth it.  so go ahead: bulldoze through the bullshit and reveal that solid foundation hidden beneath it all.  

today's chance visitations to the lucky dumpster (how in the world they got here, i don't know, but thank you dear lucky stars for gracing me with such brilliance):
the lovely musicians:
rose melberg
and
darren hanlon
plus 
talented artist
jill bliss

transformation

yesterday i drove to bellingham to meet two-week-old baby enzo for the first time.  i was excited to see the little man, and also to witness the transformation in my friend annalee.  i know that giving birth changes you in profound ways, and although i don't know from experience, i've witnessed it in several friends.  it is a mysterious and magical thing, that notion of making a baby inside one's self.  it still blows my mind.  looking at enzo's tiny toes and fingers, the features that will combine the best of his parents and develop to become uniquely him, soaking in the beauty of the vulnerable creature that will one day talk back and make his own grilled cheese sandwiches, well that's just a downright miracle.  and watching the way annalee already knows his cues, knows what to do, and is so comfortable in her own skin:  i am awestruck bordering on envious.  at times i struggle with it all, maybe because i was once that squishy warm suckling ten-pounder in the arms of my own mother. my mother is gone now.  the nurturing of a mother, a comfort irreplaceable, is at times an irreconcilable emptiness for me.  so sometimes, i catch myself staring at those beautiful glowing young mothers and their babies, trying to grasp at the intensity of that loving bond i once felt.  i have to catch myself,  just to keep from falling apart.

team

today i went with the boys, james and tom, to help with the installation of james' sculptures in the "emerging artists" room of LaConner's Art's Alive! weekend festival.  When James was first asked to participate, he thought they were asking for us both, and was surprised and confused to find out that they wanted his work only. I pretended to pout, whining "why didn't they pick meeeee?", but really, i was excited for him.  Since leaving art school to pursue cabinetry, james has mostly built furniture, kitchens and other functional wooden gear to make a buck.  i've been known as the artist of the family.  but i do know there is truly a brilliant artist inside james, waiting to explode onto the scene.  i encouraged him to move outside of function and conventionality for this one, to take the opportunity to show what kind of sophistication he's really made of.  and he did.  with the help of tom, he assembled some dramatic pieces that hearken to his influnces, from tsutakawa to northwest natives to nature to demolition and destruction to collection and resurrection.  we proudly packed the back of tom's trusty red pickup with the creations from the past couple weeks and drove the sunny fields to laconner.

so i guess i've been spoiled when it comes to seeing interesting art in well-designed environments.  Living in portland and being an art-junkie of sorts, i've been exposed to everything from guerrilla galleries to boutique galleries to formal museums.  there are so many artists in the world, and equally as many ways to exhibit the art effectively.  and also so many ways to ineffectively exhibit the art, to butcher the experience altogether.  walking into the art's alive exhibit, i felt as if it should be called art's dead.  The room looked like a glorified county fair art exhibit:  carpet paneled office room dividers lining the walls, embellished with 80's style white telescoping clip lights. and then the art.  most of it was decent, and some was downright lovely, but the presentation was so tacky and distracting it had a de-emphasizing effect.  luckily, james' pieces look good darn near anywhere, but the ladies seemed perplexed by the work to say the least.  we left, feeling confused ourselves, but accomplished still, for making a small dent called "non-conventional" in the facade of laconner-style "sophistication".  driving home, we laughed like kids, making beavis and butthead style dirty jokes about the "erection of our giant totems", in light of all the stuffiness we'd narrowly escaped.  well done, team lucky dumpster.

arrival

collection of j. shainin

crumpled pieces of paper are like snowflakes: no two are alike.  two days ago, when i was exasperated in search of subject matter, i resigned to a tiny piece of crumpled brown paper towel on my table easel.  because i was feeling particularly crumpled myself, it seemed entirely appropriate.  that day, in doing that painting, i felt as if i made a miraculous discovery.  somehow, the deceptively simple subject matter of a crumpled piece of paper was one of the most challenging subjects i've ever attempted to paint realistically.  faceted like a diamond, as intricate as a mountain topography with its many peaks, valleys, and crevasses, the paper was a maze of detail and an endless exploration of shadow, light, line, and color.  who knew?  and now, i'm kind of obsessed.  i want to be that painter who paints crumpled pieces of paper.  sure, it's probably been done lots, but who cares.  crumpled pieces of paper are like snowflakes: one is a surprise, but it takes tons and tons to make any kind dent in the landscape.  so tonight, in preparation for my painting, james and i went straight to the recycling bin.  we sat and crumpled paper, experimenting with all kinds of different techniques, the loose crumple and the tight crumple, large pages and small, with  pictures of faces and pages of text,  newsprint ads and  glossy junk mail ads... just to see the aesthetics or expressions or effects each one produces.

i feel fortunate to have made this discovery.  sometimes it seems like the most obvious moments of beauty are so close under our noses that we don't even notice them.  like today: i finally noticed the ducks.  today when i was outside, i noticed their collective quacking, ecstatic in the marshy distances.  and driving the dusky roads home, i noticed them by the thousands, tiny black dots, barely visible as V formations in the sky, then swarming, swift tornadoes of black dust, spinning collectively in a lyrical dance to land in the fallow fields.  miraculous beauty, every day.

objects

emptying boxes from a move is emotionally taxing.  each box is its own time capsule.  each box contains too many memories in the form of objects.  for each object you remove from a box, you have to evaluate its importance to you.  you also inadvertently go through a mental chronology of where the object came from, how you used it, how people before you used it, and what it's future value might be.  then you have to find a spot for it to go.  a new home.  you have to look around your space, your new home.  you then have to evaluate your home, and the patterns of use yet to be established.  you might get frustrated because you have nowhere for your object to go.  you're overcrowded.  you may not even understand why you have the object, why you've kept it so long, or why you bothered to move it two-hundred and thirty some odd miles.  maybe then you put it in a new box, designated for donation, recycling, or trash.  or you put it in the store, to sell.  or maybe you just move it a little to the side, and try a different object.  it is an unending prospect, these boxes made of cardboard and plastic, these boxes filled with fragile things wrapped in newspaper, filled with precious tiny pieces of things, filled with beachcombed flotsam, filled to the brim, every last corner filled, filled, filled.  filled to the brink of emtiness, the brink of dizziness, to the brink of a breaking point.  so you go outside, you go for a walk, and breathe in the space around you.  you decide to wait, and empty the boxes later.  some other day, perhaps.  when you're feeling stronger.

learning

the best laid plans do sometimes fail.  that is why today, when i opted not to go to portland, i was okay with it all.  i made the appropriate calls, canceled my appointments, explained my circumstances, said my i'll see you soon's, and even got my train tickets refunded without controversy.  everyone was so understanding.  they gave me their i told you so's, and their are you sure this is what you want's, but in the end, it all settled in quite nicely.  the experience of sleeping in, knowingly letting myself fail, and deliberately missing my nine o'clock train, well that was humbling. as was the immediate quietude of not going somewhere, of not having anything pressing to do, of drinking my hot mug-o-tea in my jammies, of drifting around the house picking up a little at a time, of making a wholesome meal for me and my man and my dog...  somehow, the backup plan turned out to be the best plan of all.  

as the old proverb goes : 

 we learn little from victory, much from defeat.

and besides:

hurry only catches flies

and:

the heart at rest sees a feast in everything.

words of wisdom website