So What Am I Missing??

My studio.

This sculpture sits on the back deck near the door to my pottery studio.

We renovated an old store starting from the ground up, literally, having the building jacked up and having a new foundation built under it, back in the late 90's.

Then we had the siding, windows, doors and roof done.

Then for one Christmas I asked for a set of stairs to reach the second floor as we had torn down the outside stairs which used to lead to the upstairs apartment when doing the siding.

Then we completely finished the inside and I moved my studio in late 2001-into early 2002.

Standing on the front sidewalk of my house looking towards the corner where my studio sits.

I used to head down there in the early morning, coffee cup in hand, full of excitement over what I would accomplish that day.

I miss those days terribly.

In 2007, after we found broken headlight glass on the corner by the deck, we decided to build a substantial raised bed flower garden to slow anyone who might get into an accident on the corner and go careening into the building. It worked , as a fews years ago that very thing happened, busting the end off the raised bed and doing some damage to the deck.

(Had we known at the time that the state was going to come in and take so much road frontage for a turn lane, we would have had the building moved back a ways when we had it up on the house moving jacks.)

When I would go down in the mornings, I would water the planters and admire all the flowers and plants taking hold.

It was my happy place. A place of peace and contentment.

Sadly, this is how my garden looked this year. Neglected.

We boarded up the huge front windows late last year when hurricane Irene was barreling towards us and since I haven't been in there to work anyway, we just left it up this year.

Last year I did plant a row of hibiscus along the west side where the red tipped photinias all succumbed to some disease and died off. Funny thing, the ones on the east side all survived and are about 10-12 feet tall!

This year we also had to replace the roof, the one seen here was damaged in Irene and when we went to replace the missing shingles, found they were not in good shape overall and we had a metal roof put on.

Believe it or not, those hibiscus are 3+ feet tall !

This year, the oak leaf hydrangea that I planted a few years ago outdid itself in full bloom!

As you can see, the planters never got replanted this year.

I miss stacking the kiln with the annual patriotic Fire-Works pieces and firing them on the 4th of July

I miss rushing the kiln opening to just sneak a peek inside.

Every potter I know likens a kiln opening to Christmas morning and that feeling never fades!

I miss designing and drawing and carving the clay

All of this work was done totally freehand.

Sitting here it's hard for me to even remember how I did it all.

I miss the knowledge and honed skills I had then.

I miss the feeling of the clay in my hands.

Taking the slab from the roller and draping it over a mold I made from plaster or one my father turned on the lathe for me, smoothing it with my hands to conform to the shape, trimming and finishing and waiting until it was leatherhard to remove from the mold, then covering it in slip and quickly carving the design through ( sgraffito) before coloring with oxides and glazing.

The reason I haven't been back is complicated.

Back in 2008, when my daughter was about to have her second child, our grandson, we knew we couldn't handle 2 young ones in the office at the restaurant. Our granddaughter was just 19 months old and used to come and stay up there with my daughter while she worked in the office full time. Ray and I wouldn't have to be up there all the time. I usually would go in early when I had to and then head to the studio. Many days I wouldn't have to go in until the evening and I would just head to the studio for the day to work.

So when she left to stay home with the 2 babies, Ray and I divided her responsibilites between us instead of putting someone else up there in case she wanted to return one day. This now meant we were putting in full days and nights there.

My world changed entirely.

Now pottery is not something you can start and walk away from for days on end before finishing, so I switched gears and started down the path of jewelry making instead.

I had a good start already, I began with a fused glass class in 2004 which quickly led to an earrings class to learn the basics of wire wrapping and fabrication and I was on my way. 

But a couple of years ago I started to feel like I was losing my way. I wasn't sure what I was doing anymore or even why. I was losing my authentic self.

I started this blog as a way to work through it all and hopefully find my muse again and with it my direction and passion.

Don't get me wrong, I love making jewelry, working with metals, seeing an idea come to fruition, but something is missing.

The blogosphere has been speaking to me in bits and pieces of posts from many artists talking of passion and following it.

Remember your childhood and what you loved spending your time doing?

What wakes you in the middle of the night with a new idea?

Gets you going first thing in the morning running to the studio to work out the idea?

What medium could you not give up or do without?

The answers kept bringing me back to clay.

I am missing clay.

In my next post I'll address why this isn't a simple fix.

This Week In History

25 Years ago this week we did a crazy thing. 

We opened a restaurant.

Now, what makes this a crazy thing is that neither one of us knew the first thing about running a restaurant.

 It was just a dream.

I was an R.N. and my husband was a commercial fisherman, a lifelong waterman as it's known around here.

What we did know is that we liked to cook for people.  See what I mean? Crazy!

We opened it in an area that everyone told us no one would come to, off the beaten path, out of the way in an old building that we spent the better part of a year renovating before opening.

Sitting here writing this,  it feels like a lifetime ago.

 Or even someone elses life.

 Like a story that's been told so many times you start to feel like it's real and that you were a part of it but it's somewhat fuzzy.

I don't know where 25 years has gone but I do know this-

People did come find us-

We are blessed to have some of the best and most faithful customers on the planet-

People come from several states away to eat with us-

We have watched our children, our employees, our employees' children and now our grandchildren grow up as part of this business-

We have shared in our employees and customer's lives and the lives of their families, we don't take a single thing for granted and appreciate every day we are given and every customer that continues to grace our threshold-

Thank you and God Bless everyone who has helped to make the dream come true.

Crazy as it is

Wanted: For Obstruction of Creativity

Ok, here's the disclaimer up front. This post will have a lot of pix- most of them are not pretty- please have all small children and pets leave the room as they may get lost in the clutter and i can't be held responsible! You can click on a picture and then click a second time to make it really large if you dare!

That being said, yesterday was my husband's birthday. He spent part of it fishing with a few buds of his and then he had work he wanted to get done on his boat before the weather turned bad this week.  SSoooo... I had most of the day to myself. I decided to tackle ,start reorganizing what used to be known as my studio.  Now I'm not going so far as to even go into the pottery rooms, just the front room. I will start at the front door and try to give a surround view play by play. Here goes-

Standing inside my front door looking straight ahead.  When we first renovated this old store, the back rooms were for my studio, pottery and kilns, this front part was going to be a shop, but that was right before the fire at the restaurant when all those plans changed. So the antique display cases that we had for the shop are now being used for storage units.  Notice the storage containers on the floor, think they'll hold it all, nah, me either! The bookcases are filled to the brim , hence the books and magazines on the floor, will need to figure that out. The commercial t shirt machine was for when i made the shirts for my son's FIRST robotics competitions andmousepads for our restaurant.  There is a gas fireplace set beneath the mantle.

This is looking now to the back right corner. There is an old shoemakers rack with fabric on it, the red barnwood cabinets in the corner have beeswax figures that i cast from vintage chocolate molds, the green cupboard has ephemera, sealing wax, some plates for mosaics, cigar boxes and mache doll parts that i also cast. There are 2 ships figureheads on top of the green cabinet which i started and have yet to finish, they were for the restaurant as decor. The pie safe with the doors open houses sewing supplies and there are vintage sewing implements on top along with a redware doll i made who has yet to be dressed. Behind this glass display case sits a library table and vintage oak desk which I used to make all my jewelry on but since bringing those items into my home, it now is my sewing space. Notice the little purple sewing machine behind the spinner rack? It is a real sewing machine sized for little girls, for my grandaughter.

The 8' display case hold lots of vintage trims that I had used when i was making outfits for the redware dolls. The illustration on the left is from a book from the 1800's of a sailor and his mermaid. i'm a hopeless romantic what can I say? The cardboard drink holder on top of the display case holds dead butterflies, I had the holder in my car and when i would find a butterfly lying on the ground in the street or parking lot, i put them in there to keep from getting crushed in my car.  My nephew saves dragonflies for me from the Navy ship he is on, he says they come there to land and die so he collects them for me (all for jewelry) He gets the weird gene directly from me!

This is standing at the front door looking a little to the left. The black canister looking thingie on he floor in the front is a frit crusher, for crushing glass to cast. The open door at the end of the corridor is a closet that spans the length of the wall and is beneath the stairs leading to the Up-Art-Ment. The frame is from a rug I hooked (rug punch) The rack on the wall holds rubber stamps.  An enamel kiln, PMC kiln and small glass kiln sit atop an old science table with black stone top.  Behind the rug frame sits a light table that my husband built for me 20 years ago when i was back in school and needed a light table to do the series of silkscreens accurately.

From the front door looking left, you can see the original door from inside the building which leads to the upstairs apartment. Behind the white sideboard is an old formica table which is for the torch and hot glass setup. I plan on removing this sideboard and replacing it with a workbench for my enameling ( yea Barbara!) It currently has my glass saw and grinder and tumbler and a dremel set on top but is an inefficient use of space. (that's funny isn't it?)

The mantle has a wonderful old confessional sort of doors that had been backed with a mirror and also my dada doll from Linda and Opie O'Briens class. The shoe organizer holds glass rods.

A better view of that corner

A view down the corridor. The bookcase on the left has paints, glues etc on it, the black bookcase on the far wall has all varieties of shells for making Sailor's Valentines, and the white bookcase on the right has catalogued  magazines. The slant front display case, one of my favorites, used to hold all the clear plastic storage containers of beads and gemstones and findings for jewelry making. It was great to be able to see them all from both sides with the light passing through.

Standing in the door to the pottery room looking out into the corridor. The fridge holds inportant things like water, yogurt, apples and chocolate !

Standing at the bookcase with the shells looking back towards the front door.

Closer view of the hot glass table. Note the Carlisle mini cc torch on the hardi backer board which is protecting the floor. The Barnes and Noble bag (on the table) is full of cleaned cat food cans for use with the torch fired enamels.

Standing near the hot glass table looking back across the room.

Now some of you out there are probably thinking " I would never show this" but you see that's exactly why I am doing it. Life gets busy, things get dropped and stacked and shuffled and disorganized from time to time. It's been over a year since i worked in here. Other more important life happenings took precedent over this. I am on a mission now though and showing these pix will keep me to it, keep me honest so to speak. I will be back with the final results in pix as soon as i finish.

In the meantime....

Happy Birthday Ray!

Now let's eat cake!

 

 

   



All The Comforts Of Home

OK, if you've been following along, you know that before I went back to school I had a business called Comforts Of Home where i made custom quilts.  Well, one of the classes I took while in school was ceramics which rekindled in me a love for all things clay.  The same year that i stopped going to school, my parents retired and moved from New Jersey to Florida.  One of the things that i purchased from them before their move was my Mom's old hobby kiln.  This is when i was making porcelain dolls for everyone and every occassion. 

 But my attention soon turned to historic pottery, predominantly redware. I loved redware. I took every opportunity to study historic pieces, travelling to museums, reading books, anything i could get my hands on.  I even timed a visit to Plimoth Plantation to coincide with our trip to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island so that i could take a pottery workshop there! Through trial and error ( lots of trial and error, there are no how to books out there for redware) I found my way through and soon hit upon a signature look. I formulated my colors and glazes and techniques to give just the appearance I longed for.  My Dad is a woodturner and made some of the wooden molds that i drape my plates over.  Soon after i began to make some of my own molds for larger pieces.  I started doing shows to sell my work and eventually in 2000 started selling online at Ebay.  From there I created my website.

My husband and I renovated an old store near our home and i moved my studio in and began working there in 2002.  I enjoyed everything about what I was doing and the ideas flowed.   Time would disappear while I was there. 

I prided myself in making original designs with lots of historical flavor and would get so annoyed and discouraged to see others copy my pieces. I guess that's what's happens when you put your work out there on the net as so many artists have found. But I had a loyal following and was very grateful for everyone's support.  One of my original ideas was that i would do patriotic pieces and fire them in the kiln on the 4th of July each year. These pieces all were marked with my original Fire-Works signature. It was the only time i would do patriotic themed pieces.

 My pottery actually carried us through a dark time when we had the fire at our restaurant in Nov of 2003 until we reopened in April of 2004.

 I continued to work in my studio along with the restaurant until 2008 when my second grandchild was born.  My daughter could no longer work in the office with the 2 children ( my grandaughter would come to work with her, but 2 would be too hard to do).  I couldn't do both anymore either. Pottery takes a considerable chunk of time that i no longer had.

Feel that wind blowing again?  What did John Lennon say "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"?  I have always loved that saying,  just never expected it to be my theme song!!

If you were to go into my studio this day, you would find pieces of pottery, drape molded trenchers and plates and other goodies just sitting there on the table awaiting my return!

I had to find a new creative outlet, one that would allow me to work a little here and there , leave and come back to it and not lose the piece as I would with pottery.

I started to learn jewelry techniques and am expanding on my skills all the time. I have learned lampworking, metalsmithing, cast and fused glass. I have 5 kilns to my name.

This is where you came in...with my first post, here on this blog in June,  "just who do i think I am?" 

In recapping my life thus far i have found out certain things.

• I Love all things historical
•  I love glass in all it's forms, mosaics, lampwork, glass glazes on clay, glass enamels on metal, fused glass, stained glass, roman glass, czech glass,  sea glass, you name it, glass wins me every time!
• I have to be authentic, original
• I love to learn
• I. have. to. create. something. all. the. time.
• I am strong. determined. ambitious.

Now to take everything I know and find my direction!

P.S. I had a small epiphany last night after writing this post. I started to see very clearly why I am finding myself  unsure of my direction. My husband has questioned whether I may be in the wrong medium. I considered that as well but I think it might be more this- as i look back over everything I have done, with each endeavor I started with an idea, a vision, a passion.  I did all the legwork myself, teaching myself what i needed to know and finding my way through all my ideas. 
 With jewelry it has been just the opposite. I have started with classes, instructions in techniques and all the technical aspects of the trade.  I am struggling to find my own way with this medium.
The one series that I did that was original work of mine, Vintage Metamorphosis, I created in 2008 and had copyrighted in March 2009.  I want what i had with all the other work that I have done, a look of my own, identifiable as my own, not just as a student of someone else. Perhaps this will require nothing more than what i gave to everything else, time and effort. I used to have a lot more time to "just be" in my studio. I think that is what is most needed here. Time alone in my studio to think through ideas and find my own way again. With this medium or maybe even another, who knows? That is where my muse resides and I trust she will guide me yet again.

Backstory Next Chapter

I had hoped to complete all of my backstory during the course of the summer, but if I plan on keeping that promise to myself I have a lot of catching up to do!

When I last wrote I spoke of changes afoot.  I decided that I wanted to pick up a few classes at a local university, some things that would help me take my design ability up a notch or 2. So I enrolled as a "non-traditional" student and signed up for 2 classes, Color Theory and principles of Design.  I figured I could apply both of these to my quilt design. The year was 1990 and my son was just 19 mos old and my daughter was in elementary school. I would drop her off, head up to school ( an hour away) and be back in time to pick her up. 

 As it turned out, these were the best 2 starter classes I could have chosen, I LOVED them!  At the end of the semester, my professor approached me and said" I would like to see you apply to go out for the Fine Art program, I think you have what it takes to be really successful.  "Who Me? Are you talking to me? Really????  It would entail getting a portfolio ( Oh yes, say it's true!) together of my work and submitting it for review along with the application.   Happily I was accepted.
The thing that separated the Art degree from a Fine Art degree was the degree of work involved! Each semester I had to do an independent study that i received no credit for but which was required.  My Area director as he was called, told me he would like to see me advance my design ability by either making non traditional quilts or make traditional quilts in a non traditional way.  What??? He suggested I sew quilts out of paper or something like that.  Uhh, I don't think so, not for me. But I pondered the suggestion over the summer and came up with an idea of my own. I would make quilts out of my own handmade paper. 

Transforming from traditonal to non traditional

In those days not much was available concerning handmade paper and the books that i had to search and learn from were very old and very few.   Step by step i experimented with different materials,  tweaking and refining my methods until I found what worked.  My first piece looked like a sheet of dryer lint!  Once I hit on the process I was off and running. The designs and ideas were just flowing through me and i couldn't realize them fast enough.

At the end of my second year in school, my area director told me he felt I deserved a show of my own and arranged for me to meet with the gallery curator who agreed. I was set to have a show of my own at the start of the new school year in the university gallery.

Please forgive the quality of these pix as they are scans of the originals taken at that time.

It was my so called 15 minutes of fame. The local TV stations came and interviewed me, articles were written in the local papers. I was entering shows and winning ribbons, it was all very exciting. And very exhausting. I was being torn between following my ambitions and keeping my attentions on my young family.

I wasn't willing to compromise on anything.  I was trying to juggle being the perfect mother, wife, housewife and artist.  It was only a matter of time before I hit the proverbial breaking point.  I was set to start my 6th semester when I came to the decision to stop going to school. It was 1993, My son was about to turn 4 and would only have one year before he was in school full time and I felt I was going to regret not being home with him more.  It wasn't the amount of time I was attending school, it was the demands to do all the extra work. I was distracted half the time with projects and reports and homework so that even when i was here i really wasn't all here with them.  It was one of the hardest decisions i have ever made in my life and to this day a part of me regrets the decision i made. Not because i chose my family over my own ambitions, but because when i was there I felt i was in my element, I belonged there. I belonged to be doing what i was doing. I was good at it. I left school with a 4.0 GPA.

I continued to learn and create on my own. I was a member of the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Old Town Alexandria and was juried into many shows, winning ribbons and a place in what was known as the Bin Gallery there.  Every month a friend of mine from school and i would go out there, work the jurying process for our membership and come back home the same day.  I did handmade paper, silkscreen prints, Polaroid image transfers, art quilts, Ukrainian eggs, & porcelain dolls. I went into the schools and taught what i knew, handmade paper and Ukrainian eggs to classes from second grade to high school. I always taught my children any new skill I had acquired.  Both of them won acclaim with their image transfers and photography.

It wouldn't be long before the winds of change would blow through my life again.

Backstory -continued

The loose definition of a backstory is this: the experiences of a character or the circumstances of an event that occur before the action or the narrative.  A prequel. The history behind a situation.

So, I guess that's what I'm doing here, giving all this background info on my life for 1- to let you the reader know more about who i am and 2- to help me remember from whence i come and help me to see clearer where i am headed.

That being said, I will move now to the next stage, the college years.  The most memorable parts of my first college career in the nursing program was submitting a design for the t-shirts to be worn by the health technologies division during the field day events and being chosen.  I also founded a newsletter aptly named "Nurses Notes". I was spending all of my free time taking the 35mm camera that i received for my high school graduation and going on photo adventures.  Everytime I got extra money I bought photo equipment, developing supplies, paper, film etc. Remember the Christmas lists i told you about? Now it was lenses and filters.  I even squeezed in a class on sundays at the college in photography. I was in love!  This was my medium. 

I remember sitting on campus, waiting to head to my next class, anatomy and physiology II where we were to dissect a cat and identify parts when I spotted a group of students, giant black portfolios in hand, heading to their class. I wanted to be them.  So I went home that evening and over the dinner table told my parents I wanted to quit nursing and go for Marketing, Art and Design. A hush fell and my parents thought for a moment , looked at each other and then proceeded to persuade me to finish nursing, after all I was halfway to getting my RN. With that i could go anywhere and always find a job.  And they were right, so finish I did.  To this day I maintain my license.

That's me, 1979

Shortly thereafter while on vacation here in Chincoteague, I met my husband and after graduating and taking my state boards I moved to Virginia and was married a year and a half later. My parents were right, down here I would have never gotten a job in a marketing art and design field in those days. In fact they were so short of nurses that my first job was as a nursing supervisor at a nursing home. From there I tried the health dept and the hospital where i was a charge nurse of a very busy med /surg floor until the birth of my daughter 5 years later.  All during this time I taught myself to quilt and do other needlearts and crafts and always had a project that I was working on.  I attempted to return to work when she was 13 months old but that only lasted 5 months as child care here was virtually non existant at the time and babysitters were too unreliable.  But I had a problem, I had always worked, always had my own money, and I didn't like "being dependent".  What to do?

You know, a creative mind can be a dangerous thing when left alone! One day while food shopping I picked up a new magazine called Country Sampler.  I came home and read through cover to cover and promptly called the editor directly at the time, Mark Nichols, to ask "how does a person get into this magazine?" he asked what i did and I told him quilts. He told me he was trying to find someone who did quilts to add to the magazine. PERFECT!  All I had to do was send in $575. for a years' worth of advertising, the same ad for 3 issues, send the quilts with the written copy and they would photograph them in a room setting.  Great! Now where am i going to come up with an extra $575. to do this with?  I wasn't in the habit of borrowing money but my muse was screaming "you've got to do this!"  I called my grandfather, explained the situation, he agreed to send it to me and i told him if it didn't work out i would go back to work to repay my debt.  I called my state tax office and applied for a tax number, picked a name and when my husband came home from work I announced to him " I'm going into business!"  Everyone thought I was nuts. " what do you know about running a business?" I don't know but I'll do it.  And so i did. The year was 1984 and Comforts of Home was born and i made custom quilts and continued to advertise with them for over 4 years until the influx of cheap quilts from china and other places made it so that i couldn't compete. I couldn't even buy the fabrics for what they were selling a finished quilt for!   It was also during this time that my husband and i purchased an old run down restaurant (1985)  spending a year renovating and opening in May of 1986.  Again i felt the tug between what I wanted to be doing ( my quilt business) and devoting myself to helping get his dream of the ground.

As with so many women,  a recurring theme in my life is choosing between my own ambitions and dreams and those of my loved ones. Devoting my time to them or me?  I always wanted to be a stay at home mom and when i chose to, it was an unpopular thing to do.  But to have a cottage industry, to be home with my children raising them AND to be able to follow my dream was a perfect combination.  I designed quilts using graph paper and prismacolor pencils (no computers with fancy graphics and quilt design programs back then!)and put fabrics together and worked while the kids napped (my son was born in 1989) , wrote my ads and created a brochure and it really fulfilled me. You see, Marketing , Art and Design.  I felt very blessed to have this but it was apparent- change was a comin'.

Flashback

It was late 1960's early 1970's.  There is a picture of me with peasant top, bellbottom jeans and "frizzed hair" the style of the times, I would braid my hair in as many braids as i could and then let it dry and unbraid it for effect.  Yeah, I was cool.  Artist in training.  I stood in the picture amongst my best friend and siblings, all who looked quite "normal". My Nanny cringed at my independence and free thinking.  She would tap me on my bare belly when I wore short shirts and very low bell bottoms and lecture me about how I looked.  It didn't matter. I knew who I was then and it didn't matter to me what anyone thought.  Boy those were the days!

In junior high we had all the required classes to take in a specific order, the usual curriculum, plus the girls had home economics (sewing and cooking) and the boys had woodshop. I loved home ec. we all had to sew an apron, mine was a purple calico with a heart shaped pocket with the word love embroidered on it. It was one of several chosen to be on display during a PTA luncheon for all the Mom's. ( my apron round robin friends will enjoy this)  Invaluable lessons were learned in those classes and I feel sorry for today's students who because of budget cuts and other reckless decisions don't get to experience this.

Then came freedom.  We could choose what we wanted to pursue further. well, I wanted woodshop. The times were just starting to change and it was a whole new experience to let a girl into woodshop.  The first day of the new semester, I was on my way excitedly to class when I was met at the door by the teacher, my guidance counselor and another student, a boy.  well it seems they overbooked the class and a choice had to be made. I knew as they all stared at me as they told me of the dilemma that they expected me to bow out gracefully.  Sorry fellas, not happenin. So it was decided to flip a coin, i won and promptly excused myself and went in to take a seat in class.

My mother loves to tell the story of how at Christmas break, all the boys got off the bus with a jewelry box they had proudly made for their Mom's for Christmas. Me? I got off the bus with an end table!  I loved woodshop and continued to take it until I went to high school where it was no longer offered.  In addition to the end table, I made a coffee table, 3 legged stool,  a reproduction of the art stools in our art class, a baseball bat on the lathe for my brother, bowls and mini woodturned vases.  I spent every available minute in that shop, even skipping lunch to work there.

At home I was embroidering on my jeans, making candles and in general probably driving my family crazy with my next "project"

My muse was loud and strong and I followed her with conviction.

In high school things changed though. The art teacher was intimidating, you could hear him yelling all the way down the hallway. It was a known fact that he only liked students with "real" talent, so i never signed up for any art classes. I would walk down the art hall, with the metalsmithing studio and the art studio and wish i was in there. I envied all those students who were. But I didn't feel "good enough" for the class.

OK, so i'll pursue that nursing thing instead. I got on the college prep track, became a candy striper in my free time and set my sights on my future.

In my first year of high school I was grounded for 2 weeks for spending the night at a friends' house so that i could go see the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was told i couldn't go and I went anyway.

So I spent my prison time painting the ceiling in my room. My bedroom had a dormered ceiling and i painted a scene of the Emerald city with the yellow brick road on one side and the hookah smoking caterpillar on the toadstool with Alice and all the beautiful flowers on the other all with my acrylics.

I still wore my independence proudly, making clothes that were my own style, wearing my hair the way I wanted but my muse was being silenced. Little by little her voice was growing more faint.  I started to conform. I was growing up right?

So here I am, all grown up, desperately trying to find my muse again, needing to follow her on MY path. I know I am heading in the right direction. This blog is my connection to her. There are moments now when i can hear her screaming in my ears but the words are still undecipherable. I have faith though. I am just so grateful to know she hasn't left me completely.

Crayola Moments

There are few things in childhood as pleasant to remember as a brand new box of Crayola crayons. So full of promise, all those sharp points, perfect for outlining and then filling in, bringing a simple black skeleton of a picture to life with all the imagination of a young child.

Who am i kidding? I STILL love a new box of crayons, this one pictured here is mine, Oh yeah, I said that I bought it for the grandkids to use but in truth....mine. And yesterday i got to use them, legitimately. I had high hopes of coming home from work in the morning and doing a little picture taking and uploading, posting here on my blog and then getting ready to return to work having fulfilled a little creative urge.

It was during the picture taking in my garden that my grandaughter spotted me and wanted to come to "Nanny's" house. Well, wanting soon turned to wailing and so the plans changed. How could I refuse????

"Can I color?" Sure you can. "will you color with me" I'd love to!

When I think back on my childhood, art and creativity was always an important part of who I was. The story in the family goes like this.. when i was about my grandaughters age, 3, I am told that when i met my Aunt Elaine i promptly told her that I was going to be a nurse and an artist when I grew up. I remember waking up in the morning and playing with colorforms in my bed. Not the kinds you see now, but the originals, the ones that just had colored shapes with which you had to build your own pictures. As I mentioned earlier, a new box of crayons and a beautifully illustrated coloring book was a treat.

At Christmas we were told we could ask for something special, not like kids nowadays whose lists are endless with mega electronics and everything that goes with them, no we could pick something special and then maybe a few smaller things. My list ALWAYS had some form of art supply that i HAD to have! There was the year i got REAL artists oil pastels and a REAL artists' easel and canvases. Then there was the REAL wooden artists' box complete with REAL oil paints and turpentine and linseed oil in the small glass bottles. Can you smell that? That's the smell of a REAL artist! Next came the acrylics and the watercolors and the calligraphy sets and pens with nibs and the ever exotic India ink. There was the year of the battery operated pottery wheel which was great until I tried to actually put my hands on the clay and form something, the pressure slowed the wheel to a complete stop. One day I will get a REAL wheel I promised myself! There was sewing, and cutting and pasting and saving everything in sight because "I can make something out of that, Mom!" There was no place that we went that i didn't inevitably come back with something that i was going to "make something" out of. Not much has changed but I'll leave that for another post!

I always wanted artist lessons, not something a young growing family can afford so i signed up for a program at a local library when i was about 8. It was on Saturday mornings. The last project we did was to illustrate a story. Each of us had a part, I don't remember the story but the part I had to illustrate was the melting of the ice cream mountain! Perfect! I had just the pastels for the job! I think I used everyone I had, colorful melting ice cream mountain. We were actually critiqued and i remember the instructor told me my technique was like Salvadore Dali and i should research him.

The first real validation I felt as an artist was when my Aunt Elaine asked me to do an oil painting for her. Really? Yes, she wanted something Jackson Pollack-esque. Just go outside and splatter brightly colored oil paints on a canvas. Are you sure? That's all? But the cool part was she actually hung it in her living room, for like a long time, not just to make me feel good. It was really part of her decor. Thank you Aunt Elaine!

So my point with all this rambling? As children we seem to instinctively KNOW who we are and what we're meant to do. It's as we get older that we lose our way, we let the everyday get in the way of our true purpose. We let the voices creep into our head telling us, "you can't do that, you're a grownup now, you have responsibilities" " what makes you think you are an artist?" Stop in the middle of the day and color? Nonsense.

Well, I say raise your box of crayons, declare "I am an artist" and toast to a hefty dose of nonsense!

Just Who Do I Think I Am???

"Just who do you think you are young lady?" I remember hearing that as a child , most likely after having said something smart or seemingly disrespectful to an elder, and clearly at the time the answer was "a smart ass kid who was getting too big for her britches", but I would promptly answer "nobody" for fear of what would come next.

Well, I just turned 50 at my last birthday and I find myself asking this very question of myself. I feel as if I have had to redefine myself for the umpteenth time. Every stage brought with it a whole new definition of who i was or was supposed to be. I am now at a point in my life where i feel sort of lost. I hope to find my way through journaling here and with the support of dear friends by my side i know i will arrive at an answer. I firmly believe that I can't know where it is i am going until I look back over where I've been. So I will look back over the different points in my life that have brought me to where i am and hopefully along the way i will rediscover who I truly am and where I need to be going.