Looking for More Treasures on Etsy

I hope you guys don't mind that I do this sort of thing.  There are so many cool things to find on Etsy that I could spend years writing about them.  It's difficult to choose just a few to highlight, but I'll try

First stop is NyssaInk which has a wide variety of vintage things and art.  One of my recent favorite things from her shop are notecards printed with Nyssa's original designs.  They're just gorgeous!  NyssaInk is run by Nyssa Perrin Clark, in Oregon.

NyssaInk

Another shop I really like is French Fairy Tale, owned by Myrthe Noordegraff who is based in France.  One of my favorite items is this cute record book about the North Pole.

FrenchFairyTale

Evies Tool Emporium is a really interesting shop run by Michelle Larson.  It's a shop that sells jewelry and craft tools at great prices, and there are tools that you probably didn't know you needed.  Definitely worth checking out, although I'm not sure about this item - it looks too much like a set of dentist's tools.  

EviesToolEmporium

Our final stop today is at Elizabeth Bosek's shop, Cottage Crafts Online.  It's a great place to hunt for ribbons to use in crafts, and she also creates custom wreaths.  I don't use a lot of wired ribbon but I do love to look at the patterns Elizabeth sells, like this one

CottageCraftsOnline

So there you have it.  Another collection of fun items that I particularly like from 4 shops on Etsy.  Do you have favorite shops that I can visit?  Leave a comment if you do.

later,

lin

The Big Reveal

One of my Facebook buddies recently invited me to exhibit some of my work in an upcoming exhibition he's running.  (Thanks Ricky Gagnon!)

I decided to do four small pieces that could be sold individually or as a set.  And I decided that it would be fun to recreate (sort of) a set of note cards I have for sale in my shop (here).

I've been moving away from using canvases with narrower edges, opting instead for wide gallery style like this (it's not the edge of these canvases but just an example of what I mean by wide)

 I just think they look better.  Which does create a bit of a problem for me since most of my small collages have that narrower edge, and most are too small to be framed in a ready made frame.  But I digress.

So anyway, I decided upon using wide edged 5x7 canvases to sort of mimic the note cards' size.  I also decided to use a variety of Italian Florentine papers that I was able to get from a shop called 32 North Supplies on Etsy, which sells a huge variety of fancy papers, Dresden foil scrap, and other great items.  The designs are all gold/ivory based.  I also decided to use gold foil paper which I think I bought at the Rhode Island School of Design store.  

I worked very quickly on these and didn't take any process photos, but I just wanted to share what they look like.  I still haven't decided on the captions to include - or if I should even include them.  I think I will, though, because I do want them to be amusing pieces rather than just vintage style mood pieces.

Unless they sell at the show, these pieces will eventually end up in the shop, or on Fine Art America where I am going to be listing many of my pieces.  

So what do you think of them?

later,
lin

Art Therapy Part 1

I think I mentioned somewhere here that I was embarking upon an informal course of art therapy on my own.  No class, no instructor, just occasional following of a couple of art therapy Facebook pages such as 

Art  Therapy Without Borders  (https://www.facebook.com/arttherapywithoutborders) and Art  Therapy (https://www.facebook.com/ArtTherapyBlog).  There are of course other FB pages and websites but these are the two that I'm following.

I also took out some books on art therapy from my library but, unfortunately, they were useless.  Instead, I'll keep consulting the mixed media books I already own.

One of the ways I'm doing art therapy is a shared journal with my friend Lisa Busch, owner of my favorite collage supply store, Collage Stuff (www.collagestuff.com).  She has my journal right now (for which I'd only done 1 page plus the covers), and I have hers.

The first spread of pages I did in her journal is this one: 

The background is simply lots of ordinary crayons used in a tizzy of turmoil on Thursday.  I was having a particularly bad day and needed to release my tension somehow, so I just took Lisa's journal and started crayoning like mad on both pages using different colors.

And it sat until Saturday night, when I decided to play with rubber stamps.  You may be able to see that I used a stamp with a set of eyes, and I also used some gear stamps, and swirly kinds.

Then, for some reason, I impulsively picked up a stamp that looked a bit like a crossword puzzle and stamped it over one set of eyes.  Bingo - it looked like the eyes were looking out from behind a barrier, bars perhaps.  So I did the same thing with the other 2 sets of eyes on the page.

I suppose the deeper meaning to this set is that I feel imprisoned, trapped - but it's probably also related to how I was trapped in a bad situation for many years.

This set is different in which the intent is very clear

Both pages have a mish mosh of red scrap paper glued down in no particular order.  I then used stencils and Sharpies to draw designs all over the pages.

I had been joking with my brother about his needing a suit of armor (he's involved in a political wrangle) and I found the suit of armor on a freebie image site.  I was then inspired to use the caption I did.  Sort of related to the spread before it.

The second page was a reaction to my having wasted so much time in that bad situation.  The images came from a Dover Publications collection of public domain Victorian images.

There you have it - my first real foray into art journaling in a very long time.  What do you think?

later,

lin

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

We all know Julie Andrews' famous song from "The Sound of Music," don't we?

Here are a few of my favorite things from Etsy shops:

Roosters are a big trend - they have been for quite some time.  I'm not necessarily a big fan of roosters but I do like this vintage wall lamp from VintageHomeShop, run by Camille Bonnell.  For more information, click on the caption below the image.

VintageHomeShop

Then we have this cool item from ConstantlyAlice - the proverbial Bluebird of Happiness.  You can find lots of fun, quirky things from this shop, run by Danielle Hanley Hinton. Click on the caption to find out more

ConstantlyAlice

I love vintage dresses and you can find tons of it at KrisVintageClothing, run by Kristen Willis, a true lover of vintage.  This outfit may be a waitress uniform but I'd wear it as a regular dress-if I could fit into it.  I do love the color.  If you like this dress, click on the caption for more info

KrisVintageClothing

One doesn't ordinarily think of buying rocks from an Etsy shop, but change your mind about that.  GypsumMoonRocks sells beautiful natural rocks and also jewelry made from them.  It's run by Cynthia and Kay Pepper-Jones.  The stones are just gorgeous.  I had a relative who collected rocks and he'd salivate over this shop's selection.  Here's one of my favorites.  To learn more about this rock and others in the shop, click on the caption under the photo.

GypsumMoonRocks

This is just a tiny collection of items I love.  From time to time, I will be highlighting favorite things.  If you want me to visit your shop and poke around - OR if you know of a shop that has cool stuff, please leave a comment for me.

I do have to say, though, that Etsy is a very bad place for shopaholics and practitioners of retail therapy.

later,
lin

Finding Out Who I Really Am - Part Trois

Continuing on (the previous installments can be found here and here) 

When I was finally ready to get started on the self portrait, I chose several photos to use, besides the pink house photo

3 years old

6 years old (I really love this photo)

16 years old

18 years old

30 years old

now

In retrospect, I think I should have spaced out the decades, choosing photos from my 20s and 40s, but I opted for some of these because they're milestones.

The 6 year old photo is from kindergarten, and the 16 year old photo is from high school.  Then of course the 18 year old photo is from my wedding.  At 30 I'd just graduated from college, and of course I included a recent photo of me.  Probably should have chosen one of me at 50 but chose not to go there.

I had enlargements done, but rather than use the actual photos for the project, I decided to copy them on linen cover stock paper to give a better feel.  

At first I thought I would do the self portrait as strips cut from the copies, glued together in one photo.  I tried it, and didn't take a photo of the result - it didn't work, let's just leave it at that.  I just could not cut the strips in even widths, even when I'd measured them.

Then I decided to punch the remaining pieces of the photo into squares to make a type of grid.  That was much better.

In the meantime, I was thinking about what kind of background to use.  I decided I wanted a gray-blue kind of background but instead of painting one, I found some paper in the right color at the Rhode Island School of Design store (one of my favorite sources for paper), and covered a 12x12 canvas with it.

Then I started playing with the pattern.  I really didn't know how many of the squares I wanted to use (I'd punched a lot of them), or in what sequence, so I just kept moving them around and figuring out placement, spacing (if I wanted to put space between the squares), and so on.  It took me a while to figure it out, especially since I was mired in depression and just couldn't see my way clearly.

Then, the day before I was scheduled to finish psychiatric day treatment, I had the answer to how I wanted to do this.  I decided to do a block of 25 - 13 from the pink house photo and 12 from the photos of me.  

And this is the result

And here are 2 photos with more detail

I like how it turned out but, as usual, I want a do-over.  I want to do a second piece like this with more photos, perhaps to do one from each decade or from more milestones.  For example, I didn't include any photos that were taken of me at my workplace.  I think that's important.  And I think I should not have included two photos from my childhood.

That said, I think it's a good attempt at a self-portrait.  When I showed a copy of it to my therapist, she asked me what feelings it had brought up.  I told her that I didn't know, but I think that I went at it logically, rather than emotionally.  My next attempt will be a more emotional journey, I think.

We'll see how that goes

later,

lin

Things I Own and Love

Sometimes I get tired of writing process reports, and there are times, Dear Reader, I'm sure you groan when you spot them.

This is not a process blog post.  It's another one of those posts where I show you things I have on display and tell you why I love them.  When I wrote a previous post about the art on my wall (here), a couple of people told me they loved the chance to see the art I love, and I think people like to see others' favorite possessions.  So I'm assuming you'd love to hear about the things I have on display on my entertainment center.

Here goes:

This is a collection of small objects that I currently have next to my TV (it's a large photo so you can see the items clearly).  In the background is a photo of my mom with my brother Richy and me, probably taken a couple of months after I was born.  There's also a lamb figurine and a lamb pin (given to me by my friend Maude Proper), and two cute salt and pepper shakers I bought from a fellow Etsy seller, Danielle Hanley Hinton from her shop ConstantlyAlice.  Finally, there are two plastic dancing robots that I love to play with (I love wind up toys like these), which I bought from the Butler Hospital gift shop.  I'd love to find more robots like these.  Finally there's a little robotic type figure made from recycled tech parts that I found at the Foundry Show in Pawtucket one year.

This is a little wooden pot-like figurine that a former boss brought me from India.  She was the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the medical school where I worked for 25 years, and she often went on business trips overseas to deliver papers in her field (pulmonary/thoracic medicine) and do other business.  I loved her as a boss and a person and this is something that brings back fond memories of her.

Two years ago I took part in the XOS Studio Show which was part of the Pawtucket Arts Festival.  During a break from manning my booth, I wandered throughout the building looking at other artists' work and found this really great, minimalist painting.  Unfortunately I don't know the artist as it's not on the work, but I have it on my entertainment center and I love looking at it every day.

Every year I participate in a calendar project run by my friend Lisa Busch who is a supplier of items to use in collage (her site's link).  I think I've done just about all of the projects, and this is one of the pages from this year's calendar.  I've actually ended up with two calendars because I did pages for 2 months.  This page is for June and is by Margaret Richardson.

Speaking of Lisa, she is a collage artist herself and recently started working with a Gelli Plate to make fun background papers (you can find out about Gelli Plates here).  She realized that she could mount the papers as works of art themselves on small canvases, and this is one I really liked and bought from her Etsy shop (found here).  I have a Gelli Plate too, but haven't started using it.

And, finally, this painting was a Christmas gift from my brother Will.  It's a gorgeous painting of woods in winter by David K. Anderson (info about him here), a Rhode Island artist.  It's another work of art I really like and take pleasure in viewing daily.

So there you have it.  More items that I particularly love.  It'd be fun if you shared some of your favorite art and creative items with me.

later,

lin

Finding Out Who I Really Am Part Deux

The other day I wrote the first part of my self-portrait journey (here), which was a rumination on the idea of a self portrait (or real portraits) as being painfully penetrating - looking deeply at the person, warts and all.

That's a scary thought.  Most women wear makeup and use various products to hide those wrinkles, and many go to the extreme of changing those elements about them that they dislike through cosmetic surgery (as opposed to corrective surgery which fixes real problems like cleft palates and scars from injuries).  Many of us hate looking in the mirror (which, by the way, was invented by Seneca not to primp in front of but to allow for that deep, penetrating stare), which illuminate our flaws.

I don't wear make up - I haven't since my early 20s since I never learned how to use it and frankly couldn't be bothered.  I don't have a fancy hair style, and I certainly haven't done cosmetic surgery.  I also don't color my hair (though I think about it often-an auburn shade would be nice) to hide gray hairs - my attitude is that I earned those gray hairs (not that there's many of them).

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with dying hair, pulling out stray hairs, waxing, wearing make up at all.  I just choose not to.  I present myself to the world as I am and if people don't like it, well....

So, as I said in the post, the Art Challenge assignment of doing a self-portrait was going to be difficult for me because I'm a non-painter, and I opted to use photography.  

I had always wanted to do a project in which I took different photos of myself and combined them into one.  I'm not well versed in Photoshop so I didn't know how to do it digitally, so the solution was to take photos of myself and cut them into shapes.

I've also been thinking about a project having to do with home - the apartment I lived in for 30 years off and on - and its effects on me and my life.  (let's just say it has a bad aura from bad things happening there).

I had taken photos of the house and had figured out how to change its color.  I showed the various results to friends and asked them to pick the creepiest version.  The majority ruled that this one was the best - 

Yeah, it looks pretty weird.

The original idea for the house thing was to take photos of the houses I've lived in and somehow use them in art.  Two houses are unavailable to me - the one I grew up in til age 17 (now demolished as part of 'urban redevelopment') and one I inhabited while living in Syracuse NY) - but there are 3 others I can use, including my current building.

I haven't gotten too far with that project, but I thought I could use the pink house with the self portrait somehow.  

I then started searching for photos that might work to show me through the decades.  It was harder than I thought because many photos I wanted to use were poor quality and not usable for this particular project.  I had decided to take the photos I wanted to use and enlarge them, so the resulting photos of the poor quality photos would end up badly pixelated.  

And I still hadn't decided what I wanted to do with them.

I'll tell you about that decision process soon.  (ooh, the suspense)...

later,

lin

On Father's Day

A friend of mine said to me this week that she was fed up with 'invented holidays' like Mother's Day and Father's Day.

When you think about it, all holidays are invented, even Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Independence Day.  

Christmas was established by the mid 4th century as the celebration of Jesus' birth, although the exact date remained flexible for centuries to come.  Even now, the Orthodox church's celebration of Christmas and Easter occur on dates different from the rest of Christianity although in the same period of time. 

The first Thanksgiving was reportedly celebrated by the Pilgrims to thank their Indian allies (so to speak) for helping them survive in the New World.  Of course the Pilgrims showed their thanks in other ways by transmitting illnesses for which their new friends had no immunity, and by other fun things.  The date was fixed to the 4th Thursday in November by Abraham Lincoln, although it didn't become an official holiday until Reconstruction in the 1870s.  Other countries also celebrate days of thanksgiving, including our neighbor Canada.

So, basically, these and other national holidays are invented days, much like Mothers Day and Father's Day.  They are not days established by the greeting card industry (nor is Valentine's Day by the way) to sell cards.  Anna Jarvis campaigned for years to establish an official American holiday to honor mothers, a quest which was rewarded by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.  Days honoring mothers had been celebrated for millenia, by the way.  We weren't the first.

When it came to a day just for Dad, that was much more difficult.  An actual Father's Day holiday wasn't established in the U.S. until the presidency of Richard Nixon.  However, the idea had been bandied about since 1910 or so, when the Mother's Day movement was picking up steam.  It met opposition, however, from those who did view it as merely a money-making campaign for companies that manufactured and sold menswear, tools, etc.  The intent behind the day, however, was to honor fathers just as mothers were.  Other countries also have Father's Day celebrations, just as they do for mothers.

I do hate the proliferation of advertising for gifts and cards for Dad, as I do for other holidays like Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, and Mother's Day.  But I have no problem with a special day for moms and for dads.  In fact, they should be celebrated year round, not just on one day a year.

Then again, if you have parents who didn't act like parents, it becomes more difficult for their children to celebrate.  No parent is perfect, but there are far too many who wouldn't qualify for "Parent of the Year."

In my case, I haven't known what to do about Father's Day for several years.  When my father was alive, it was obligatory to honor him on Father's Day but I tended to do that with my fingers crossed behind my back.  The year after he died was when I first started to be honest with myself about what a horrid father he'd been to the three of us.  An abusive sociopath, in fact.  And I don't exaggerate.  Before his death I lived in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome situation in which hostages start to sympathize with their captors.   Which most people wouldn't believe, but it sadly was the case.

So Father's Day is very painful for me as you can guess.  

But rather than focus on that, I would rather think about the guys I've known who have been amazing dads and who are adored by their children.  And that's a lovely thing.

Happy Father's Day!

later,
lin

Finding Out Who I Really Am

One of the Art Challenge Projects I dreaded was the self portrait.  Let's face it - I am not a trained artist - I don't draw or paint.  My drawings tend to be stick figures and my paintings of faces look like, well, messes.

And I didn't want to do a selfie, either.

About self-portaits, Peter Conrad wrote a review in 2014 of the book Self Portrait - A Cultural History by James Hall, in which he also pondered the importance of self portraits as a psychological journey.  He wrote that selfies basically look the same - identical poses, look-alike grins, taken only to mark an occasion or for self-aggrandizement. 

 Which was something I noticed on Thursday while I was waiting for a bus home.  Two women were entertaining themselves at the stop by taking constant photos of each other on a cell phone as each posed in increasingly suggestive poses.  Their antics were cheered on by the guys waiting at the bus stop, as well as guys driving by.  

Anyway, Hall says in his book that a painted self portrait is a sort of surgical penetration, an intense study while photographed portraits are instantaneous and ephemeral, skin deep in fact.  I would disagree with this, at least in the case of portrait photography done by the truly great photographers.  

The portraits done by Dorothea Lange, for example, are searing looks into the sitter's soul.

Who can forget Diane Arbus' photo of Germaine Greer, or her photos of circus people?

And of course Yousef Karsh's photographs of Jessye Norman, the great soprano

These photos really do get to the heart of their subjects.  I cannot call them instantaneous and ephemeral.

Hall sees early self-portraiture as reflexes of Christian conscience, and a way of checking that the artist is still here, not just a figment of his or her imagination.  The great artists painted their portraits with all the warts and wrinkles, like this one by Rembrandt

and Gustave Courbet

Contemporary self-portraiture in his eyes, however, is but a means of self-promotion, not self-review.

In light of all of this, I really wanted my self-portrait to serve as a way to review my life and the things that have created ME.  

And because I am, again, not trained to paint or draw myself (or anything else), I have to use photography.

I'll show you what I did soon.  

But the next time you see a painted self-portrait, as opposed to the ubiquitous selfie found on FB, Twitter or Instagram, appreciate the amount of time and skill it took to create that intense look into the soul.  I know I will.

later,
lin

Finding Buried Treasure in Unintended Consequences

(Note to all you wonderful readers - if you are feeling a sense of deja vu, you're right - this post ran last month.  I'm rerunning it as part of Seth Apter's "Buried Treasure" blog project in which participants choose a favorite blog post to republish.  As soon as I have the official link to all the participating blogs from Seth, I will post it here, and on my Facebook page.  Now without further ado - DEJA VU!)

*********

On Saturday morning, I had some time before leaving for my afternoon shift at the Pawtucket Art Collaborative's Mill Gallery - I'm a volunteer there.  And what better way to spend time than to create something?

I had been dithering over what to do for the next installment of the Art Challenge - this week's assignment was Favorite Colors.  I have a lot of favorite colors, but I decided to make this piece with pink.  

One thing I tend to do is when I think of a project I get obsessed with it and make far too many things to go into that project.  Case in point my continuing interest in geometric shapes (which isn't obvious from the work that I do).  Sometime back I had punched and cut out tons of geometric shapes in a variety of colors and patterns which have just sat there.  So, I decided, why not look for pink shapes?

I came up with a bunch of pink squares, which became the raw material.  During my Friday gallery shift, I sorted the squares, chose what I wanted to use, and decided on a pattern.

apologies for the photo

In the meantime I had been pondering the best background.  After some research, I decided to use a grayish background.

the palette I decided upon

Ready for action Saturday morning, I chose a silver paint to start with and mixed in pink to see what I got.  It was rather light so I added some neutral gray paint (this was all acrylic).  I liked the result and painted a canvas board in that shade. 

The result
 (I use FedEx & USPS shipping envelopes to protect my table BTW)

Just after I finished mixing the paint, I had a visit from one of my studio assistants who wanted to check out what I'd been doing instead of playing with him.  Fortunately he decided to leave before getting into the paint.

Junior

Unfortunately I can't show you the lovely paint job I did on the canvas board.  Yet.

I had a little bit of what I'd mixed left over, and decided to add more gray paint, then some black.  I discovered I didn't have an open tube of black paint, so I opened one.  The hole was rather small, so I squeezed the tube a little harder.

Can you guess what happened next?

spots on ceiling

Yes, paint everywhere.  Ceiling.  Bedspread.  Me.  Floor.  Not as widespread as it could have been though.  And I had about 90 minutes to try to clean things up.

Black paint also splattered a bit of the nice silver/pink/gray canvas I'd painted.  I tried to fix it but there are still streaks, so it needed to be repainted.  Later.  First I had to shower - AGAIN - because there was paint in my hair, on my arms, and on my face. 

One decision to make is to not try to accomplish something complicated in a short time.

But the real lesson learned Saturday morning was -- put a larger hole in the paint tube's opening next time.

I'll tell you what happened with the piece for the art challenge in my next post.  And, yes, I'll have to do something about that ceiling.

Later
lin

The "Zen" of Cleaning Toilets

I'm not a Zen Buddhist.  I'm not even a Buddhist.  And I hesitate to even use the word "Zen" without having a right to.  But I figured that people would know what I meant by using the phrase.  It was the fashion at one time to write books about the "zen" of doing any sort of task, like motorcycle maintenance, for example.  But my understanding of Zen is that it's about coming face to face with yourself.  But what I really mean by the title of this blog is that I find peace within myself by doing ordinary household chores.

What may be more an accurate description of what I mean about cleaning the toilet is actually the peace one can find in doing menial tasks.  I'm far from the first to talk about this.  Many authors have written about using menial tasks to grow closer to God, to free the mind to consider more lofty things.  Agatha Christie is said to have commented that the best way to grow ideas is to wash the dishes.  I can understand that.

So I started thinking a while ago about this business of cleaning toilets as an exercise in cultivating serenity.  It's a reaction to my years of living a hoarder's lifestyle where one really had a hard time navigating amongst the piles.  And as a result I became less and less able to do housework.  It was a chore!  One easy to neglect.  And neglect I did, growing ever more depressed as things got less and less tidy.  When I moved here 3 years ago I essentially said goodbye to all that, abandoning a good 80% of my possessions to whomever wanted it.  True, I could have donated everything to Goodwill or the Salvation Army--I'm sorry, I couldn't even deal with that chore.  I needed a total purge, and leaving things behind worked for me.

Once in the new space I resolved to keep it tidy and as uncluttered as possible.  And so I started the daily routines of sweeping, dusting, lint rolling the couch and recliner and, yes, cleaning the bathroom.  I have become a quasi-expert in the virtues of one cleaner over another.  I discovered that one didn't need to buy name brand Swiffer cloths, but that the best store brand was made by Dollar Tree.  Yes, really. I've tried a lot of lint rollers to get cat hair off furniture, but right now like one that I get at my local supermarket.  I've experimented with dusters, and have found one at Family Dollar that I really like.  It's harder to find dusters that I like.

I have also found that for cleaning the bathroom I like Spic and Span's Antibacterial Spray.  For one thing it's a pretty interesting shade of green.  I like seeing how much is in the bottle.  I'm using 409 right now and don't like it much.

OK, so all this discussion of cleaning products and such is pretty boring.  I imagine most people find cleaning pretty boring.  It can be.

For me, though, it's become a way for me to center, to calm myself.  (although I can get a little obsessive about it).  The sheer act of moving  the sweeper around in circles and arcs soothes me.  Spraying the cleaner on the sink and toilet satisfies me.  Dusting is less interesting, and I'm not so fond of lint rolling--I just don't want to be wearing cat hair on my rear and my back.

But I have become concerned, for instance, that I get into panic mode if I don't do the cleaning first thing in the morning.  I'm not sure why this started - it seems like I think that if I don't do it

Part of the reason I sweep daily is I do hate the feel of cat litter under my feet.  I am still trying to understand why, after I've cleaned out the litter box and swept up around it, Junior is compelled to use the box and kick still more litter out of the box.

And I fight a war against cat hair.  No sooner do I sweep up cat hair than I find more.  Junior delights in this I'm sure.  I do wish he'd clean up after himself.  But no, he sits on the table or the recliner or the window sill and looks down and wonders what Mom is doing.  Like a dog, he has to follow me.

I suppose doing homely tasks like the toilet cleaning ease my symptoms.  I haven't spoken to any of my friends about this.  They'd probably think I'm nuts, to coin a phrase.  Most people consider cleaning to be an awful chore.  And I'm not saying I enjoy every task--I hate washing my floors, and I'm not fond of putting dishes away--although I love washing them.  Give me a really gunky frying pan and I'm delighted.

Cleaning does help me.  But I am NOT available to clean anybody's house.  Even if you paid me.  And let me know if you want to wash my floors.

It is Finished

No, silly.  Not the blog.

I'm done with the Day Hospital program I started on May 29 to try to get me back in the groove.

Day Hospital (also known as Partial Hospital) is where you are in a mental health program for a portion of the day but go home at night.  For many it's a step-down from inpatient hospitalization, for others it's a stand-alone program that one does if they're unable to deal with acute psychiatric symptoms on their own.

I am glad that I reached out early in the development of my own acute symptoms and asked my psychiatrist for a referral sooner rather than later.  The program was useful to me in bringing me out of the chaos my emotions had become.

It was also very useful in that I finally had an additional diagnosis that I'd known I'd had for several years - but which my providers disagreed with.  The new diagnosis, in addition to Bipolar II and PTSD, is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), which you can read about here.  

Many psychiatric health providers are uneasy about trying to treat BPD patients because they can be more unstable and demanding than other patients.  Some providers won't treat BPD patients at all.  My own therapist has said to me that I didn't fit the profile because I was too nice and sensible (well, sometimes).

But that's OK - she'll get used to it.

So now that I'm done with intensive day treatment, what's next?

As I mentioned in my Sabbatical post, I'm planning to take time off from running the actual Etsy shop although I'll still be doing maintenance tasks.  I want to make this time for me, to deal with things that came up during treatment through art and to make art that I won't necessarily sell anywhere.  I'll be sharing a lot of it with you.

Somewhere along the way I lost the sense that making art should be fun.  I'm hoping I'll rediscover that sense of fun.

Two photos that I found on the Crafts Report Facebook site remind me of just that:  

The first makes my point and plan quite clear - 

But most importantly - 

And I mean to rediscover just that.

later,

lin

Process Papers Yet Again

One part of my process that took a while to develop is how I start a piece.

When I first started doing collages on canvas, I used to only cover the actual front surface of the collage with my creation.  This meant that the sides were plain and white, and after a while I realized that this was rather ugly and wasting space that could be prettied up.

I tried to amend this by painting the sides of the collage with colors that sort of matched the collage itself.  This looked even worse.  Sometimes the colors did match, but often they were off just enough to ruin the effect of the whole piece.

Eventually, my cousin Jan Lawson, a great artist herself, said to me, "Why don't you just extend the collage out over to the edges?"

DUH!

Why had I not seen this before?  It made perfect sense.  I often had extra paper hanging over the sides that I used to just cut off.  Now I could feel free to glue that paper on to the sides and it would extend the design and, I hope, heighten the appeal.

I've extended that further.  Rather than add the collage design to a blank white canvas, I've been covering the entire canvas with a sheet of handmade paper with a color that compliments the piece I plan to make.  This is what I mean

The base of this collage was originally a piece I'd shown in a pop up exhibition honoring my home town.  A few weeks later, I looked at that piece again and realized it just didn't work.  In truth, I cringed at the sight of it.  It just looked so awful.

So I removed what parts of the collage I could save, and just left the canvas to sit for a while until I decided what to do with it.  Close to a year actually.

So then I restarted the piece by covering it with a sort of bronzy paper that I just love and can no longer find.  (Sorry about the photo)

Then I started to add paper that I'd picked out earlier when I was figuring out what to make.

It really is trial and error.  Some things work, others don't.  I have the option to change it until I glue it down, and even then I can cover it over if I don't like it.  But usually I test drive the stuff until I am ready to use the glue.

I had had several images of people I wanted to use at the beginning, but I found this photograph in a bin of photos at an antique shop in Bristol, and really liked the woman's face, so she was the one for me.  

As you can see, I continued to add elements after the previous photo, and came up with something I like quite a lot.  I'm hanging it in the Member section of the Mill Gallery, run by the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative - a perk of being a Gallery volunteer.  

By the way, you may have noticed that this collage doesn't have one of my usual tag lines.  I considered adding one, but decided that it worked without it and actually, I think, a tag line would have spoiled it.  

Do you agree?

later,
lin