This is NOT About Halloween

I suppose most people writing blog posts today will be all about Halloween.  This post won't be.  I have nothing against Halloween - I'm just indifferent to it for the most part.  I do remember the costumes my mother made for us quite fondly, though.  And candy.  Definitely candy.

I would change kids to cats here

No, this post is once again about art journaling, because that's where I've devoted a lot of time and energy lately.  I'm really trying to make it an area where I'm thinking about things.  I might think too much but it's fine with me.  I also seem to be spending too much time and energy cleaning and organizing, but let's not go there.  

(non sequitur - this post is being written while listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony - glorious)

Back to the point, ahem.  the journal exchange Lisa and I are doing is still in full swing and I just wanted to show you what I've done recently.  As I think I've said, I usually don't have a plan when I do the journals.  I'm making myself play (kind of a contradiction in terms) because I have a bad habit of sticking to tried and true.  And even in the journals you'll see that.  However, I'm breaking out of the bonds of sameness ever so slowly.  Like molasses.

So here you have the early stages (I have no idea which journal these pages belong to as the journals are packed and ready to go back to Texas)

The left page has a a paper foreground of punchinella-style white paper over a red bronze paint background.  On the right, a very thin, delicate webby type paper was used. On the background I used things like jar openers to create texture but I thought it'd be more fun to use the webby paper instead - both papers came from RISD's store, I think.

 I used a set of rub-ons from 7 Gypsies to add interest - I forget the name of it but it's been discontinued.  I bought a bunch of them from Lisa (she has an online shop called collagestuff.com) on clearance.  I like rub-ons better than rubber stamps, actually since I never seem to stamp properly without leaving marks that shouldn't be there.

I then added a bunch of stuff to the left page.  The "Work Hard..." quote comes from a postcard advertising the recent Pawtucket (RI) Arts Festival, a month-long celebration of the arts held every September in this industrial city trying hard to find an identity (and the city where I was born, incidentally).

Obligatory cute picture of cat

As usual I have my helper - if you want to call him that.  He and I were playing a game of "who gets the chair first?"  Doesn't matter that he has four chairs to choose from - he wants the one I'm using, and so each time I get up to find something (a neverending activity), he sits on my chair.  Doesn't mind being turfed off it though.

The final result of the second page is something I quite like.  It's weird, like myself, and perhaps I need to do a larger version of him.  He's so serious yet he's flying around attached to a card from a game called "Flinch," which I've never heard of but you can read about it here.  

I think the wings might be too small for the weight of the card, though.  He's wearing a deerstalker hat too, though I think he's probably wearing it wrong.

So there you have this week's art journal session.  What do you think?

later,
lin

Too Many Pots on the Boil?

Like most artists I know (heck anybody probably, artist or not), I've got lots of things on the boil - some things that have been tried but come to naught (like my pirate knitter collage, alas).  Or I've got stuff that is percolating and not quite ready for prime time (like a wedding gift for a certain happy couple in North Carolina).

And there are the Christmas gifts and cards that are scattered all over my kitchen table.  Well, not really.  I've got that fairly well organized, it just seems like it's overtaken my kitchen table.

A page from the 1st calendar I ever made

The gifts are often handmade calendars that I have created for 5 years, I think.  They are so popular that each fall someone with pleading eyes will ask me if they're on the calendar list.  They get kept year after year for future giggles, which is a great compliment.  And new people do get added to the calendar list too.  I'm doing 10 this year.

Other special people in my life get other handmade gifts appropriate to their interests.

There's one family of cats (5) that is getting a set of small crocheted sleeping blankets, for example.  I figure the cats won't mind that I'm not the best of crocheters.

A select few will get store bought (mostly Etsy-bought) gifts that are carefully selected to suit their interests.

And everyone will get handmade Christmas cards.  And I hope that the non-calendar recipients know that I really appreciate and love them too.  When I told someone that I was doing 90% handmade this year they remarked that it was a good way to save money.  Hah!  Not true.

Getting back to the calendars, they're a hell of a lot of work to be frank.  My therapist (one of the calendar recipients) and others have urged me to make them for sale.  The amount of work that goes into them, however, makes that cost-prohibitive.  Just taking the time spent into account would make them at least $50 each and that's not even counting my materials.  I could try to have them printed but that's just too much work and, besides, I want to keep them special, one of a kind, just for the people I care about.

In this post I'm showing you the front of monthly pages from past calendars.  However, there are two special features that recipients love.  First, I include a list of anniversaries for the new year.  These are researched online and I choose a few that interest me or are a bit weird.  Sometimes they're serious anniversaries - this year's list includes the end of World War II and the anniversary of the ending of the Civil War.  This list is glued to the back of the front page.

The second feature, something that is especially anticipated by my therapist, is a monthly list of bizarre holidays for the month that I glue to the back of each month's page.  I don't include the whole month - that would be way too long for the size of the page - but again I select a few ranging from bizarre to serious.

So, I've included samples of past years' pages in various states of completion in this post.  I should note also that the bases for these pages are often upcycled postcards, either the free postcards one used to find in nightclubs, bars, and elsewhere (but seem to have disappeared), or watercolor paper cut down from large sheets.  And though the design may seem simple, it's still a lot of work.  And of course the completed pages contain the usual Rhodyart caption.


Even though they do take a lot of time (I start working on them in June, usually), I enjoy doing them, especially because I know how much pleasure the recipients get from them.

And that is reason enough for me.

later,
lin

Color, Color, Color

In spite of my having a brown couch in my living room (a regrettable decision, I admit), I love bright colors.  Which is probably surprising for a person with severe depression.  My love for bright colors is a strike back against depression.  I want to believe that color will beat back the darkness that consumes so much of my thoughts and so I defiantly wear t-shirts in bright pinks, reds, purples, blues (not yellow or orange - I look horrid).  And sometimes it does work.

Although a lot of my work starts with brown or sepia tones, I try to add color wherever I can, where it works.  In a journal that I've started, my base has tended to be vintage papers from books and newspapers, overlaid with colorful paint or elements.

These most recent pages from the journal started as usual with the old papers.

I wondered what I wanted to do with them once I laid down the papers, and decided to go back to paint and stencils.  I rubbed gold paint on the background papers first, then overlaid that with cadmium red medium paint rubbed over a stencil by Tim Holtz

and also punchinella (stencil waste).  I then got the idea to take a piece of bubble wrap, slather paint on the bubble wrap and rub that over everything.


Then I wondered.  What next?  And, I decided, nothing.  I would leave this set as is because I really like it as an abstract piece.

I decided to write a few words on the other set, words that expressed how I feel about color.

I think what I said probably resonates with a few people.  What do you think?

later,
lin

Little Wonders

from Unearthedcomics.com

Those who have chronic illnesses probably understand quite well when I say that one lives it 24/7.  It becomes an obsession, how one feels.  You monitor every little symptom and if something new comes along, you immediately think that something is terribly wrong.  The internet doesn't help - you can Google every symptom and find a host of causes, a lot of them terrifying.  And naturally you pick the absolute worse cause.

I'm no different, and of course it drives me nuts (well, I'm already nuts - it just pushes me further along).

When I'm feeling particularly out of sorts, as I have been recently, I try, I really try, to think about life's little pleasures, the things that feed me, that make me laugh.  (Yeah, this is going to be one of those 'uplifting' kinds of posts so feel free to exit now) 

I suppose the most constant source of amusement for me would be the feline contingent.  Junior and Maggie, even at their most annoying, are funny little creatures that constantly amaze me.  I have a large fan that sits on the floor of my parlor and Junior and I discovered during the summer that he can sit behind the fan and grab at Da Bird and pull it through an opening under the fan.  It's been several months and he still hasn't tired of the game.  And I don't dare put the fan away even though it's October.

Michele at a flea market we went to

Will, Cathy (seated),
Jan and I (red sweater)

Friends and family, as few as I have of them, keep me going.  They listen to me whine, they push me through barriers, and rejoice with me at small and large triumphs.  And I'm totally grateful for them - my brother & sister-in-law Will & Cathy, cousin Jan, and my friends Michele & Adam, Krista, Ricky, Lisa, Cynthia & Kay, Maude, Mama in Law Lucille and others - Thank You.

I am continually awed by the sunsets I see from my sixth floor window.  I don't see sunrises - I'm not usually up early enough.  I spent years in apartments surrounded by buildings that blocked full views of sunsets - now I revel in them.  My photos aren't that great but who cares?  They still make me smile.

Music is one of the things I don't think I could really live without.  Whether it's Beethoven, which I'm listening to right now, or the 2014 80's Rewind Festival I saw earlier on VH1, or Cajun, bluegrass, Arabic, Pink Floyd, and so on and so on, my tastes are wide ranging.  

Buckingham Palace scene in
"A Scandal in Belgravia", "Sherlock"

I'm also getting some joy out of current TV obsessions, whether it's slowly getting through full seasons of "Midsomer Murders" on Netflix (an English series), "Nova" or "Secrets of the Dead" on PBS, or something I became obsessed with this summer - "Sherlock."  Yes indeed.  Sherlock.  I admit it - if I need to calm down after a particularly difficult day I will watch a scene from "Sherlock" on Youtube.  




Then there's the flowers - those who read this blog regularly have seen me post about the flowers I see when I'm walking.  And trees.  Especially a tree on the Butler Hospital campus in Providence that looks to me like two trees intertwined.  




And, oh, the silly things.  Art by Ricky Gagnon, cartoons by Greg Stones, and bright pink minivans in the parking lot of a local supermarket.  Cross-dressing lumberjacks and silly walks.  Puns and nerdy jokes.  Wacky posts about animals from Cynthia, Ricky, and others on FB. Funny magnets from an Etsy shop called Beanforest.  Stupid memes shared on Facebook.

  I could go on for hours but that would be boring, I'm sure.  

And I haven't even gotten to the thing that gets me through most days - making art.  When I've talked to others who also deal with severe mental illness, most are surprised that even in the midst of severe episodes I'm able to make art.  After all, they say, "I can't even get out of bed when I'm bad."  

There are times when that's really where I want to be--in bed, or somewhere else, hiding from the world.  And it truly is often a struggle to stay out of bed or stay off the couch watching TV just to occupy time. Making art, or preparing things for pieces (such as cutting out images, making backgrounds, sorting papers), gives me a reason to keep going these days, as it has since I lost my job because of my illness 4 1/2 years ago.

I'm sure that it's one of the major reasons I'm still alive, quite frankly.

I try to maintain as positive an attitude as I can, which lately has been quite difficult.  That's one of the reasons I decided to pull together an "uplifting," "saccharinely sweet," "inspirational" blog post.  Perhaps numbering the good things in my life instead of obsessing over the bad might help for a little while.

We'll see.

later,
lin

Process, Process, Process

I hope you're not bored with this continuing series detailing the journal exchange between my friend Lisa Busch and me.  I just like to show you things I'm working on, and since I have a bit of a bully pulpit with this blog you'll just have to put up with it.  

I've started a new journal, since the one that currently has been with Lisa (and which has been mailed back to me) is just about filled up.  I like to make my own journals rather than buy them, so the journal itself was made with watercolor paper sheets that I cut down to size, and I added two pieces of black cover stock to use as covers.  I then brought the pages down to Staples for binding, rather than use my Bind-it-All (I'm lazy), and voila! A journal.

I started out plastering old text pages all over, something which I've been enjoying doing recently.

 Yes, I know - they don't look that much different from each other, do they?  But wait.....

The next photos show that I've added some rub ons to each page of the first spread, then added additional embellishments, and one figure of a priest on one page, and two people talking on the phone on the other page.

The rub-ons I used were discontinued by their company, 7 Gypsies, and I bought a bunch of this pattern from Lisa some time ago.  I normally use rub-ons to add background to the magnets that I make but thought I'd use them for the journals.  The strip of fabric trim on the left page is also from Lisa's shop (collagestuff.com)






The priest image came from a Dover collection, I think the "Men" collection.  The people talking on the phone images came from TheGraphicsFairy.com, a great site for finding free, quality, vintage graphics. 

I finished the two pages by adding quotes from two songs by Pink Floyd: "What Do You Want From Me?" on the left, and "Keep Talking" on the right. 

Often, when I'm working on pieces I forget to take photos documenting the whole process, so for the second set of pages I can only show you the finished product.

With this set of pages, I added lots of embellishments without really planning anything.  When I'm doing the journals, I don't plan.  I simply take stuff and stick it.  Sometimes I'll stencil, sometimes I'll use rubber stamps.  It's whatever I feel like doing.  I don't have a theme in mind most of the time either, and this set definitely shows it since I had no clue how to finish the second page after I glued the cat's head to it.  I just left it as is.  


On the other page, however, I decided to add a quote from another Pink Floyd song, "Wearing the Inside Out."  The songs I've quoted from are from their The Division Bell album, something I've been playing over and over lately.  I've been thinking a lot lately about hiding, about communication, about demands, and I felt that I wanted these pages to reflect that.  Except for the cat page.  There's no deeper meaning to it.  

On these pages, I used some gold punch paper that I got from a local art store, cheapo tissue paper from Dollar Tree, old buttons, and more rub-ons from 7 Gypsies.  Both the images are from Dover books but I don't know which ones.

Hope you've enjoyed yet another excursion into art-making.  I'm thinking that these might become larger projects someday.

later,
lin

A Happy Project

I occasionally do commissions and I enjoy them because I'm able to tailor the project to specifications given to me by the buyer.  Plus, it's often for a happy occasion, such as a birthday or Christmas.  

Twice in 2014 I have been honored to do cards for gay weddings, both commissioned by the same person, Stacie.  First it was a card for friends, and most recently a card for her niece and her partner who got married last weekend here in Rhode Island.

The first time I did a card for Stacie, I finished 7 cards.  I then had her choose her favorite, as well as a personalized caption, which included the couple's names.  I listed the remainder in my shop, and these are a couple of them.  You can check out the listings by clicking on the caption.

Card #1

Card #2

The couple loved the card and had it framed professionally.  I know several other recipients of my cards who have done the same, and it's a huge compliment.

In August, Stacie mentioned that she had another wedding coming up -- would I mind doing another card?  Absolutely!

This time around, I gave Stacie a larger role in the process.  I made 10 different card fronts, 5 silver and 5 gold, and had her choose which one she wanted.  Unfortunately, I didn't scan the fronts for you to look at.  You'll see the final result momentarily.  I then told her that I would pull together a bunch of female couple images and get them to her to choose from.  

Some of her choices included:  

It took Stacie a while to choose the couple she wanted.  In the meantime I was deciding upon additional ornamentation, and was thinking about turning the remaining card fronts into romance/wedding/anniversary cards - which I haven't finished doing, and may not for a while.   I also gave her a list of possible captions, using her niece and partner's names or not.

Non-sequitur:  I have to say that I'm very thankful that Etsy exists as a source for finding things to use in my work.  Ebay used to be my go-to source but it's so difficult to find things there these days.  Etsy has loads of sellers with the types of items I need, ranging from images to ribbon to papers, although I also source my materials from quite a number of companies, ranging from local fabric, art, and craft stores to large companies like Home-Sew.  Some of my favorite paper companies are no longer in business, alas, so I've had to scurry around looking for new suppliers.  As it turned out, none of the items I bought from Etsians were used on the card, but I had a ball looking for things and I have several items (bows, ribbons, paper etc) I can use for future projects.

In any case, Stacie finally chose a couple and a caption, and I finished the card.  Exit a happy customer with this card:

I saw Stacie last week, and she said while she hasn't heard from her niece about the card, it was admired by everyone who saw it - and hopefully some of those folks will wander over to the shop.

For what it's worth, the items used in making the card are as follows:

• gold metallic cardstock purchased at the Rhode Island School of Design store
• gold and ivory figured paper also purchased at the RISD store
• white tulle flower purchased in a small quantity from Home-sew
• gold foil (German/Dresden Scrap) embellishments from collagestuff.com
• female couple image from one of Dover Publications'  many fashion collections - I cannot remember which one, unfortunately, but their books are invaluable to me

I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into the fun world of commissioned work.

later,
lin

Making More Art

Last week I wrote about some art journaling I'd done in the journal exchange I'm doing with my friend Lisa Busch.  You can find the post here, which details the process I used to create the pages.   

I thought you'd like to see more pages done at the same time.  I don't remember which pages are in which journal, but I tend to think the ones with the man and the saying about negativity are in my journal.  

The pages with my statement about negativity is really a play on the reputation I have for being rather like a Pollyanna - always positive.  However, several years ago a former friend was upset with me because she felt that I was being overly negative about some people we both knew.  I was speaking the truth about them, actually, but "Marie" didn't like it.  

In recent years, that positive image has slipped a bit as my life changed and things got a little rough.  I still try to maintain a 'glass half full' attitude, but sometimes it's a little harder to do so.  I thought it would be funny to pair my statement with an image I got from an Etsy shop called Veetzy Innovations  which sells fabulous digital downloads of original photographs.You can find the man's image (still available) here.   The man looks so dour, and I love him.


 The next two pages are in Lisa's journal.  I think the first couple is from a CD sold in Lisa's shop, collagestuff.com, and I've had a photo of the second couple for years, and I'm not sure where it came from.  One of my trademarks in my work is to add a wry or humorous caption, and these are no exception.  I'm not sure why on earth I added the pink piece from a doily, though.  That just looks so out of place now.



The final two pages feature two women's images that I found in the Dover Publications of Victorian etchings featuring women, which you can find at Amazon here.  Dover is a great resource for these kinds of collections, and I couldn't do my work without them.  The woman on the right doesn't say anything but I added a man's hat to her, which I think looks cute.  The woman on the right has a sad expression, possibly because she has to read "The Good Wife Guide."  I got the idea about the "Good Wife Guide" after seeing a reference to an actual book of that title on Amazon.  It's a reprint of an article published in the 1940s or 1950s.  There is a book for husbands as well.  Someday I might actually buy them myself.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this look at the journal pages.  As I'm starting a new journal for this exchange (my other book is running out of pages), I'm sure I'll share more.

later,
lin