Artfest 2009

Creature from Carla Sonheim's Imaginary Creatures class.

I've spent the weekend at Artfest in Ft. Townsend, WA, taking classes, making friends and creating art. It was an amazing experience that began on Thursday morning with a watercolor portrait class by Tiphoni. In a room full of artists that had little experience with watercolor, every single person turned out a credible self portrait created from looking into a mirror and recording what we saw using a contour drawing (which is why the portraits look slightly askew - you aren't supposed to look while you draw) and filling in with layers of color glazes in red, blue and yellow to create the colors of the portrait.

Self Portrait from Tiffany's class

Friday, I spent the day at LK Ludwigs Artfest Journal class. This was an incredible class in that we learned so many ways to create journal pages. She creates many of her pages "outside the journal" and then attaches them to the actual journal page. We worked with metal mesh, tissue collage, layered collage, acrylic washes, surface treatments and more in just a one day class - and LK is so generous with her materials and her instruction time. This is a class I would highly recommend!!! I will be posting journal pages as I complete them.

Saturday, I attended Carla Sonheim's Imaginary Creatures class. We created creatures from random scribbles of watercolor on the paper. Everyone in the class turned out wonderful creatures from their scribbles. Carla also taught us the basics of drawing, including drawing a portrait of the person across from us with our left hand!! And although most of us were right-handed, all the portraits were recognizable and wonderful. Another great class to attend that gifts you with a sense of whimsey to add to your art!

More creatures from Carla's class

In between times there was the vendor fair and show and tell and wonderful walks on the nearby beach and fabulous shopping in town. And catching up with friends I miss so much, but only get a chance to see at these retreats. But the best part of all is the fellow artists you meet all on the road to finding their path in this artistic life!!

Spring has Feathers

a day of dreams
the garden and the hummingbird
float on my breath - unknown

In just a few moments in my garden, I was visited by most my feathered friends that struggled through the winter at my feeders. My Anna's Hummingbird was here this morning, but I missed getting a photo of her. This new hummingbird I believe is a Rufous Hummingbird - all rust and red in color. The House Finch looks a bit more orange - gearing up to wow the ladies...and as always, the jays come for their peanuts as soon as they hear me rustle the bag. Each jay picks up several nuts and puts them down, weighing each one to find the best one to take, although eventually, they take them all. We were graced with sunshine late this day and I planted my lettuces and snow peas while feeling the sun's heat warm my winter bones. Wrapped in the warmth of a spring day, I wonder what would life be without a garden full of feathers and flowers?

After the Storm

We had snow today - to me, March 1 should be the official day for snow to disappear into its winter den on Mt. Hood - but no, not this year - although it did not stick, it was strange to see snow after having several balmy days in the high 50's. But after the storm, the skies in the east cleared to show the almost full moon among the fluffy, cotton-ball clouds tinged with the rose pink of sunset. And the skies in the west were on fire with sunset. Nature gives us such a treat when displaying her beautiful artwork and for a moment, even in these difficult times, you can lay down your load of worries and just drink in the beauty of the world and be thankful.

Listening to the Sea on a Distant Shore

This is my completed collage for the latest Nature Gathered assignment, the Sea. Gesso on wood, with collage, acrylic, graphite and water soluble crayon....she's listening to the sea on a distant shore while enjoying a hot summer day...

By the Sea

Just a fun collage piece I put together while working on my Nature Gathered challenge.

At last, a sunny day...

It seems like a lifetime since I was last able to walk the LaCamas Lake trail in the warmth of the sun. A week ago, the cold of winter parted and allowed a sneak peak of spring to be. I grabbed my camera and headed out for the trail and was not disappointed.

I had not seen my shadow in so long!

The reflective color of the deep blue sky sets of the winter bare foliage and and moss covered trees.

The jet contrails make abstract art in the water.

And the full moon rises to lend her beauty to the sky.

I am taking part in a small poetry and prose exchange that will continue through all the days of winter. I thought I would share a few of my words:

December 30, 2008

How much more vibrant are the colors of the landscape when heard through the song of birds and the percussion of wind and rain. The music of the landscape is composed by all who share its bounty and color forms the notes in which it is written. Each being plays its own melody - a flash of red thunder wing , a shy soprano in drab grey, the dark melancholy of bare, brown branches, the jaunty tune of a squirrel stealing peanuts from the blare of the sky blue jays – yet all these songs will join together to create the symphony of life.

January, 27, 2009

Fly wild and free

Joyously celebrate your freefall, weightless

Dance in the clouds

While singing your trumpet songs

On your southward journey home.

I close my eyes and feel

Your windon my face

And become a feather on your wing

Taking my spring-yearning heart

toa a warmer land

Leaving on ly my time worn body

to contend with the cold winter.

I dream of daffodil sun.

February 5, 2009

Small yellow suns dot the grass

Dandelion wine, you say...

But I see thousands of white downy parachutes

Blowing in the wind

Eager to seed another star.

No weeds, these

But small worlds yet to be

Found Poetry

LK Ludwig posted a found poetry prompt on her blog on 2/6/09 to create a poem from the words on three scraps of book text and work it into your journal. Here is my interpretation of her exercise, taken from the pages of an 1860's ornithology textbook. Rather than put it in my journal, I created a journal "bottle" to illustrate my poem:

In winter,

Dark, without the exquisite hue of spring birds
Silky, silvery white feathers contrast

With the dingy, less-pure colors of the season.
Restless, active little forest birds,
Picking bugs out of cracks in bark,
A quaint and curious song

Recalling a titlark in midsummer

Be sure to visit her blog and check out everyone's links and read their found poetry, as well. Enjoy!

A Weekend at the Coast

Sunset at Lincoln City

A curious seal

Sun break on the ocean

Siletz Bay tree

Happy dog chasing the seals

Crow's feet

Lincoln City Beach

Another sunset view

***

I just returned from the Central Coast of Oregon where I took a class in Writing and Selling Nature Essays at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. The class was taught by Melissa Hart, a professor at University of Oregon, who also teaches an online class in memoir writing for University of California, Berkeley. Her class was amazing - she taught so much in a short six hours and was very generous in sharing her resources. Eight women from Oregon and Washington, some new to writing, others already published, attended the class and shared stories together in this peaceful and remote area, with a stunning view from every window. We learned that vision is our strongest sense and tends to dominate our stories. So we left the classroom and went outside into the trees and closed our eyes to hear the birds and the distant thunder of the ocean waves, used our fingers to feel the soft, velvet moss on rough tree bark, and used our noses to smell and taste the salted pine air and pungent loam beneath our feet. After the class, I drove to Lincoln City and walked the beach, searching for treasure and enjoying the sun as it set behind a fog bank. After spending the night, I left to explore other beaches in the area, stopping at Siletz Bay where I watched a happy dog chase a herd of sea lions off their cozy sand beach and into the cold waters. All too soon it was time to go home, but rather than my normal route, I chose to meander slowly through the slow back roads, exploring towns I had never been to before and did not know existed. There is so much of the world we don't know and miss in our travels over the interstate. Yet, in these places, history is alive and once experienced, stay in our hearts forever.

Life in the Not-So-Fast Lane

I still remember moving day seven years ago, when I left Boise to start a new life in Vancouver, WA. I was SSOOOO excited because I was moving to the coast (okay, it's almost the coast - much closer than Idaho) and I had visions of long, meditative walks on the beach every weekend and frequent hikes on the wooded Columbia Gorge trails breathing the cedar-scented air and sketching the abundant waterfalls. I DEFINITELY did not give ANY thought to snow. In fact, when one of my friends asked if I was going to load the snow shovel in the moving truck, I laughed hysterically and told her that I would certainly not need that where I was going. After all, I was moving to a place where snow knew its proper place - the slopes of the nearby mountains. Oh there was a bad week four years ago when an ice storm kept me homebound for a week, but it was just one week.....until this year. We have already had more snow in the past two months than we have had altogether in the last six years. In fact, it is the snowiest year since 1950 and we still have half of winter left to get through.

I carefully watched the weather forecast and breathed a sigh of relief when the weatherman said snow flurries as in a light dusting of snow - as I left for work, a few snow flakes began to fall and I admired their lazy float to earth - I could feel the tension slip away in the zen of the moment - but then the pace picked up a bit as I left to meander my way to the freeway - the flakes began to multiply, as if they had invited all their extended families to fall to earth on this fine day - and then they began to stick and cover the road - I feel myself slipping and sliding at stop signs and by the time I reach the freeway, three miles away, I am in a veritable blizzard of a snow flurry.

I'm a little freaked out - I am NOT a happy winter driver - but I think, once I reach the freeway, all will be well, because in Idaho and Montana, that is the first place that is plowed and maintained. Not here. The freeway is a mass of snow and ice and very nervous drivers, like me, in my little Saturn that has normal everyday tires. It does not take long before my knuckles are a gossamer white and my face a waxen green. We are moving at a fast clip - 10 MPH - cars are off the road being attended by stout tow trucks with merry flashing lights that make you want to say, "hey knock that off - this is serious out here!" - then I see the crumpled remains of a four wheel drive truck that apparently failed the invincibility test - this is when the pleading starts - please oh please oh please let me get to work in one piece - the car has only been paid off for one short week - oh please!!!

An hour later (with a normal drive time being 20 minutes in high traffic) I arrive in the relative safety of my parking lot and I can finally breath again. By that time, two inches of snow flurries coated the ground. As I gathered myself together and started the work day, I stopped to wonder - why didn't I consider a career as a meteorologist? Where else could you be so wrong, so many times, get paid well and still keep your job? Surely there must be a position out there somewhere.....anywhere.....as long as the snow knows its place and stays in the mountains.

Encaustic Class

I've dabbled in encaustic before, but today I took a class to learn the ins and outs of using colored waxes from Kimberly Kent, who creates fantastic, impressionistic landscapes in wax. Three students managed to cover the tables with wax as we created our "masterpieces". We used the conditioned wax and later carved back into the wax and filled our lines with chalk pastel for greater detail. I have a lot to learn in this medium, but was pleased with what I produced in a two hour time span.

Hoarfrost Morning

Woke up to a fairy tale world today. Everything in the yard was coated with the delicate feathers of frost crystals, shimmering in the light of dawn. Even the most mundane objects were transformed into glistening jewels fit to be worn by the Fairy Queen. It did not last long in the rising sun, but for a moment, there was magic in the air.

Amphibians and Reptiles

Here is my latest painting for the Nature Gathered challenge. Watercolor on hot press D'Arches paper.

Alex the Desert Dog

I have an Australian Shephard I adopted from the pound five years ago. He is an amazing dog and as a companion, you could not ask for better. But Alex hates water. All forms of water. Especially if it falls from above. Bath time is a disaster and always done outside where he has a running chance of escaping and I avoid mopping up copious quantities of water dumped on the floor when he attempts to escape.

But it's cold outside. And Alex picked this date to sneak into the garbage and forage around for goodies to eat that even my cat, Amazing Grace, turns his nose up at. If it remotely smells like food, Alex will eat it. With sometimes disasterous results. Such as today, when his bowels wrecked vengenance on his stomach's insatiable need to eat. I heard the telltale whine that signals an emergency request to be let outside - too late - he had annointed my new wool area rug along the entire eight foot length. At which time he turns to me and does a very good imitation of the Marley Mambo - oops, mom, sorry about that!

Never fear - I have carpet cleaner especially for these embarrassing moments. After carefully covering my hands with impervious rubber gloves, I decide to read the instructions - not something I do often and now I know why. The instructions state, "Not for use on wool rugs" - well, Alex did not hit the linoleum. He did not even poop on the carpet I would so dearly like an excuse to replace. No. Only on the wool rug. But when push comes to shove, what's a few spots on my rug compared to the mess that is currently filling my house with an aroma that appears to result from eating something that had decayed for at least two weeks. Probably rolled his eyes in ectasy while he ate it. I ignore any directions I might have been foolish enough to read and start scrubbing.

Once the rug is clean, I return to Alex who is looking at me with forlorn eyes and a hanging head because he KNOWS what comes next - his entire back end is covered with unmentionable nastiness and he has to be washed before he can have contact with anything in the house again - and it's cold, did I mention that? I can't wash him outside....so, I know I am about to undergo the bath from hell with the dog that hates water in my bathroom. I get what I need and get the water running in the tub. But Alex is ahead of me on this one. He hides. I find him and drag him into the bathroom and close the door. He stands and looks at the tub. I stand and look at the tub. Will this 60 pound dog willingly step into the water? Not if his life depended on it.

Now comes the dance of the drenched....I pick up his front half and put it in the tub - I reach for the back half, and as I lift it in, the front half has escaped. This is repeated a few times until I realize that the only way he is getting in the tub, is if I lift him in, climb in after him and straddle him with one hand on his collar while I desparately try to get his hind end wet and soaped. This is easier written than done. Soon I notice that I have more water on me than he does. And you could put koi in the pond that has formed on my bathroom floor. I finally manage to do the wash and rinse and make the mistake of letting go of the collar to turn off the water. Whereupon Alex promptly jumps out of the tub and shakes to rid himself of the hated water. There is now enough water on the bathroom walls to create a steam room.

But Alex is happy. He no longer stinks, he has a nice cushy, warm bed to lay down in and I am so busy cleaning up, he knows he is out of the doghouse for now.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to you all and may the New Year bring you good fortune, good health and many adventures!! I hope Santa brought you all that you wished for!!

A Cold Little Hummer

It's taken a week to catch this hummingbird sitting still long enough to take his picture. I would never have believed that a hummingbird would stick around in temperatures that have rarely reached freezing over the past week, but here he is. I have been rotating two feeders in and out of the house to make sure he has access to unfrozen nectar. What a wonderful winter treat!

More Snow

Woke up to a beautiful, snowy day and called in for a vacation day to enjoy it. We don't get many snow days here in the Northwest, but have had more than our share this year. Instead of struggling to work on icy roads, I decided to take a moment to appreciate the rare beauty of a landscape trimmed in the most delicate of lace, lazily floating through the air and perching upon objects that were once ordinary and now a work of art. Our birds are not used to this weather (below freezing for days at a time), so I have made sure the feeders stayed filled and have been rewarded with visits from house finches, Oregon juncos, Anna's Hummingbirds, scrub jays and my resident squirrel, still playing with the cat through the window. I thought I would share a bit of their day with you. Enjoy!

Baby It's Cold Out There

Couldn't resist posting the photos I took this morning as the artic storm came through SW Washington - the wind is blowing so hard that it temporarily took the curl out of the squirrel's tale.

Cat Television

For weeks I have watched this squirrel through my patio window. He watches my cat watch him, fully knowing that he is protected by the window. And every now and then, he runs up and slaps at the cat's face through the window and then runs away. The cat, not nearly as bright as the squirrel, immediately leaps for the squirrel, slams into the window and then looks very puzzled as to why he can't get that squirrel. I tried several times to photograph them, but my digital camera does not shoot fast enough to catch the moment. So I decided to bring them together in Photoshop for my Fauna assignment for Nature Gathered. This is a composite of two photos, taken just minutes apart, blended with the watercolor brush and color adjusted.

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down

-who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed,

how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?