Self Portrait Friday

Taking pictures of myself late on a Friday night after working a full day and when I am tired is a challenge. The first challenge is to once again familiarize myself with my appearance. Vanity knows me well. I expect to see in a picture the me that was so long ago before I married more than once, had children and stepchildren, lived a life. I look for that naive youth that used to hang around me, that used to be me. Where has she gone? she has done many things, seen many things, experienced the very ripeness of life and that experience shows in the soft wrinkles of her face, the gentle folds of skin, the graying of her hair, the weight of her body and the ache of her well used joints, not the least of which are her fingers. Fingers that crafted and created and forged and drew and hammered and painted the very things that made her living. Should I be ashamed that I am aging? Should I fear going into the later years of my life? I am proud of me, even when those most close to me question what and who I am. I am pleased that although it sometimes hurts to take these pictures; I am beginning to SEE me, and all that I am and will be. What an adventure!

Earrings for the Port Townsend Show

All day yesterday I made multi-dangle earrings out of my silver pieces for the Port Townsend Bead Market. The bead market is next Friday - Sunday, Mother's Day weekend in downtown PT at Studio 49 on the 3rd floor above the Silverwater Cafe. I use doing a show as the perfect excuse to assemble jewelry that is more complicated than the pieces I often make for the shop.Laboring time on these pieces is a luxury and very rewarding. I am hoping everyone finds these earisistable! Seriously, doing a bead event on Mother's Day weekend helps me ease myself away from the longing I feel for my mother and grandmothers. I miss them and playing with beads and friends and customers takes the sting out of the day.

I Try to Keep the Blog Not Political but....

Wall Photos
YOU WANT TO GET MAD? We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad! You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President. You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy. You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted. You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.. You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war. You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq. You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people. You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans. You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden. You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown. You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich. You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides. You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark. You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no. AND NOW YOU’RE MAD !
By: Christian Struzan

Done? Or Almost Done?

This is a painting that I have been working on; flowers in a sunny setting. When I am looking at the piece on the easel in the studio, I say that it is done. I am happy. Satisfied. Anymore work on it would take it beyond what I am doing with the image or colors. But then, oh then, I take a picture of it to post and it feels undone. This may be showing back up in my blog as a changed composition later on.

When I work on a piece, it sits on my easel or a tabletop or windowsill in the studio and I run at it in spare moments and paint here, there, add a line, place a color, until it says done. Sometimes a piece will linger for months and months, as the thought of its completion is in my head from morning to night. In moments both expected and unexpected, the right final marks, color, texture or image will pop into my head and I will be able to finish the piece.

What I do know for certain is that the flowers in this painting will become charms in the near future.

I have had the sweetest most relaxing day here at home. I had the entire place to myself!! Now that is so rare, I could not figure out what to do first! It was even a pretty day and the house was surrounded by new mown lawn, weeded flower beads and blooming wall flowers and daffodils.Blessings all!

Self Portrait Friday Rolls Around Again

I had my camera locked in my studio and the keys to the studio locked safely in the shop in town so I needed to take a picture with my laptop's camera. Jacob saw what I was doing and said if I was doing a self portrait, he needed to be in it! Of course, he buttered me up by saying I did not have a double chin, so who could resist?

Seriously, I am enjoying the challenge of self portraits and the awakening of myself that they bring about. I find myself thinking about them all week long and examining my feelings towards them. I still do not like having my picture taken, even by me as it is very difficult to not see before me the image that is carried in my head. Who knows where this inner path will lead? I am walking carefully around personal land mines and demons on this journey of self.

On another note, I can not let Phil mow the lawn because too many plump chickadees are feasting on all our bloomed out dandelion seeds! They are so wonderful to watch!

FAME!

I know, it is a bit of being a braggart but remember the song, " FAME" ? " Remember my name, I want to live forever.... " Disco days from so long ago that even now when I think of something I have done and it is in print; that song runs through my head.

Truly, I feel blessed, excited and grateful ( to Interweave Press & Beadwork magazine ) to have included some of my charms in their Editor's Picks 2010. I am thrilled to the point of clucking that my chicken charm is included in the layout. I still get such a charge out of drawing, painting and crafting chickens. Chickens and crows are my two favorite birds!

Now, I can hardly wait for the new charms to be back from the casters and the platers. It will be another thrill to unveil them at Bead & Button in June!

Doodle by My Chair

Just a sneak peek at the drawing/doodle that I am working on while I watch television. I find it relaxing to just sit and color in a piece that I have done with a line drawing. I am using the time I would normally be knitting to do these doodles. I was thinking back just this evening of my college days when I lived in a small apartment without a television and spent my evenings with my artwork and friends. I do not look back on those times as being deprived or of missing the TV; but of having more creative time.

I have finished my new series of charms and soon, maybe in a few weeks, they will be ready in several different metals. Bead & Button will have lots of new work to see!

Self Portrait Friday

I can not believe another Friday has rolled around and that I am posting again a picture of myself for Self Portrait Friday. This is a picture of a happy woman; one who delights in her family, friends and career. A woman that is wise yet still learning, a woman who has everything she needs within yet with the ability to choose what to add into her life to make it fuller. She has learned that life is short, sweet and short and that days are definitely numbered. A lesson brought home this very day as a friend and fellow business woman worries her cancer has returned. If I am to live in happiness the days I am allotted on this earth then I must accept what life presents to me and enfold it in my heart. i will pray for my friend and pray a thanks for all that I have been blessed with. Life is short, enjoy, enjoy and say good by to the ones who would try to take that joy from you. With many blessings to share - Lois

Creativity

A woman that has broken a long time friendship over issues of creativity and copying another's work quoted Picasso as saying that all good artists steal from other artists. Picasso has long been one of my favorite artists, indeed his use of dimension and viewpoints in his paintings gave me a freedom in my own work that I had not known before. To this very day GUERNICA can bring tears to my eyes and its' strength, savagery and images can make me fall to my knees with emotion.

Is it stealing to remake another's work? To use the same forms, texture and materials in the same combination of the original work that you viewed? Rather than " steal " I think a true artist needs to interpret another artist's work. If you learn something in a class or an experience with another and you reinvent that lesson in new form or new idea, stealing ( a word which I hate to have used in the context of art or craft ) moves beyond mere imitation into your own creative realm and if the teacher has inspired the student to do just this; is that not a successful relationship both among the creative parts and in the presentation of new work? Where in this does ego fit in? The teacher who has taught the student will release their ego and their ownership of technique to the student who then creates new work and sends it out to the universe with new ego attached.

We, as artists should not hide behind accusations of copying or stealing or adulterating another's work but rush ahead into new areas of exploration. Ego will survive, friendships will survive and the world will be richer for the new work created in this release of instruction and learning.

Busy Girl!

Creativity is to my day what breathing is to my body!
New charm design masters are done and heading to the casters tomorrow. In sterling I will have new birds and crows and in pewter, I will have new heart shapes. I am excited about all the new designs and since I have been doing so much drawing lately, I just have the best feeling that even more designs will be in the pipeline!

Today was a beautiful day here in the northwest in a way that only this area can seem to be. It was not cold, not warm, not windy, not rainy, not sunny. It was a beautiful shade of light purple gray and the flowering plants in my yard gave the light and color the day needed. I love unpredictable spring but I confess, I am really wanting to hit the road and end up in New Mexico or Arizona. I want to sit in the dessert and think, be quiet and recharge.

Self Portrait Friday

When I pulled this picture up on the computer, Jacob was standing by and watching me. He looked at this picture and the others I had taken and said two things, " you need to get someone else to take pictures of you " and your hair is so light that you look like a blonde ". I just had to laugh at both comments and then really take a closer look at the pictures. He is right of course, that as hard as I am on myself, I am even harder when I take pictures of myself. I am surprised to see myself aging and aged. In my mind, I am much younger and everyone around me has changed but I remain the same as I looked in 1974! Jacob is right about the hair. I look at the picture and see the gray, he sees something mightily different, a blonde me. I always wanted gray hair. Indeed, I looked forward to gray hair when I was a kid and what is the first thing I did as I began to turn gray? Fall to societal pressures and color my hair!

If I have learned or rather am in the process of learning anything about myself, it is acceptance of the gray. Not all aging, just the gray!

Sweet Few Days

It has been a few very creative days in the studio earlier this week. I moved from painting, to resin work, to jewelry making to charm making. I feel energetic, creative, things were just moving along nicely and I felt for a brief moment that yes, I was living the artist's life!

I am struggling to stay awake so for tonight I am saying, sweet dreams!

Chickens

Yup. I like chickens. I have drawn them and immortalized them in my silver work. I have inked ( non toxic ) and printed their walking feet. I like their feathers, the noise they make, really it is a conversation, and with a last name like VenarCHICK; how can I help myself!? Happy Tuesday!

Self Portrait Friday

This is once again Self Portrait Friday and this week's piece is again a drawing. The exaggeration of features in this quick drawing of myself represents what I see first when I see me. Eyes, glasses, mouth, teeth. Is it me? Or is it me as the pen and paper see me? This is an interesting exploration of self. I am beginning to like the self portrait exercise!



I find I am really looking forward to these self portraits and think that they are causing me to have an acceptance of myself, an appreciation for my days and rewarding myself with some degree of kindness. MAybe we all are too hard on ourselves.