Dancing Crow Designs

three days and a stamp pad

I mentioned I made my own stamp pad (and spilled green ink all over). I wanted some new colors, so I made a purple and pink pad, and did not spill any ink. One of my Flickr contacts wanted to know what I used, so I show you the tiny adorable bottles of Tsukineko inks and blank stamp pads from Dharma Trading.

Over the weekend I took Alice and Red Kate, and we took my mother too and went to the Peabody Essex Museum. A friend had acquired timed tickets for us to hang out with about 40 tiny adorable zebra finches and their musical stylings on a half dozen electric guitars and basses. They looked like this - the picture is courtesy of PEM,  because my sketches of the birds were not successful.

 

what I did at summer camp

by me, Lee:

 

to recap:

• I made a circle a day
• I made a bunch of experimental art pieces using white fabric and a ton of thread
• I made other experimental art pieces using only thread and odd non-fabric things
• I went kayaking
• I sang to the moon
• I waded in exquisitely cold water
• I stitched an achievement badge for each of my classmates and my teacher
• I made some velvet jacket for beach stones
• I made some lined linen jackets for other beach stones
• I ate a lot of very nice food, including a great deal of dessert
• I was as nice as possible to everyone I bumped into (some of these were easier than others)
• I came home ready to think about what I'm doing, but it will probably take a while for this to sink in - most things take a while to sink in for me...

 

twenty five

I like square numbers. Nine was nice, sixteen was lovely, and now twenty five. 

I signed up for a drawing class. The first one was today. It was slow, and the teacher is opinionated. I am not sure about some of his opinions, but he can certainly draw, and he can probably help me draw better. The best thing he said was that he was tempted to bring a laminating machine to class so that he could issue Artistic Licenses to all his students. Our interpretation is what makes it art. 

 

never never (never) hurry

I have been spending time with Alice in the studio doing Santa Claus things.

We'd decided on making four more hippos and rhinos, two of each, for the young cousins we are visiting for Thanksgiving. We got fabric yesterday, lovely soft fleece, and cut out pieces for all the aminals. This evening, we sat down to make them. Alice was working on an essay on the yin-yang symbol, and I was stitching away. Once the first was done (a blue argyle rhino) Alice started stuffing while I finished the second rhino. I stopped for a phone call, and came back see that Alcie had stuffed the green butterfly covered rhino, but it looked....odd. In fact, I had stitched the head where the tail should be. I'll have to cut off the head and restitch it to the correct end of the creature. 

So I've paused to regroup, and to remind myself to slow down and make sure I have things correct. To my credit, the head is right side up, just attached to the wrong end. I'll deal with it when I've had more sleep. 

new skillz

Alice cleverly convinced me to sign up for a pot throwing class with her. We couldn't fit the kid's class into our schedule, but the kind gentleman who runs the place said she'd be fine in one of the adult classes and I could come too if I wanted. I have yearned to throw pots in the same way I have yearned to spin and weave for years now. It isn't a burning kind of yearning, but one that persists from year to year.

In class today, our second so far, Alice and I made rapid progress backwards. Where we had both thrown fairly competent and rational looking things last week, this week all was wabbly and floppy. I realized I do my nicest work when it doesn't matter - clearly I need a certain level of relaxation to accomplish pots - and with practice clay. So I kept thrashing around with more and more water and clay...and ultimately produced only one thing I wanted to dry out and mess with further. But that one thing may be my cereal bowl if it comes out of the kiln well.

Alice was having similar problems with intensity of trying. Last week she produced a series of interesting little Ali Baba pots with bulbous bodies and little necks and flared tops. This week she was most interested in a double container, looking rather like a candle holder in a deep dish. She made a series of these and each time they were close to finished looking, she'd try to push it just a little farther or thinner and it would splorch. She is remarkably patient and resilient, but it wore thin on her after a while so we cleaned up and came home early.

There will be pictures when I remeber to bring my camera to class, or I manage to bring a piece home.

2008 in review

Just to review, I said I'd do the following things in 2008.

Art commitments:

• media of the moment – an extended set of experiments with a particular media going for at least a month, possibly six weeks, and consisting of the daily thing and the weekly thing
• daily thing - daily sample of the media of the moment
• weekly thing – using the samples or new knowledge of the media of the moment, make a 5x7” work

The Media of the Moment didn't make it past the transfer paints and other transfer stuff. I let them lapse at the end of February because I don't like the feel of the man-made fabrics I had to use, and I was missing the cottons and the ability to paint and dye things.  The daily thing and the weekly thing failed at about the same time. I think for a daily thing it has to be completable - the giant advantage of the postcards is that each was an object, and when it was done, I was done for the day. I can rethink that for 2009.

• monthly thing – SharonB's Take it Further Challenge  (TIF) - work off the colors every time, try to get to the theme as well

Pretty good success, I managed to finish all but one month, and I did one out of order and with no object to show for it (my workroom which was most of September and she wanted to hear about in October). Plus I got 10 interesting pieces from the year that are bigger than I have been making, and will go into a gallery show this coming year (more on that later).

• trees/leaves – finish 5 of 10 leaves each series (a project I have been idly thinking about for a year) for gingko, birch, dogwood, maple, oak

oops. Not yet.

• start the first of the weeds series on 12x12" backgrounds

yes, started one and have backgrounds for two more, and I am liking them a lot.

Personal stuff:

• call your mother - do better
• ride a horse - doing much better - three to ride steadily, a teacher, and the potential for competing with one in the spring
• laugh with a friend - better
• go to a gallery/museum - yes! almost monthly
• ride your bike with your family - yes! two tandem rides totally rock!

In the unexpected successes department, I have some.

1. First, I never really expected to get the work room emptied, wallpaper stripped, walls repainted, and new and usable furniture in and refilled. I still have some stuff in our bedroom that has to go back in, but the longer it remains in my bedroom, the less I think I need it in the workroom. More things into the cellar, and from there, probably on to the next owners. 
2. I managed a sales milestone. I took my work to a craft show, which was interesting and I learned some things, like make sure there will be people going to the craft show so there will be someone to buy the stuff you bring. 
3. I started an Etsy store, but I have to put things in it. 
4. I applied to the gallery at the local library and I was invited to show my stuff. I do not have dates, but when I do I will tell Everyone, and there will an opening, with cheese and crackers and wine and beer. You MUST come.

  

circus thoughts

Well, that was .... uninspiring. Surprisingly so. We went to see Ringling Bro.s & Barnun & Bailey Greatest Show On Earth at the Boston Garden (I don't care who paid for it is remains the Garden, only slightly removed from the manky glory I remember from my youth) and, wow. Not much there there.

Aerin said it best, when she pointed out that they clearly have pots of money and spend it freely, but make inadequate use of the extensive talents of the people they have hired. Every act stopped before it got interesting. No individual was allowed complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty. The simple fact that there was always one more thing to look at than I had attention to apply meant that I felt I might be missing something, yet once I turned my eyes to a new point, there was still nothing much going on. The aerial stuff could be accomplished by anyone at Circus Smirkus (plus they didn't let the girls do anything interesting on trapeze - something I pay attention to.) There were too many clowns and no one got any personality except Bello and I was pretty darn sick of him by the end. Plus it was painfully loud. Really, really, really loud.

Having complained at length, there were some things I liked a lot. I liked that there were a lot of animals. I liked the horses (although the above applies here as well - they had some ponies in the opening parade we never saw again, and two Freisians who were gorgeous and should have had a bigger part in something, anything....) There were liberty zebras who did a little act. They were not as comfortable as the horses, but seemed in good spirits (the last one was bucking at the whip, which made me laugh each time). I loved that the dogs looked like they were in some kind of dog heaven - their tails were going, their eyes were bright, they were having a great time. For all that there were protesters outside complaining about the elephants, they didn't look unhappy. They looked like it was work, but not bad work, simply something that was not recess. I felt worse for the big cats - mostly tigers I think - who seemed really out of place. I think, in retrospect, they were encouraged to look fierce, but they looked mad and miserable to me. Not abused. Not starved. Just in the wrong place.

We were told to see the circus by our teachers, to see where we fit in the circus continuum (to be fair, it was aimed at the pro track kids, and Aerin's class of advanced teens, not the fat and lumpy middle-aged  performer wanna-be that I am). I can see now why Cirque was so astonishing when it appeared for the first time almost 20 years ago - it is a really different aesthetic.

It is only a little sobering to realize that I am a circus snob.

small deities

Alice and I were going from one place to another in Brattleboro when we were captivated by something visually and aromatically spicy. The shop on Flat Street selling things from India sucked us right in. We wandered for a moment, caught by different things. Alice fingered all the tiny interesting objects - there were puppets combining men and women into one two headed flip/flop creature though only one was visible at a time, and boxes of tiny skinny bangles, some too small to fit over Alice's hands. I found an astounding array of textiles, embroidered, dyed, appliqued and stitched together. And we wound up together looking at a shelf of tiny gods. Alice wanted to know who they represented, and I had no clue. The only individual I knew, even glancingly, is Ganesh. Others I have only heard of, and could not match names with the images in front of me.

Alice picked up one in particular and was ready to bring her home when I stopped her. I found myself saying "We can't invite her into the house if we don't know what she stands for." Which has made me think of all the things that do come into the house, when I don't know what they stand for. Food, clothing, random stuff migrates into the house, invited in on the spur of the moment yet without a clear statement of intent.

Aside from a new metric to think about, I have to do some research on the panoply of Indian deities and see who caught Alice's eye.

live from the KitchenTable

I am typing this on the most astoundingly  pink gummy keyboard I have ever witnessed. It is a test to see if the keyboard will work for typing on a tiny machine when in Brattleboro. I have to do a picture transfer test too, which will allow me to show you exactly how gummy and pink this keyboard really is. Also how tiny the tiny mchine is. If I can make typing more comfortable then I can write letters, post to this blog, cope with pictures, etc. from someplace other than the home base.

I never thought of myself as yearning after a laptop much. I use to joke that a laptop machine meant to me a sewing machine I could use on my lap while in the passenger seat of a car. But maybe there is use to this after all.

biking in Vermont

What I like about biking in Vermont is that all the roads are either uphill (no biggie, that's why I have all these gears) or down hill (whoopieee) or running along next to a river.

Both girls have camp in Brattleboro VT for the next couple of weeks. Aerin is helping keep small children from falling off circus equipment, Alice is learning scenes from Shakespeare to be performed at the end of two weeks. I get to have a day in Brattleboro while I wait for them to be done. Yesterday and today I rode my bike. Yesterday was down the Connecticut River on the New Hampshire side and into Massachusetts, then across it and back north on the Vermont side. It was lovely coming back up the river with the wind pushing me along up the hills. Today I followed Rt 30 north along the West River. It was busier than I usually like to ride along, but the river was gorgeous. I got so hot I waded in, bike clothes and all, at my lunch stop. It was cooling as I continued back to town.

I am still working on the June TIF Challenge, I am almost done, and that should be my next post.