Arting

It's time to load some photos of my art, some recent, some a little bit older. The first one is one in a series of small cloth art dolls I titled Soul Dolls. Each doll is made from cloth and hand embroidered. They measure approximately 2" x 6".

Our bathroom floor has finally been finished....altho the baseboards inthis photo are still raw wood, they are now painted a very light pink. I took up all the old tiles and brought it all down to the cement foundation. Primed the cement and then painted. All the other work on it has been hand stamped with acrylic paint.

A closeup of the floor

I have been working on a series of blue jean purses. Poor Jerry's jeans are being cut up. If he can't wear them - off they go into the barn to be recreated. All the purses are hand embroidered and lined.

This journal is covered with dyed paper towels. The flower stamped on the front is one of my original carvings and it is repeated onto shrink plastic for the image in the center. The binding for the journal is hand painted watercolor paper and the pages inside are three signatures of Fabriano Uno watercolor paper. This way the journal can be used for multi media.

This jacket was purchased from a sale at the local community college's theater group costume sale. There is a tag at the neck on the inside that tells what the play was and who the actor who wore it was. I have hand embroidered on it and added images with bits and pieces of material.

This assemblage is titled Broken. The chair is made of wood and bark. The body parts are polymere clay. The assemblage itself is sitting inside an abandoned wooden dresser drawer. On the tops of the chair back sits two bees. This piece was entered into a show at the San Luis Obispo ARt Center and at my solo show at Allan Hancock College.

This assemblage piece is titled Bound. The main image is a plastic doll part that has been wrapped/bound in fabric. Her mouth and eyes have been covered and her arms are bound and she is hanging from a chain. Under her are shards of glass and the piece is enclosed with rusted wire and barbed wire. The assemblage itself is sitting inside an abandoned wooden dresser drawer. This piece was entered into a show at the San Luis Obispo ARt Center and at my solo show at Allan Hancock College.

This piece was created for a mask exhibit at Allan Hancock College. The main body of the mask is a hip bone from a small animal. It has been wrapped in and hung by strings of glass beads.

Another in the series of blue jean purses. This photo is the back of one of the purses which has images of women.

The front of the purse has a hand embroidered eye with more hand embroidery detail on the sides and pockets.

A wearable art jacket is hand embroidered and embellished with bits and pieces of colorful fabric.

This mosaiced piece hangs over our front door. It is mosaiced with stained glass and mirror shards.

Wearable art doesn't just mean purses and jackets......it also means shoes!! And no two can possibly be alike. These shoes go with everything!!

Jerry's birthday weekend!!

This weekend we went to Pismo Beach to celebrate Jerry's birthday. Saturday night at the Sea Venture. We left home on Saturday morning and had breakfast at Alphy's. Full and satisfied we went to see the Bucket List. Loved that movie. Checked into the hotel. This is the view from our hotel balcony.

From the beach this is the hotel. The weather was so beautiful while we were there. And to think this is only 1/2 hour from home.

We walked through Pismo, stopped at a pool hall and had a beer and sweet potato fries. Again walked all over Pismo in my new MBT shoes. These are the most amazing shoes. The soles are curved so you have to constantly balance yourself. http://www.swissmasaius.com/

Had dinner at Rosa's......butternut squash ravioli......very yummy. Back to the hotel to sit in the hot tub on the balcony under the stars. Such a beautiful night.

After breakfast in bed the next morning we took a long walk on the beach. A man on a horse went galloping by on the shoreline. It made me almost cry. I miss my horses so much. And then I remember one of my horses, Blu, so hated crossing water. Even it if ws a trickle of water she would bunch her legs up and jump. She was veyr silly about water.

The gulls were everywhere. Iliked this one with his reflection in the water.

We set the camera up on a post and took this photo. The there was a breeze so our hair is blowing about but still sunny and warm.

The birthday boy!!! That is the Pismo pier in the background.

We also visited Butterfly park. If you look closely you will see a clump in the trees. Then when you look closer you realize that that clump is moving.

There are millions of monarch butterflies at this one park. They return each year to the eucalyptus trees there. It is like a fairy land with all these butterflies flitting around you.

It was a perfect weekend. Great food, beautiful weather and I got to spend it all with my bestest friend. I couldn't want more.

Satchel

Jerry and I went to visit Satchel again last night. What a difference two weeks makes. He is now 5 weeks old and huge. He is the largest in the litter. Look at those paws!! I wanted to bring him home right then and there but can't until the 20th. :( Yesterday I bought puppy teething toys so he will have something to chew other than my shoes when he arrives. We have been so fortunate to be able to go over there and visit with he and his brother/sisters and take pictures of him growing up.

And he has that wonderfull puppy smell. When we got home the cats went crazy on my sweater.

play time

The sun came out today and I needed some painted silk to make gift bags for trades when I go to Asilomar in April. Here the silk is on the stretcher in the backyard.
It is covered with DynaFlo and then salted with kosher salt.

Closeup of the salted silk.

I love it when the salt does it's "thang". Here are a few closeups of the silk after the salt has been removed and the silk has been ironed.

It is such fun watching the dye move around the silk and then seeing the salt absorbing the dye. Absolutely beautiful!!

Where did all this come from.......

snot....where did all this snot come from. One day I was a perfectly normal, well maybe not perfectly normal but as normal as I can be, person minding my own business and the next morning I wake up with a nose full of snot. What happened? Did the snot fairy come along at night and fill my nose with snot and gave it the capability to have babies in my nose so that no matter now much I blow my nose it keeps multiplying? Tons and tons of snot. I have gone through boxes and boxes of kleenex. And yet there is more snot there. It is dripping out my nose, running down my throat clogging up what were perfectly good lungs yesterday. It seems to be everywhere. I sleep with a kleenex box by my side and a wadded up piece of kleenex in my hand to catch the drips so they do not run on the the pillow and dry there with my face attached to the pillow. And along with the snot comes the sneezing. That tickle way back in your nose that usually happens after you have finally blown all the snot out of your nose, or at least you think you have, and then the tickle begins. way in the back of your nose, a little tickle and you scrunch up your nose because that is simply what your nose does when it is about to sneeze and the tickle gets worse and just when you are sure that you are going to sneeze the tickle gets less and you do this over and over again until finally you sneeze. It is kinda like an orgazam. It's there, it's not, it's there, it's not.....then it comes and explodes all over the place. And once again your nose is filled with snot.......with the sneeze not the orgasm. So for the rest of today I will walk around blowing my nose and sniffling because I have been visited by the snot fairy. If I ever actually see her she and I are going to have a very long talk.......