HOPE

Sixteen years ago the talk around the kitchen table was all about a man from a town called Hope. That didn’t work out so well when a deficit of character was revealed. Then we placed our hope on a man of character who led us down the path to war… and that didn’t work out well either. Now many Americans link this country’s future to “hope for change”. We’ll see. It could just work if we all pull together to re-claim the honor that was once integral in the USA.

There’s another kind of hope, one that has nothing to do with the hope and expectation I place in the leaders of my county that they will lead with wisdom, integrity, and strength. This other kind of hope is more personal and has to do with faith, this one woman’s hope in the God of the Bible.

Happy New Year to each of you. May this year bring you hope, joy, and peace.

Roses in the Snow

We're still buried in snow up here on Maple Hill though the temperatures are rising and the rains have taken over. The chains came off the car today and I just might venture out alone tomorrow after 12 days of snow and cold. I don't mind being homebound because I'm never bored. There's always something to paint, glue, cook, stitch, draw, write, read, or photograph... and there's the long winter's nap, too, that restores my creative juices.

I just got a note from my friend Leslie Miller who has a wonderful blog that you all will just love. I met Leslie in a hot tub in Taos many years ago when we were staying at the same B&B the night before starting a weeklong workshop. We hit it off right away and have been friends since. She's such a fine collage artist and makes beautiful non-objective paintings. Do have a look at her work.

You'd think that with all my free time I'd have a sparkling clean house, a tidy studio, an organized basement storage, and lots of new artwork. I don't know where the time went but not into those activities. I did get some Christmas gifts made and our family had a wonderful time together celebrating Christ's birth. Now it's boxing day and the boxes and paper are on their way to the dump and I'm working on plans for the coming week when I intend to get some art made.

Roses do indeed bloom in Oregon in December, even in the snow.

Red blossoms bend low

Weighted by winter diamonds

Snow and ice and cold

Paintboxes

Here's a page from my daily Moleskine journal. I draw and write with a Gel Xtreme pen by Y&C to make and add watercolor from my little recycled Altoid's tin which is now a handy paintbox.

Making little paintboxes has become a bit of an obsession. I collect flat, lightweight containers such as makeup compacts, vintage metal cigarette boxes, vintage aluminum soap boxes, children's watercolor sets, mint, candy, and cough drop boxes can be converted into little paintboxes. I spray the inside of the boxes with white enamel so I can use this as a mixing area. I order empty half pans and full pans from Daniel Smith and adhere them to the bottom of the box with doublestick carpet tape, fill them with a warm and a cool of 3 basic colors, add a tiny Koi waterbrush, and I'm set to paint wherever I go.

The face is a handcarved rubber stamp that I made from a tracing of a photograph. It was very difficult to carve the details but it's close enoough so that I don't feel the need to re-do the carving.

Open Studio report

Last month's Open Studio was a success, so much fun that I'll definitely do it again. Around 100 people came sometime during the 2 days and several who couldn't make it during the weekend stopped by later in the week, and some returned later to make purchases. My sales were much better than I thought they'd be, considering the economy, but the most important result of the show was that quite a few people were inspired to go home and dig out their packed away art supplies and get back into working. We had such good conversations about art and process, and for a few hours I got to be a teacher again.

I couldn't have done it without help from friends and family. My dear husband pitched in with setup and was a wonderful host. Joanne, Saundra, and Marilyn took charge of the kitchen and sales Friday night, leaving me free to talk to my guests. Then on Saturday I relied on Linda and Marnie with some assistance from my granddaughter Amy and her friend Kelly.

It was such fun to show art that I've created to friends who didn't know that side of me, and many of them turned out to be my customers. I think it's because buying art from the artist is sort of like buying a little piece of the artist. I know that's true for me. I have always made it a point to meet the artists who made the paintings in my collection, and I've succeeded with one exception. I enjoy having authors autograph their books, too. This personal connection adds perceived value.

One thing I'll do differently from now on is to catalog each painting as it's finished. Although I own the Working Artist software I had not used it to catalog my work so much of the month before the show was spent cataloging 146 pieces of finished work. Whew.

Sketchbook Journaling

For years I've kept an art journal of one kind or another and I've often made the books by gutting a discarded book and rebinding it with my preferred papers. But right now I prefer coil bindings over sewn bindings because I can fold the pages back on themselves for more comfortable working.

My journals aren't sketchbooks although they contain many sketches. They aren't diaries although they contain many personal observations. They could more accurately be called repositories because this is where I keep notes, lists, art ideas, workshop notes, sketches, web addresses, gallery show announcements, images from magazines, and pictures of my grand kids, among other things. They're quite colorful and once I get a few pages done in a book it compels me to keep going. Sometimes when I'm painting I'll swipe some color across a blank page so the page isn't so difficult to mess up with something else... it's my way of getting around the fear of the blank page.

I'm not alone in this love affair with the blank book. I'm currently devouring Danny Gregory's newest book about journaling, An Illustrated Life. Danny features the sketchbooks of 50 artists, illustrators and designers, giving them each 4 to 6 pages to showcase some of the pages from their own journals and giving each of them a voice to tell the reader when, where, why and how they journal. If you keep a sketchbook or journal I recommend that you buy this book and read every word. The book has "meat", heft, real content and if you aren't inspired to spend more time drawing I'll be very surprised. Danny's original book, Everyday Matters, emphasizes that anyone can draw. I believe that. It just takes practice, every day practice, because you see, drawing everyday does matter.

Jo

How to subscribe

I know from experience that figuring out how to subscribe to a blog can be confusing. I still don't have all the answers but maybe what I DO know will help someone out there. If you're reading this blog in your browser look up at the top right hand corner of the browser window for a square red icon with some radiating white lines on it. If you click on that red icon you'll be directed to a subscribe page. Simply click on "subscribe to this feed" and you're set. Then whenever you open your browser (Internet Explorer) look at the top left hand corner of the browser window, on the same line as the red box but on the other side, and you'll see a big yellow star. Click on that star and you'll get a drop-down list of the blogs you've subscribed to through feedburner. The newest posts are in bold. Just click on the title. The trouble with this is that you don't get to see my blog with all its bells and whistles, so you need to then click on the title, One A Day, to open my pretty blog which I spend so much time on to make it just right.

Or click on the Subscribe to button at the top of my blog and choose your feeder. The other way to subscribe is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on "Subscribe to posts: Atom".

If this didn't help a bit you're on your own. That's all I know right now. One of these days I'll figure out how to let you subscribe via email.

Oh yes, and then there's comments. Bloggers LOVE comments. at the very bottom of each post you'll find "0 comments". Please don't leave it at 0. I'm looking for lots of comments, friends. Click on that comment word and then leave a comment. You'll need a Google ID unless you want to leave an anonymous comment. Go ahead and get your Google ID. It's a good thing.

Jo

Winter on Maple Hill Lane

It’s a cold morning on Maple Hill Lane. It started snowing at 7:45 yesterday morning and probably 5 inches were dumped before it was over. Our daughter and her family came for a birthday lunch but couldn’t past a driveway at the bottom of my street. SIL worked to put chains on while the others walked up the hill to Grandma's house. The new Les Schwab chains were the wrong size! So he-who-drives-in-anything decided that they’d better go right back home while the getting was good. I put half the uncooked meat in one container and ¾ of the potatoes in another and sent them home to cook their own food. They made it.

But it’s not over up here with the wind whipping and blowing around the house and sounding like some screaming banshee on the loose. We’ve battened down the hatches and plugged any gaps in windows and doors and are staying relatively toasty. Periodically one of us has to take a heat gun outside to melt the ice where water drips through a pipe from the furnace because when it freezes the furnace turns itself off. Pipe insulation doesn’t do the job so now I’ve covered it with a plastic box to keep the wind off. I didn’t cover the Phormium planted between 2 big rocks in front so it’s probably history along with a few other barefooted plants.

A big fir tree just fell in a yard up the street and they're out with chainsaws. Ours is at the farm so we can't offer any help and are glad of the excuse. However, the sun is shining, I have company because DH wasn’t needed at work this morning, and there's a project on my desk to keep me happily busy. Life is good.

Here's a recent watercolor painting:

Summer in Venice

Sold

My Artist's Statement

Lift Me On Angel Wings

12" x 16"

Mixed media on board

$300

I wrote my artist's statement for my recent Open Studio. I'll write up a report of the event soon.

JO REIMER, AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Gathering and hanging art work that I created has been so interesting and informative, revealing just where I’ve been and hinting at the direction ahead. Seen together on the walls of my home this work from the past 4 years reflects my interests, both in the seen world and in the spiritual. There are works that tell a story of how I look at my environment as well as how I relate to God and his creation.

Artwork like the Pear series and the Flower Vases are practice pieces and yet are among my personal favorites because they are so much fun to make. It doesn’t matter if a line is right or if a shadow is off or if the color just isn’t very realistic. What matters is that I do them, that I get paint onto paper, and in this practice I grow. Like a pianist learning scales before she gets to the melody I paint my little practice pieces so that I will get to the place where I can paint whatever is waiting within me to be expressed. That’s what painting is to me… an expression of who I am and what I’m thinking about.

I started being an artist when I was four years old. My grandmother was teaching me to embroider and I insisted on making the flowers brown and the stems red… present things my own way. I grew to use embroidery to create fiberart, things that hung on the wall rather than pieces that were functional. I still remember the evening I saw embroidered art on display in a gallery setting and recognized that I knew how to make art even though I didn’t know how to use a paint brush. I studied with creative embroidery in London, England and stuck with using the threaded needle, art quilting, surface design, sewing, and pattern design until 1998 when I turned off my sewing machine, put away my embroidery hoops and leapt into fine art making, knowing that there were paintings deep within me that wanted to get out. I refined my drawing skills, took some painting classes, and practiced and practiced. I continue to work at learning by reading, watching DVDs, taking workshops and classes, and talking art with like-minded friends.

My favorite way of working is what I call collage painting. Several times each year I prepare papers to use in my work. I apply dye, ink, watercolor, thinned acrylics, to thin paper working with layers of color to create interesting collage papers that are uniquely mine. Then I collage these papers to heavy paper, canvas, or board and add paint as needed. It’s like my cooking…
I sort of follow recipes but mostly I wing it based on my past experience of what works together.

I love books, reading them and writing in them and I usually create my own sketchbook/art journals in which I make plans, journal about art and life, and often even create art on the pages. When we travel I take along a little sketchbook, paint and pens. Ask me about these journals because I love to share them.

I enjoy painting with acrylic paints. They are water-based and fairly non-toxic, unlike oil paints whose fumes I don’t much like in my home studio. Oil is fun to paint with; smearing buttery oil-based color around on canvas is so satisfying, but the cleanup isn’t as easy for me as with acrylics. I also like to use pastels, both dry and oil. Well, perhaps you’re on to me by now… I love to use anything that will help me put color on a surface, and the more color the better I like it. Many people paint with neutrals, but even when I start painting with umber, sienna, and other neutral colors it isn’t long until the piece has mysteriously turned red or orange. That’s just me. I like to paint happy.

Jo Reimer, November 21, 2008

Open Studio

Sauvies Island Pond

Oil on board

5x7" available

I'm preparing for a party, an Open Studio, a show and sale of my own work here at my home. For years I've visited other artists studios on the Portland Open Studio Tour and have considered joining them as a participating artist, but haven't, not wanting a lot of strangers treking through my home. But friends continue to show interest in my work and where I do it so I decided to throw the front door open for a weekend. Come if you can... Nov. 21 from 5-8pm or Nov. 22, between 10 and 5pm.


I wasn't prepared for the work this has been. I'm been merrily working away, having fun painting and making books and collages without doing all the archival work that a working artist keeps up with such as photographing and cataloging each piece as it's completed. I just add the work to a stack over against the wall and start on the next piece. Now it's all catching up with me and I've spent day after day photographing and scanning work, determining a fair price for each piece, cataloging it in Working Artist software, making labels with Avery. Just when I think I'm nearly finished I complete another painting and have to add that to the mix.


I've taken down my collection of other people's work from my walls and am hanging my own work, and I must confess, I think it looks really good. Even my husband is surprised at how much I've done over the past couple of years. There are a lot of different directions that are revealed when all the work is hung together, abstract, landscape, collage, work done from photographs that I've taken, and work done from my head. It's interesting, to say the least, and I guess that's good enough, to produce interesting work. After the party is over and done with I might just settle down and concentrate on just one way of working for the next few months and see what happens.

Being

Being

Collage on Paper

8x8"

It's been over a month since I've posted and this morning I decided that it's high time I wrote a bit to assure you that I have been working and that I intend to continue with this blog. I've just been being myself: housewife, gardener, friend, wife, mother & grandmother, artist, reader, traveler, worshiper... and that all takes up my precious time. And all those roles are important enough that they share pretty much equally with my role as artist and are the reason that I don't pursue a full time art career. I am content and pretty much joyful all the time.

A friend visited my studio last week and noting the piles of paintings adorning every surface in preparation for an Open Studio, commented: "you paint happy". I guess I do. I use intense color, lots of warm colors, and lots of color. I keep trying to paint with quiet neutrals but somehow the stronger colors win out every time. Even back when I was doing contemporary embroidery I turned to hot colors when I chose fabric and thread.

My husband and I spent the better part of a week on Washington's Long Beach peninsula last week while I attended a 3 day workshop with Eric Weigardt in Ocean Park. It was called "Painting Loosely". We worked with watercolor and I learned a lot. I tend to tighten up and go right for the detail whenever I work so I'm on a quest to reverse that tendency with whatever media I'm using. I'm not a watercolorist although I do use watercolors, especially in my journals, and I want to understand it better.

What I got from this workshop was an understanding of the importance of using a planned range of values in my work. Oh, I knew, intellectually, about value studies, about making little sketches of my subject using at least three distinct values, light-medium-dark. But I rarely do the value study and I didn't accept that in order to make good art I must incorporate this notion in every piece, especially if I'm drawing the landscape. Here's an example of a photo I took in France and the value study I did from the photo. I'm really slow but I know that practice will speed up and improve my skills.