Balance

While looking through my editing tools at Blogger today I found several posts that I never did get published. I'll re-read them to see if they're still worth posting. This one is the first....

Singapore

5x7 Daily Collage

Achieving the perfect balance of elements can be difficult in a collage but maybe easier than in painting because you can move the bits of paper around until it's right, while with painting it's place a stroke, stand back, wipe, do it over. Here I worked to balance several blocks of color as well as the bits and pieces that make up this little collage.

Knowing when something is balanced comes with experience... simply making lots of decisions about what looks best, doing miles of work. Sometimes it comes naturally but most of the time it simply takes practice in order to train your eye.

Remember to back up and squint.

Growing up with a mother who liked symmetrical balance was a bit tough. She had 3 pieces of  wine colored McCoy pottery on the fireplace mantle, one large bowl and two matching vases, so of course the bowl was in the middle and the vases were one on each side. If I'd had my way I'd have used the two vases together with the bowl placed in just the right place to achieve balance. And no, my mantle isn't symmetrically balanced.

What's asymmetric balance? Picture two kids on a seesaw. One child weighs 15 pounds more than the other so she schooches closer to the center so both children are balanced on the board and can work the seesaw. It's like that in art.

Mattie and the Girls

Mattie and the Girls

5x7 Daily Collage

My paternal grandmother, Mattie, is the woman upper left in this photo from the 1920s.  Dressed as they are one would think they've been been to choir practice but that roundish thing one woman is holding looks suspiciously like a football... or maybe it's a watermelon.  Aren't you glad we don't dress like that anymore?

Starting a Series

Maudeline

5x7 daily collage

Maudeline Patterson was my home economics teacher in middle school and high school. She recognized my creative abilities early on and helped me learn whatever I needed, especially in sewing class. Miss Patterson was no fashion plate but she was interested in helping her students realize their fashion dreams. The only comment I remember disagreeing with her about was... "Martha, chartruese green and navy simply don't go together".

SERIES

With my daily collages I'm turning toward home and homemaking as a series theme, at least for awhile. Although many artists have used the house shape in their art I will try not to look at too many pieces by others and simply see what I can do with a square or rectangle and a triangle. Maybe I can burn through my scrap paper backlog.

I've come to believe that working in series is the way to go. It narrows my focus and keeps me from jumping around so much. I have several series going and I jump around from one to another... home, trees, the garden, spiritual relationships and family are currents interests. 

FOCUS

It's hard for me to focus on just one theme.  One day I feel like doing something about "home" and the very next day I'm ready to draw some trees.  I know, they are all interrelated. And the truth of it is that I'm free to play around with any topic/theme that strikes my fancy, but more gets done when I focus on one or two topics at a time.

My friend Jane Dunnewold addresses the topic of focus in her December 1, 2010 blog post at Existential Neighborhood.  I'm so glad I read it.

Jane reminds me that I don't have to make a decision to do anything forever. I can build paper houses for a month. The next month I can play with circles. I know that my attention wanes at around 6 months. If I take that in consideration when I set my goals I can motivate myself to keep on keeping on with promises such as "if you work on building houses for the next 4 months then you get to paint flowers."  With a single focus I can dig deeper.

LIGHT

LK Ludwig is posting weekly holiday prompts on her blog The Poetic Eye this month with the theme of LIGHT. I urge you to read her post.

Light of the World will be my own theme. I'm already behind because my work day is almost over and I haven't started... but my plan is to make a journal that's devoted to the topic and finish a photo journal page most days during December, using my own photographs, of course.  That's do-able. And focusing on just this one thing leaves me room to enjoy this month of light, including a few minutes for my little daily collage.

Thanksgiving

pumpkin by Marnie Fordice

I hope you each have a wonderful, joyful, and blessed Thanksgiving Day. We each have so much to be grateful for...the love of family and friends, and the basics of life such as shelter, food, and clothing... and hope.

God bless each of you.

How I Spent My Weekend

Cannon Beach Post Office

I've often stopped in local post offices and asked to have a page stamped in my sketchbook; this is the first time that I've been told that I have to buy a stamp in order to have them use the cancellation stamp! So I bought a penny stamp. I rather like the addition of the stamp so I'll probably buy one every time from here on out.

Haystack Rock - Cannon Beach, OR

Shadow walking

Kelp grows as underwater forests which are easily dislodged by storms. This kelp bundle, along with 6 others, was on the beach after last week's storm.

Tops

Roots

Today the sun disappeared and hail on the beach drove us homeward. Snow above 1000 feet.

Here's a little video of my snowy drive home. 

Life is Short

photo by Jo Reimer

Please visit my online friend Bren of eSynergy whose post today points to an essay by David Duchemin called Life is Short. In that moving post and the one following he says

"...life is short and no one is going to live

my life on my behalf.

And one day soon my candle will burn out;

I want it to burn hot and bright while it’s still lit.

I want it to light fires and set others ablaze.

Life is short. Live it now.

And live it with all your strength and passion now.

Don’t keep it in reserve against a day you might not have.

While the ember is still lit, fan it to flame.

Be bold about it, even if your circumstances mean

all you have is to love and laugh boldly."

Thanks, Bren, for the introduction to David's essay on living life to the fullest.  I find it so interesting how God works things together in this life and how through a connection to someone I've never met he brings the answer I was searching for. 
 
David also asks his readers to complete the sentence:

 

"Life is short and therefore I will....."

 

That's my journal prompt for today.

STRUCTURE, FREEDOM, and CREATIVITY

What Shall I Do

journal page

9x9"

I subscribe to Lisa Call’s blog, partly because she’s a fiber artist who makes art quilts as I once did, but mostly because of how she thinks about her work and life.  In her last few posts she’s talked about accountability, goals, and structure, topics which hit home with me as I’ve been struggling for awhile with those same issues.

She quoted Jon Stewart who said “I’m a real believer in that creativity comes from limits, not freedom. Freedom, I think you don’t know what to do with yourself. But when you have a structure, then you can improvise off it and feel confident enough to kind of come back to that.”

I would phrase it differently for myself: Creativity blooms within limits. Too much freedom leaves me not knowing what to do with myself, but when my days are structured I’ve given myself focused time within which I can be even more creative.

Haven’t you noticed how busy people get more done?  “If you want to get a job done give it to a busy woman”. I’ve been that busy woman who gets a lot done, but right now it’s not happening because I haven’t much structure in my life. I don’t have a paying job; I don't work to sell the art I make; I’m not involved in structured volunteerism other than marginally; I don’t answer to anyone for what I make, other than dinner every night and that’s loose, too. I’ve given up my one-time habit of setting 1- and 5-year goals and breaking them down into daily and weekly action items. And I don’t accomplish much… certainly not as much as I know I’m capable of doing or as much as I want to do.

Do any of you feel like that about your own life? Do you wish you could accomplish more? Do large swaths of time pass with nothing to show for it?   I know I'm not alone.

I thought blogging would help, that I’d feel accountable to you readers and get the work done and then write about it, but you’re all so nice that almost no one questions why I haven’t been writing. I can’t put blame on you… it’s me who’s given up doing what needs to be done. I feel lazy, in a bad way.

What would happen if I set weekly studio, art business, and personal goals?

What if I wrote them down every Sunday evening and revisited them the next week and checked off the completed items?

What if I had a section in my Planner for goals and a to-do list with a yellow highlighter that I use to mark completed items?

What if my life had structure?

Jo

The Sketchbook Project – The Beginning and The End

I’m finished!  The title page is complete and the end page is done, too. I haven’t touched the cover and may not do so. It’ll take a lot of handling once it’s back at The Art House/The Brooklyn Art Library and I'm thinking that it's good as is... a simple red cover... maybe with the title stamped across the front. We'll see. And now that I see the ending page published in this post I see that I need to write something more across the top of the photos.

The Sketchbook Project 2011 will be on tour in the USA starting in March and appearing in the following places: Brooklyn, NY - Austin, TX - San Francisco, CA - Portland, ME - Atlanta, GA - Chicago, IL - Washington, DC - Winter Park, FL - Seattle, WA

The Sketchbook Project - Beaverton Farmer's Market

Beaverton Farmer's Market



My routine from May through October is to attend the Beaverton Farmer's Market early on Saturday morning. I buy a pastry from Grand Central Baking Co., buy a cup of coffee and find a bench next to the fountains in the park and do a bit of people watching before actually shopping.

This market is unique in that there are no crafts allowed other than those which are food related such as jams, fruit vinegars, desserts to go and gorgeous floral arrangements. The lanes are lined with around 100 kiosks selling produce, dairy, and meats/seafood direct from the grower.

I take lots of photos of people and produce and color, but at the last market day, shown above, the colors of the surrounding trees were amazing. My camera battery went out after just 2 photos so I ran home to get my dSLR and returned record the incredible color.

The Sketchbook Project - Eastern Oregon

Eastern Oregon

Here's the spread with a photo taken in Pendleton last May showing a wide landscape of fields and a big sky. I found just the right green washi paper to extend the grasses in the left foreground and other bits of papers to extend the fields on either side of my photo.